You Only Live Twice

Meadows (2008:51) argues that experiences create a grounding of belief. “People in virtual worlds build things, use them, sell them, trade them and discuss them. When another person confirms what I am seeing, places value on it, spends time working to pay for it, buys it, keeps it, uses it, talks about it, gets emotional about it, and then sells it – this tells me there is something real happening. The suspension of disbelief has become a grounding of belief”

Psychologically you are your avatar. People respond to interactive technology emotionally and social level. People feel bad when something bad happens to their avatar. Nick Yee, a recent PhD graduate conducted a survey of 30,000 social interactive gamers and discovered that 40% of men and 53% of women who spent time in virtual worlds said their virtual friends were equal or better than their real life friends.

Meadows talks about how a player is very interactive with the game Second life, then you look into Second Life it is interesting to see how much it looks like our real. You have suburbs which do look exactly the same, there are clubs where people dance like they dance in real clubs, there are shopping malls and people addicted to shopping. There’s even architecture, purchasable real-estate and fashion. This brings a sense of realness to the game does it not?

According to research by TIME magazine it is suggested that the qualities you acquire online, whether it's confidence or insecurity, it can spill over and change your conduct in the real world, often without your awareness. Even just chatting with another avatar on Second Life is enough to elicit behavioral changes offline, at least in the short term. This is evident that Meadow may have some truth to his statement. If what someone experiences in the interactive social game can alter the person in real life, it demonstrates that there is something indeed real happening.

Byton Reeves and Clifford Nass two Stanford University professors also the authors of The Media Equation, suggest that media experience equals real life experience. Through the media not only virtual social interactive worlds can people believe they are living? Assuming what they see in the media is real life as we interact with it emotionally. They point out many interesting things that apply to avatars and our experience with the virtual world. A fictional character in a virtual world can be affected attention, memory, reaction time and emotions whether or not the virtual character is close or far away from the living person.

One of the keys to realness experience in Second Life is the fact that millions of people share in the development of an interactive narrative. There is a real life person behind every avatar; this means that these people are bringing the real world into the game via their avatars. The avatar based worlds such as Second Life there is roles to be played. They offer communities, goals, commerce and interaction to achieve a social position much like real life.

Some 13 million people have visited Second Life at least once, with about 450,000 residents online in a given week. It is real enough for millions of people to committing hours a day, emotions, attention, reputation and money. In the end, it's as real as you want to make it.