Still on the campaign trail

January 13, 2008 Leave a comment

Tarissa, commenting on my last post, says that she visited a Barack Obama Second Life site a while back, but I still can’t find it, just a couple of “Obama for President” groups. I checked out the official Barack Obama website, and there’s no mention of an SL presence. Maybe he had one, then closed it when he found out that the Hillary already has SL stitched up.

John Edwards does have an SL “Campaign Central”, but every time I try to go there I get the message that “the system was unable to complete you teleport request in a timely fashion”, which might be a metaphor for his whole campaign.

Nevada is up next, on January 19th. (Actually Michigan is next, on the 15th, but Hillary is the only major candidate on the ballot, the others having withdrawn because the date was moved). Annoyingly there don’t seem to have been any polls in Nevada since December, at which point Hillary had a healthy lead, but obviously things will have changed since then, especially since the influential Nevada Culinary Union have endorsed Obama.

I’m starting to get a bit obsessed with this race. God knows what kind of state I’ll be in by Super-duper Tuesday.

Filed under Politics, Second Life Tagged with ,

On the campaign trail

January 10, 2008 1 Comment

After her unexpected victory in New Hampshire I was inspired to visit Hillary’s Second Life campaign headquarters:

clinton_hq.jpg

There wasn’t a lot going on, but I did pick up a campaign T-shirt, and a “Hillary” yard sign.

I tried to find Obama’s HQ too, but, despite his supposed appeal to youth, he doesn’t seem to have an SL presence.

I’m leaning towards Hillary for the nomination, not because I’m particularly enthralled by her platform (Mike Gravel has the best policies), but because I like her personal qualities, particularly the way she has stood up to years of vilification in the US media and still come out fighting. All the mainstream candidates are hopelessly compromised by their reliance on special interests for campaign funds, but Hillary seems to be the most focussed on some sort of personal vision of what the country should look like, and as such I think she would make the least worst President, of the candidates that are likely to get elected.

It’s all academic anyway, since, like most of the world’s population, I don’t have a vote, even though the outcome of the poll in November will affect my life in a lot of important ways. All the US citizens I have known over the years have been pretty sensible, so I guess I can trust them to make the right decision. Mind you, I thought that 4 years ago…

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Time passes

January 6, 2008 Leave a comment

What with the holidays and everything I’ve not been online much in the past couple of weeks, and when I have, I’ve been too busy checking out the predictions for the Iowa Caucuses to waste time in Second Life. Not that anything I read deepened my understanding much – I was confidently predicting to anyone who would listen that Hillary was going to walk it. I still think she’ll get the nomination though.

Anyway, I’ll try to get on the grid a bit more this week, and work up a column for Friday.

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Feeling Small

December 20, 2007 1 Comment

I noted a while back that there seemed to be essentially no restrictions on what Second Life residents can do with their property, and my neighbours have proved this with some spectacularly anti-social development:

neighbours.jpg

As you can see my little mountain hideaway is now overshadowed by a big rocky outcrop that my left-hand neighbour has thoughtfully constructed on his land, presumably with the intention of creating enough flat space for a substantial dwelling. At least it looks natural, unlike the giant bookcase that the guy on the right has installed on his patch of mountainside, the purpose of which I can only guess at.

I know that I shouldn’t be too bothered by this, since I spend only a tiny fraction of my life in my cabin, and my “land” doesn’t really exist in any material sense anyway. It has been annoying me though, in way that is indistinguishable, in nature if not degree, from the feeling I would get if my real life neighbour cut off all my sunlight by planting a massive hedge in his garden. I guess that goes to show that even a sceptical observer like myself can be unconsciously drawn into the virtual reality of Second Life.

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Elf Actualisation

December 6, 2007 Leave a comment

I’ve not had much time to be online this week, so I don’t have any interesting Second Life stories to recount, unless you find virtual interior decorating particularly fascinating. (I got a new coffee table!)

Instead I’ve been catching up on some reading, looking through back copies of CyberPsychology and Behavior. There was an interesting article in the August 2007 issue – “The Ideal Elf: Identity Exploration in World of Warcraft”. The researchers recruited a sample of 51 World of Warcraft players, and got them to complete rating scales evaluating their real-life personality, their in-game personality, and their ideal personality. The characters were (mostly) viewed as closer to the ideal than the players’ real selves, with players who rated themselves poorly more likely to idealise their characters. This isn’t terribly surprising, but it’s always nice when intuition is given some scientific back-up.

Also interesting is “Multiple subjectivity and virtual community at the end of the Freudian century” a paper by Sherry Turkle from back in 1997, looking at psychological aspects of MUDs. Turkle notes that a player can create multiple characters reflecting different aspects of the personality, and deploy these adaptively in different situations. She draws parallels with Dissociative Identity Disorder, but argues that, unlike in DID where such personality splitting is dysfunctional, in the context of a MUD it can be integrative, and lead to enhanced functioning.

Neither of these papers relate directly to Second Life, but it seem likely that SL users will create and use their characters in similar ways.

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Almost Famous

November 30, 2007 Leave a comment

This blog has been getting a steady trickle of hits, most of them via Google searches featuring the words “second” and “life” somewhere (like “second life adverse events” or “how to find adult club in second life” – that guy must have been disappointed). Hardly anyone ever leaves a comment, so I’ve no idea what visitors think of the site, but I suspect most of them click away again pretty quickly.

Since it’s clear that there is no way that I’ll make money from Second Life by any means other than writing about it, I’m going to have to do something to improve the stickiness of this column.

Writing stuff that’s vaguely interesting would be a start I guess. I can see two ways that this column might develop an audience.

The first option would be a gonzo-journalism style travelogue, where I dot around the grid like a virtual Hunter S. Thompson, cataloguing the collision between the established order and the emerging counter-culture. The problem is that Second Life hasn’t been around long enough for a dominant culture to develop, so nobody is really pushing the boundaries, because there are no boundaries to push against. I guess I could contrast SL with real life, but my feeling is that SL is more of a complement to the existing social order than a threat to it, so there’s none of the sense of danger that would give the column some edge. It’s possible that I’m underestimating how liberating the SL experience can be for people though, and it might be more revolutionary than I think. There is probably some mileage in exploring that further.

The alternative model for the blog would be a character-based episodic narrative, something like “Tales of the City”. To make that work I’d have to find some sort of vibrant SL social scene and immerse myself in it, and I’m not sure that I have the patience for that, if such communities even exist. I don’t think my writing skills are up to it anyway.

Even if I do build up a readership, there would still be the problem of turning hits into revenue, something that has defeated smarter business brains than mine. Advertising perhaps, or syndication, particularly to non-internet media. Maybe Rolling Stone would bankroll me while I did some in-depth research, like John Travolta in “Perfect”. They printed a big article on Second Life just a few months ago though, and anyway it’s not like I’m Lester Bangs or anything, so maybe not.

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Face/Off

November 28, 2007 Leave a comment

The Second Life interface provides a multitude of options for fine-tuning the appearance of your avatar (or “av” as we SL regulars say). In fact there are rather too many options; I managed to spend a couple of hours tinkering with my av’s nose, chin and hairline:

before_after.jpg

I hesitate to say that my new features are any better than my old, (and my av still looks nothing like the real me) but at least it’s a change from the standard issue.

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Property Speculation

November 25, 2007 Leave a comment

Although I have in theory bought my little patch of heaven outright (for the princely sum of L$3725 or about US$16), what I have in fact purchased is an indefinite leasehold. The landholding system in Second Life is effectively feudal – possession of land is dependent on keeping up payment of tribute to the feudal superior, in my case Linden Labs themselves. It’s true that my monthly membership fee covers the first 512 square metres, but the costs escalate as the amount of land held grows – a 65,536 square meter estate incurs a monthly charge of US$195. I have no idea how close this is to the cost of the hardware and electricity that is required to host that amount of virtual real estate, but I suspect L-Labs are making a healthy profit.

Instead of buying land myself I could have rented a plot from one of the so-called “Land Barons”. This can be rather more expensive than dealing directly with L-Labs, but has one big advantage; regulation. L-Labs impose practically no restrictions on what can be done with land; my neighbours are free to build big ugly buildings right next to my property, or, even more annoyingly, start up a popular business that would suck up all the server resources for the sector. Big landlords can enforce planning regulations, so tenants can feel secure that they won’t wake up one morning to find their quiet beach house overshadowed by a six-storey strip club.

Renting out premium land does seem to be a reliable way of making money, reliable by Second Life standards at least. A big attraction is the fact that it’s not very capital-intensive – US$1675 will buy you a whole island – which makes it easier to get into than real-life property investment. However it also means that you would need to look after an area the size of Antarctica to make any worthwhile return in absolute terms. The associated administration would be a full-time job, and a dull one at that. Not quite the escape from the rat race that Second Life promises.

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Magic Mountain

November 20, 2007 Leave a comment

I’ve invested in the virtual property market; here’s a picture of my spread:

my_land.jpg

It’s 512 square metres in area, though it looks a bit smaller since about 500 of them are vertical mountainside. The compensation is the view, free of the lurid advertising hoardings that disfigure most of the mainland skyline:

my_view01.jpg

The lack of flat ground isn’t too important anyway, since the laws of physics aren’t too closely followed in Second Life, so it’s possible to build structures that balance precariously on the narrowest of ledges, like this little alpine cabin that’s going to be my virtual home for the time being:

my_house.jpg

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How to make money on Second Life

November 12, 2007 Leave a comment

It doesn’t surprise me that someone has figured out that the best way to make money out of Second Life is to sell people a book that promises to reveal how to make money on Second Life.

To be fair to the author, Daniel Terdiman, he is upfront about the fact that not many people are getting rich on the grid, but I’m sure his book will sell to a lot of hopeful entrepreneurs. And there’s a chapter on how to profit from a Second Life blog …

Filed under Economics, Second Life Tagged with ,

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