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These most recent two entries here at the blog (the other on vampire community Darkside) are supposed to serve as companion pieces of sorts, to the shared question posed by this month's theme of "Third Life;" of what exactly roleplaying is, and how this answer is sometimes getting sharply redefined within the context of Second Life. For decades, in fact, the definition of "roleplay entertainment" was almost exclusively associated with the fantastical; that if you weren't imitating a vampire or warrior or other such metaphysical character type, participating in activities that only those types would be interested in, then what you had wasn't technically roleplaying entertainment at all. And sure, there have been plenty of non-fantastical roleplaying experiments hosted over the years as well; but almost exclusively as academic-style tests, with there rarely being one marketed as a mainstream commercial "game."
What I find interesting about Second Life, then, is that when you give people the tools to make any kind of roleplaying scenario at all, a huge portion of them have turned to rather blase real-life examples as running a store, designing clothes or creating a nice park. Let's take, for example, Nyte Caligari's very popular fashion store Nyte 'n Day [Couture Isle 142/125/48], which was on my mind this week because of a recent redesign there. Now, right off the bat, I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to belittle SL's wonderful fashion community, when I say that designers are often "playing" at being movers in the fashion world; there is a very real business at hand in the grid regarding this subject, in fact, with millions of real US dollars exchanging hands each year, and with most people now believing that at least several hundred designers are making a "living wage" from their activities (which in America is at least $25,000 a year). To become a top designer in Second Life, you need a solid combination of skills, savvy and luck, just like in the real world, and one can't expect to just stumble into success there half-assed.
No, when I talk about people 'playing' at fashion in Second Life, I mean that for many of them, their ambitions far outstrip those of the average real-life designer; these people get their greatest enjoyment out of being fashion moguls, a large and far-reaching enough activity to be what I consider an entire roleplaying scenario. People like Caligari and many others aren't just satisfied with designing their own clothes; they like opening up their own store as well, their own chain sometimes, in essence becoming their own architect, display artist, marketer and event coordinator. I don't know Ms. Caligari myself, but if she's anything like the dozens of other fashion designers I know, a big part of her pleasure in the grid comes from all these seemingly support-style activities; that it's the bureaucracy of setting up stores, maintaining mailing lists and hosting fashion shows that becomes a huge part of why it's so much fun, and why they devote so much time and money to it all.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about all this, though, is that the 'rules' by which to roleplay such a part can differ wildly from person to person; note here, for example, how Caligari's store is the very essence of a real-life clothing shop, while other retail outlets take the form of giant treehouses and other such fantastical dwellings. Different designers take profoundly different approaches on how to be "part of the fashion industry" in Second Life; somehow or another, though, it all melds nicely into one community there, albeit with still a whole lot of in-fighting at points (again, just like the real-life fashion industry).
As you can see in these photos, my entire point is that there are a whole lot of things that go into being a successful designer in Second Life, besides merely designing impressive clothes; a typical large store, for example, will also maintain a mailing list for regular customers, have regular sales, host regular fashion shows and other social events, give away some clothes as an enticement for visiting, and a half-dozen more possible activities. This is a lot of time and energy to put into a virtual activity, especially when there's no guarantee at all that you will actually make a real-world 'living' from it; in fact, as I've mentioned here before, when you press most of my designer friends about it, they'll admit that they're not doing such things ultimately for profit anyway. That's what leads me to calling such things as a legitimate roleplaying scenario, as real to Second Life's gameplay as joining a guild in World of Warcraft, or killing you a whole mess of space aliens in many of these console games out there.
And yes, by the way, I ended up picking up something new while there; it's this cute little monochromatic number you're seeing above, for about 50 American cents, which once again gives me ample opportunity to show off the fact that I own boobs. Ah, my clothing addiction continues unabated; twisted irony, as I've mentioned before, in that in real life I could care less about clothes or fashion.
Anyway, I hope all this has given some of you out there something to think about; that when it comes to traditional 'gameplay' and 'purpose' in Second Life, the means for defining the answer can get deceptively complex. Again, I'll ask the question I asked here a week ago: If I'm having fun, is it a game? Who defines what a 'game' is, anyway? What we're seeing in the grid is that a lot of things can take on the form of an enjoyable game, even things a lot of people would never consider 'fun' out in the real world, depending on what kind of player you're talking about. It's something to perhaps keep in mind, if part of the MMO/gaming industry yourself.