Second Life miscreants punished by boredom: The Corn Field
by Christopher Grant 
{ Jan 4th 2006 at 11:30AM }
Linden Lab have implemented a unique system, with a Twilight Zone twist, to punish misbehaving residents of their popular virtual world, Second Life. Dubbed "The Corn Field", this virtual prison contains nothing more than a (slooow) tractor, a black & white television playing a continuous feed of the campy 1940 educational film Boy in Court, and row after row of corn. The pictures were obtained by one such offender, Nimrod Yaffle, who predictably lamented, "There's nothing you can do there except ride a tractor and watch a boring movie, which was black and white anyways."
Considering his curiosity first propelled him to try and "crash the server The Corn Field was running on in order to be teleported to the nearest safe simulator by default," the punishment appears perfectly suited; the inquisitiveness of hackers/griefers makes the confines of The Corn Field a particularly inhospitable place, the virtual equivalent of an 8-year old sitting in the corner. The group that pulled of this stunt would surely resent their stay, although something tells me they were probably dealt with a little more severely.
[Via BoingBoing]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Spence @ Jan 4th 2006 12:07PM
I want to play the game now, it looks rad.. nice to be able to experiment in your environment like that.
And of course the rebel side of things is a bonus, I think the chances of petty crime going up are high.. perhaps they should do what they had in Runescape (lame) a disc of returning, you can visit the black hole where banned members are sent to, but can only mock them and communicate.. you can't break people out, it's one way for inmates.
chris @ Jan 4th 2006 1:50PM
how long does an offender have to stay? is it permanent?
Davis Freeberg @ Jan 4th 2006 9:33PM
I've seen every episode of the Twilight Zone and this episode is clearly the most disturbing. It features an emotionally disturb adolecent who has the power of God. His dark mind causes him to deform creatures around him and everybody fears the boy, but he can read their thoughts. When he would transform his victims the actors in the story would urge him to send it away to the cornfield. It was very dark and psychologically twisted. One of the few twilight zones that actually frigthened me.