Celia Pearce ponders “what is ‘winter’ in a place (virtual world) that has no seasons?“:

Often, when I enter an MMOG or virtual world, one of the first comments I will hear from people is “It’s laggy tonight.” In my neighborhood in Second Life, my landlady recently “winterized” the sim to give it a Christmasy feel. [...] One of the most notable qualities I’ve noticed about emergent behavior is that people generally start with shared cultural reference points that index “real world” practices.

I think this also speaks towards our  desire for a dynamic world and the ability to express ourselves creatively.  One of my favorite moments beta testing Uru Live was when Cyan released a screenshot of Zandi sitting outside his trailer, decorated for Halloween, with a bowl of candy.  It sort of nailed home the idea that this world was going to change.  It would be new and exciting and “real.”  I wanted to witness and instigate change.  I think we all want to be gods sometimes and want to make things and make things happen.  Decorating for Christmas and seeing snow in a world are part towards that goal.

What virtual ways do you mimic your real world habits?  Do you change your desktop wallpaper to a winterscape right after you hang your real world Christmas lights?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 6:04 pm and is filed under Gaming, Life, Myst. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.