More Second Life pranks coming to The Office?
By David Cassel
Second Life emerged victorious in its first encounter with NBC’s The Office. But the episode hinted at more Second Life cameos to come.
As last night’s episode began, Office-worker Jim teased his oddball co-worker Dwight about logging in.
Jim: Playing that game again? Dwight: Second Life is not a game. It is a multi-user virtual user environment. It doesn’t have points or scores. It doesn’t have winners or losers. Jim: Oh, it has losers…
Watch the episode here!
The episode ultimately directed its jokes against its own characters, and not the game. It used the game to shed new light on Dwight Schrute — the show’s strangely gung-ho paper salesman who once motivated his co-workers by offering “Schrute bucks”. He says enthusiastically that he joined the game when “my life was so great that I literally wanted a second one.”
“In my second life, I was also a paper salesman, and I was also named Dwight.”
The Second Life Insider reports Dwight’s Second Life character — “Dwight Shelford” — really has been created in the game Second Life, with a profile making in-joke for fans of both the game and the show. It says Dwight hopes to one day calculate “the exchange rate between Schrute bucks and Linden dollars.”
But was that only to acknowledge this episode, or will the game work its way into future story lines? The Second Life Insider speculates it may intersect an ongoing story line — as the young new manager Ryan tries to bring an online presence to the small Pennsylvania paper vendor.
The episode suggested another way Second Life could appear in future episodes. It seemed equally possible last night that Jim and his girlfriend Pam would be logging in — to play virtual pranks on Dwight. Before the episode ended, Jim revealed that he’d created his own avatar in Second Life for keeping an eye on Dwight. Pam teased him that he’d done more than simply create an avatar; he’d invested the extra time to create a muscular Philadelphia sportswriter alter ego, who always travels with a guitar!The episode was written by 28-year-old B.J. Novak (who also plays the show’s recently-promoted intern Ryan.) He’d written a line about an unhappy Dwight loving Second Life so much, he “created his own world. It’s called Second Second Life.
“For those people who want to be removed even further from reality.”But he also included at least one line that suggested a real affection for the game, showing at least one way that a virtual life could fascinate an eccentric like Dwight.
“Absolutely everything was the same.
“Except I could fly.”
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October 28th, 2007
There are more interesting Office references to be found in Second Life. Remember the Prism DuroSport from Season 2 of the office (the Injury)? The official Prism DuroSport store is located in Second Life. You can read more about it on the company’s website (and employee blog).