Second life is worse than first life!

“Real” gamers hate it, everyone else loves it – it’s the Sims. I myself love ‘em. It’s not even that I don’t have a life so I have to spend 18 hours a day playing life simulation games, no, I play very irregularly, but when I do I am really enjoying it. The fun thing about the Sims is that even though their creators have developed a very good algorithm that imitates real human needs and behaviours they are still not quite human. They can do things you can’t do in real life, silly things, fun things, sim things, simply it’s fun. It is also easy to use. Interface is very user friendly and so is modifying the objects. Sims are a family game so I find some things to be highly amusing, for example, Sims can not woo hoo if they are not in love, so forget about one night stands, but when they are in love they can do it almost anywhere – in the closet, in the car, in bed, in pool… It’s all over very quickly, but hey maybe that’s how they like it!

Over past couple of years I kept hearing about Second Life and how awesome it is. Everyone absolutely loves it; they brag how you can completely personalize it, you character, the objects, you can even work and earn real money.

And the best thing is that you’re communicating with other real people. I mean don’t you just love the idea – why go out and hang out with your friends when you can sit in front of your computer the entire day and hang out with people. Imagine, socializing without having to leave your room. You don’t have to worry about your breath or non – existing six pack, you don’t have to worry about any flaws you might have or money… Second life was meant to be the first life only without any downsides to it.

But, unfortunately, once you try it, you realize that except technical problems (horrible interface, buggy software that keeps crushing) it has far more problems than first life. You may think that most people in first life are jerks, I know I do, I also think that most people are just plain stupid, but take an average person and add anonymity of the internet and customization of an avatar and you get an entirely new species “super jerk”. Graphics are bad, the world somewhat confusing and quite messy. When you just enter the game you’re supposed to go find a job to earn some linden dollars and meet people. The best thing you can do is work as a gogo dancer in a night club. Seriously. After you advance a bit you can be a host/ess or event organizer. People get overly cocky, because even an obese 50 year old can be a suga’ daddy in second life if he played his cards well.

The second world doesn’t look really pretty either, bad graphics and the entire world is user made, so not to everyone’s liking, it simply lacks consistency.

Which all brings me to one question – why do people want to have surrogates or avatars living their lives? Familiar with the idea of surrogates? You have a surrogate who looks like you (only better), can do all the things you can do and more and is indestructible, it makes you immortal in a way that it can be replaced should something happen to it, while you’re “safely” lying in your bed your entire life.

So why? Why would you want to spend your life in bed / in front of computer / insert necessary here – when you can actually live it?

Not happy with yourself? Think you deserve to be better than you were made? Want to be immortal? Are too lazy to get your ass out of the house and actually be with people? Want to get rich and beautiful very quickly without any effort? Yeah, go get therapy. Seriously.

When it comes to second life being presented as a video game, that idea doesn’t quite work, video games are supposed to be entertaining wastes of time, not as engaging as second life, where you actually have to spend several hours a day if you don’t wanna get behind. I mean if you get a job, you have to show up at that job every day, second life acts like real life in some instances.

So if you want an online game go play WOW, it’s highly entertaining. And it doesn’t consist of meaningless roaming around trying to make friends with other super hot avatars. It gives you purpose and goals to achieve, objectives.

Second life is not an online game, it’s not a highly advanced chat, it’s not a dating service, second life is really trying to be a second life, but it sucks. I don’t want a surrogate or an avatar, I want to be an active participant in my life, even if I’ll never make it to be leader of the free world like I am in Sims.