Emily Cunningham proposal for Final

For the final I wanted to focus on the game Second Life. I thought that it was interesting how involved one could get in the game, and how much time and energy can be spent on it. The game is an online computer game where you can create an avatar, a character in the game, and let it interact with other Avatars in the game. In order to buy clothes or a house in the game, you must find a way to make money. The game is structured so that you could actually get a job and get paid in the game’s currency, linden. This is one of the main examples of the game crossing the line into becoming work. A job in Second Life is similar to one in real life in that your character must put in a certain number of hours of work to earn money. Some examples of jobs on the game are becoming a hostess for a club, becoming a DJ, a prostitute, or a dancer (most likely exotic). The jobs are either task based or time based, which is why I wanted to use the E.P. Thompson essay “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism” to help describe them. I also thought it would be helpful to refer to Aspen Aar Seth’s essay “Allegories of Space: The Question of Spatiality in Computer Games”, because I would like to discuss how this game evolved off of other computer games.