Slashdot Mirror
Playing God in Second Life
Wagner James Au reports from the New World Notes blog about events in Second Life. Today, he's got a discussion with a woman growing her own garden of Eden in the alternate reality that is 2L. From the article: "The result of a year's work, Laukosargas Svarog's island of Svarga is a fully-functioning ecosystem, adding life or something like it to the verdant-looking but arid pallette Linden Lab offers with its world. It begins with her artificial clouds, which are pushed along by Linden's internal wind system. 'If I was to turn off the clouds the whole system would die in about six hours,' she tells me. 'Turn off the bees and [the plants stop] growing, because nothing gets pollinated ... '"
This game gets triple the press of games that are 100 times more popular (yes I made this stat up but it is probably close to true). According to http://www.mmogchart.com/ it had 45,000 players at the last time they counted and it seems like every week there is a news article, TV segment or slashdot post about Second Life. Is somebody tipping these people off or something? Sure it offers a currency exchange for US dollars, but so does Everquest 2 and Entropia universe, along with countless games that have a black market for such thing. You can run businesses? Oh wait, I think I recall setting up a shop and selling customized goods in Star Wars Galaxies 3 years ago. Players can create things? Well how about trying to modding tools that come with almost every game that isn't an MMORPG these days, creat all you want. To me it just seems like people are playing a glorified chatroom, but maybe that appeals to some. It still doesn't explain why this game gets so much attention.