Second Life?.... or get a life???

[Mo_Gearhead]

Ok, I (being a geezer) am late to this Gen X party but...

Last PM I see this hour long story on TV concerning on-line gaming. (I recall some time back reading in some financial magazine that people were actually spending REAL dollars to purchase land, rent store space, sell avatars in this on-line FAKE world. All very puzzling to me.) The TV show introduced people making several thousand dollars per month. I believe they said McDonald's, Pepsi, Nike, and others OWN stores in this FAKE world. I forget how many MILLION players (worldwide) they now have?

So confess, any Pelicans spending time there? And please explain ...WHY? Escapism? Is the REAL world doomed to second place as virtual worlds take over?

If I build a race track there ...will they come?

[tcar]

I'm interested in this too, was talking to a friend of my brother's about what her husband (early 50's) does. She said that he spends a lot of time on Second Life, but she doesn't know really what it is.

Like spends hours and hours and hours there...

[kstar]

Originally Posted by tcar

I'm interested in this too, was talking to a friend of my brother's about what her husband (early 50's) does. She said that he spends a lot of time on Second Life, but she doesn't know really what it is.

Like spends hours and hours and hours there...

[Mo_Gearhead]

Forgot to add:
I assume one company provides the servers and bandwidth where ALL this inter-action resides?

Food for thought:
Earthquake, flood, ice storm, some major disaster occurs ... electric power shuts off servers (or more likely the individuals home/office computer) for days/weeks. Are we going to see young people in the future seeking psychiatric help because their 'second life' fell apart?

[red-beard]

Do you have to pay an attorney, go to court, etc, to get divorced in 2nd life?

[RoninLB]

I read a couple of articles on it.

Married people actually have cosmic girlfriends/boyfriends etc on it.

They go shopping, to dinner, dancing etc.

Its a fantasy, a stress reliever, and escapism. A gay can pretend he/she is the opposite sex etc.

Every article said it's an enlarging group of 2nd Life fans and as tech gets advanced so will 2nd Life.

[kstar]

Originally Posted by Mo_Gearhead

Forgot to add:
I assume one company provides the servers and bandwidth where ALL this inter-action resides?

Food for thought:
Earthquake, flood, ice storm, some major disaster occurs ... electric power shuts off servers (or more likely the individuals home/office computer) for days/weeks. Are we going to see young people in the future seeking psychiatric help because their 'second life' fell apart?

We are already in a "second life" -> the net.

I get uneasy if I am totally cut-off from it.

Best,

Kurt

[legion]

I don't get it.

Then again, I enjoy my life in the "real" world.

[kstar]

Originally Posted by legion

I don't get it.

Then again, I enjoy my life in the "real" world.

Chris:

Over 9,000 posts in three years or so says you like it here, too.

Best,

Kurt

[legion]

Touché.

[Z-man]

Originally Posted by legion

I don't get it.

Then again, I enjoy my life in the "real" world.

Yep.

But I suppose these online-world folks don't understand the that concept... The scary part is when they have a difficult time determining if they are in their "2nd life" or in their "real life."

-Z

[rammstein]

Do you take the red pill or the blue pill?

[rammstein]

I can only imagine the amount of virtual sex that will take place in there. Good god- any city they make will be 90% burlesques. It will serve as a reflection of what we really wish life was- 90% sex. The other 10% will probably be cops & robbers.

[kstar]

Yup, 90% sex and not nearly that percentage of human females.

Uh oh.

Best,

Kurt

[rammstein]

D'oh!

[TerryBPP]

Just checked it out. Weird stuff.

Time to go look at some real porn.

[Seric]

I think I've seen it all since the early 90s when I first started using the Internet. Having spent my fair share of time on Internet Relay Chat, Massively Mupltiplayer Games (Ultima Online, EverQuest and World of Warcraft), I think I've seen it all. Alot of people I played with fit into different categories of people. For some it was a social outlet and others it was a really fun and interesting way to play a video game. I happen to be the latter. Take in the social heirarchy, ecomonies and dynamics of these games, it's hard not to be fascinated by them.

I have since kicked the habit and feel the better for it. Life changes. Everything in moderation

[Scott R]

Originally Posted by Mo_Gearhead

Forgot to add:
I assume one company provides the servers and bandwidth where ALL this inter-action resides?

Food for thought:
Earthquake, flood, ice storm, some major disaster occurs ... electric power shuts off servers (or more likely the individuals home/office computer) for days/weeks. Are we going to see young people in the future seeking psychiatric help because their 'second life' fell apart?

Datacenters that house these servers are in most cases totally redundant. I worked on a project for another MMOPRG for Electronic Arts, and the same principles we use in any datcenter applied to them. We had a live syncronis replication pipe to a co-loc center, and the ability to be back on-line in a few short hours of that failed. There is big money involved here, probably even more than the financial company I work for now.

[tabs]

My head hurts and the little pills Mother gives me do nothing at all.

[svandamme]

logged on to the thing once to find out what the shizzle was all about

the first 5 minutes were boring
so were the next 5 minutes
but half an hour after that , things did improve
my heart rate was up, things were definitely exiting

in retrospect, it made sense why things had improved so drastically

it was because i had disconnected from the darn thing and had gotten in to the 944S and i was looking through my side window, while my car was going sideways through a corner