MMORPG mental health professional

In a bid to expand my knowledge of the metaverse beyond Second Life I’ve been reading a bit about EVE Online, which claims to be “the world’s largest game universe”, and sounds rather more action-packed than SL, if this BBC report is to be believed.

I was tempted to try out their 14-day free trial, especially when I saw that there was a linux client available (though it’s apparently going to be discontinued soon). I’m worried that I would end up hooked enough to start paying the €19.95 monthly fee though, not to mention the extra time I would waste online (the average weekly playtime is 17 hours apparently), which would be hard to justify. There do seem to be some interesting in-game dynamics – deception and subterfuge are an integral part of the experience – but I would struggle to convince myself that I was conducting some sort of serious psychological research rather than just playing a game.

When I was first thinking about setting up this blog I considered getting an account at Entropia, which at the time was getting more publicity than Second Life. Four things convinced me that SL was the way to go: Entropia seems more restricted in what there is to do, the creative possibilities provided by SL‘s building and scripting functions were interesting (though I have actually made very little use of them), SL supports linux, and finally, and most importantly, Entropia Shrink doesn’t really trip off the tongue.