http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/SecondLife

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Second Life is a virtual world, originally launched in 2003 for Windows PCs, with Mac and Linux versions also available. It's like a sandbox MMORPG heavy on user customization, or a world-sim meets 3D-chat-program, or the Internet's largest alternative-digi-porn-emporium. No matter which of the three definitions you prefer, it's generally agreed upon that Second Life is not a game or even a work of fiction so much as it is a simulation of real life made much more interesting.

There is no story-line and no goals, instead putting an emphasis on chatroom-like conversations with friends and buying virtual property. It's the sort of environment where a hacker attack involves self-replicating spheres spreading across the biosphere, and banned users find themselves in an endless corn-field with only a TV showing a promo for Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life. And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack. You may find yourself standing beneath a tree on which money grows. You may find yourself pole-dancing while what can only be described as a sentient light-show stuffs cash into your G-string. You may ask yourself, "Why am I wearing this beautiful house?". You may ask yourself, "Why am I running through the junkyard in a swimsuit?".

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It may be the dawn of The Metaverse in Real Life. Also a bit uncanny-valleyish, especially when it comes to the default "human" models, and the user-created ones can be disturbing in a very sexy way. Or sexy in a very disturbing way.

On the technical side, a user can create nearly any item within the simulation, using the built-in editor to manipulate "prims" simple 3D shapes that can be combined however you want, "sculpted prims" were introduced later and allow the importing of 3D models from an external program, via the same method textures could be uploaded before. An in-world scripting system that allows a large amount of control over prims, which nearly everything in-world is made of (except for the ground and basic player models). Streaming audio and video are another feature, with the latter acting as a special texture for a prim's surface, which some people have used to make blended meetings with video from the simulation projected into the same room that's being streamed. (There was also a cordoned-off area for teens that was merged with the adult grid in early 2011.)

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Open Simulator is intended to be an open-source alternative.

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