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Urban Planning! Without it, we are lost! Lost to stumble through a glass prison of Victoria Secret copycats and copycats of the copycats and wild cats and pussy willlows and OH HORROR OF HORRORS!
Why did I not know this when I signed up for Linden Lab’s alternate-economy Second Life MMOG? Pay $9.99 just once and play for a lifetime? Sure! Completely customizable avatars and clothing, as well as player created cities? Oh my gawd! True player driven economy! WOW!
I mean... NO! PLEASE NO! EMPHATICALLY NOOooOOOOooooOOOooo!
I’m here, but where am I? I’m dumped out of the tutorial isle into an alien landscape with no bearings at all! I’ve only played this for one hour before now, just enough to learn how to type and talk and walk along a preset path… But there is no path now! Only empty expanses of… surface! Not even world, but dull lifeless garaud layers bereft of natural texture or comforting vegetation! I already knew that MMOGs don’t have an end, but I never met one that didn’t have any semblance of a beginning!
Did I just pay $9.99 to play tourist in this lifeless digital construct? But there are no tour buses, no cars, no planes, not even tour guides to help me! Even that newbie helper who was assigned to me automatically by the website… Where is he? Is he even online? Did I accidentally throw away his calling card?
Finally! Some sort of actual transportation! Find an advertisement for some place, tear it off the wall and click it, like a magical poster. Wait, I’ve completely lost my bearings again! Now I’m in a totally different place from where I was before! Am I north? Am I south? Am I above or beneath? How do I get back? There’s no back button! This darned poster is ONE-WAY!
… I’m scared. No one else is here. I’m surrounded by light and shiny metal surfaces and poorly loaded textures of scantily clad women! I think I’m at a Bus Stop… a glittering shiny clean bus stop in a deserted impersonal machanical distopia.. Oh god, now I see what players DO when they get to build a city from the ground up! THEY SELL LINGERIE!
Left, right, up, down, I’m surrounded by lingerie shops! Scantily clad women (and men!) are displayed everywhere on the walls of empty virtual shops that offer to texture me up like some super model. They offer to animate me shaking my pa-too-tie. They offer digital panaceas for all my real life uncomformities! PLASTIC SURGERY FOR 200 LINDEN DOLLARS A POP!
…THIS IS NO PLACE TO RAISE CHILDREN! URBAN PLANNING I SAY! URBAN PLANNNIIIINGGGGGG *collapses*
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