Putting the Bite on Bloodlines in Second Life

Second Life begins to bite.  Or at least certain Residents do.

No, I’m not developing an Enemies List.  I’m referring to players of Bloodlines, a viral game centered around vampires and their victims.  It’s apparently spreading through the Grid like…well, like a pack of hungry vampires on the prowl.  I was unaware of the game’s existence until I read about it at New World Notes, where Hamlet Au interviewed a player who was begging him to be bitten.  (The guy was trying to bite a Linden, looking to goose his rep with a slice of cachet.  Ham isn’t working for Linden Lab anymore, but he still has the cachet.)

The game is quite simple; one of the players comes up and “bites” you while they’re wearing the game HUD.  If you accept the bite, you become one of the Walking Undead — by wearing the HUD yourself — and your avatar’s name is entered in the game database.  Then you go on the hunt yourself.

Bloodlines claims an unreal number of participants — and therein lies the problem.  In order to rise higher in the ranking, you need to bite more necks.  (The resemblance to a Real World pyramid or Ponzi scam, where you need to keep bringing in more new [ahem] blood to raise your returns, has been noted by other writers.)  Some players have taken to hanging out in areas of avatar concentration in the search for victims.

Avatar concentration.  Gee, I wonder where avatars tend to concentrate…?

More after the break….