SECOND SKIN

50 million people, we’re told, most of them between 22 and 35, log on to massively multiplayer online computer games (MMOs). Time spent in a realm where you chose your age, gender and body type and are more likely to slay dragons than in your day job is simply a recreational kick for most. But some never want to leave, sleeping at their computers, eating junk food, peeing into bottles. Others get out more, crossing the world for a first personal encounter with the true love they proposed to as avatars. Meanwhile in China ‘goldfarmers’ accumulate points online to sell for real world cash to time-hungry players in the West. Second Skin gets up close and personal with hard core gamers, recovering addicts, variously game-challenged or game-enhanced couples and one passionate anti-MMO activist. Instigated after the filmmaker saw that a close friend’s game obsession might cost him his job, Second Skin constitutes an excellent, unjudgemental outsider’s guide, richly infused with insider credibility.