As ‘Dick Valentine’ of the wildly camp disco-guitar outfit ‘Electric Six’ said, “Electric loving is a (sex) crime”. It’s probably best not to quote from Electric Six all day, but its kind of ironic that a ‘Nuclear War’ has taken place in the electronic online game (MMO) ‘Second Life’

The game itself is incredibly user friendly and is also very open to user generated content. Like a lot of things which are popular on the internet, it was only the question of ‘when?’ that ‘real life’ brands and advertisers would want to get in on that huge user base. After all, television and print audiences are evaporating; they must be going somewhere else for entertainment. From the industries point of view, advertising in games and online ‘hang-outs’ is the next best thing. For the user though, the lack of advertising is one of the best things about the internet and video games.

The game ‘Second Life’ bills itself as exactly that, a second life. Although there have been a few satirical laughs about the game, well over 2 million people are signed up to this free game. Marshal Cahill played the game before it became a mass interest to the populace and media. He had noticed that since the boom in players and press attention, the game itself had started to go down the pan. Cahill became a founding leader of the Second Life Liberation Army, set up to change the way things were operated in the game. On the 24th of February the game was ‘nuked‘ by the Liberation Army to show their distaste for what has become of their beloved society (pictured). The Liberators have now stated that they wish for a voting system to be put in place so that it’s up to the people what happens in the game.

It’s quite ironic really, a game created and maintained by a group of coders for little income has become dictated to by their user base. The same is happening all over the place online, especially social sites such as YouTube and MySpace. Both have been taken over by large media conglomerates for the sole sake of profit and brand ‘brain washing’ of the public. It’s happening also in video games on a larger scale every year. Just take a look at the new Battlefield game and you’re not far from an advert at the next corner. Craig wrote about ‘In Game Advertising‘ before and its becoming more and more widely used as the online industry grows in audience.

I don’t believe that voting will change the way things are run in online games, especially seeing as our own voting systems are corrupt as it is. If anything, this is the sort of thing the people behind the ‘world government’ would like us to think, that digital entertainment and culture are much more important than real issues. Surely it is of higher priority that we sort out our own governments and social systems rather than those that only exist because of many many electronic signals, ones and zeroes being transferred across the world?

Further Reading;
The Last Boss
Addict3d
8bit Hero: IGA: Good or bad?

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