Virtual Communities
and Real Life
Community can be formed through gaming by connecting people of similar interests and having them interact in an alternative reality
These people form real connections through this “Second Life” with each other and their environment
Social gaming thrives on the relationship between the virtual community and the real lives of its users
Director of the MIT Comparative 
       Media Studies Program
The authored and edited nine books 
       on media and popular culture
How Second Life Impacts Our First Life...
Henry Jenkins
The last several decades of observation of the digital world teaches us that the digital world is never totally disconnected from the real world. 
Even when we go onto the digital world to "escape" reality, we end up engaging with symbolic representations which we read in relation to reality.
We learn things about our first lives by stepping into a Second or parallel life which allows us to suspend certain rules, break out of certain roles, and see the world from a fresh perspective. 
More often, though, there are a complex set of social ties, economic practices, political debates, etc. which almost always connects what's taking place online to what's going on in our lives off line.
Second Life that operates in parallel to your First Life and as a metaphor to think about the ways we can try things out, learn to think and act in new ways in virtual worlds of all kinds, and then carry those skills back with us to our everyday reality.