Marktollefson’s Weblog
doing the documentary thingArchive for 2Life
Narrative in games
One of the primary distinctions that Alex made between online gaming (such as Counterstrike, Call of Duty etc) and Second Life is that the former have a narrative structure, a story that plays out. Second Life is just a big playground where a variety of endeavours … from the mundane to the sublime … can be enacted. There is not an inherent throughline of story in Second Life.
I have to agree that this is an important distinction, but I think there are subtle variables on either side … detail which Alex had no chance of addressing since most of us were busy goofing off in Second Life while she was delivering her lecture today.
Online games have objectives, but the teams of players who cooperate to achieve those objectives can do so in an infinite number of ways … and the elements of chance, human error, skill, luck and misfortune all play their parts. As an analogy, just because a football game has rules doesn’t mean that it is the same story every time. Once the game is completed, however, you can look at it as a story in hindsight.
So what about Second Life? There aren’t any formal objectives, and yet there is clearly a pattern of kinds of activities that are going on. So far, I have observed two basic things that happen in 2Life. People are hustling for money or looking for companionship. How successful they are depends on chance, human error, skill, luck and misfortune. How events unfold is never the same twice. And in hindsight, those events can be looked at as a story.
Therefore I would postulate that right now there isn’t that much of an actual difference between 2Life and online gaming. The big difference is 2Life’s potential to become something more.
