Playing a fool

Julian Dibbell wrote extensively about the life of a Chinese gold farmer. Without going into details, it is essentially about how these Chinese gold farmers 'play' WoW to work. The description of how these Chinese gold farmers operate sounds nothing close to the normal idea of 'playing'. However, it is worth pointing out that some still managed to find elements of play amidst the routine of 'working'. (for example the power leveler who said that his old gold farming job has afforded him more room to play.) This shows that an activity can no longer be the unit of determinant of whether it is work or play. In other words, in an activity, there are period of time where the person plays and there are period of time where the person works. Perhaps humans have adapted to an extend that one can frequently and seamlessly switch between work and play to an extend that it is impossible for the outsider to determine which is which. Indeed, this ability to switch seamlessly may become so natural that the 'player' is no longer consciously aware of the switch.

Well the melting of work and play just cannot be applied to me and Second Life. Indeed, since I start give Second Life a Second Chance, things just have not changed at all. I was never 'playing' (perhaps the full meaning of this verb has been diluted over time such that it just means “the act of going through a game” now) Second Life. It was a chore from start to finish. All along I have been working (for the module). In fact, writing this blog is more of a play for me than 'working' (as opposed to 'playing') Second Life. Everything I did on Second Life is because I was forced to not because I want to. Now, I realized that the concept of being 'forced' to do something also occurs when one plays. For example, one might hate the drone of (lets avoid the grinding example, for it is done to death. Using grinding as an example would be grinding in itself) traveling in a huge game world. It is boring and I am forced to do it as there is just no other way. But I still do it because of what I can get at the end of being 'forced' to do it is something that I want as opposed to me traveling in Second Life where at the end of traveling is still something I don't want to do (i.e. interact with the weirdos in Second Life). In this case, the end goal of doing something that one is being 'forced' to becomes the key.

With regards to the Mckenzie reading, I think the blurring of the the game world and the real world is quite evident. The RMT of Dibbell's reading supplements this. In addition, in the case of Second Life, it can be argued that the game world can be more real than the real world for the players, especially if their avatar in Second Life is a direct representation of their suppressed needs, desire and personality, free from the confines of conformity of society.

Discussion Question : Should we move away from what deciding what is play or work and what is game world or real world and focus on how the meaning of play and work and Game world and Real world has evolved throughout history and what position do they occupy in the current world?

Fourth of March is tomorrow

Dibbell talks about how the issue of gender gets murky in the world of MOO. Murky because it foregrounds the issue of how gendered one's identity is, and in Dibbell's book, more so for female. I must be careful in trying to mirror or fit Dibbell's experience to my own in Second Life as I believe the interface makes a lot of difference – text based vs visually rich 3D environment. In a text based environment, there is gaps for readers to fill in between the words. No matter how precise the descriptions are, there are always room for ambiguity, imagination and creativity when readers try to visualize the descriptions. These gaps allows the reader to project his/her own perception onto the description and the same description may yield different visualization for different people, especially more so for readers of different culture. After visualizing the descriptions, the reader then try to characterize the descriptions. One good example is how often when there is a movie adaption of a book, readers of the book goes “that is not really how I imagined him/she/it to look and sound like”. As for a visually rich 3D environment like Second Life, the first step of visualization is stripped away and the visuals attack the 'readers' (in this case, viewer perhaps? Hmm lets just use 'players') directly.

I would like to discuss a little on the idea of 'monstrosity' as mentioned in the Mutation.fem reading before talk about some of my experience in Second Life. With regards to the point of female characters in games tending to exhibit unrealistically large bodily proportions, perhaps precisely because the issue of gender is so murky in online world exaggerations have to be made in if they were to come out as a definitive female or male character. As female characters in games, especially First Person Shooter, perform actions that are typically masculine, female character perhaps need to have an exaggerated appearance in order to maintain the notion that they are very female characters albeit doing typically masculine things.

Okay, now the boring bits are over, I shall proceed on to my 'adventures' in Second Life. First and foremost, the thought of cross dressing never occurred to me when I signed up for Second Life. The only consideration I was making when signing up is whether to let my avatar reflect more of myself or should I try to come out as a different character than my real life persona. Perhaps subconsciously, I am like Dibbell towards the end of the chapter that, I was afraid to be found out.

With regards to the issue of monstrosity, all I can say is, it seems that in Second Life, you are a monster if you are not a monster. What I mean is that I see more flying spaghetti monsters or 3 headed ogres or things that I cant even describe (maybe it is due to the way I just randomly teleport around islands. Hmm I should have just stayed in Newbieland or the virtual NUS campus) than beings that resemble human. Even humanoid figures have bleached hair with blue skin or impossibly muscled chest and arms and small frail legs.

There are a few times I go up to a female looking avatar and ask if they are really female in real life, most would immediately reply 'yes'. I had one incident where this fella got so offended by that question that she (or he or it? I dont know) chased me around the island scolding until I logged out of the game 10 mins later (hmm I should have just teleported away on hindsight but I am not sure if that fella can track my location).

Discussion question: Is the ambiguity of the text based world a better arena for gender and identity experimentation than a rich visual world?