Is Second Life a Game ?

When I started Second Life, I believed like many that Second Life was a game, a kind of MMO Sandbox game with no goal...

What a fool I was !

Second Life is a wild new world, like America had been in the centuries following his discovery by Colombus, where people can start anew and  even have demigod-like powers (teleportation, flight, instant communication, etc...).

A sort of new continent to live part of your life in, that is a dematerialized extension of the physical world.

You can use your access to this world to do many things, and among them play some of the many great games  that have been developped by other users inside Second Life, but according to my experience, Second Life is definitely not a game.

If you don't see it, you don't capture the essence and potential of this fascinating new place.

A real society has grown there, where you can have real friendships/relationships, see real art, get real knowledge, listen to real musicians, even earn real money if you work very hard and have the rare luck to be gifted with a successful business in this extremely competitive place : Second Life is a real and thriving world.


People manipulate avatars inside Second Life, not fantasy characters like in a video game. What is an avatar ?

The word "avatar" comes from the sanskrit and was designating the earthly incarnations of the Hindu god Vishnu, his projections amongst humans.

Your avatar in Second Life is a pixelized projection of you,  an in-world body that your brain control through your fingers, like he controls your flesh body in the physical world through your muscles.

Of course, you are free to spend all your time in Second life playing games, but similarily to what happens when you spend all your free time having fun on your game console in the material world instead of doing other things, you then miss your chance to really discover the wonderful people out there and to build yourself a great social life, burying yourself in entertaining but futile games...

Even worse, there is people who see life as a game, both in Second Life and in the physical realm : to them  people are pawns to reach their selfish goals and they don't care about the damages they do.

We have a world for them : players.

Don't confuse players and roleplayers however. A responsable roleplayer is playing the part of his character only in  the context of a consensually-shared fantasy story with other roleplayers, he is not roleplaying his life  outside of it and is lucid enough to know when to get out of his character to be just himself.

There's a lot of sim devoted to roleplay in Second Life.

Being myself as an experienced table roleplayer, I can testify that I have seen a lot more of quality roleplay in them than in any of the numerous MMORPGs I have tried before where people are more focused on killing monsters to gain experience points than paying attention to staying in character, but that's not the subject of this post.

Players are the people who, outside of any roleplay context where everyone is aware that everyone else is playing a role, pretend to be what they are not, lie about themselves to the people they meet, make false promises to get what they want, fake emotions to manipulate you. To them, you are game...

It's wise to stay away from them and give preferently your time and attention to the other people who are real, honest and sincere.

Especially in the D/S context where emotions can run deep and honesty is key in the success of a long-term connection, players are to be avoided at all cost or you'll get hurt.

Life is not a game, Second life isn't either.

Period.