The real estate mogul Anshe Chung wears a black tank top and low rider jeans, and sits on a stage opposite reporters. She gazes at the eager audience members who have a plethora of questions about her lucrative real estate business. The yellow backdrop behind the stage advertises CNET in huge letters, the logo for the online technology guide CNET.com. Then, as the press conference begins, a parade of squiggling pink penises dances toward Chung’s face and goes right through her head.
Yes, this actually happened—well, sort of, in the virtual world of Second Life.
Linden Labs’ Second Life is a virtual world that provides exactly what the title implies: a second life. It mirrors real life in almost every way, allowing users to customize their own character, called an “avatar,” and travel the digital world as they please. The possibilities available to users range from summer camps for kids, attending digital concerts (some recent performers have been Ben Folds and Suzanne Vega), sparking a digital (or actual) romance, or buying and selling real estate. A thriving economy and marketplace offer a virtual test realm for entrepreneurs interested in creating and marketing products in real life. With over a million U.S. dollars being spent on the game every day, it’s likely that Second Life could revolutionize the way people make money and interact on the Internet.
Graphically, Second Life looks a lot like the MMORPG World of Warcraft, a role-playing computer game where characters trade real money for weapons, homes, and other virtual commodities. Second Life is the newest face of social networking websites. CEO of Linden Labs, Philip Rosedale, says his creation is not a website, nor is it merely a game. Unlike massive multiplayer role-playing games such as World of Warcraft, Second Life doesn’t have points or scores, winners or losers, or even any real competition. It is about networking, not competing.
Take, for example, the consumer side of the program. Second Life offers opportunities for users to communicate with other avatars to discuss books or movies. “If you’re on Amazon.com now, you can’t ask [other Amazon users] whether they liked a book or to meet up again for a reading group. Second Life is more real time, social, and experiential,” said Rosedale in an interview with Business Week Online. He goes on to explain that in the future, your character will be able to walk into a virtual Amazon store, speak to other people about books, and browse shelves just as if you were in a Borders or Barnes and Noble.
In fact, they’re already doing just that at the American Apparel store, located on the clothing manufacturer’s own Second Life island. Shoppers are able to view high-resolution images of products and buy them for their avatar to wear. Users are even given redeemable receipts with which they can buy the same physical article of clothing for a discounted price on the American Apparel website.
Second Life offers an active in-world currency that is traded on an open market. The exchange rate is determined by its market value, by supply and demand. One United States dollar will get you approximately 250 Linden dollars. With Linden dollars you can purchase a number of things, ranging from clothing, to real estate, to labor.
Anton Hand, who is an adjunct instructor in the Media Study department at the University at Buffalo, says he spends between four and ten hours a day in Second Life. “The primary commodity in Second Life is land,” Hand says. “Land is ultimately server space and server resources on the part of Linden labs.” Land can go from $10 per month for a very small plot of land, to up to $250 a month for a private island.
Anshe Chung, who was attacked during her virtual press conference, is perhaps the most successful and well-known Second Life real estate mogul. Chung is the avatar of Alin Graef, who buys large plots of land sold by Linden labs, then chops them up and develops them into luxurious vacation spots for Second Lifers—a $1 million industry. She is disliked because of her business practices, and as a result, some dissident Second Life programmers assaulted Chung with penises while she was giving a digital interview to a number of reporters.
This type of attack is hard to prevent because of the lack of censorship within Second Life. There are two different types of sims: mature, which is 18 and over, and teen sims. There is a whole separate server dedicated to teen sims that censors things not suitable for younger users. On the adult server, however, anything goes. “There are things in here that would make the people from HBO and Showtime blush,” explains Hand. “There is plenty of explicit adult content in here. A lot of the communities that exist within Second Life are centered around sexual fetishes. Things you don’t typically find, things that aren’t talked about.”
Linden Labs’ creation has become so popular that over three million people have created accounts, and approximately 25-35 thousand users are signed on at any time. This kind of popularity provides an excellent medium for large corporations to advertise in. The car company Scion has begun a marketing campaign in Second Life, allowing you to purchase one of their vehicles and drive it where you please. Reuters has set up an entire island dedicated to delivering news to Second Life users just as well as they do in the real world. Even individual countries have seen the marketing potential in Second Life. Sweden will soon become the first country to ever set up a virtual embassy online that will allow users to interact with Swedish culture and hopefully draw more tourism to the country.
The profit-making opportunity is drawing all sorts of entrepreneurs. Hand offers a number of coding and graphic design services for those interested in video production or avatar creation. He is personally interested in machinima, which is a film making process that involves the use of interactive 3-D engines like Second Life. He recently created a commercial using machinima for CBS. The commercial features the stars from Two and a Half Men, Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer, interacting in Second Life. Hand has also created an entire Norse-like island for a client who had a specific interest in Vikings. Hand said that most of the time he spends in Second Life, he is working.
Although Second Life can be compared to Myspace or Facebook in terms of a social communication medium, it’s probably closer to an interactive web browser. Hand explains that “If you like creating things for yourself instead of just taking in the shit that’s shovel fed to us every day, this can really become an obsession. I mean, that’s why it’s called Second Life.”
