David Lucifer
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Second Life Sketches: A Night On The Grid
« on: 2007-01-30 21:10:00 » |
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source: Reuters
dated: Sun Jan 28, 2007 4:01am PST
By Warren Ellis
The following is an independent opinion column, and is not connected with Reuters News. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by Reuters.
“You’ve been invaded,” someone said to me as I materialised on Integral Bay. The minimap radar showed a cluster of pings on the Bay’s frontage, among the flying machines I leave out there for people’s free use. “You’ve been invaded” never sounds good on Second Life. It usually means that a gang of sex ducks are making giant bendy penises frolic around to the tune of “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.”
Out on the frontage, a team of mutant Elvises — Elvii? — are stamping around and waving banners. They appear to be celebrating the formation of the First Second Life Church Of Elvis. The broad flags depict that wonderful old photo of Nixon shaking hands with Elvis. They’re all discussing their last few appearances — or, more to the point, the last few places they got ejected from. I take a photo of them, and they give me one of their flags. I plant it on the frontage by the main steps. For a moment, I am their friend, accepted into the spangly bosom of the Church. Then the disappointment sinks in. They’re not going to be ejected from my land. They are, in fact, welcome. Something has clearly gone badly wrong. I teleport out again, leaving a huddle of subdued, slightly confused Elviseseses.
Carnage Island, the combat area, announces a makeover. They want to rebuild the sim as a World War Two-era urban conflict zone. I stand atop one of the island’s lovingly-designed bombed-out modern buildings, watching a giant fox bound down the street clutching a sci-fi weapon the size of a dinner table. Yeah, one of them loping through 1945 Berlin isn’t going to look incongruous at all. The fox spots me and strafes my position with blue laser beams. V-Day for the Furry Nation.
A friend joins Second Life, but a day or two on her own has her wondering why she bothered. I take her to Transylvania.
The Wastelands are a couple of days old: a remote island designed to a theme by a group. It’s Mad Max country, post-apocalyptic desert and buildings constructed out of scrap. I rented a small parcel there to help get them over the participation hump and to watch a sim being raised from scratch. The designers are creating an innovative “scavenger” system, where post-nuke junk is generated randomly around the space to be found and repurposed by the inhabitants. The Wastelands are like walking around inside a 1980 science fiction paperback cover. “Tell them we’re awesome,” a girl shouts as I talk with the sim organiser. “There’s nothing bad here!” Her boy guns the quadbike they’re both sitting on, and they take off to look for scrap across the low dunes and half-buried roads, trailer bouncing around behind them.
There’s a white tiger zooming around the Transylvania open-air dance floor in circles at sixty miles an hour. I threaten to shoot her out of the air like a clay pigeon, the fifth time she sideswipes me. She sits on my head.
A friend joins Second Life after reading my entries here, but a day or two on her own has her wondering why she bothered. I take her to Transylvania, first, because it’s the perfect example of avatars as art. Korii Tiger’s trying to eat someone’s head; a working avatar in the fully-functional form of a white tiger. It’s a quiet night when we get there, with only eight or nine people at the wall by the dance floor. (”The Wall” is a thing of legend in Transylvania — when an aggrieved member of the group lost her grip, cut into the system and deleted everything on the two-sim island, reducing the place to raw rock and water, only The Wall survived.) The place is Goth-themed, as you’d expect, the work of SL veteran Obscuro Valkyrie, and one of the most intensive and complex builds in the world.
I leave my friend, at night, on one of the high catwalks, the torches waking up to light the forest canopy and the river. “Now I see why this interests you,” she says.
The regulars respond to that by making their avatars equally innovative. “Oh my god,” my friend says. “This is so surreal.” It’s still snowing in Transylvania, all over the island, as elegant hallucinations dance to music streamed directly into the island by group members who are also Transylvania’s live DJs. It’s a subculture all of its own. I will often teleport into Transylvania, pick a spot to sit my avatar down, minimise the Second Life window and listen to the DJ stream like an Internet radio station while I work.
Transylvania is one end of the pole. After a while, I take my friend to the other: Svarga. Svarga, again, is an island, and the perfect example of Second Life as art installation. One woman designed Svarga from the code up as an environmental space. It’s another simulated ecology, an active chillout space soundtracked with ambient music. It has weather, birds and plants with scripted behaviors, pre-programmed boats that’ll tour you through its tributaries, and beautiful arboreal constructions.
It illustrates what is probably Second Life’s greatest strength; that the entire world is driven by user-created content. Of course, that’s also its basic flaw, but you don’t get one without the other. I’d trade off “trailer park” Second Life for Svarga any day.
I leave my friend there, at night, on one of the high catwalks, the torches waking up to light the forest canopy and the river. “Now I see why this interests you,” she says. “One person made all this? It’s incredible.”
On Help Island, a naked man is performing a slightly horrifying bump-and-grind in the middle of the landing site, and he won’t stop screaming into the chat channel. “Help me! Someone stole all my clothes and now I can’t stop dancing! I’ve only been here twenty minutes!”
I return to Integral Bay to discover yet another Giant Penis Of Welcome on the frontage next to the Elvis flag.
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