We’ve always dreamed of perfect places: Eden, heaven, Utopia. Imagine gambling without loss, love without heartbreak, sex without exposure, experience without risk. Welcome to the fascinating world of online virtual reality, the land of invented places and populations that is entered and inhabited every week by nearly fifty million people worldwide. Each participant creates a virtual body, works at virtual jobs, and makes virtual friends and family. In Second Lives, Tim Guest, an internationally acclaimed young journalist, takes us on a revelatory journey through the electronic looking glass as he investigates one of the most bizarre phenomena of the twenty-first century.From Second Life to EverQuest and beyond, here are the computer-generated environments and characters that can easily become more engrossing and fulfilling than earthly existence. With the click of a mouse you can select eye color, face shape, height–you can even give yourself wings. Your character, or avatar, can build houses, make and sell works of art, earn money, get married and divorced.In this fascinating and groundbreaking book, Guest meets people who found meaningful love and friendship despite never having met in person, catches up with the companies that have used virtual worlds to make big money, investigates the U.S. military’s massive online global model that trains soldiers to fight anyone anywhere, and travels all the way to gaming-crazed Korea to get a taste for just how big this phenomenon really is.At first glance, these new computer-generated places seem free from trouble and sorrow. But Guest examines the dark side of this technology too, including the online criminals who plague imaginary worlds, from cyber mafiosos and prostitutes to real hackers and terrorists. It seems that one cannot escape greed, corruption, and human weakness–even inside a computer screen.Are these virtual worlds a way to enhance life or to escape it? Guest explores this question personally as he lets himself be transported into myriad parallel universes. By turns provocative, inspiring, and disturbing, Second Lives is a crucial book for this millennium. After all, real life is so twentieth century.Advance praise for Second Lives“Tim Guest is a young writer with the literary goods. My Life in Orange, his hit memoir of growing up in a commune, looked at his past; his riveting new book, Second Lives, looks at our future: the world of virtual reality and the spellbound people who inhabit it. The book is some kind of revelation–by turns compelling, chilling, and illuminating. Curious, intelligent, offbeat, and artful, Guest is at the beginning of a big career.”——John Lahr, senior drama critic, The New Yorker, author of Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton Praise from England for Second Lives“An anthropological adventure but also Guest’s personal voyage . . . a fascinating portrait of rainbow landscapes and their inhabitants.”–Time Out London“Rich and colourful . . . an important mapping of a new social frontier.”–The Guardian“Remarkably timely.”–The Sunday Telegraph“Astonishing.”–The Sunday Times

Features include: •Use your mini-game points to go shopping for new beauty products and send them to friends.•Become part of the game by taking your picture with the Nintendo DSi and using it to create your own face in the game and then find the perfect styles to suit your facial features.•Transform yourself by taking on beauty challenges to improve your skills, which will earn you points and rewards, and by learning tips and tricks that you can

Style Lab: Makeover is a single player fashion simulation game for Nintendo DSi and DS that allows tweens and teens to create their own virtual styles whenever they want. Packed with mini-game challenges designed to hone players' skills at creating different looks, and able to utilize imported images for use in virtual makeovers (this functionality only available through the DSi), it places players literally and figuratively at the center of the game, where the only limit is the player's imagination. .caption font-family: Verdana, Helvetica neue, Arial, serif; font-size: 10px; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; ul.indent list-style: inside disc; text-indent: -15px; table.callout font-family: verdana; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1. 3em; td.vgoverview height: 125px; background: #9DC4D8 url(http://images.amazon.com/images/G/01/electronics/detail-page/callout-bg.png) repeat-x; border-left: 1px solid #999999; border-right: 1px solid #999999; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; padding-bottom: 10px; width: 250px; font-family: verdana; font-size: 12px; Develop your style on the DSi/DS. Gameplay Style Lab: Makeover, along with its sister title for DS and DSi, Style Lab: Jewelry Design, are Ubisoft's initial releases in the new Style Lab game franchise. Gameplay consists of a variety of beauty challenges which test the player's ability to do everything from recreating specific looks on in-game characters from memory and using a model, to developing more subtle skills like applying makeup and hair techniques to create specific overall effects. Alternately players also let their creativity run wild in Free Mode, where they practice what they have learned on a variety of representations of women with different physical attributes. Success at these challenges earns players points, which in turn can be used for in-game shopping sprees for items like nail polish, eyeliner, powder compacts, lipstick, makeup brushes, mascara and more. Also, the game's wireless functionality allows players to share their created looks with friends via wireless DS multi-card play. Although playable on the DS, Style Lab games are optimized to take advantage of the DSi's advanced functionality. An example of this in Style Lab: Makeover is the ability to import pictures of players and friends taken with the DSi's digital cameras into the game. These images can then be used as backgrounds for endless makeovers where everything can be altered with the tap of a stylus. Key Game Features Become part of the game by taking your picture with the Nintendo DSi and using it to create your own face in the game and then find the perfect styles to suit your facial features. Transform yourself by taking on beauty challenges to improve your skills, which will earn you points and rewards, and by learning tips and tricks that you can use in real life. Discover your own unique style with personality tests and in-game expert recommendations. Unleash your creativity in Free Mode, where your imagination has no limits. Share your new looks with friends via local wireless. Take pictures of your friends and give them makeovers with your new expertise. Use your mini-game points to go shopping for new beauty products and send them to friends. Screenshots: Learn makeup application. View larger. Hair coloring. View larger. Hair styling. View larger. DSi camera functionality. View larger.

1. Mall Tycoon 2 Deluxe Build the Ultimate Mega Mall! Mall Tycoon 2 Deluxe is a new set of business challenges that let you unleash your inner tycoon! You'll be in charge of Turing an empty building into a bustling mall -- bring in the right stores, offer shoppers the right deals and keep the budget balanced, to earn a fortune! Select the right staff for your mall, from engineers to gardeners to security Contend with random events such as floods, fires and criminals Deluxe Edition includes bonus content - new scenarios, features, people and much more! Includes all the contents of Mall Tycoon 2 plus bonus scenarios, features, people and more! Welcome to the exciting, challenging world of Mall Tycoon 2 Deluxe. This detailed 3D Management Sim allows players to oversee virtually every aspect of creating, managing and profiting from a dynamic, fast-paced mall environment, while allowing an unprecedented element of creativity in size, layout, themes, types of stores and even the patrons that frequent the mall.  Place stores, hire cleaning and security crews, and manage every aspect of the physical layout of your new shopping paradise. Pay your workers, manage lease payments and loans, and watch your mall rise to the top of the commercial world - or sink to the bottom. It all depends on you! 2. Mall Tycoon 3 Build the Ultimate Shopping Paradise! Tired of cruising the same old mall? Then create a Mall that rules with Mall Tycoon 3, the ultimate shopping center simulation! It's up to you to build trendy stores, delicious restaurants, fun-filled arcades and even a cutting edge multiplex. View your creation in full 3D as shoppers swarm your fabulous retail empire and spend their hard earned cash. You've got to make sure you keep your mall totally hot, fun and successful - or else your shoppers will go packing! Interactive and expressive 3D shoppers bring the mall experience to life like never before!

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