Ever since I was little, I've been somewhat of a gamer. (As if my blog posts don't give that fact away.) So you'd think that I'd be ecstatic about our Second Life session on Tursday... unfortunately, I can't say that I was. It did nothing more than make realize two things.
As I entered college, I've become more and more involved in real life - RL for the l33t-speakers out there. No longer am I the marathon gamer I once was; gone are the days of planning 5-hour mammoth tank rushes, building monuments in Civ II, or going for that one...last...round... of de_dust2 in CS. Now it's all about getting that last angle, or landing that dance routine perfectly on music. Don't call me a Luddite, but I'm not as plugged in as I once was. As Y.T. said: "You spend too much time goggled in. Try a little Reality, man."
Notice that Reality is capitalized... within the context of Snow Crash, it seems to give reality a sense of significance, as a world separate from that other world - the Metaverse. (Its parallels with Second Life, from the astounding geography to the depth of Avatar creation, are unbelievably creepy. What's up with authors predicting the future? Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, and now Neal Stephenson... damn.)
Is Reality the reality in today's modern world? I don't think so. The world certainly has the capacity to jack in and participate in the already existing "metaverse," but they don't. Why? For one reason, see my post last week. For two, people are just too involved in the real world. Hyperinflation hasn't (yet) completely destroyed our government, incorporated the country, and rendered a wealth gap the size of the Grand Canyon. (Or, I'm just socially ignorant. So sue me.) We actually DO have better things to do than spend much of our time in an MMO... name 10 people you know that play Second Life, outside of this class (and OUTSIDE OF THE CS DEPARTMENT. Nice try.).
Finally, I think such an open-ended world may be a bit much for society to currently handle. As Barthe pointed out, much of our media is very consumption-oriented; we read through something, and then we move on. Manovich argued that navigable space can serve as a driving narrative force, but only to a certain extent. Place in too much freedom (without a sense of at least optional linearity, i.e. side quests vs. the main quest in RPGS - Gary Gygax, rest in peace), and you alienate people. For me, games are no longer about the experience alone, so much as they are about the story; the interface, and system, serve as part of the narrative for the most part, with few exceptions. (There are only so many times you can run over pedestrians in Grand Theft Auto before you realize it gets old.)
So yeah... Second Life is an amazing concept, an amazing entity, and an amazing subculture. It is, for all intents and purposes, a microcosm, a digital reflection of our real world. But honestly, it isn't for me. I've got way too much to do here.
Plus, the graphics in RL are wayyyy better... like DX 10,00 yo. (If you get the reference, more power to you - but you probably need to go outside more.)
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