Ιt all started with a Second Life
Τhe Grid - Second Life's world map depicting the inhabited part in 2022
Authors
Apostolos Lagarias, Ifigeneia Kladou, Lais-Ioanna Margiori, Christos Mpaknis, Lorelay Christodoulou
Technical University of Crete, School of Architecture, 2022
The Second Life story
In the digital era, millions of games have been played on screens around the world, however, Second Life stands out as a particular case. Falling into the category of early Sandbox games, like Sims and Grand Theft Auto, with non-linear storytelling and emergent behavior, merging gamedesign with gameplay, Second Life was launched by Linden Lab company in 2003 as an on-line multimedia platform. Linden, is emphatic that their creation is not a game, but more like an open-ended experience (. The users create virtual representations of themselves (avatars), and they can explore the world: interact with places and objects, meet other residents, socialize, participate in both individual and group activities, build, create, shop, and trade virtual property and services with one another. In many ways, Second Life is similar to massively multiplayer online role-playing games; nevertheless, it does not have a designated objective, nor traditional game play mechanics or rules. And what is more important: In a -seemingly- infinite space with 27,343 regions, and a total area of 1791 square kilometers, Linden does not create the content. The “residents” -that is the users- build everything (.
In that sense, Second Life is considered as the first Metaverse, a term, was adopted from Neal Stephenson' novel “Snow Crash” (1992) envisioning a virtual urban environment, where users are represented as avatars, and the geographies and physicalities of the real world are modeled in networked digital space (Schroeder et al., 2001). Metaverse is broadly defined as a “a theoretical or emergent networked online space with digitally persistent environments that people inhabit, as avatars, for synchronous interactions and experiences, accessing the shared virtual space through virtual reality, augmented reality, game consoles, mobile devices, or conventional computers” (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/metaverse).
Although unfolding nowadays by companies like Meta and Microsoft as a bigger concept, encompassing most of the existing internet structure and being described like the “new internet” (https://www.matthewball.vc/all/themetaverse), Metaverse definitely bares some relevance to 3-D online virtual worlds. In that sense, non-linear storytelling videogames with emergent behavior, can be considered as ancestors of the new Metaverse, or even early versions of it. Second Life definitely falls into this category, while other similar games include Sims, Minecraft, World of Warcraft, and Fortnite; all categorized as popular Sandbox and/or Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs). Sims was released in 2000 (some years before Second life) as a game where the player could create an avatar, its home and lead its entire lifetime. World of Warcraft (WoW) was released in 2004 as a role-playing game where the player chooses an avatar and leads its way through wars and missions. Similar to WoW, Minecraft was released in 2011 and there were two main aspects in the game, the first to survive by gaining food and armor and the second to create buildings and villages by 3d cubes. A most recent relevant game is Fortnite, released in 2017 and having as main goal to survive on the battlefield.
Since its launch in 2003, Second Life was extensively used for social interaction between its users/residents. Second Life saw rapid growth for some years reaching in 2013 approximately one million regular users. In the next years, growth stabilized and by 2018 active user count had declined to around half a million active monthly users (Buscemi, 2020). The platform even has its own currency (Linden Dollar) that is exchangeable for real-world money. Commerce within Second Life has given rise to a new digital “gig-style”, or "sharing” economy", where users create their own content in the form of Digital assets like Avatar skins, vehicles, buildings, and artwork, and sell it to the others (Antin, 2020). Anshe Chung, a real-estate tycoon of Second Life and Avatar of Ailin Graef, has become the first virtual millionaire (Parloff, 2006) by building an online business that engages in development, brokerage, and arbitrage of virtual land. Second Life during its 19-year history, also has hosted various types of social, educational, and cultural events. Moreover, it has hosted several participatory planning processes (Foth et al., 2009; Gordon & Manosevitch, 2010), collaborative learning (De Lucia et al., 2009) and pedagogical projects (Bhattacharya, 2013). Second Life has been extensively referenced in sociological studies (Boellstorff, 2015), developing its own history and norms, and constituting an interesting case study in how Metaverse communities evolve over time (Antin, 2020).
A bar
in Second Life
Public Space in Second life
U2 concert within Second Life virtual space in 2011
Understanding Space in Metaverse
Online virtual worlds like Second Life act a showcase of what is coming in the nearby future. Metaverse has been recently announced by Mark Zuckerberg as the new reality of the internet, marked by the rebranding of the $1 trillion worth Facebook Company as ‘Meta’ and officially declaring the death of the social media Era as we know it. But how is space structured in Metaverse? What space attributes could apply in a seemingly space-less place with no spatial restrictions, where teleporting is the “rule”? Second Life could help us explore the above emergent questions regarding Metaverse Space, proving evidence of how emergent spatial qualities could affect the Avatars’ interaction. We proceed by organizing space attributes into three categories: a) World Structure b) Mobility and exploration c) Interaction and Co-presence. Finally, a comparison of Second Life’s design principles and space attributes to other MMOs style environments is presented.
World Structure
Second Life world is structured by a Grid containing thousands of Map Regions or Sims (https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Grid_Map_And_Dimensions). Map regions are all 256x256 meters in size horizontally and defined by map coordinates (Fig. 5). Grid Sector is a square of 100 X 100 Map Regions. In the Second Life’s geography, Da Boom is defined as center of the map. This is the very first region in Second Life, founded in 2002 and named after the "De Boom" street in San Francisco (https://secondlife.com/destination/da-boom). Vertically Map Regions go up to 4096 meters vertical, this being the build limit, as Avatars can fly higher, but cannot place objects above that. According to the Second Life server architecture, there are about 31,000 Map Regions in total currently and each one has to be hosted on a Server running copies of the Simulator program (https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Server_architecture).
About 5000 of the regions are directly managed by Linden Lab, are referred to as the "Mainland", and are grouped mostly into 7 large continents, and two small ones. The rest are managed by the "Estate Owners" who bought them. When an estate consists of a small number of regions separated by void regions from anyone else, it is also known as a 'private island'. Only 81 sectors host something, the remaining 280 being part of the Void Ocean, consisting of Void regions: Avatars cannot travel through the void regions in between actual map regions, as there is no server hosting that part of the map (Second Life Wiki, http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Map), this fact creating space discontinuity. Time is set to the time-zone of Silicon Valley, while daily cycle consists of three hours with daylight and one hour in night time mode, along with a time lapse (four minutes) dedicating two minutes before and two minutes after sunrise or sunset.
Second Life's Grid Structure, with several Map Regions
Mobility and exploration
Inside the Grid, Second Life re-creates elements of our physical world such as islands, the sea, forests, buildings etc. in virtual space. There are thousands of different places for exploration and interaction within Second Life, ranging from lecture halls, seminar rooms, cafés and clubs to ephemeral landscapes or even virtual brothels (Locher et al, 2015). There are three modes of mobility (Walk/Run/Fly), while teleporting to any location in the Map is possible. Velocity is fixed and adjusted to natural movement across space, quite similar to a real person walking or running, while flying speed has been set to 16meters/sec (https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Voluntary_Movement_Speeds), providing a smooth bird’s eye view of the space below. Therefore, Avatars actually need plenty of time to move across space, unless they choose teleporting.
|
Movement Type |
Speed in Meters Per Second in Second Life |
Average Speed in Meters Per Second in Real Life |
|
walk |
3.20 |
1.20 – 1.40 |
|
run |
5.13 |
5.00 |
|
crouch walk |
2.00 |
1.00 |
|
fly |
16.00 |
- |
Flying across the landscape
Standing in the road of a suburban-like townscape
Interaction and Co-presence
Users can choose between and a third-person perspective and a first-person perspective. In the third-person perspective (which is the default point of view) the virtual camera adopts a slightly raised position immediately behind the avatar providing a view of the avatar's back and the approximate field of vision of the avatar. In the first-person perspective virtual space is observed through the Avatar’s eyes. When moving to a space where other Avatars exist, Second Life’s Platform offers several affordances for interaction like Text-based chat, Instant Messaging (IM), Voice-over IP, Notecards, Action scripts (Locher et al, 2015). Billboards and road signs also exist, while real-time navigation directions when flying towards a new location can also apply. Presence of others can be directly noticed by vision when coming close. Alternatively, when teleporting to a new location, a mini-map allows users to quickly assess whether they are alone or whether there are other avatars in the vicinity.
A comparison of Second Life’s design principles and space attributes to other Sandbox/MMO style environments is presented in the following Table.
|
|
Fortnite |
Sims |
WoW |
Minecraft |
Second Life |
|
Release date |
2017 |
2000 |
2004 |
2011 |
2003 |
|
Avatars |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Triggers |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Interoperability |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Virtual economy |
V-Bucks and real money |
Real money |
- |
Minecoins Real money |
Linden dollar (exchangeable) |
|
Perspective |
First-person
perspective
|
First-person perspective Isometric perspective Isometric Flat side-view |
First-person perspective Third-person perspective Isometric Flat side-view |
First-person perspective Third-person perspective |
First-person perspective Third-person perspective Birds’ eye view |
|
Flying mode |
Yes |
No |
No |
Yes/No Changeable |
Yes |
|
Teletransportation |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Grid |
Tiles Imaginary city-scapes |
Tiles Imaginary city-scapes |
Open world |
Tiles Grid system |
Tiles Imaginary city-scapes / Voic Ocean |
|
Time continuity |
No |
Yes Day-Night |
No |
Yes Day-Night |
Yes Day-Night |
|
Space continuity |
No |
Yes (with inaccessible zones) |
No |
Yes |
Yes (with inaccessible zones) |
|
Distance |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Barriers |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
World boundaries |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
Triggers activate pre-defined series of events that occur when triggered by player location or actions that play out in the games engine. Interoperability by definition is the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and use the exchanged information without special effort on either system. Economic activity is the process that the interaction between the video games and the players can lead to the manufacture of goods, the provision of a service or corporate profit. Virtual economy is the economy in virtual worlds that creating and exchanging (virtual or no virtual) goods in an online game, particularly in massively multiplayer online games (MMOs). Perspective is the point of view that the player is able to see and control their player. Flying mode is the ability of the avatar to fly when the player is controlling them. Teletransportation is the instant change of space- transportation, the ability to teleport through portals. Grid is the way the world is structured and organized as tiles/urban blocks etc. Time continuity is related to a time sequence defining the past, the present and the future and the ability to distinguish the difference between days, nights and the passing of hours. Space continuity is the ability to move continuously through space in a game. Distance is the continuous path-way a player can take in a video game. Barriers are objects that cannot be interacted with and define gameable space. World boundaries are the limit- end of the gameable world.
References
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Second Life® Wiki, https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Main_Page
Image sources:
Game Platform, Second Life Release 6.5.2.567427
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https://www.flickr.com/photos/openmls/458635215
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