Virtues and veracity of the second life

 

Virtues and veracity of the second life

Nityesh Bhatt & Sapna Choradia /  November 9, 2011, 0:53 IST

 

Online communities - like Second Life that offer an alternate world - are gaining popularity not just among the youth but also among adults, businesses, religious organisations ... you name it.

Virtual community is a virtual space providing technology-mediated communication to perform a wide gamut of activities like building relationships, entertaining people, exchanging information, thoughts and knowledge, performing business activities and facilitating studies. Howard Rheingold (1995) defined virtual community as “social aggregations that emerge from the net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in the cyberspace”. Later, the concept was defined from a multi-disciplinary perspective, ranging from social, technological, business and economic viewpoint.

 

Millions of users across the world log into their Facebook account religiously and follow the discussion thread, post comments, upload pictures, play games and wish their friends on special days. Almost a similar number of professionals follow LinkedIn from the start of their day. MySpace, Orkut, Skype and many such online communities attract a large number of users everyday and are growing exponentially. The emergence of 3D communities like SecondLife, SmallWorlds, ActiveWorlds etc has given a Midas touch to the community era. The success of these online communities can be attributed to both associated benefits as well as emotional attachment among its users.

Today, with this incessantly updating technological era, these virtual communities have become an integral part of living for the growing generation. Following this dynamic trend, one can observe a significant shift in the social, political, economic and regulatory environment across the globe. On the basis of this advancement, Humphrys (2008) defines virtual world as a space where people not only communicate but also create an alternative (single/multiple) identity. Researchers believe that by 2020, the growth of virtual world will be similar to the world wide web and it will soon replace the web browser, changing the way we interact on the internet (Rawlinson 2007; Sarvary 2008).

De Nood and Attema (2006) believe that the concept of a virtual world is as old as that of humans dreaming. Several novels, plays and movies represent the idea of an imaginary world (Greto 2008). One can identify significantly large number of users on the internet spending most of their time in online gaming, interaction and work activities as compared to the real life (Hof 2006). Several virtual worlds have cropped up to give an opportunity to the users to experience the realm of fantasy and imaginary world. Such online world is experiencing great success with an increasing number of users every second. Williamson (2007) in his study noted the tremendous growth in internet users and stated that if this trend continued, then by 2011, half of the young internet users across the globe will visit virtual world as shown in Figure 1.

Second Life represents an excellent example of a virtual world, engaged in providing virtual experience to its members (Greto 2008). It is a 3D virtual community comprising animated characters in the form of more than 20 million registered users. It represents a complete new world of imagination and creativity. The concept was developed by Linden Labs using Linden Scripting Language and a three-dimensional modeling tool, and was launched on June 23, 2003 with a view of providing a platform and not a game. In January 2004, the website was re-launched after going into dark due to funding problems. However, since re-launching, it allowed its users to own their own land and since then the number of residents have grown rapidly.

Derryberry (2008) categorised Second Life as a serious game embarking the activities of socialising, training and learning. However, this virtual world lacks structured and mission-oriented narratives, defined character roles and their explicit goals (Reeves et al, 2008) and scripted play with a game plan (Sharp and Salomon2008). Later, several researchers gave their opinion and defined Second Life from their point of view.
 

Table 1: Definition and characteristics of Second Life by several authors
Booker  -2007	“Second Life is proof that we are entering a much more immersive era for entertainment. It offers a whole new level of experience with something that you’re interested in.”
Muthalaly  -2007	Characterised Second Life as a platform where real people come and lead virtual lives. It is an immersive world appealing to people because it is heart-driven and not information-driven.
Rawlinson  -2007	“A place where all is nipped, tucked and primped to perfection”
Scola  -2007	“Second Life is a combination of real-time interaction and physical embodiment, creating a space unlike anything else online.”
Zimmer  -2007	“Second Life offers a microcosm of vast potential for business, commerce, marketing and learning in this decade.”

 

Second Life has predefined rules and regulations, own currency, banks, police stations, cinema halls, shopping malls, resorts and art galleries and offers more than the physical world. It provides a complete new form of imaginary world in which one would like to be, with a changed perspective of socialising and doing commercial activities.

Second Life: Social structure
Second Life represents the virtual world through the activities performed by its residents known as avatars. This term has a historic religious Hindu belief of physical embodiment of a divine being and represents one’s online persona in a 3D virtual world (Lee 2007). The residents can hold multiple avatars but can exhibit one avatar at a time. These avatars can be in the form of any animated character, including living and non-living things, and perform all the socialising activities of local chat, group chat, global instant messaging and voice chat, either publicly or privately depending upon their choice.

People from different corners of the globe meet in the form of avatars, interact, and establish relationships. Here every group represents an online society, similar to that of the physical society, commands and guides the behaviour of other members in the group, keeps the discussion forum live, hosts live performances and performs all sort of entertainment activities that keep the members connected for a longer period of time. Members have their own houses with other residential members (maximum five members/accounts per household) and neighbours. User profile on Second Life plays an important role in creating the user’s virtual social group. The profile helps the user to discover and get connected with other like-minded users and participate in the discussion forums to enrich her knowledge base. Second Life also gives an opportunity to the residents to add their event in the website’s event guide and create a buzz.

Second Life has already witnessed the emergence of entertainment groups, educational institutes, business organisations and governmental entities as the most growing and beneficial of Second Life’s virtual societies along with its residents (Castronova 2005; Guest 2007). Boulos et al (2007) defined 3D virtual community as a platform to create simulations for business and educational activities during the process of learning. Therefore, members experience the presence of others in much more realistic ways with decreased distance (Boulos et al 2007; Castronova 2005; Guest 2007; Huvila et al 2010). Looking at this changing behaviour and the success of virtual world, several religious organisations have also created their presence to promote spiritual sayings and activities. LifeChurch.tv, a Christian church, has developed an “Experience Island” on Second Life to spread the sayings of Christianity. Similarly, Islam Online has purchased a land and allowed its followers to perform the rituals of Hajj, so that they can be prepared before making the pilgrimage to Mecca.

Such an online environment demands certain rules and regulation to govern the behaviour of the members and maintain a sustainable environment for the others. This led to the formation of the ‘laws’ of Second Life, referred to as the ‘Big Six’ rules. These rules act as a behavioural guidelines prohibiting members from engaging in activities like disclosure (releasing information about the real-life person behind the avatar), intolerance, harassment, assault, indecency and disturbing peace (Linden Labs 2008b).

Second Life normally restricts the membership individuals below 18 years of age. The profile of Second Life users is given in Table 2. The population is dominated by male characters. Most of its users fall in the age group of 25-44 years. One of the interesting observations here is the total number of hours spent by each age group. Although the two groups, 18-24 and 35-44, have equal per cent of active avatars in Second Life, the time spent by age group 35-44 in Second Life is almost double than the younger group. It is evident that as age increases, the number of hours spent among the members increases considerably (Figure 2). On the basis of this fact, we assume that increase in the hours with increasing age reflects their active state of commercial purpose. The members belonging to these bands might constantly derive value from performing activities related to marketing, training and other business related tasks. Therefore, they spend more time as compared to the users in the age group 18-24, who mainly look for entertainment, fun and educational activities.

On the basis of activities performed and the type of users, the virtual world of Second Life is divided in three categories, known as ‘sims’. These categories are: PG (no extreme violence or nudity), mature (violence and nudity to some extent), and adult (extreme violence and adultery). The PG sim represents the teens grid while the other two represent the main grid.

 

Table 2: Second Life user profile according to Linden Labs in (2008b) (quoted in Wyld 2010)
Age group	Active avatar count	% of active avatars	Total hours spent	% of total hours
13-17	5,524	1.01	135,401	0.44
18-24	126,952	23.32	4,745,842	15.50
25-34	192,057	35.29	10,598,929	34.61
35-44	129,570	23.81	8,698,627	28.40
45 +	87,435	16.06	6,314,192	20.62
Unknown	2,752	0.51	132,186	0.43
Total	544,290		30,625,177

 

Majority of the Second Life avatars belong to USA (35.81 per cent) (Table 3). The second- and third highest active avatars belong to Germany and the UK, representing only 8.25 per cent and 8.06 per cent of the overall Second Life population. Wyld (2010) quoted that Second Life population is an overly white population group with most of its users being North American and European. Few Asia-Pacific countries have cast their footprints on the virtual islands of Second Life. Countries like India, with the second largest population across the globe, still lag behind in making their presence felt in such virtual worlds.
 

Table 3: Linden Labs’ (2008a) list of top 10 countries with active avatar count (quoted in Wyld 2010)
Country	Active avatars	% of avatar count
USA	194,899	35.81