Another world
When you first install and run Second Life, an online 3D world built entirely by its “residents”, it’s a surreal experience. You’re deposited on Orientation Island, where you learn the basics of the Internet-based virtual world.
You immediately notice other characters in your vicinity, also milling around. But these are not computer-generated characters as in popular games such as The Sims: they are real people represented by avatars — digital representations of users in virtual reality. You can walk up to them and talk to them. In the three and a bit years since Linden Lab launched Second Life to the public, it has signed up 2,7m users.
Thousands of new users join every day and at any given time at least 15000 residents are online, each with their own personalised avatars, socialising with one other, trading virtual goods and services, buying virtual property and building their virtual dream homes.
Second Life even has its own floating currency, the Linden dollar, which can be exchanged for real-world money at online forex dealers. “Second Life is a place dedicated to your creativity,” Linden Lab explains on its website. “It’s about dreaming of something one moment and bringing it to life the next. Everything in Second Life is resident-created, from the strobe lights in the nightclubs to the car (or spaceship) in your driveway.”
The company wants to create the type of “metaverse” — an online representation of reality — envisaged by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel Snow Crash Until not long ago, creating an environment such as this would have been impossible. But supercomputers and the ubiquity of broadband in the developed world are making it possible.
Some forward-thinking companies have already recognised that Second Life — and similar, but less popular virtual worlds — offer an opportunity to market and sell their products and services. Nissan, General Motors and Toyota, for example, have established virtual dealerships selling make-believe cars for a few dollars each, or, in the case of Nissan, giving them away and allowing Second Life residents to drive them on a virtual race track.
Musicians are also cashing in. Last August, folk singer Suzanne Vega became the first major recording artist to perform live in Second Life, playing to eager fans in an auditorium inside the virtual world. Her performance was projected into Second Life through a specially created avatar.
On February 3, comedian Jimmy Carr will perform a live show simultaneously in real life in London and in the virtual world of Second Life. His onstage movements will be replicated in near real-time through his avatar.
The most exciting aspect of Second Life is the way people are using it to make real money. Ailin Graef (Anshe Chung in Second Life) last year became the first person to become a dollar millionaire by doing business in Linden Lab’s virtual world. According to Wikipedia, Graef has built a business that engages online in the development, brokerage and arbitrage of virtual land, items and currencies. Already, Second Life residents do millions of dollars worth of transactions with each other every month. And this trade is growing rapidly.
As computers get more powerful, and as more people get hooked up to broadband, imagine how “real” virtual worlds such as Second Life could be in five or 10 years.
Spending hours in front of a PC tinkering with an alter ego in a virtual world is not something that will appeal to everyone. But to many people, Second Life has already become second nature.
Financial Mail
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