Archive: July 4th-August 15th, 2006: Letters from the Metaverse / GameSetWatch

As I suspect my most recent “Letters from the Metaverse” column should be posted on GameSetWatch today, I should really cover the pieces that are already up.

“Letters from the Metaverse” (named from Alistair Cooke’s Letter from America and Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash; it was only later that I remembered that it was “letter”, not “letters”) was a column several months in the making, as I’d been interesting in writing a column for GameSetWatch for a while, and discussed it with proprietor Simon Carless, but we never quite managed to settle on a topic. When Simon put out an open call for a Second Life column, I jumped at the chance, as I’d heard so bloody much about Second Life by then I just had to give it a shot.

I haven’t been too impressed, let’s say.

Despite that, it’s nice enough to have joined the 553,721 people who, at the precise minute, are Second Life users, and of whom about 90% are probably journalists or students writing their thesis about it. The other 10% are the sexual deviants who really drive the economy…

1: “Escape from Orientation Island”
“Fancy putting on a diaper and being teabagged by someone dressed in a raccoon suit? You can probably do that in Second Life.”

2: “American Apparel in a Parallel World”
“Second Life does seem a bit overexposed, doesn’t it? (Not that I’m trying to put you off this column, or anything.)”

3: “Take Shelter”
“I don’t think I’m quite ready to talk about the trauma I experienced teleporting somewhere only to find myself trapped in a cage by a huge muscular goth. Let me just say I’d noticed he was already dragging around two naked slaves on a chain and I decided he didn’t need a third.”

I think I had accidentally found myself on a “Gor” sim, which Warren Ellis blogged about recently. I’d never heard of the Gor series until I started playing Second Life, so I wonder why it is the culture is so big, and so apparent, within the world? (I don’t really want to explore it any more than I have to.)

4: “You Know When You’ve Been Tringo’ed”
“Really, the past few weeks I haven’t managed to prove to anyone, least of all myself, that Second Life is much more than a glorified chat room, with a dress-up doll attached.”

I finally get around to exploring the games available in Second Life (my original intention with the column) and do so with a snappy reference to the old Tango ads. I don’t know if anyone reading my column picked up on it.

5: “A Good Flight Spoilt”
“It must say something that the two sports I’m most aware of in Second Life are golf and sailing. I like to imagine it says, ‘All of the denizens of Second Life might be massive sexual deviants, but they’re also WASPy as hell.’ But I digress.”

6: “My Dark Life”
“It’s all because of that bloody Givan dagger.”

7: “Turning Japanese”
“I wonder, do the adult movie studios have a Second Life presence? Can you rent videos that aren’t porn in other stores? Both, I imagine, are also good ideas.”

Last week’s article, and probably my favourite area in the world so far – a samurai combat sim. Shame it costs so much.

August 22nd, 2006 : Archive, Columns, GameSetWatch