Kanomi Pikajuna Reviews Second Life's Most Promising Games
No, I'm not ignoring you, I'm playing Tiny Empires.
Some people say there's nothing to do in Second Life. To those people I say, "Get a Tiny Empires 3000 HUD, sign up as my subordinate, and begin contributing ships and income to my tiny space empire."
The game is about as undemanding as a game can be. It's played entirely through one HUD; that's it. No keyboard commands to memorize, no sim to go to, no board to rez. There's no looking for other players or waiting for a game to start.
The flip side of that is there's no action, no combat, and little in the way of in-depth strategy or roleplaying to be had, at least at the lower levels. In fact you don't really have to do much of anything at all. Check a few boxes, solve a few puzzles, and that's it.
Yet over time, the accumulated results of even minimal efforts will begin to push you up the ranks and increase your fleet. And that's where the addictiveness kicks in. It's like cigarettes -- not much of a kick at first, but over time you can get hooked. Here's how:
When your HUD is active, a new turn will appear every few minutes or so, offering you some different options: buy or sell a ship, solve a puzzle, change allegiance, or vote on a measure. By default your options are set to "No", so if you are AFK or have the HUD minimized, you don't have to take a turn and you won't be penalized. So you can play the game risk-free while shopping for shoes or discussing Metanomics or all the other things you normally do. This subdued and slow pace meshes nicely with Second Life.
Every turn your ships earn a set amount of income; the more ships you have, the more income you make, but much of that is sent to your superior. And that's the key to the game, having others do the work for you.
This basic design borrows from multi-level marketing schemes, in that everyone has an upline (or "superior") to whom you pay a share of each turn's income. That's not exactly a Better Business model in real life, but in the context of an imaginary game world, it's fine. No real Lindens are changing hand, just in-game money called "credits."