The ability to distinguish real life from a virtual life can be rather problematic for some in Second Life (SL), which leads to the documentary called “Life 2.0”. Jason Spingarn-Koff follows the real lives and alternate lives of three individuals using their avatar names: Amie Goode, Asri Falcone, and Ayya Aabye. The people who Spingarn interacts with in SL begin to show a problem that comes up often in the alternate reality games that there is no distinction between real life and the virtual life. To understand what he is reporting on, we need to understand what SL is.
SL is a virtual reality game that simulates real life and mixes it with fantasy. You can buy houses, start virtual families who are actual people playing an avatar, interact with people like you would in real life, etc. By allowing this transaction to happen, the people behind the avatars can create their own little niche where life is the way they want it to be, not what they are forced to live through. This is explored through the three people interviewed in and out of the virtual world.
The first person is Amie Goode; a housewife in the real world plays SL to explore her curiosities of relationships. She found a man in SL, with whom they spent many hours together, sharing an emotional/romantic relationship that led them to eventually meet. They eventually met in real life, which destroyed both of their marriages and led them to debate on moving in together. In the current times, this is actually not that weird to meet people from the virtual world into the real world. Unfortunately, the man wasn’t who Amie thought of spending the rest of her days with when he turned out to be completely different than their short encounters and online relationship. It is a hard example of two worlds not mixing in a good way.
The second person is Asri Falcone; a businesswoman who made a career making clothes, shoes, furniture, and houses in SL. Her business was helping her earn 6-figures a year, but took a hit when someone began to copy her stuff and make it available for free to the players on SL. She, and a few other creators, took a stand against the player for copyright laws and amazingly won her case. It took a stand towards the negative aspect of copyright problems, but with a happy outcome towards legal actions even for the virtual world.
The final person is Ayya Aabye is a little girl in SL, but in reality is middle-aged man who remained anonymous. As a married man, Anonymous signed onto SL for the first time and felt a character taking over him. Ayya eventually became an entity all her own who would control Anonymous’s life for dozens of hours at a time. It caused a strain on his life and he eventually stopped when Ayya said it was fine. After a few months of being away from SL, Anonymous created a new male child on the site, spinning him further into addiction to the site.
In the end, “Life 2.0” is a documentary about the lives of those in the real world and the virtual world through the website, Second Life. Though it is still in the new phase, Second Life has created a world where avatars live a relatively amplified life of real world traits. This causes a misunderstanding between where the real world ends and virtual world in the selected peoples’ lives. It is a misunderstanding that is beginning to happen more and more as video game addiction is becoming a growing problem in the real world.