Linden Suburban Home Owners More Likely To Treat Their Place As Extension of the Real Life Self, Academic Suggests

Wiviott and Soup

Who would buy a new prefab virtual house in Second Life, and why? That's a question longtime Second Life users have been wondering, and presumably the Lindens thoroughly researched that topic before they launched their Linden Homes product. A Resident named Remington Soup is also interested, but for a more particular reason: that's the avatar of Matthew Wiviott, an academic in Cultural Mediation and Technology studies with Canada's world-ranked McGill University.

"Essentially I'm conducting research that will document a community of Linden Homes," he tells me. "I hope to provide an analysis that offers insight into the kind of relationships that Residents have with spaces they claim as 'theirs'. Linden Homes is fascinating, I think, precisely because of the severe restrictions imposed on modifications. Ideally, I would like to see people discover ways to subvert these restrictions, but any kind of personal expression is potentially interesting."

Wiviott believes there will be pronounced differences in who purchases which kind of Linden Home (pictured), two of which are contemporary and realistic, the other two historical/fantastic.

"My hunch was that people who inhabit SL in a similar way that they inhabit Facebook, i.e., as a virtual projection of their social identity, would prefer the California Modernism of Meadowbrook -- or perhaps the quaint rusticity of Tahoe. The two others -- Tolkien-esque Elderglen and Medieval Japanese Shareta Osumai - would attract those in SL as immersionists." It may seem obvious that people interested in online roleplay would prefer the fantastic or exotic choice, but for Wiviott, this exposes an interesting assumption:

"The modern home, as depicted in Meadowbrook, is recognizable as a contemporary residential form -- but very few people actually live in such houses. Suburban tracts are far more likely to have pitched roofs, and city-dwellers are housed in flats or condos. In a particular sense, the Meadowbrook setting is just as fantasy-based as the others -- and yet my preliminary research does seem to indicate that homeowners in Meadowbrook are far more heterogeneous in their decorative taste -- and far more likely to insert a personal touch that is related to their real life identity: symbols of nationality, indications of sexual orientation, images that refer to real life places." If I understand him correctly, even though it's unlikely that the owner of a "realistic" Linden Home actually lives in a place that looks anything like it in the real world, they're still apt to connect their real identity with the virtual setting.

"I'm not sure what to make of it yet," Wiviott says. "As a student of architecture, I find it fascinating that a particular language of building seems geared towards a certain mode of expression. Is this how we've culturally come to understand the modern home? I still need to conduct many more interviews in order to gather evidence for my claim - so if you know of any SL homeowners who are interested in speaking with me, please pass on my info!" Consider that information passed: IM Remington Soup to talk about your new Linden Home, and why you bought it.

Mixed reality photo courtesy Soup/Wiviott

Comments

[Arcadia Codesmith]

"Ideally, I would like to see people discover ways to subvert these restrictions..."

Ideally, I would like to see people who agree to the rules and then set out to undermine the spirit of those rules get kicked out of the sim, if not banned and blocked.

It's not as if SL has such a shortage of places where anything goes that we have to let our more indulgent self-expressions spill into the laps of people who just want to play house.

[JJ]

OMG build restrictions are SUPER SERIOUS!

[Ann Otoole]

Build rules and covenants are there for a reason. One thing you won't see in the Linden Home sims is the jerk in the next sim erecting a 256*256*0.5 megaprim wall that is not transparent on your side but is transparent on his side. And had been there through enough ARs to know it is a linden alt or friend of a linden that will do nothing about it because there is also camping bots littering the jerk's airspace.

Maybe LL needs to polygraph their RESI team from time to time. I still see bad things obviously being allowed to go on to drive people away. In this one case clearly it is intended to devalue the property. I won't buy it as long as that jerk with the megaprim and camp bots is allowed to remain in SL openly interfering with and infringing upon the rights of others.

Anyway one thing about Linden homes is if you get tired of the suburban life and want to try the rp styles or vice versa it is not exactly difficult or costly to do. However the Linden Home "rp styles" are not exactly castles (like this one: http://bit.ly/9eMvp6 ) so if those folks want a more serious environment they will have to "move on up" to the expensive side.

I say to each their own and let people have the fun they want SL to be without trying to control the fun of others.

[Remington]

@Arcadia: I agree completely that rules and regs are important to maintain a standard of conduct, and smooth framerate.

However I don't buy the claim that Linden Homes are only about "playing house." As I understand it, they are primarily for new avatars to establish a place of their own in SL - a component of their virtual identity.

Its like saying that Wordpress is about "playing writer," and so we should accept limits on what people can post. Hey, if they're serious, they'd get their own URL and code their own page layout!

I hope that Linden Homes facilitate the creation of online identities and add to the richness of SL content, like Wordpress and Blogger have done to the blogospere, and not be relegated to some second-class activity like you seem to suggest the "spirit of the rules" imply: a virtual IKEA catalogue preview or something.

[Remington]

@Ann: Again, I agree completely with the benefit of certain regulations.

I would raise the point, however, that I don't think its just about having fun. Take nightlife - clubbing - for example: its easy to see it as a 'fun' activity. Ideally everyone is having fun at a club - that's what they're there for after all. However, if that's all you consider in the value of nightlife, you miss the tremendous social and cultural implications (not to mention economic systems that connect to many other facets of modern life we would not characterize as 'fun').

The Linden Homes sim (and SL as a whole in fact) is an opportunity to have fun - but I think we do it a great disservice if that's all we make of it. Call me an academic, but I try to take these things seriously.

[Remington]

One more thing: I guess what I meant by "subverting the restrictions" didn't really have anything to do with the technical restrictions mandated by the covenant.

What I really want to say was that I hope Linden Homes will prove to be more colorful than the "happy nuclear family in front of a boxy suburban house" marketing image that Dio ranted about in blog.

It might be that the building restrictions work against that... that's what I'm curious about.

[HeadBurro Antfarm]

Well I've got one more by a stubbornness than anything else. I was holding off becoming Prem & probably was never going to take the plunge as I saw nothing in it for me, but changed my mind in order to help out the Forest of Kahruvel. As part of my newly-upgraded-premium-member tier donation I decided that if I was paying LL for being here then I damn well wanted a house (and whatever else they were offering) out of the deal.

Long story short is that I've got an anonymous modern LA style box in a no-mark sim I couldn't find if you showed to me on a map and repeatedly banged my face into it.

From a newbie pov I can see the attraction of a house & (possible) community, but to me it was redundant several times over so I've decided to do what I also default to doing in SL - roleplaying about it. It's now the sparsely decorated house of a missing 1950s style PI who disappeared looking into an unknown Cthulhu-esque affair. How far I'll go with it between all my other RP stories I don't know yet, but I like the idea that noobs will find it and maybe realise that SL can be a blank canvas (freshly booted interactive whiteboard?) for their imagination.