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The Elevator Effect In Second Life
There is an good video on NPR about how real human reactions translate to the virtual world. It's interesting in view of the question posted here about rape in Second Life. The video covers a little experiment in SL where a reporter gets together with a psychologist to see if some unspoken human rules apply in the virtual world — such as staring or standing too close to someone. Perhaps surprisingly, in this world where you can be or do just about anything, you can't break these unspoken rules with impunity.
you can break all these rules with impunity because there is no real consequence, unlike in actual life.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Humans have human nature and human psychological responses. Film at 11.
Slashdot has never had a great signal to noise ratio, but it sure as hell is getting worse by the day. What a useless waste of bytes!
I get the same feeling here: I'll post something, and then someone else will post just below me, and it'll be stuck there right next to my post FOREVER.
Freaks me out.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
SL is not really unique or different to any other aspect of the online world. People in forums giving others volley after volley of abuse for very little reason. If it was in the real world and you had to look someone in the eye you react very differently to the online world where I am sitting at a desk typing on a computer which nobody else knows about. Second life isn't showing some unique symptom here, it is simply a 3D and graphical representation of the same type of behaviour that has been occurring since the online world began back in the BB days.
Ok, Second Life may or may not be pretty cool, but why is there one Slashdot article about it every two or three days? World of Warcraft is at least ten times as popular but does not get anywhere near the same coverage as Second Life does. It smells fishy.
:)
For example, there was this article about a woman offering sex for 5000 World of Warcraft gold. It did not reach Slashdot. That ten times as funny and definitely more "interesting" than some kind of psychological experiment.
Football Odds
Can you fart in Second Life now?
"if some unspoken human rules apply in the virtual world"
Do you know how annoying it is for a ten foot tall neon pink ogre to jump up and down in front of your face and not stop until you log out?
My friends do!
I put on my robe and wizard hat.
I find it entertaining as these reporters are acting like it;s a new thing. It's not. Ever cince the days of Doom this has been observed and documented. Camping, while being a viable attack vector in the real world (called a sniper) is frowned upon so much in game that most all combatants will band together to punish the camper.
There was a paper published about it back in the 90's. I wonder if anyone can find it out there on the internet. I believe it was "social manifestations in online gaming" or something similar where they already looked at this and even in a game where you are supposed to go around killing each other, certain social rules are still followed or suffer getting punished.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Second Life is like cyberpunk hell. Want to know what Second Life looks like? Read Snowcrash, then take out anything at all cool about that world. It is one big unending strip mall comprised mostly of casinos, sex shops, and brothels.
Second Life is in no danger of becoming anything bigger. It is messy, awkward to use, and has little interesting going on in it. Something more interesting might grow from the original idea (which in truth, is not all that original), but it has a long way to go before it even begins to touch the sort of mass media acceptance of games like World of Warcraft.
The really interesting thing about such virtual, anonymous worlds like Second Life is, that although we *could* be someone else, we decide not to. Newbies in these world often try to be a completely different character, however, over time they get very, very close to their real character.
I'd say, it's quite simple: In normal life, we chose who we are. Most people have fixed patterns which affect their behavior and therefore their daily life. Over time, these patterns get more and more restricting and make people lose their authenticity.
So, there's certainly a wish to break out, and that's what these virtual worlds promise us - but changing or breaking patterns can never be done by changing worlds. We see that every day, when people change their jobs, their partners or their homes - after all, most end up the same.
Even if there's a "Third Life" and a "Fourth Life", maybe hundreds of them, they will in the end be all the same, simply as we are who we are.
However, if we are shaken up so much, that we have to drop some patterns, or really decide to make a change, this and all other worlds will be different - instantly...
It's totally acceptable. Just set up next to a spawn point and... oh, wait.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
My WoW experience is slightly different. Surely I've seen some cases when WoW characters (or rather players behind them) followed those 'unspoken rule' the video is talking about, but in the majority of cases they didn't. The reason is simple, in WoW all the characters are transparent, there is no 'pushing' effect or anything similar. The chars can simply go *through* each other (and they often do). I am sure you've seen the scenes in the Auction Hall or near mail boxes in all large cities, where literally dozens of chars are standing *on* each other. What social distance! Compared to that, SL does allow some kind of 'physicality' of the contact, which therefore leads to a stronger push to follow the 'social' rules (and stronger punishment for not doing so). Again, I don't want to say that social rules are not present in WoW; they are; in a way, the message of this video is just too obvious for me. However, it also slightly misses the point by not taking into account the qualities of the 'medium' (which as we know, an essential part of the 'message').
In *real* war, the sniper is also the most hated enemy soldier. And like in Doom or whatever game you're playing, your best bet for survival is to gang up on the sniper to eliminate him/her.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
It never, EVER fails to amuse me when someone on /. says this...
"It has been mentioned before many times on slashdot but it always remains worth repeating go: http://www.getafirstlife.com/"
We have enough youth, how about a fountain of SMART?
Real Life is like soul's hell. Want to know what Real Life looks like? Read [insert religious text here], then take out anything at all cool about that world. It is one big undending strip mall comprised mostly of casinos, sex shops, and brothels.
Real Life is in no ganger of becoming anything bigger. It is messy, awkward to use, and has little interesting going on in it. Something more interesting might grow from the original idea (which in truth, is not all that original), but it has a long way to go before it even begins to touch the sort of mass media acceptance as games like Fantasy.
Dude, are you camping in a maternity ward with a rifle?
Property is theft.
but it has a long way to go before it even begins to touch the sort of mass media acceptance of games like World of Warcraft.
The interesting thing is that SL is the only online virtual world (for want of a better term) in which inhabitants can actually make a lasting change in the world which is tangible for other players.
In There you can introduce new textures or models at an exorbitant cost and at risk of losing $$$ when your texture or model is rejected. Oh and they approve models which cannot be placed in world due to an error in your model (they still charge you for it). But you cannot drop any object other than a vehicle or a PAZ; eg you can't drop clothing on the ground. Nothing is interactive apart from vehicles (sit and ride), chairs (sit), signposts (read and maybe post text). You cannot have a locked door or container which requires possession of another object (eg a key).
In WoW no changes that the inhabitants make is persistent (except, sometimes, for them). Kill something and it (mostly) respawns. Complete a quest by removing some supposedly unique artifact from some location and for another player the artifact is still there waiting to be picked up. Or, eg, turn someone into a rabbit for a quest and its only you who see the rabbit, not other players who still see the satyr and can talk to it and turn it into a rabbit. It is a truly bizarre, surreal world.
In SL you can actually create something in the world and leave it there for someone else to find.
As much as I hate SL, at least it has a sense of persistent interactivity.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Points for doing your research. I play SL. And I use Linux exclusively. There's a Linux-native client for SL... and believe it or not, the Linux-native client actually works better than the Windows client as of right now. Fewer known bugs, and some of the known bugs that affect Windows do not exist in the Linux client.
*shrugs* gotta love it when zealots spout off about shit they don't know about, and don't even bother to lift a finger to confirm their facts first. You're a perfect example of why most people don't take the Linux community seriously. Kindly do a little research before you open your trap next time. And failing that, remember the axiom... 'tis better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb