Building a Mystere

With apologies to Sarah McLachlan, having finished describing the tale of Mystere within Second Life, a follow-up article with some observations on the experiment, lessons learned, and the opportunies within the game.

(Contains adult themes.)

This article presumes you are familiar with the three previous articles covering my experience within Second Life. If not, you’ll want to read them first.

Second Life: The Virtual Whore
Second Life: Becoming “The Real Slut”
Second Life: A Slave to You

Writing the Articles

I have to admit more than a bit of trepidation at writing about my experiences with Mystere. Since so many people I know read Abulia Savant, there was more than a bit of concern at exposing myself. Thinking about it from a role-playing point-of-view, I was really struck with the ability to be so completely sucked in and become the character as opposed to a passive participant. It was something that I’ve only experienced in pen-and-paper role-playing very rarely.

So with that as an impetus, it seemed reasonable to share the experience. While the entire experiment is rooted in eroticism and is of a sexual nature, I could have just as easily run into people who were interested in something less controversial and been sucked into this role. The underlying theme is that the pervasive social nature of Second Life, the tools, and the ability to take on a digital persona so completely allows a degree of freedom unfound at the table.

The fact that it was all about BDSM and sexual slavery is somewhat secondary. =D

The Second Life Medium

Part of my disappointment with Mystere online was the interface. To call Second Life difficult to use is something of an understatement. The client is bloated, slow, and incredibly network heavy. You need a beefy pipe to run Second Life — else you’ll be standing around waiting for everything to load around you — and you’ll be “rebaking” textures constantly. The UI is primitive, unresponsive at times, and difficult to use.

But, in spite of all this, it IS possible to have a rich and deep role-playing experience within Second Life. In fact, it could very easily be used as a virtual RPG table of sorts. Were one willing to go to the trouble to actually design and build locales, you could “virtually” run your game within Second Life.

Scripting is essentially a programming language, so the curve is steep. Thus there’s a large market in making items by programmers and selling them to Joe User, much like the “fully functional” genitalia you can get from the Xcite! store. So as the complexity of your experience increases, so does the cost. As in with real life, very little (of quality) within Second Life is free.

But while I may have wandered from dungeon to dungeon, I also found a few more esoteric things, such as an entire plot of land devoted to Star Wars with a makeshift Millennium Falcon, spaceport, and more. So there are already people doing, essentially Second Life live action role-playing. Virtual LARPing?

Judge Not By Kink

Another item that I was pleasantly surprised by were the people on Second Life. The few that I met that were generally jerks were in the public, non-adult areas. In the areas that Mystere tended to frequent (read: sexually explicit) people were universally nice. Even while “working” within Second Life, Mystere’s clients were nothing but respectful, kind, and gentle, if not more than just a bit kinky in their desires.

Thus, judge not people by their preferences, sexual or not.

Also, these people were very willing to accept Mystere (and me) for who I was digitally. There were no questions as to gender, my real life name, or anything of that nature. As close as conversations would ever venture to real life would be “when can you be on again?” No inquiries about my job, experience in BDSM, or personal information. Everyone took you at face value and treated you well until you gave them cause to do otherwise. For example, I did see someone booted/banned from a public sex club for being rude to the fellow patrons. Intolerance simply isn’t tolerated.

Virtual Money

You can not throw a rock without running across an article on CNN, Business Week, or some other site on Second Life and its booming economy. In my limited experience there certainly is money to be made in Second Life. Real money. Essentially it is by filling the ever-constant need for a service or product that consumers demand. Since Linden Labs has, to this point, been very hands off, this includes services you might not see in the real world. At least one person I know has made a healthy living within Second Life by interviewing prospective escorts and weeding out the potentials from the chaff. Also, escort verification services that make sure, for a nominal fee, that the person behind the digital avatar is actually a real man or woman, preventing the kind of situation that existed with Mystere.

So while the world oldest profession may be taboo across America, it’s alive and well within Second Life. “What happens in Second Life stays in Second Life?”

Heck, I wish I had known that before I wrote the articles!