www.SecondLife.com

Being a guy im sure I must be genetically predisposed to games or something because they are awesome! And I dont remember to many all night tekken or jonah lomu rugby battles going on with any female involvement at all. The idea of virtual worlds and MMPORGs isn't a new one to me for a change. Ever since my old man brought me home a grey brick of a gameboy when I was about seven or eight Ive been into them. I remember the first time I was made aware of MMPORGs was sometime after the first Matrix film came out, I must've been about twelve or thirteen or so but the concept was that they had recreated the matrix world online and you could either follow missions solo or with other online users or just go walkabout and do pretty much anything you like. Obviously at the time I thought it was the shizz. I also remember liking the idea that you could create a virtual character from literally scratch. I believe this is a major drawing card to users attracted to MMPORGs. Being able to become whoever you like and fight or just talk smack as this virtual you is a fun idea.

Hardeys reading discussed how face-to-face interactions are minimising due to urbanisation. I found it very intresting and good in the sense that it got me thinking. I thought it makes sense that there is a decline in face-to-face interactions in comparison to the past because of urbanisation. It shows how communities are becoming less involved with each other where you might not even know your neighbours names as opposed to the past where people would know the entire neighbourhood. I think I have a good understanding of this because I can really put the idea into perpsective by comparing my home in New Zealand and my home in Chile. Chile is a 3rd world country and where my family live is a very poor area. Being mainly brought up in NZ, when I first travelled to Chile at a young age I remeber being suprised when going to play football with my primos (cousins) how they would greet and know pretty much everyone in the local neighbourhood. It reminded me of a poor kids cartoon or disney movie, without the glitz and glamour obviously, where the characters would all hang out and know each other. People would know my primos name and know they are brothers and know their parents and my grandparents yada yada yada. This was a total contradiction to me then coming from NZ, where if you wanted to play with a friend after school you would have to ring them then pass the phone onto your parents and so the story goes. This made the point of a decline in face-to-face interaction very clear because Chile seemed like a country living in the past with more 'old fashioned' type rituals as opposed to NZ which was very much in front economically, technologically and what seems socially because of it. These days im able to speak with my cousins over the internet, send and share photos, the whole schbang. This shows me how Chile has caught up and how perhaps these face-to-face interactions and communities that reminded me of a disney movie without the cash money factor might be declining.