[iDC] RE: An Inconvenient Youth and Second Life

Thu Mar 1 03:31:24 EST 2007

Would be curious to any pointers confirming that the U.S. is responsible for
almost 100% of computer games and online worlds ...

Recently, someone mentioned something like 'most Africans are now connected
with mobile phones'. I checked, it is only 10%.

Michel Bauwens

On 2/28/07, Ana Valdés <agora158 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> That's exact my point when I refered to my short experience in SL. I
> think the US (where almost 100 procent of computer games and online
> worlds are created) has a problem with the reproduction of the nuclear
> family and the wishing of a kind of Barbie/Ken archetype where the
> same house, the same furniture and the same tables and chairs are
> copied or cloned.
> In SL you can find hundreds of reproductions of Le Corbusier or of
> Frank Lloyd Right, it's as the Sims (the popular computer game who is
> the most clear "parent" of Second Life, has discovered architecture
> and city planning.
> When you have characters who fly what's the point making stairs or
> walls? Or to design roads or motorways?
> For me SL is a kind of perverse reproduction of life but without
> death, sweat, smells or poverty.
> In Everquest, the online game I usually played for several years, I
> was playing a female avatar and  another player, a man playing another
> female avatar, asked me to marry "him".
> The marriage thing was a cool thing in EQ, where the weddings in the
> game were attended by guests from the whole virtual world. I have
> attended marriages between vampyres and elfs, centaurs and frogs.
> We asked the "game masters" to come and marry us, it was Sony's
> employees who acted as priests or civil servants and who performed the
> ceremonies.
> We got a letter, very polite, but they refused us the right to be
> married, "two women avatars can't be married. It could upset a lot of
> other players who could experience that as offensive".
> We, Charles, my friend, and me, could not believe what we read. We
> played as wizards and shamans, we fought demons and zombies, we lived
> in a fantasy world where magic and phantasy played an enormous roll.
> Did they mean that two female avatars were "not natural", but all the
> other stuff was it???
> We argued with them for months and we dropped the idea, but it
> strenghtened my these about online worlds as very conservative and
> oldfashioned.
> Ana
>
> ps. the description of the marriage it's a bit of my research about
> Gender in the Online Games, I am writing a book which it's going to be
> released in this Spring, sadly, only in Swedish and Spanish for the
> moment.
>
> On 2/27/07, Brooke Knight <brooke_knight at emerson.edu> wrote:
> > Hi all:
> >
> > I'm an inveterate lurker on the list, but I have to pick up on Steven's
> > comment a few days ago about how he gave a lecture about SL, both in the
> > "real" world and the "virtual" world of Second Life.  We here at Emerson
> > College are currently engaged in the same thing -- as it is opening up
> as an
> > educational space.  We have students cranking away at building what are
> > essentially avatars of our buildings.  In fact, we have an event
> tomorrow,
> > where both Trebor and Ulises will be speaking at Emerson and on Second
> Life,
> > on the Emerson College Island, Emerson Island (145, 109, 23).  Come by
> at 7
> > eastern and see if it works.
> >
> > In this case, it will be inside the Bordy Theater on the island.  In the
> > "real" world (I've never been comfortable with the distinction), the
> Bordy
> > Theater is inside of a building alongside other buildings of the same
> height
> > and size.  On Emerson Island, It stands out as one of the only objects
> > there.
> >
> > So, I ask -- why is it that there seems to be a need to reproduce items
> that
> > already exist? Is a replica of a real-world place the best way to convey
> a
> > message, even if it doesn't work in SL?  How is that message different
> in
> > SL?
> >
> > I'm just worried that we continue to experience the tyranny of the
> metaphor,
> > as we have so many times in digital media.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Brooke
> >
> >
> >
> > Brooke A. Knight
> >
> > Assistant Professor of New Media
> >
> > Department of Visual and Media Arts
> >
> > Emerson College
> >
> > 617-824-8760
> >
> > brooke_knight at emerson.edu
> >
> > www.brookeknight.com
> >
> >
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