Second Life goes nuclear
Yahoo is running a ridiculously-framed story about “virtual nuclear terrorism” in Second Life:
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - In an explosive display, virtual-world banes now mirror the havoc of the real one as terrorists have launched a bombing campaign in Second Life.
People controlling animated avatar members of a self-proclaimed Second Life Liberation Army (SLLA) have set off computer-code versions of atomic bombs at virtual world stores in the past six months — with their own manifesto.
The SLLA claims to be an “in-world military wing of a national liberation movement” devoted to replacing the rule of Second Life creator Linden Labs with a democracy representing the nearly four million residents.
There are a lot of misconceptions here that need addressing. I’ve spent a bit of time in Second Life, so I guess I know what’s going on there, at least moreso than the AFP’s reporters. For one, this isn’t terrorism, it’s simply a protest. Real terrorism is so vile, deadly, and damaging I don’t think it’s even appropriate to use the word in reference to events in a virtual world that only last a minute and cause no lasting damage. The proper term for this is “griefing”. Terrorism doesn’t even begin to enter into it. It’s like comparing an online troll to the Nazis. It’s very offensive to the millions of people who had relatives killed in the Holocaust. Likewise, I’m sure a mourning family in Iraq would stare daggers at you if you referred to events in Second Life as “terrorism”, because they know what terrorism really is.
I’ve had it up to here with the news media treating every little thing that happens in virtual worlds as if it has parallels to the real world. No it doesn’t! Yes, so a few people have made lots of money out of Second Life. For all of the rest of the players, however, it really is just a game. If someone is griefing the grid with “nukes”, replicating objects, or whatever else is hot these days, you can simply log out for a little while and go play a different game until the attackers are inevitably banned. It’s not a big deal. It’s happened all the time. There have already been so many more destructive griefer attacks against the grid in the form of replicating objects, and nobody called those terrorism.
It’s just because we’re using this silly word “nuke”. It’s not a nuke on any level. Second Life is only programmed with Newtonian physics. It has no concept of nuclear physics. For that matter, it has no concept of even normal explosions, either. All that any “bomb” in Second Life really is is an object that is packaged together with some graphics and sound (to fake the explosion) and a push script that pushes everyone within a certain radius (and in a combat-enabled zone, also deals damage to them). That’s it. All a “nuke” in Second Life is is a normal faux bomb with the radius turned up to the maximum and a different set of graphics.
I’ve been nuked before in Second Life, and surprise surprise, it didn’t make the news. This was months ago. I was in a combat zone and this guy was showing off his weapons package. It had eighteen different ammunition types, all of which were pretty unique. For instance, one ammo type shot expanding balls of ooze that trapped avatars in place, another type of ammo was a net, another was exploding ammunition, etc. And of course, one type of ammo was a nuke, which is basically the best griefer weapon ever, because it throws you dozens of kilometers into the air and more likely than not also crashes out your client. That is if you don’t have the weapons package, of course, as the weapons package contains an anti-push script, so its user isn’t affected by bombs or nukes at all. This weapons package, incidentally, can be bought for L$2000 (~US$8) at in-game stores. It’s basically just a well put-together program that people buy and use for fun in the combat zones. It’s not even illegal within the game so long as you use it within combat zones; go outside of the combat zones and use it on the main continent to grief people, however, and the Lindens may want a word with you.
So you see, this whole “nuking” incident really isn’t a big deal whatsoever. All that happened is that people took a commercially-available script and used it outside of combat zones on the main continent as a part of their protest. Yes, their accounts may be facing some sanctions for it. No, it’s no terrorism, and more importantly, it’s not news. I hung out with some real griefers and I saw attacks far, far worse, such as infinitely replicating, bouncing, realistic-looking penises. Why didn’t the news media pick up on that? Because it doesn’t fit our conventional definitions about what terrorism looks like?
Addendum: Dr. Dobb’s just put up a great Second Life scripting tutorial.
February 26th, 2007 at 02:12
Hear hear, totally agree with you. I play SL, and some people take it way too seriously. Its a glorified chat room, it has its uses, but its no big deal.