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How Many Lifes Do You Have? |
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Written by David R Jennings
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Sunday, 19 February 2006 |
The text based World Wide Web will be replaced someday by something different,
something built less on paragraphs of text, something that is more human. We are three
dimensional beings and the 2D experience that is the modern internet will
eventually be replaced by something that allows us to be in a place and
experience virtually what we experience everyday in real life. If you are
interested in seeing what I'm referring to you should visit
Second Life.
If you are like me your first impression of Second Life will be to say, "Oh,
a video game....so what"? Well let me say that I'm not a gamer, I don't care to chase others
around in a fictional world with the hopes of blowing something up
or moving up to the next level, so getting past the gamer style interface involved
taking a mental leap. But I quickly learned that although Second Life is implemented using Avatars, Sims, 3D Objects and is viewed like a 3D gaming experience....it is not a video game.
San Francisco based Linden
Labs created a blank virtual landscape that has
become Second Life. Just like in the real world every object exist because
someone created it, but unlike traditional video games where the environment
is created for you to enhance the game, Second Life is being created by the
users. Residents can buy and sell property, setup a store
selling real products, or like on the www find like minded people.
When tens of thousands of people can gather in a fully 3D
environment to buy and sell fanciful clothing, defy gravity by flying, make
friends from all over the world, build residential communities, speculate
on land prices, and create and license software, what do you call it?
Quoted from an article on CNET
To further the Second Life experience and encourage commerce Liden Labs
has created a currency called "Liden Dollars" (LD). A user can purchase Liden Dollars by credit
card, currently $10 U.S. dollars will buy $2650 Linden Dollars, and spend that currency to buy land, setup a business or do just about anything you could do in the real world.
With a currency exchange in place all the tools necessary to make real money exist in Second Life, namely property and the ability to create sellable goods. By recent
calculations that is exactly what is happening as real U.S. dollars flow
rapidly. The day of this posting Second Life boasted of 144,221 residents,
who are collectively spending millions of real dollars each month. Second Life has reached a tipping point and the flood of cash is quickly being noted in the media. See an article at CNNMoney
There are even a few Second Lifers who have given up their real life day jobs to make a living in Second Life, one of whom claims to be earning more than
$150K per year. Now that sounds like a game worth playing!
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