VIRTUAL WORLDS: From fun to addiction.

Case Study : Second life "Escape to the Internet's largest 3D virtual world, where your imagination has no limit." 

The Virtual Worlds Phenomenon:

There is nothing new about MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) on which thousands of people can play simultaneously; the most popular of all being World of Warcraft. Second life however is not a game, it is an online community, a virtual world allowing users to interact with one another, and design their lives, jobs and avatars.

As a matter of fact it is with the appearance of second life in 2001 that virtual worlds began to grow in importance. Indeed around 13 million people have visited Second life at least once and there are about 450 000 regular users in a given week.

Those online communities are for the most part, in 3D and the content is generated by the users: they can be themed, with goals and missions or simply an interface where people can communicate, bound and experience whatever they want. According to Nielson Online, in 2008 Second Life was the third most popular application in the UK, following Facebook and YouTube, in terms of minute spent on the website.

A dangerous form of Participation/ Interaction:

As Nico Carpentier states, Media Participation is about the audience taking part in media organisational decision-making (structural participation) and, in the participation in production of media output (content-related participation) which is the one we are interested in when focusing on the impact of virtual worlds on the participants' lives.

As a matter of fact, the concern with virtual worlds is that with this participatory audience, with the user becoming the 'prod-user' (e.g. Bruns. 2007) creating content in the interface, the participant's actual life becomes totally embedded in his or her virtual life.

Those virtual worlds imply that the participants must be active. However, as Hoijer states, we should avoid 'the trap that being active is always best for the audience'. As a matter of fact, letting a non-professional user create online content can be dangerous for the participant himself, as he or she could end up by not being able to differentiate real life with the virtual world.

Considering those risks when engaging with virtual worlds, we can wonder if the internet through those MMORPGs is the new way of escaping from reality.

Example of side effects: Psychological risks, depression, violence.

In England in 2008, a woman asked for a divorce after catching her husband's avatar with an other woman in Second Life. As the Guardian states “Fact an fiction have collided in heartbreaking fashion”. This is when we realise that for second life's users it is not a game like the Sims. As a matter of fact for them it is real life, even if obviously there was no other exchange than a virtual one, the woman actually considered the fact that his husband's avatar was chatting passionately with another avatar, as cheating.

However it is not the worst issue, as it is more about shy people who take shelter in their virtual lives. As a matter of fact, behind their screens through their good-looking avatars they finally find the courage to talk to people and bound with the other participants while behind in the comfort of their home, not having to worry about their physic, their looks. This is when the addiction begins, when people actually start to think that their online life might be better than their real one. This is how thousands of player end up playing between 15 and 20 hours a day, living their “other” life.

The problem being that at first, players have the impression that those virtual worlds like SL are the solution to all their problems, they are finally able to open to people about your problems, be more confident, but it becomes a trap as it gets harder and harder to go back to the real life and face reality. Indeed it is much more easier to just escape to your avatar's perfect life.

“SL can be addictive, as you get such a buzz out of meeting people and having good times that you want to repeat the experience over and over. But like real life, it doesn't always work out that way” (CNN Report).

Moreover, Bailenson's research has demonstrated that even only 90 seconds spent on a virtual world with your avatar is enough to change your offline behaviour, in the short term. The problem is when the users consider SecondLife as a second chance, then when the users realise that it is not true, the disillusion leads to some of them wanting to commit online suicide. As a matter of fact, it is not rare to find groups of avatars talking about suicide, as they are not satisfied with their online lives, or if they need to devote more time to the RL (real world). However as for them the line is very blurry between real and virtual world we can wonder if those kind of online behaviour would actually lead to the same real behaviour.

Finally, it is important to look at the irrational and crazy behaviours that people can have on the virtual world, leading them to do break real life laws. For example a Japanese woman who was so angry because of her virtual divorce, killed her online husband's avatar by illegally hacking into a computer to carry out her virtual murder.

This all demonstrates how, recently, virtual lives have had more and more impact and consequences on the real world. Is this kind of participation dangerous then? Is it the result of the virtual generation, who is not able to distinguish what is real from what is virtual anymore?