Project Beacon is an initiative begun by a group of users to find and promote the best of the Second Life (SL) experience. We hope that by doing so, we get more people and more creative energy invested in SL and we hope to show why we think its worth our effort to defend.
This is an introductory article organized to help you skip what you don’t need. Hopefully future articles will be a little less dry.
Intro to Second Life.
Second Life is an open interactive environment. Its massively multiplayer like World of Warcraft, but its not a game in and of itself. In this world, you create an account and a digital avatar of yourself. After learning the basics, you then can go do pretty much whatever you want. This includes exploring the virtual world (most of its flavor coming from the creations of other citizens, as opposed to the programming team), meeting other people, finding and joining groups, learning how to “build” (make digital objects) how to “script” (write programming code that you can stick inside physical objects for interactive behavior) buy your own land and create whatever you want on it, go into business and sell, or simply spend and collect neat and useful tools and accessories.
If it seems open ended, that’s because it is. The Lindens (the team that created and runs Second Life) provide a virtual environment with certain basic tools and abilities available to all users, and then leaves it to us for the most part to figure out what we want to make of it. Perhaps to get things moving, the Lindens introduced a currency called “The Linden” which has an exchange value with real life money. You can spend your money to buy Lindens or cash out your Lindens to receive real money. Many who are in business in Second Life make enough money to support their buying habits in sl. Some make enough money from their in-world businesses that they need no real life job. Their job in Second Life is actually their job. All of this will be important to understand as we proceed.
Intro to Griefers
While Project Beacon does not primarily concern itself with griefers, they are a part of our origin story so they’re worth mentioning. A griefer is someone who causes grief in a game. Some make their own tools and perform elaborate attacks but most griefers are angry/bored immature individuals borrowing gadgets, scripts and ideas from people much more clever than themselves. Some aren’t even that clever, just grabbing a freebie weapon and shooting people with it.
This is not limited to Second Life and I think this is where the waters get muddied for a lot of them. In a game like World of Warcraft, a griefer might run around killing less adept players in inappropriate situation, might try to hack the game to get advantage, or might simply pester others. Its annoying, but at the same time, its just a game.
In Second Life, griefers have been a substantial problem. Because the game is open ended and allows for all kinds of gadgets to be created, a griefer can crash regions, flood chats with offensive, bigoted racist rhetoric, and more. It ruins the fun for their victims. If they get you angry over a grief, the griefer wins.
The problem is, unlike World of Warcraft, Second Life is not a game, its an environment. Griefing someone in Second Life is like if someone came into your office every couple days and start chucking smoke bombs around everywhere or taping swastikas all over your house, and it was a different person each time. Its annoying and distracts people from getting things done.
Some do it to vent their aggressions on seemingly acceptable targets (SL, like many open internet environments, attracts many unusual and misunderstood groups of people, which some griefers use to justify their hate.)
So claim to have a point to make with their attacks. Perhaps they’re commenting on the aforementioned "weird" populations, or they have a beef with the Lindens over one point or another. Some even claim they’re trying to shake us out of a “pathetic” virtual existence.
And I’ve encountered some who are sympathetic to that attitude without themselves being griefers. Its that attitude we hope to change.
Intro to Superheroes.
You can style your body however you want, and add gadgets and special effects. People are creating this stuff all the time. Some create superhero avatars and gadgets, mostly for play.
The admins can only go so far when stopping griefers. Some felt like the Lindens needed help from regular Second Life citizens who know the rules, know how to file reports and know how to clean up messes. Some of these people decided to dress like superheroes.
Being a superhero in this context, is performing services in the Second Life community, from helping to newbies, to reporting and cleaning up after attacks, to raising money for charity, all while in a superhero avatar. We’re not doing anything special in this regard, its just more fun for us to help people while playing superheroes. If being a superhero gets you excited about helping people, its a good thing.
The vast majority of us don’t believe we’re actual superheroes. We’re not confused about reality. We don’t think we have any special privileges. We’re just helping people while having fun.
Its true that some come to the superhero community because they’ve been burned by griefers and they want to burn back. They’ve heard that we’re doing something about the problem and “fighting back.” We all try to help them understand that “fighting” accomplishes nothing. Avatars cannot be hurt or killed and battles only cause added lag on the server running the environment (called a sim) and add to the distraction for innocent bystanders. If you seen anyone doing this, they don’t represent our community.
COUNCIL OF LANTERNS
Thanks to comic book writer Geoff John’s revival of the character, Green Lantern and the Green Lantern Corps have skyrocketed in popularity among comic book readers. Along the way, Johns brought back Sinestro (who uses a yellow power ring) and Star Sapphire (who used a violet power gem) positing that they, along with the Green Lanterns were wielding the power of a spectrum of color.
The popularity and all the options created by the storyline has resulted in more than 100 “Lantern Corps” groups being created in Second Life. Some were created because users were ignorant of the existing groups. Other groups were created because users wanted their own group run their own way or they were rejected by another group but still wanted to be a Lantern. A lot of these groups are open, sprawling, and inactive.
The Council was originally the United Lantern Corps, with the goal of creating a centrally managed and unified set of Lantern Corps. The Council of Lanterns originally inherited this purpose, but we have since decided to disband most of our Corps and focus on fostering relationships and cooperation among the other existing groups (several of whom are older and more established), facilitating the pooling of resources.
To that mission, we have added the goal of being a one stop shop for newcomers looking to become lanterns. The idea is, you can come to our tower, buy a costume and ring, find roleplay opportunities if you want them, or find a legitimate active Lantern Corps groups to join and even take classes to learn more about being a good Lantern. We’re more than half the way there on that goal.
PROJECT BEACON
As I mentioned above, we’ve come to realize that “crimefighting” only goes so far. We can catch and stop attacks quickly many times, but they do continue. Whats worse, there are many others who find it amusing. There’s an attitude or a set of attitudes behind griefers and their sympathizers that suggest Second Life is nothing but deviant freaks and losers, often with no grasp on reality. Some of them believe that superheroes and other volunteers are busybodies and tattlers at best, fascists at worst.
And its not hard to portray Second Life this way. Its true that the place attracts some pretty weird people (nothing wrong with being weird, but I’m talking about bad weird.) Like an unprincipled journalist, you can focus on the weirdos and try to make it look like they’re most of the population. Also, as I’ve mentioned, there are some individuals running around in superhero costumes who attack griefers, get into shouting matches, and report over the most minor infractions without giving the offender a chance.
Also, Second Life itself has had its missteps along the way. There was a time when most of SL was overrun with ad farms, stripper bars, and gambling as these were all easy ways of making money. But ad farms and gambling have been banned and the adult stuff has been moved to its own continent. Today, when you come to Second Life, you can have a much more rewarding experience than might have been the case a couple of years ago.
For this reason, we created Project Beacon, who’s goal is to explore the possibilities of Second Life. The first phase is simply to collect a list of interesting destinations for new people to visit. We also plan to post here about our Second Life experience and hopefully offer video on our YouTube channel.
A great thing about SL is, if you know about the best it has to offer, then the worst doesn’t matter. Citizens can teleport from one awesome experience straight to another without having to deal with things they’d rather not encounter.
People who might be overloooked in real life due to their background, education, or appearance are given another chance to shine here. In Second Life, the baggage of the real world is left behind. You can begin anew and be yourself in ways that real life doesn’t allow. People who can’t walk in real life can fly in Second Life. People who can’t leave the house now have a world to explore and communities to connect with.
You might be saying “But its not real. What you really are is the couch potato at the keyboard.” We understand where you’re coming from, but let me ask you this: Have you ever played a video game or known anyone who does?
Talk to anyone who has interacted in a virtual environment in this way. You stop thinking about the interface, your body, the fact that you’re sitting in a chair in front of a keyboard. You screen all that out and focus on the monitor. With practice, our brains remap to these new interactions. You don’t think about the keys you’re hitting or the mouse you’re moving, you just know you want your digital “body” to move and it does. Amputees with prosthetics experience the same thing. With time, the brain views the new prosthetic as a part of its body and the brain remaps so the amputee doesn’t have to really think about it anymore. You probably don’t think too much about your typing I’ll bet. This is normal for all of us. Its how we learn to interact with any environment, material or digital. Its not the sign of a delusional mind.
What this means is that, for a little while each day, we can transcend the arbitrary limits of our mundane reality and live in the realm of the extraordinary. It’s true we have to come back to this world and these limitations eventually but what we take back to the “real” world are memories, skills and discoveries about ourselves and others that feel are worthwhile.
This is a preview of the future, where resources are less scarce and opportunities more open to all, and the powers of imagination and creativity matter more than the power of your circumstances. We hope you’ll join us there.
No comments:
Post a Comment