I always enjoyed video games but I was never a big fan of online open-world games. I had heard of “Second Life” when I was a child and I remember how enthusiastic the Congolese media had referred to this virtual world. It seemed like we were on the brink of all becoming like Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn in “Tron” (1982): ready to jump on our light cycles to explore the endless virtual grid. I never took these claims serious, given how far apart wishful thinking and practical reality usually were.
A friend of mine urged me recently to visit Second Life with her, so I did. I’m currently at the hospital and I can’t really do much anyways, so I decided to visit Second Life. I did make an account a few years ago but I never activated it.
First off, I was surprised how awful the graphics look. Some of my friends have compared them to Sega Dreamcast or early Playstation 2 graphics from the early 2000s. I find that comparison inaccurate and unfair, because both Dreamcast and Playstation 2 had excellent graphics for the time when they were released, I visited Second Life in 2022 and the graphics looked like they were done in the late 90s. Worse, most of the worlds and the textures of the avatars either have issues with loading in correctly or were done badly and look half-finished. I was always under the impression that Second Life had been continuously updated over the decades, looks like I was very wrong. I’m really not someone who is obsessed with graphics, I actually enjoy older game systems like the Atari 2600, the NES, the SNES and the N64, but these weren’t just old looking visuals, these were mostly dysfunctional visuals.
Anyway, I tried to ignore the lousy graphics and made my avatar, a big, African guy wearing a traditional Catholic cross. I was guided through an “introduction island” which was more confusing than helpful, I in fact had less problems learning on my own how to use Second Life than with this chaotic tutorial. My friend awaited me in another “sim”, a place which resembled the Tardis of the Doctor from “Doctor Who”. She was very excited and appeared as a small and cute kobold. I did notice strange changes in her behavior, she sounded very squeaky, nervous and confused, which was in strong contrast to her usual characteristics. I remembered the “Proteus effect” which I had heard about in my psychology classes. The Proteus effect refers to Proteus, the Greek god of the sea, a sun of Poseidon and brother of Triton. Proteus was capable to change his shape, size and appearance (which was an ability which most Greco-Roman gods seemed to possess). Anyways, the Proteus effect describes the phenomenon that the behavior of people is changed by the avatars they are using in virtual worlds. People show different behavior and attitudes than they would in the real world. It has been argued that people instinctively realize that this character doesn’t match their actual personalities and appearances, so they started to change their behaviors in favor of a seemingly more appropriate persona. This seemed the very thing which had changed the behavior of my friend, she had started to imitate a kobold instead of actually being herself, which I found rather worrisome.
She showed me around, but much to my surprise, this world seemed surprisingly empty, there were five avatars in total (in a very big area) and all seemed to just stand around. My friend explained to me that this means that they are “afk”, they are preoccupied with other things such as the communication platform Discord. Why they would run Second Life when they are away doesn’t make any sense to me, but then again, I’m new to online games and I don’t actually plan to continue to play them, so this might be rather normal for these types of games. I can’t really blame the people, given how empty Second Life seemingly is. So, l took the whole thing with a grain of salt. I have to admit that I was instantly bored with this virtual world, despite there being a Tardis and things from “Doctor Who”, a show which I have always greatly enjoyed. Come to think of it, I wasn’t able to interact with anything, which might have caused me to lose interest. You usually can use objects in games, but in Second Life most things seem to be decoration without any actual function. There was the DeLorean from “Back to the Future” but it couldn’t do anything, it just stood there. I didn’t say anything to my friend and pretended to be interested, but the unfortunate truth was that I felt immensely bored. This world was so empty and lifeless. I actually expected something along the lines of “World of Warcraft” or “The Elder Scrolls Online”, a world where one can go on epic adventures, fight evil tyrants and become a race car driver or movie star! I basically had anticipated something along the lines of the trailers which I saw for “Second Life”. But the actual thing was nothing like this. Instead, Second Life seemed like an amalgamation of modern problems to me: it was completely free of any real substance and culture, everyone seemed obsessed with dressing up their avatars with actual money (Second Life has its own economy and the currency is something called a “Linden Dollar”). My friend told me that there are people who have put several thousand real life dollars into their fake “second” lives. I was rather shocked to hear this. Consumerism is in fact so rampant in Second Life that it makes actual consumerism in the real world look tame by comparison. Everything can be bought and sold and that’s all that seems to count. So, we have a virtual world without any actual culture, where everything revolves around buying stuff and the people behave in fake and unnatural ways. My friend noticed that I didn’t like this world and she decided to ask me why I didn’t enjoy it. I told her that almost everything I could imagine is more worthwhile than Second Life. Literally everything, even starring at the wall. I carried food and medicine to people on feet during Covid-19 and while this was often physically demanding, it felt great to do something for other people and to help the community. There’s this innate need for us humans to do something which has meaning in our lives and which helps others, such as friends and family and even strangers. Second Life for me is the absolute waste of time, I in fact cannot even imagine something which is a worse way of wasting precious lifetime. One might claim that about video games in general, but traditional video games at least allow you to explore fantastic worlds, defeat mighty villains and become heroes, they at least offer adventures and experiences which we most likely will never have in real life. I’m sorry for those who are more excited about Second Life, but I can't help but see it as a monumental waste of time.