In Second Life, sexe, fric et paradis perdu, published by Atlantico on April 1, 2011, Aurélien Fouillet explains the progressive and inexorable decline of the little world of Linden Lab by the unpleasantly intrusive, even "colonialist" way in which the residents would have experienced the arrival in the Metaverse of big companies, political parties, universities and other institutions of the real world; This arrival would have been considered as an attempt to "take power" over the peaceful anarchy reigning until then, and sanctioned, therefore, by a desertion for other universes with greener grass.
Let's say it clearly: the theory exposed by Aurélien Fouillet seems to us false.
Second Life is indeed deserted by Internet users, but for reasons completely other than this question of companies and institutions; "stupid" technical questions, that is to say, in reality, fundamental.
Indeed, SL is a virtual world, and in this domain, the technical choices, the choices concerning the possibilities and the limits of the game, the choices concerning the interface between the player and the world, are moral, political, existential choices. The interface with the world is the world itself, and it is the player's "body" in the world, which will determine the limits and nature of his action, of his mode of being.
How ridiculous, then, is this fixation, in Second Life, on the "avatar", this poor 3D model representing the player in space, when his real body is the software. And it is indeed because since the beginning, in its very conception, Second Life is a false promise, it is indeed because in its very technical conception, it is not a virtual world, it is not the place of a Second Life, that it is today a dead world.
Or has it always been so? I haven't checked the evolution of the number of residents over the years, nor their frequency of connection. But I'm not sure that it's actually gone down that much; because to tell you the truth, I'm not sure that it was ever that high, compared to Linden Lab's claims and media exposure.
I'm convinced that normal people were never interested in Second Life anyway, so they couldn't run away from it; that the possible drop in attendance is only explained by the fact that the curious, the first timers and those who went for the "fashion" are less and less numerous, Second Life is getting older, and hopelessly not getting better.
Who is the only real audience in this world? On the one hand the perverts and absolute no-lifers, on the other hand the merchants – creators of clothes, accessories, skins, various services for no-lifers. Also, at the margin, by contemporary artists trying to stand out, generally of very low level, with falsely deep "virtual" issues and dubious aesthetics; the real artists of our time being, of course, already employed in the video game industry.
The real people of Metavers, the no-lifers, the perverts, don't give a damn about the presence of the Collège de France, the National Front or the Library of Congress, and continue to do in SL what they've always sought. The creation of the "adult" zones officially confirms this use of SL, and these zones are places of total freedom where it is hard to imagine respectable companies or universities setting up shop. In reality, there is no one to disturb the sweet anarchy and the pixel frolics.
The general public, the real general public, goes to chat on Habbo Hotel or Dofus, while teenage gamers kill boars in Warcraft and prepare the attack of their high school in Counter Strike.
Under these conditions, why would universities, companies, political parties pay to maintain their "embassies" in the Metaverse? When there are clearly not enough visitors to justify their existence? And that there never were any?
As a personal testimony: I was able to talk with the resident in charge of creating and developing the virtual double of the German State of Saarland, which reproduced, with great aesthetic concern, by the way, a part of the cities of Saarbrücken and Saarlouis, as well as the Saarbrücken zoo, and some other places. I have forgotten the exact figure, but according to him, all this cost between 2000 and 3000 euros per month to the organization that wanted to promote its Land through this means. Between 2000 and 3000 euros per month, for an almost null attendance – I have been to their sim enough to know that. Who would pay for that? And who will believe that the Collège de France, or some American library, or the region of Cantal, have more frequented sims?
The fact is that Second Life residents have never cared about politics, books, 3D tourism or U2 concerts broadcast by Linden Lab. And the people who care about all that, don't go to Second Life.
Residents want a series of extremely simple things: to dance, to exchange "LOL", to buy clothes and to have sexual relations, deviant ones if possible – in which the article of Aurélien Fouillet reflects reality.
There is nothing else left on Second Life. In fact, there has never been anything else. This may seem poor. It is.
And if we have come to this point, if Second Life has irreversibly demonstrated its inability to attract a large audience, if its commercial failure as well as its "philosophical" failure (as an experiment on virtual reality and the place to give it in life) are so blatant, it is, let's say it again, well and truly because of its fundamental technical choices.
To begin with, connecting to it in good conditions requires a PC with a graphics card that most Internet users do not have. The lag is almost permanent. As for the graphics, they are worthy of an old GTA. This is a lot for an experience that is supposed to be so futuristic, and that is presented everywhere as a quasi "Matrix".
But, more serious, and this is born from the technical limitations of the "game": there is nothing to do in Second Life. Here it is, the first pitfall. I will be told that no, on the contrary, you can do everything – and indeed, you can fly in the air. You can build objects, creatures, clothes, houses, in a few clicks. We can dance. We can chat.
And after that? Afterwards, nothing.
The acts have no weight. They do not correspond to any necessity, and therefore, to any real motivation. They have, moreover, no consequences. And they are very limited in spite of everything. We evolve, in short, in an almost complete vacuum of interactions with the world.
You can fall from 500 meters, and simply get up again. You can walk underwater for hours. You can fly. Of course, there is a point to all of this, and it is entirely possible to use Second Life as a kind of daydreaming medium, as a surreal online experience, as a 3D assistant for psychogeographic walks – but then what? Most people won't be interested in it, and the "soft" and passive aspect of Linden Lab's world will even put them off – they proved it by deserting it. It is the lack of possible interactions with the environment, the lack of constraints and stakes, the lack of world, in short, that made people run away, or rather dissuaded them from staying in the Metaverse after the first experiences "to see".
No doubt, if this experiment failed, others will succeed.
Minecraft is one of those "experiments", and is giving a lesson on what a virtual world should be, and incidentally what a game should be. In all points, where Second Life failed, where Second Life betrayed what it pretended to be, Minecraft, even though this was not foreseen by its designer, but because its technical choices let the playful and existential uses of it by its players develop by themselves, in all this, Minecraft is imposing itself.
Where Second Life is ultimately just a kind of web with a graphical interface (you can watch a movie in Second Life, you can listen to music, you can open web pages – but what's the point?), Minecraft is establishing itself as a real world.
Minecraft is beautiful. Primitive but beautiful, coherent, and with a strong identity, where Second Life looks like a game from 1999, and an uneven aesthetic poverty depending on the area, but often blatant.
In Minecraft, as in Second Life, there is nothing to gain. If it is not to continue to live. Which is not nothing. A fall can be fatal, a stay under water too. During the night, monsters prowl. And if you want to build a house and decorate it, you have to dig in the rock, cut wood, shear sheep, pick flowers.
The world resists and you have to work to get something. But where in Second Life, work is almost always akin to prostitution (jobs as "escorts", models, dancers in clubs, flappers, various links of online commerce), Minecraft allows the player thrown into a hostile world, humiliating by its size, and where death is everywhere, to create, through work and the slow construction of his own life, access to dignity. Those who have already spent several hours at repetitive tasks such as digging, cutting wood, planting wheat, letting themselves be invaded by the deep peace of labor, will understand.
Where Second Life requires the investment of (real) money to afford a space to build your house, and the 3D skills that go with it, Minecraft requires only clicks and a little bit of imagination from the player – and while SL maintains and thereby entrenches a financial and technical divide, Minecraft creates equality, in the sense that everyone has the same chances as everyone else, at the beginning of the game, to succeed in life.
I say "world" and Minecraft is the only one that deserves this term. Unlike the simple scenery of Second Life, which is only the web with a graphical interface, the world of Minecraft has its physical laws, its limits, its constraints, which we undergo, and with which we can also play, and in which we can find joy.
Who hasn't seen on YouTube those videos of players filming their "fun" sessions at the TNT, or crazy experiments on waterways, who hasn't been amazed by the megalomaniacal constructions of the most gifted players, by the extent of the cities that are born little by little on the multiplayer servers? Who would deny that human genius – dare we use big words – is expressed there?
And who would feel a tenth of that wonder, seeing the same thing in Second Life, where building the same thing would take three clicks? And it would be a mere scenery, and a dead one?
And what's more, a very quickly limited setting – Second Life being divided into regions and islands, sometimes tiny, of which you quickly reach the border, while Minecraft is simply infinite and continuous, the world being generated as you go along, without limit. Who could, until two years ago, dream of going forty-eight hours in a row, if the urge took him, in a video game, without encountering a border, and knowing that there is none? This simple fact, this simple novelty makes all the old conceptions obsolete. The freedom gained with Minecraft is a new benchmark by which all future production will be judged.
Video games – and the failure of Second Life shows one thing: you can't get out of the video game, that is to say the notion of narrative, of goal, of success and failure – offer to the players coherent, consistent worlds, as well as a discourse, even if it's implicit, on the world, and on the place we can find in it. Whether in Minecraft, in GTA, in the Sims, playing consists in confronting a world endowed with a certain level of consistency and interactivity – of reality, in short – and in living various experiences, the interest being naturally that they are of those that one can hardly live in real life – whether it is a question of domesticating a virgin land or of taking control of organized crime.
The question of Evil, that is to say also of freedom, is central in all this. It arises, or rather, does not arise, in Second Life, where – unless you are a real hacker – it is impossible to destroy the scenery, the objects, to kill the other participants – even though the history of online video games, for a long time, is marked by the malice or cheating of some, and that, it is so obvious that I am a little ashamed to write it, there is no good, individual or collective, no good that has value and weight, without the possibility of evil – the one we do as well as the one we can suffer.
If one wanted to risk a Christian reading, one could say that Second Life, where one risks nothing, and where Evil is impossible, is a satanic parody of Eden, an imprisonment of Man in narrow limits, without Grace, without God – while Minecraft assumes the human exile in matter, in a hostile or at best indifferent world, but domestic, perfectible, of which Man becomes little by little the master and the co-creator While waiting for a possible savior...
Second Life has nothing of a game nor any of the characteristics that make the game something fundamental. There is nothing particular happening and we are "free"; except that we are free only to do nothing fundamental. And that nothing happens is the worst option imaginable: in real life, there are trials to go through, which fall from the sky; things happen that you can't do anything about. The choices are limited. And the games, which reflect these trials to be passed, allow to prepare for them, or to sublimate, or to free oneself. Second Life is not a game, it is even the anti-game par excellence; and it is not life, even second, or even virtual; it is not life, it is its opposite.
And where Second Life only allows, at best, a poetic wandering, at worst, a life of a consumerist pig, Minecraft allows something very simple and yet fundamental, probably so fundamental and so absent from the life of many of us that it's enough to explain the success of the game: the realization of oneself, the possibility to create and to give one's best.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire