Game Stooge

Grinding Gears: Second Life @ Home

• Scribbled on April 27th, 2007 by Shogun6789
• Filed in Editorial Content, Grinding Gears, Off Topic

You know what grinds my gears? Second Life. Honestly, who even came up with the idea? The whole premise of the game is to go around pretending to lead another life in a false existence. How badly must your life suck so that you have to waste your time creating a faux life for yourself in which you have a better one? This kind of crap is what is causing the degradation of our society.

You log in, create a character, which most likely, will look nothing like you, and start “interacting” with people and the environment. How can a person be such a schmuck as to believe this is fun and enjoyable?

If you think that life sucks so much, then why are you participating in a game where the whole point is to live a virtual life online? It just doesn’t make sense. Now I can understand businesses and colleges and the sort setting up places and things in the game, it makes sense — advertising. Personally I think it’s a brilliant idea; direct advertising routed to the business’s main consumer — I’m not knocking them. I’m talking about the lazy, sad, depressed excuses for life that sit in front of their PC and play all day.

Second Life also gets people to spend real money. Maybe this is why your life sucks so much and you’re depressed, you’ve spent all the money you had on Second Life and now your life sucks. For example, there is a company in China that buys land with Linden Dollars, gets their team of designers to design and build houses and the such and then they sell it back to players for actual money (known as Linden Dollars, purchased with real money) Do people not see the insanity in this?

Paying real money to get fake stuff in a fake world so they can impress other fake characters in the game. If your life is truly so bad you have to escape to Second Life to get a break from real existence, give me the money you would have spent on the game and just kill yourself and get out of my existance; stop wasting my oxygen.

For all you naysayers out there thinking “don’t knock it till you try it,” well I did, and I thought “how can people waste away their lives doing this?” You guys should be ashamed of yourselves. Go get a job. Earn some money. Invest it rather than spend it on this pointless game. You may actually get some real money out of the investments and perhaps your life won’t be so boring. As for people that play this game for fun…WTF is wrong with you? Go outside! Yes, get up from your computer, walk out the door, and be sure to wear sun protection (we all know your computer nerd-ass hasn’t been outside in three years) - go meet people.

You may actually meet some interesting people and have REAL fun. You may actually get laid for the first time! I still don’t understand how this game could be fun. If you want to talk to people you don’t know, go into a chat room. Please though, for my clarification, could someone please tell me why people play this game? (If it could be called that.)

Furthermore, I’m an Xbox guy. Naturally, I have contempt for the PS3 and most Sony branded game consoles. Playstation fans don’t get upset at me, you know if you were comparing the Xbox 360 to the PS3 you would be extremely biased towards the PS3. Throwing in phrases like “it has Blu-ray, 360 only has HD-DVD, and you have to buy it separately” and “PS3 has complete backwards compatibility, 360 you have to download an emulator.” To that point I have to say “so what” it takes less than a minute to download. I know I have bashed the emulator previously, but it’s not a hassle to get. And now future PS3 owners will have to do the same crap anyways.

However, Sony’s announcement of the Second Life copycat Home, just threw me over the edge and made me want to destroy Sony. I may not like Sony, but they do have some really good games and such. In my opinion, this release is just pure blasphemy. What a waste of time and space. They boast “you can play basketball or shoot pool or bowl or go see movies” WTF? The target audience that will be playing this is probably around college age or somewhere around there. Go do these things with your real friends.

Go up and ask someone “Hey you wanna go bowling?” or “Wanna go down to the student union and shoot pool?” Not to mention the “movies.” The Sony Home game doesn’t even show real movies! You’ll get marketed advertisements in the form of game previews and the such, that is is what you will be offered, on a small screen no less!

Go see a real movie. Get some culture in your life. Meet real people. Stop spending real money (yes, you can spend real currency to buy stuff on Home) on games like this and get out and do something. And that’s what grinds my gears..