Behavior in Second Life:

Redefining Fantasy in the Metaverse

Second Life• Second Life bills

itself as “an online 3D virtual world imagined and designed by you.” Users, download a free Second Life viewer, which enables their self-created avatars to interact, explore, buy, sell, trade and participate in group activities with other “residents.”

MMORPG• MMORPG stands

for Massively multiplayer online role-playing game. It is a genre of computer game where a large number of players interact with one another in a virtual world.

Metaverse• The term metaverse

comes from Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash. It refers to a virtual world where humans interact with each other as avatars in a three-dimensional virtual space designed to mimic the real world.

•Anonymity and accountability have an inverse relationship. The higher one’s anonymity, the lower one’s accountability.

Anonymity

Trust

•Trust is established in an online virtual environment through reputation and experience

•“Deviance” within Second Life varies depending on the individual perception of normalcy.

Sexual Deviance

Identity

•Second Life has the potential to be stratified using similar social cues to those in Real Life.

Considering Second Life Using PQMA

METHODQUESTIONPROBLEM

What is the rupture

between real life

identities and those

created in Second

Life?

Interviews, research

into RPGs, other

community mediated

environments

Behavior in Second Life

versus behavior in Real Life?

•http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3d_fqDcN1s