Wired is reporting that a video game that exists within the online game Second Life is causing a stir - apparantly because it’s mimicking the real world where parents no doubt moan the fact that their kids are online all the time playing games like Second Life.

“People started to complain that Tringo was harming the culture,” says Wagner James Au, the writer who has reported on Second Life as an “embedded” journalist for the last three years. “They felt it was ruining the social nature of the game. People were just showing up to play. They weren’t socializing or buying stuff any more.”

In essence, it was classic libel against video games: That they encourage isolation, with each player staring glassy-eyed at the evil, hypnotic screen. The irony here, of course, is that these complaints were coming from players who themselves were spending hours staring at their own computer screens while they played Second Life. Dig it: People were complaining that a game was ruining the quality of virtual life inside a game.

Of course, this said as much about the nature of Second Life as about Tringo. Second Lifers do not regard their world as a game: It’s a social environment, a chat room on steroids — a platform for an alternate life.

Just goes to show, even alternate realities can’t escape from reality.