The Apathy Of The Stars: LIS 757 Group Project: Gaming & Virtual Worlds

by Gerry McCrae, Mike Beazley, Elise Cogo and Leah Swift

What is a Virtual World

“A virtual world is an interactive simulated environment accessed by multiple users through an online interface. Virtual worlds are also called "digital worlds," "simulated worlds" and "MMOG's." There are many different types of virtual worlds, however there are six features all of them have in common:

Shared Space: the world allows many users to participate at once.
Graphical User Interface: the world depicts space visually, ranging in style from 2D "cartoon" imagery to more immersive 3D environments.
Immediacy: interaction takes place in real time.
Interactivity: the world allows users to alter, develop, build, or submit customized content.
Persistence: the world's existence continues regardless of whether individual users are logged in.
Socialization/Community: the world allows and encourages the formation of in-world social groups like teams, guilds, clubs, cliques, housemates, neighborhoods, etc.”

Betsy Book: Virtual Worlds Review

Gaming World

As noted by Betsy Book, A gaming world, or Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG), is one where character-focused avatars progress through story lines and competitive events.
Some examples include Everquest, World of Warcraft and MPOGD.com

A list of virtual worlds by category can be viewed here.

Since this is a social networking class, we decided to focus on ‘Second Life’, a virtual world that has been developed for ‘community building’ rather than gaming. As noted on Wikepedia, “Second Life is sometimes referred to as a game, but this description is disputed. It does not have points, scores, winners or losers, levels, an end-strategy, or most of the other characteristics of games, though it can be thought of as a game on a more basic level. It is a semi-structured virtual environment where characters undertake activities for the purpose of personal enjoyment”.

So, what exactly is ‘Second Life’?

As noted on their Website, Second Life is a 3-D world built and owned by its residents. It opened in 2003, and there are currently over 8 million residents, who are represented in the world by avatars. It is free to join, create an avatar, explore the world, meet and chat with other residents, attend meetings or social events, and use freely available tools to build and then sell things to other residents. You own the rights to anything you create. Thousands of residents are making part or all of their real life income from their Second Life Businesses.

If you wish to own land, and build on or develop the property, then you will have to pay $9.95 a month plus a ‘Land Use Fee’ which will vary depending on the size of your parcel. Once you own land, you can build a home, or business, a park, a school or anything you like. The Marketplace on Second Life “currently supports millions of US dollars in monthly transactions. This commerce is handled with the in-world unit-of-trade, the Linden dollar, which can be converted to US dollars at several thriving online Linden Dollar exchanges”.

Residents communicate via local chat or instant messaging, and voice communication is currently in beta testing. Avatars travel the world on foot, and they can also fly and teleport. A variety of vehicles are also available, and some are free and others must be purchased by the resident who created them.

Developers and Providers

Second Life is produced by the San Francisco-based Linden Lab, whose mission is to “connect us all to an online world that advances the human condition.” (Linden Labs, “About”) Founded in 1999 by Philip Rosedale, Linden Lab runs Second Life through “a scalable server grid running Linux” and encourages open source collaboration from Second Life users. (Linden Lab “News and Events”) This places some of the onus for development upon its residents.

In 2006 Economist article, creator Philip Rosedale was quoted as saying that the inspiration for Second Life was that, “Since I was a kid, I was into using computers to simulate reality” and that Second Life would take this further by allowing users to “extend reality”. (Economist, September 2006)

Second Life is promoted by its developers as an adults-only environment, however, because of the prevalence and availability of adult transactions within the virtual world, Second Life has been accused of exposing children to inappropriate materials. Second Life does have a world specifically for teens and children, but because it relies on self-disclosure from users, this is difficult to maintain. In June 2007, the developers of Second Life announced measures that would require one-time identification that would verify age. (Brisbane Times, 2007)

In contrast to the interactive emphasis of Second Life, there is Blizzard Entertainment. Also based out of California, Blizzard Entertainment is the creator of the popular multiplayer game World of Warcraft. Unlike Linden Lab, the makers of World of Warcraft have also lent their expertise to the development of non-interactive venues, such as movies like the recent 300. (Blizzard “Company Profile”)

The technology behind Second Life

Second life functions through the interplay of both client and server based software. This means that Linden Lab maintains servers on which the virtual world “exists,” while users download and install software that interprets and presents the world on the user's computer. According to Wikipedia, the servers run a version of Debian Linux, and the client software is available on Windows platforms as well as on Mac OSX and Linux.

The world of Second Life is divided into many separate regions, each of which is often maintained by an individual server. Every object within the world can interact with any other, thanks to the physics engine Havok I. This is a piece of software that allows objects within Second Life to interact with one another realistically (for example, one avatar can push another). There are reportedly problems with this engine and there has been pressure from the user community for an engine upgrade to Havoc IV. All items in Second Life are stored in a giant database powered by MySQL, an open source database program.

Second Life has recently revealed the source code (the coding that allows the virtual world to function) for its client software, thus allowing third parties to modify the functionality of the software. Users have long been able to create their own items in the world (clothing, hairstyles, tools, props, etc.), but now programmers can actually modify the user interface to allow new funtionality within the world. As reported by Shankland for Silicon.com Linden Lab will review modifications submitted by users, and if approved, they will be added to the official version of Second Life. There are plans to release the source code for the server software as well, which would mean that third parties could conceivably operate their own version of Second Life. Perhaps we'll see Second Library somewhere down the road?

Libraries Using Second Life

The Alliance Library System started the Second Life Library (a.k.a. Info Island) in April 2006, and library involvement in Second Life has expanded in the past 15 months to 10 library islands with over 4000 visitors a day and over 300 volunteers. In addition, a quick search for “library” under “Places” in Second Life gives 53 results. The teen version of Second Life also has a library, Knowville on Eye4You Alliance island.

Libraries are using Second Life in a variety of ways, including to:
o provide reference and research services,
o offer access to online books and other collections,
o hold meetings, conferences and classes,
o have book discussions and author talks,
o present displays and exhibits.

An article published in Reference Services Review on Second Life and library issues
(Grassian & Trueman, 2007) found that the benefits include “opportunities for collaboration, creativity, learning, and global networking with other librarians, educators, and technologists”, and that this environment could be used to extend a library’s reach in reference, collections, and information literacy to areas where users are going.

There are now even 2 six-week librarianship courses being offered (in Second Life) regarding services in a virtual world. See the “New Virtual World Librarianship courses” blog post for details.

The best way to see and understand what libraries are doing in Second Life is to set up a free account, create an avatar and visit it yourself. Help with this process can be obtained by downloading The Unofficial Complete Fool's Guide to Second Life.

The second best way (although a quicker way) to see is by clicking on the following videos, slide shows, and blogs.

View these 2 brief slide shows to get a fast and easy sense of what libraries are doing in Second Life:

Second Life & Info Island: Library Service in a Virtual World

Flying Librarians of Oz: What's all the fuss about Second Life and what's it got to do with libraries?

Surf these focused blogs for detailed information about Second Life and libraries:

InfoIsland (Second Life Library 2.0)

Second Life: Binary Footprints

Eye4You Alliance on Teen Second Life

HealthInfo Island

Second Life Education Research

Check out these blog posts for further examples of how libraries are using Second Life:

McMaster Library Reference on Second Life

Michigan Library Consortium in Second Life

Gaming and Libraries Symposium Enthusiasm