This feeling struck me when I first started in SL as well. It all seemed so empty and barren. Like the person in the Slashdot article he references mentions, as I wandered, I hardly ran into a person. I found some really terrific builds. I checked out the NOAA sim, and no one was there. Vassar’s SL campus was bare. In one region, I actually saw a green dot on my mini-map and zoomed over to find the owner of the sim working on something (an industrius-looking fox-furry in grungy cyberpunk gear). He was completely surprised to see me and was shocked that I’d taken the time to look around the build. It felt like some science fiction novel where a great civilization had been wiped out in an instance, removing all inhabitants and leaving the artifacts of their civilization unscathed.

Eventually, I found the pockets of habitation around. Almost exclusively at the nightclubs, but with occasional concentrations at the rp sims or the particularly popular shopping area. People are clustered around a central point so they can be in chat range of each other (usually around a dance ball so their avatar can be doing something besides standing there while they chat). These crowded places have a lot of unused space – side rooms hardly get used except for the occasional looksee.

 I found people who had their own parcels or even sims and they loved showing me around to see what they had built, but it became pretty obvious that that most of their parcel was never used. Unless they were actively building a section, they could always be found in the same location. And they generally use landmarks and teleports to get anywhere, so people don’t actually travel any of the distance between locations. Most people don’t even know what is in the same sim as them, unless it is a private sim or an RP sim. I realized that I spend the majority of my time in SL in my lab, which is a skybox where I build things.
 
I think that a lot of people would classify this as laziness, or the same sort of degradation local ties that have lead people to barely know their neighbors. Those statements are true, I think. But to leave it at that misses the forest for the trees. The issue is one of space – as in, space means something different in the virtual, and has a unique role in Second Life.

As I have posited before, the disinguishing trait of virtuality is the use of ‘place’ is different. Virtuality is based on the concept that place is a consensual reference point for an experience, as opposed to a physical locale. This is something that is only truly capable either in imagination or with the use of modern communications. We use place as our indication of oc-existance – “I was there and you were too.” But now that we have interactions over distance, we describe that touchstone of experience as a ‘place’.

When we go into immersive virtual environments like Second Life, the software replicates the sense of space by creating artificial distinctions in location. However, the other limitations space are not inherent in that environment.

Real-time communciation is usually limited to locality. Without the help of communications technology, we can’t talk to someone who isn’t in the same physical location. But in virtual worlds, we can. We can talk to each other with instant messages. And often we are talking with several people all at once. This leads to the very common situation to arrive in a busy place in SL and no one is talking. And no one responds. They are all deep in their own conversations which are in no way tied to their virtual location. In fact, there is very little difference between local chat and a Im or group chat in most cases. The local chat is just the chat where you are seeing the same set of non-verbal virtual elements.

We see some of this in the real world, of course, with people on their cell phones chatting away in the grocery store. But in the virtual environment, the effect is more profound as the dislocation isn’t a facet of extra technology, but built directly into the environment.

Additionally, space isn’t a major issue in terms of having to pass through it to get to other places. peopel don’t have to travel through space to get to their friends or favorite places – you just teleport. I know in the old days of SL, you could only teleport between telehubs. But now, space isn’t an inherent factor in travel, even when co-location is an issue. Rather we move point-to-point and space isn’t as integral to the environment as it would be if you could not teleport. This stuck me early in my time on SL, when the first house I bought in SL didn’t have stairs or a ladder or even a hole in the ceiling. Rather, you teleported upstairs.

And additionally, space isn’t as limited as a resource in virtual worlds. SL has a rudimentary sense of objective space, given the parameters defined by a region. But that is more of a factor of processing time for calculating physics interactions than anything else. A region could handle a lot more space if the number of objects in it were limited more severely. And, if you can get another server up, or are willing to live with slower responses, you can just ‘make more’ space.

All of this makes space not an ever-present and permeating, yet invariant, element. Rather, it is a variable that can be influenced by situation and desire. Space, in SL, is an aesthetic option more than a vital resource. That makes for a very difference set of experiences.

For example, there’s the story of the Jesse War in SL’s history . Space, at the time, was much more of a commodity then. There was much less of it, and you did have to travel through it to get most places. The conflcit over the Jesse Wall and all around it played out much like real world escalations happen – a circle of ever-rising conflict over territory. I’m guessing we see less of that now. Space is plentiful and cheap in SL and you can always go elsewhere and buy your own plot. Or find a new club.

Without the restriction of invariant space, virtual worlds like Second Life become about connections with other people. People go to places where other people are, even if the place is just a bare box (think about chat rooms – just text and people have been hanging out in them for years). So when most people walk into Second Life as a newbie to the experience, they look it it from the perspective that they understand – space is ‘real’ and when there is a lot of space without a lot of people, the place is empty. But empty doesn’t mean the same thing when space isn’t a foundation of the world you are in.

Once you leanr to navigate by what is real in Second Life – connections either through group chats, IMs, friends lists or landmarks, you find that Second Life is full of people. You’ve just been measuring with the wrong ruler.

It’ll take a bit to get to my point here, but bear with me. I think that one of the problems with how people react to the modenr world is that they make assumptions about what the progress brings us. Moon’s First Law of Sociology is “Human nature only changes in response to new technology.” And I think that too often, we look at these things not from the standpoint of understanding what we are becoming, but rather through the lens of what made sense in the past

Let’s pair up a few personal experiences here. Just recently, I posted on a blog about finding more people to hang out with, both offline and online. My goal is to become more sociable (a skill I’ve lost some in the last few years). I did say I wanted to know if people wanted to do online stuff with me as well, especially local people, so we could hang out online and offline.  One of the responses I got was someone saying that looking for people to hang out with me online was defeating the purpose of trying to cultivate sociability.

My response was based mostly around the fact that some of my hobbies are specifically online hobbies. I enjoy virtual worlds and Internet technologies, among other things. So I want to enjoy those with other people, both locally and remotely. (As an aside, I’m a big believer in the idea taht if you want to develop friends or find dating partners, you should do it while enjoing your other hobbies. I think you are far more likely to find someone compatible).

I think this exchange highlights one of the big paradoxes of the Internet Age: The Internet is becoming a cornerstone of modern cultures on many levels, and yet we usually consider what we do on the net as trivial. An example of this: MC Lars (who is really a geeky musician and often associated with the niche nerdcore genre) has a song “Internet Relationships are Not Real”. Yet, I met my wife of 10 years on the Internet. I know a lot of people who have forged long-term relationships online. But it’s still considered ‘strange’.

Of course, that’s a lot anecdotal evidence. So let’s bring in some science. In the Journal of Communications, there’s a paper called “Looking for Gender: Gender Roles and Behaviors Among Online Gamers“. I found this quote in the middle of it, where they are talking about the fact that they found that, unexpectedly, women who play online games play more hours than men who do. Their suggestion is that women use it as an avenue for social interaction. (emphasis mine)

The desire for communication could in part have been met through game play with romantic partners and/or relatives, suggesting that MMOs may allow (especially younger female) players greater opportunities to communicate with friends/family outside of normal routines. [...] If true, this pattern would be consistent with the general trend in Internet research to find online activities to be more of an extension of offline life, for example, a maintenance tool, than a substitute for it.

So here’s the point I am finally getting to: science is beginning to show that online activities aren’t overall, escapism. Rather they are an extension of a person’s life. And I think that this is one of the key things that will come out of the generations that grow up with the Internet, that the ‘virtual’ world is just way to extend who you are. The future isn’t Extropian transcendentalism, where we shuffle off this mortal coil for the digital aether. Rather it is bolting on the reach the digital age gives us onto who we are.

The future isn’t virtual reality, but rather augmented identity.

We are human and we are always going to be. But what we can do changes with technology. Like augmented reality uses technology to ‘extend’ what you can do/see/interact with, augmented identity is where who we are is extended through the avenue of technology.

What is augmented identity like?

• Decentralized social identity – the people in our life don’t have to be close by. People keep up with friends and family all over the world through email and social media. You don’t have to run into a person on a regular basis in order to be informed on their life. Of course, there’s nothing like real face-to-face interaction. But it seems like now that is being extended by socializing in ‘the cloud’.
• Simultaneous multichannel communication – my father-in-law mentioned to me recently that he noticed how in IM conversations, you often have two threads of discussion going on at once, as people respond out of sync to one another. He said you get used to it. Because of the Internet, texting and IM have made this commonplace and reflexive for some. It’s an asynchronous way of communicating – we communicate in little bursts here and there and hop back and forth between them quickly. Conversations are happening interwoven with each other and thus effectively simultanously. And it happens across multiple media as well – having IM conversations while on the phone or talking to someone in the room with you. This is second nature to those who grew up with it. And I think that’s the source of the frustration older people have with younger people texting while having conversations while the younger people really don’t understand what the fuss is about. Multichannel communication is natural for the internet type, but not for the pre-digital person.
• Multidimensionality of self – another favorite of mine. Augmented identity acknowledges the fact that people have more dimensions to them than usually gets expressed. There has always been this human experience (I act differently when I am at work as opposed to when I am at home) and some more real life ways (see the SCA). But the extension into the virtual allows people to express these parts of themself in ways that couldn’t otherwise. Second Life is, I think, one of the prototypical examples of that now. Culture in second life has evolved into several noticable ‘virtual races’ (neko, vampire, furry, dragon, etc.), virtual genders (shemale, hermaphrodites) and even virtual ethnicities (Gor, Uru, and more). While there is roleplaying in all of this, if you look, you find that these are real people adopting personas and customs as an expression of who they are. That person may not be physically a black skinned drow with cat ears, but does the fact that they present themselves as such make it any less a part of who they are?

So, I’ve been into Second Life for about a year now. And before that, I was a rabid player in Myst Online (and its previous incarnations, Uru Live and Until Uru). Before that, I was a MUDer and built things on LambdaMOO. And before that, I played in RPG channels in QuantumLink (what AOL was called before it was AOL). So, what I am saying is, I’ve been in virtual worlds a lot.

Like many people who are very into a more esoteric hobby, I have a hard time explaining why I find it so fascinating. I tend torwards niche hobbies and cult-movies anyway, so that’s always a point for virtual worlds in my book. And, I’ll admit to a certain level of obsessiveness. This seems to be a common trait in the hobbies I’ve chosen.

Hamlet Au talks a little about the cult-like nature of Second Life residents in their advocacy of Second Life and virtual worlds in particular. There’s some confusion over whether it’s about ‘cult’ in the cult movie, ardent niche fandom sense, or in the hyper-obsessive drink-the-koolaid sense. I think it’s telling that people resonate with both of these interpretations (both in the positive and negative senses). I think that SL Residents realize, on some level, that they are obsessed with something. And that they are interested in something that varies from the norm.

This isn’t unique to Second Life, though. As a member of the Uru community, I’ve seen some of the most fanatical fans I’ve ever met in that community. While the games and background serve as a common mythos, the community has become as much about the community as the games. This community developed into what anthropoloist Dr. Celia Pearce called a ‘virtual ethnicity’ as she traced Uru fans across virtual worlds. They display that ‘cult’ sense as well, both in their sense of ‘separateness’ and in their nigh-on legendary fanaticism about the game and the world.

As I look back, I see that same sort of attitude about MUDs, and the early Internet in general. In fact, you can find that same attitude in most ‘geek’ fandoms and subcultures.

But what makes these things so different? Dusan Writer asks about the symbiotic link of Second Life, that thing that ties it into common experience (it’s brought up in reference to Google Wave, but I think it’s a good thought to apply independently). I think the answer is right there in the name – it’s a second life. As Dusan writes elsewhere about Second Life: “But I’m going to keep talking about immersive power and explain that there are some of us who also LIVE here.”

Now, I’m not talking about escapism. At least not cheifly. There is elements of escapism in all the above, of course. But I’m talking about a more trans-rational sort of existence. Rather than a replacement life (a deadend concept in transhumanism, in my opinion), Second Life seems to be most valuable (philosophically speaking) as an added dimension to human existence. It allows those things which are unreal in our First Lives and thus we can learn more about ourselves in every dimension. That’s, I think, the symbiotic link – the extension of the human in previously impossible ways.

First off, MagiQuest is a live action game aimed at kids. You buy a wand, which has an IR emitter and a motion sensor in it, and you use this wand on what is essentially a series of fantasy-themed scavenger hunts throughout the facility. You go to a Quest Tree to get quests from a screen embedded in a tree which sends you looking for a specific set of things, like crystals, gems, treasure chests, paintings, etc. You come up to you, flick your wand to activate the IR emitter and the item lights up or moves or talks or something.

This is all tracked in a database somewhere as having come from your wand, so your progress is saved. When you finish the quest, you are granted a rune from a character in a video screen. You collect the runes which lead onto ‘adventures’ which are a little more complex and have a simple story line. All along, you are gathering XP and gold and little bits of info about the MagiQuest universe. Later one there are some more complex challenges. We didn’t get to those, but I heard there was a team-oriented quest where you and others fight a dragon together, using the runes you have collected.

You take your wand home with you, and you bring it back next time. Or take it to another MQ somewhere else. Your name and progress are saved and follow you with your wand. And if you want to trick out your wand, the gift shop has toppers (screw-on ends for the wand that make noise and/or flash when you wave it), style accessories, wand holsters and other assorted magic-y swag.

So, now let’s review. I went with my family, which is me, geeky father, my wife, lovely yet geeky mother, and my kids, 19, 15 and 9. This MQ is part of the Great Wolf Lodge, so it’s integrated into the first five floors of the place. These consists of the lobby and a few halls, the second floor which is also home to an arcade, small food court and has the entrance to the hotel’s indoor water park. The game areas on the other three floors are limited to the foyers around the elevators, and the stairwell which connects them all.

The wand itself is about a foot and a half long. It comes in five varieties (three classic – black with gold trim, brown faux wood and silver, two ‘dragon’ wands – ice and fire). These range from about $15 – $20, but are a one-time purchase. The end is bare so you can attach a topper. There were around a dozen styles of toppers, from gems, to wolf’s heads, to orreys, to balls with skulls in them. These are almost as much as the wand and can add another 4 inches to the wand. They flash when the wand is waved and some make noises (lights and sounds can be turned off). Ad they have places to attach things. If you don’t choose one, you just get a basic gold ball (which does not light up) on the end for free. You can also buy ‘style’ packs, which are ribbons and chains and little medallions to hang off your wand. These are about $9.

The wand is plastic with an IR emitter in the business end. It’s bulkier than I expected it to be, but it’s not really awkward. The toppers seem pretty well made and if you want to get fancy, they are fun. They ARE spendy, however. And the person at the store mentions that if you hold the wand by the topper and not the handle, they’ve seen kids break the toppers. So now you know. The style packs are pretty much a waste of money – don’t bother. They are just some colored chains and cheap ribbons. You can also pick up knick knacks, like copies of the runes, keychains, etc. There are costume bits. The wand holsters are kinda cool in that cheesy Halloween-costume way. They seem well-made, but sized for kids. If you are a crafty sewing type, you’d have no problem making your own, though.

Oh, and you can choose to have your wands as individual games or linked. Linked wands mean that the progress on one wand is recorded for all of the wands. So you can do it in ‘teams’ if you like. Or you can just buy one wand and all walk around together. We chose individual wands because we are all gamers and all wanted to play.

Now for the gameplay. You go up to one of several Quest Trees, flick your wand at it and it detects who you are. You then use the touch screen to choose a quest, and you get a little video of the Questmaster or another character telling you what to do, usually with a little poem describing it. Luckily, you can skip through this if you have multiple people wanting do the same quest and you don’t want to hear the quest video 4 times. And if you miss things, you are given a pamphlet (the Book of Wisdom) which lists all the quests, their clues and important info, like the fact the fifth floor is actually the Twisted Woods, etc.

By the way, getting the wands to work consistently is a bit of an art. You have to move the wand to activate, but keep it pointed at the object’s receiver (usually obvious) after wards. It can be a little frustrating.

Now that you have your quest, you go looking. The things you need to find are scattered around and usually have little MQ symbols on them. It’s all pretty obvious. The clues in the Book tell you where to look, and you spend a lot of time running from one end of the place to the other. Note for the mobility challenged – you’ll tire out quickly. Take a lot of breaks and learn to love the elevators. Luckily, most of the things you can wave your wand at have variations of responses for if they aren’t a part of your current quest or don’t react. The correct ones will react in obvious ways. In about 10 -15 mins you’ll get the hang of it. Also, there are several video boxes around that have video characters on them. If they are not for the quest you are on, they will tell you where you are on your current quest and what you need to find. Useful and easy for the kids.

As the quests go on, they get a bit more complex. But you get a good sense for the layout and often remember where you passed that giant ruby while you were looking for the tree slime earlier. Some places you have to cast several times in a row. Another thing I found suddenly told me I had 30 seconds to find the next item, which was unexpected, but a nice change. There was a room with a video projector that had several objects and was used as the end point for several quests. It’d change the video for each person that activated it. The frustration here is that it was a bit of a bottleneck – we often had to wait in line for it. And since we all had our own wands, people had to wait for us as we all went through it. There didn’t seem to be a way to skip through the end of quest videos.

I’ll get this out now. The acting and writing isn’t going to blow your socks off. It’s obviously aimed at kids, and comes across like a public-access kids’ show. It doesn’t really have the ‘wink wink nudge nudge’ quality that a lot of modern kids TV has to entertain the parents who have to listen to while their kids watch it over and over. But they obviously aren’t trying to be anything more than something cool for kids, and they do that well. Your kids will like it, and you’ll like it too as long as you aren’t expecting something that was made for you. As far as story, you only get hints of it early on. But the adventures take you through a simple story. And you get hints of a background, which includes several clans of Magi. Once again, it’s far from intense. Also, I get the impression that not every MQ place has all of the same quests, so you’ll get a different experience at each place you go to.

Overall, it was a fun time. There’s nothing mind-blowing here. We do weird stuff in video games all the time. But it’s surprisingly satisfying about waving a real physical wand and seeing something light up in response. If you come just to run around (with kids or without) and have a good time, you’ll have a good time at MagiQuest. If you want something serious or intense, this isn’t it.

Admission was $10 per person. That’s for the length of your stay at the Lodge, or 4 days, whichever is longer. I’m not sure what it is at other facilities. This isn’t a bad cost for what you get, once you’ve gotten the wand. You could easily spend all day there. Or several days playing if you are staying there for a weekend. In the three hours we were there, the 19 year old had gotten through most of the quests, the 15 year old about two-thirds, and the parents with the highly-distractible 9 year old got through about half.

The biggest drawback is the cost. The wands are a little spendy, and if you tack on the swag, the price goes up really quick. Also, going to a MQ is out of the way, travel costs and food (very spendy at the Great Wolf Lodge) will stack as well. But it’s definitely as fun as a trip to an amusement park. If you travel a lot (or take your family on trips a lot) and like this sort of thing, then you’ll get your money’s worth. If you plan to go to to a lot of them, or the same one a few times, the cost of wand isn’t all that bad. And it’s cool to have around the house. I hope to go again, with and without kids.

*whew* Okay, that was a lot. Now, for my commentary.

A lot of gaming nowadays is removed from physical experience. MMOs are the epitome of that, especially things like Second Life. Virtual world and unreal things. MagiQuest shows that you can effectively meld the unreal into a real experience very successfully. It’s pretty much automated and computer driven, and it brings some unreal elements adequately into the manifest world. You could think of it as a sort of narrative cyborg – half fantasy, half technology.

Really, it reminds me of my first trip to Epcot Center when I was a kid (14 or so). We went through a exhibit that talked about the technology for running the animatronics and the rest of the park, all of the engineering, computers, connections, devices, etc. And it occurred to me that if you applied that to something besides just moving exhibits, you could do some really cool stuff.

MagiQuest reminds me of that. It’s a pretty simple concept, yet well-executed. While I’m sure that the technical hurdles have been significant, it shows that it can be done and done reliably. So, what could be done if we extend the concept into fuller gaming experiences? Could we have Myst-style adventures in this sort of environment? Could we make an immersive fantasy environment that is not just virtual, but physical as well? Think of what is being done with augmented reality. Now merge that with this concept.

When I was running LARPs in North Carolina, I thought it would be cool to have a LARP with everyone having a PDA and having those PDAs communicate as the game mechanic. Want to shoot that guy across the lawn? Plug it into your PDA and they work it out. Of course, that was before Bluetooth. Now, that’s realistic. What kind of immersive environment could you have with 30 people all with their iPhones talking over Bluetooth to do the number-crunching and accounting? I don’t know if anyone has gone there yet. But they should.

When we talk about virtual worlds, usually we mean something like Second Life, or World of Warcraft – something that falls into the Neuromancer/Lawnmower Man/Matrix school of virtual reality. It’s about 3D environments that replicate or extend our world and dreams up uploading yourself into it, leaving your fleshy prison behind.

However, I was looking at a blog post by Brian Solis. In it he has some graphs of virtual worlds, placing them by ‘sector’ and by age group. There’s some interesting info in there. But what struck me is the number of things in there that I’d never heard of, and the number of things I wouldn’t really have thought of as a ‘virtual world’. These include things like Gaia Online, Neopets and Webkinz. This makes me think that what I think of as a ‘virtual world’ is a rather limited definition.

So, it occurred to me that this idea needs to be taken further. Once, William Gibson said that cyberspace was where you were when you were on the telephone. And I think this is really one of the great revelations of the information age. From the telephone forward, we have been visiting virtual worlds.

The basic facet of virtuality in all of its forms seems to be the disassocation of self from physical place. When we are on the telephone, we are communicating in real time with someone who is not sharing the same space. This is a different sort of interaction than in earlier communication-over-distance. That was just writing letters – passing messages back and forth. But the immediacy of real-time conversation has a different effect, I think. Instead of just messages, it becomes a shared experience. In essence, you were both ‘there’. There just wasn’t an actual ‘there’ involved.

At that point, ‘there’ becomes a consensual construct. Rather than a place, it’s a point of reference for the experience and gains a measure of reality, one that is completely subjective. Humans can only really think of such a thing in terms of place. So when we talk on the phone, we are ‘on’ the phone, we are ‘in’ a virtual world, etc. Any place where we can have a experience that uses a non-real point of reference instead of place can and should be considered ‘virtual’. Not just your 3D worlds, but telephone conversations, IM chats, IRC channels and more. And even non-realtime interactions that provide that sense of place – BBSes, roleplaying games, etc – reach into the realm of virtuality.

So when we talk about the virtual, we have to realize that this is actually an umbrella term with fuzzy edges. And any exploration of virtuality has to look into these areas as well.

For a long time, I’ve held the belief that most of the things that are important to us don’t actually exist. While there is an objective reality that is at the base of our existance (all you solipsists out there, sorry to have to break it to you), the majority of what drives us as human beings is not these physical things, but the intangibles. What drives the human condition are things without material reality.

Politics is driven by ideology. Religion is based off of belief. International boundaries are lines on a map. Economics is a web of agreements called stocks and credit. Wars are fought over conflicts in meaning, whether they be religion, boundaries, ownership or ideologies. Science is the extrapolation of patterns, and technology the application of these patterns in novel and useful ways. There are physical realities involved in these things, and are often at the base of them. But the layers of value, interpretation and extrapolation pile up quickly. And as humanity progresses, we focus more on these intangible layers than we do on the underlying matter.

It boils down to the fact that human beings are a symbol-using animal. Our brains excel at modeling the universe using the data we encounter, and thus we create maps of the universe. We are beings of abstraction and these abstractions are our tools for grappling with reality. And in order to utilize abstractions, we make judgments based off of perceived meaning. In the end, it is the meaning that is as important as the actual reality. And as humanity has continued to grow and expand, it is our universe of meaning that has expanded far beyond our universe of form. In contemporary society, the Information Age has given us the ability to tackle this world head on. Virtual worlds, online communications, and more highlight and accentuate this mode of interaction. From there, it seeps into all levels of our experience.

The human condition, more than anything, is based off of compelling ephemerality. It’s this world of the unreal yet vital that interests me the most, as I am humanist at heart. And I can’t think of anything that is more uniquely human.

I hope to talk about that on this blog my exploration of ‘ephemerology’. I’d like to approach it from several different angles, from the personal to the philosophical to the technical to the fantasic. It’s not intended to be a scientific survey, but rather a continuing exercise in “reflective attentiveness” from my own point of view. Nor is it intended to be an impartial exploration. As such, I plan to include topics such as metaphysics, spirituality, religion and occult as areas of the ‘unreal’ that drive who we are in one way or another.