Print-Screen: "Second Lives: A Journey Through Virtual Worlds"

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Eventually, Guest seems to come away from his experiences disillusioned with much of the virtual world evangelism. Without dismissing or invalidating how many positive experiences are out there, he knows that the real world is still out there, and that addiction is, for many others, a very real thing.

For gamers, many of the stories he tells are well-known. Anshe Chung is probably the most famous avatar in the world. The great heist capers of Eve Online have been told and retold. The basics of duping items in EverQuest are not unfamiliar.

There is a lot of value in seeing the experiences translated through the eyes of someone discovering many of these worlds for the first time. Just as we never appreciate local tourist attractions unless we have out-of-town guests, the foreignness of playing pretend escort takes on new humanity through Guest's observations.

The best example of this is when he travels to Korea to get bombarded by NCSoft's business reps. Then, in the midst of this PR management exercise, he gets to meet the king of kings of Lineage 2, the owner of a failing restaurant who would clearly be better off leaving his online life behind him, but he can't. An entire kingdom depends on him. He has friends there. He's somebody. The poignancy of the encounter forces you to reexamine every other meeting he has had and maybe meetings you have experienced yourself.

"Second Lives" demonstrates why Second Life is such a rich topic for discussion. No, it's not as popular as raving mainstream media reports suggests, nor is it as intuitive. (Guest's attempt to make an object is amusing in its brevity: He tries, he fails, and then he stops trying.) Anshe Chung's predictions of dozens of Second Life millionaires are as distant now as they ever were. But Second Life works for an examination of the powers of online worlds for a number of reasons.

First, it isn't a foreign world where the writer needs to explain what is going on. No need to describe quests or PvP or leveling up. It's a world where you can, theoretically, be whatever low-resolution thing you want to be. It's the ultimate "let's pretend," except so many people choose to pretend to be idealized versions of themselves.

Second, the lack of real "game" structure means that the user interactions are not mediated through an artificial determination of friend and foe. Relations with other people are based on more than a utilitarian focus on completing the next mission.

Third, every story is unique. Since there is so much user customization and there are no dungeons to run, Second Life remains an intensely personal experience for those who play it regularly. There are no ideal specs or identical paths, so no two users will have the same encounters on any given day.

These facts make Second Life easy for non-gamers to understand and appreciate, and, conversely, they make it impenetrably pointless to gamers. Just as the dollhouse appeal of The Sims escapes the hardcore shooter, MMO gamers are likely to turn up their nose at a virtual world that is entirely what you and others make of it. Guest tries, and fails, to get his WoW-playing father interested, a story that probably has thousands parallels in the online universe.

Guest is open about how his real life intersected with his online experiences, how one life would be an escape from the other. He's also keenly aware of how his own childhood makes him suspicious of utopian promises and how slavery is sometimes sold through promises of freedom. Even if you don't "get" Second Life, Guest's book is more than worthwhile because he's not sure he "gets" it either, though he desperately wants to.