New World Notes

SWEATING THE DETAILS

The "virtual sweatshop worker"-- the real occupation, or the roleplaying persona, or both-- finally arrives in Second Life (originally published here.)

"I'm a Chinese girl," the new resident tells me, by way of introduction. "My work is playing this game for my boss in real life, and my boss asked me for 500 Lindens a day, or I'll be fired, and I'm poor in Second Life and real life, so don't have any chosen.

"So," she concludes, "I'm in trouble now, sir." 

"Why does your boss want 500 Lindens a day?"

"Because," she explains, "500 Lindens equals US$2, and US$1 equals 8 Yuan. So I have to finish this task… Do you know my job now, please sir?"

And of course I do know what her job is. The wonder is that I haven't met her kind sooner. At the moment, she's a voluptuous blonde woman with white angel wings, and a spear in her hand. But she's also the latest incarnation of an even more elusive figure-- and perhaps one that's just as fantastic.

"As some of you are probably aware," Persig Phaeton posted to the Second Life forums a few days ago, "other MMO titles over the years have had to deal with an influx of actual sweatshops in Third World countries. These sweatshops force young, underpaid workers to play [popular MMOs], not for enjoyment, but solely for the purpose of harvesting gold to be traded out... to be eBay'ed." This apparently happens on more traditional online role playing games, where it's possible, for example, to earn gold coins or whatever else the official currency of the realm happens to be, by having one's character perform some simple, mindless task like mining or fishing for hours at a time. With enough low-paid laborers doing these tasks on a battery of workstations, the theory goes, it's possible to auction off a large block of the currency on a site like eBay for a profit.

Since there's no simple, mechanical way of earning in-world money in Second Life, however, Persig believed the phenomenon wouldn't come here.

"Last night, however, I had a disturbing experience."

WATCHING THE DETECTIVES

Got a philandering spouse? Property needs securing? Marked for vendetta? Online gumshoes for hire in Second Life-- rates from L$100/hour, plus expenses.  (Originally published here.)

Laura Skye had an inkling that her lover was unfaithful, and had gone back to tomcatting in the racier nightclubs, where the working girl avatars come with loose clothing and even looser morals. So she hired herself a private investigator, to do some snooping.

"I found out he went with an escort," she tells me at my office, "and we had a big argument. And then he promised no more. But I didn't trust him." So she clicked on the Find button-- Second Life's equivalent of the yellow pages-- and put "detective" in the search slot.

Which is how she wound up at the office and the private cave hideout of Markie Macdonald, P.I.

"We set up a honey trap," says Ms. Macdonald.   "You know, nice female avatar... flirted quite a bit." 

In a honey trap, a gorgeous woman or a handsome man is hired to approach the target of an infidelity investigation, lay down some seductive patter on him or her, and see if the suspected philanderer takes the bait.

THE FREEFORM IDENTITY BEBOP OF EBONI KHAN

I met Ms. Eboni Khan, a Black Republican Buddhist Fortune 1000 executive who is testing the appeal of upscale social events with no explicit sexual content, by moving my mouse over a list of Residents online during the day, and clicking on it with my eyes closed.

I first got acquainted with her in-world at a live jazz performance in Beverly Hills, a private island simulator, and after the event was over (she was its hostess), we went on a couple short tours of the sim, chatting about race, race and avatars, jazz clubs, socialization, men who seduce women while acting as women, going in-world from airport terminals, and more.

THE TRAGICS OF TRINGO

An in-world game developer creates a phenomenon, garners enormous financial success... and alters the culture of an entire society, in the process.

So I spent the last year or so predicting to anyone one who'd listen the imminent arrival of the Counter-Strike of Second Life, and when it finally gets here, I'm slow on the uptake. 

In the 90's, a kid working out of his parents' basement used the level-editing tools of Half-Life to create the Counter-Strike mod.  It got so popular, people began buying the original Half-Life, just because you needed to install it, to play the kid's game. It got so popular, in fact, it had a broad impact on multiplayer gaming and the game industry's attitude toward modding.

In a similar way, my prediction went, a Resident would one day create a game that's so addictive and popular, people will end up logging into Second Life just to play it. That will be the tipping point when things change-- for the Second Life community, and the way it was perceived by people outside it.

Trouble for me was, all along I had been expecting that game to resemble something like, well, Counter-Strike-- a multiplayer FPS like U:SL, for example.  My own bias as a gamer had blinded me to the realization that the Counter-Strike of Second Life was really this simple, innocuous looking, casual game which involved nothing more spectacular than a bunch of people sitting around poking at two dimensional boards.

Oh, I'd noticed its arrival, and mentioned it back in January, in my profile of club culture doyenne Jenna Fairplay -- but that was just in passing. By the time realization finally hit me full, it had already pushed past that tipping point; in here, and in the world outside.

So it was last week that I met Kermitt Quirk for the first time, outside his home near the Tringo board which he used to host himself (though he's been too busy to do that lately). Since he's based in Australia (while originally from New Zealand), arranging an interview conducted via a 18 hour time difference was a challenge in itself. But despite our distance, the quality of his connection is just fine.

"I just got a new graphics card yesterday," he tells me. "Second Life runs smooth as silk now."

"Bought it with your Tringo earnings?"

"Pretty much, yeah," he replies. "Not actually from Second Life money cashed in, though. I haven't done that yet. I'm gonna just keep it in there as a nest egg, I think."

But Kermitt Quirk's fiscal success isn't a topic for this entry-- by now, that's already become an item for the mainstream press to report. This is the story behind its creation, and just as important, the way its unprecedented popularity has impacted Second Life society-- for better (as many believe), or-- as some strenuously argue-- for worse.

ANSHE AT THE GATES

Originally published here.

The Gates of Central Park came down last week in New York City, as planned, after they'd completed their successful run. Last week, the Gates of Briarcliff Manor were also uprooted from that hilly island. And though their creators also saw them as a temporary art installation, it wasn't part of the plan for them to be steamrolled so a Chinese-European land speculator could turn the place into a gated resort community for the French.

But this is, more or less, what happened.