Living my Second Life

With all the conferences I have been attending, I have been hearing a lot about this virtual world Second Life. I even have some working theories underway for my job about how the company might need to prepare for the inevitable influx of virtual economies... so needless to say, it is a topic that has been on my mind a lot lately.

It turns out Business Week is running a full feature about Second Life. Obviously there are a lot of people out there recognizing that if a person can make over six figures a year in real money selling virtual real estate, maybe they ought to start paying attention to the potential business opportunities!

I therefore had to try this whole thing out. Here is a quick set of thoughts about my two week experience in this virtual universe. Forgive the stream-of-consciousness style:

The experience of interacting with Second Life isn't something you can really explain. Multiple times I have found myself trying to get across just what exactly the world is like, and I utterly fail. It is a place where you can have giant castles next to tree houses... floating airports next to water slides... you can buy body parts... clothing... the Starship Enterprise (which I did by the way for $2!)...  You can own land... you can rent land... you can create a box to sit on or you can buy a comfy leather chair. If I had to describe Second Life in two words it would be "no limits".

There isn't really any game to play. Second Life is a 3d operating system where you can use the scripting language and 3d object creation tools to build what ever you want. If I was motivated enough I could build a virtual art gallery to sell photography... I could build a virtual music store to sell my MP3s... or I could just spend my time exploring... which is what I did.

I tired the land owning thing. I bought a parcel of "first land" (cheap stuff you can get when you join the premium membership) but I quickly realized that the 512 sq meter parcel didn't come with enough "prims" to furnish my house. What is a "prim" it is a counter used to measure objects. It takes processing power to render ever piece of a 3d object. So for instance my Starship Enterprise is made up of 30-40 individual 3d objects. If you buy land, you are given 100 prims. That means that my land can only hold 100 individual 3d objects. This is because it costs money to run the servers to process all the polygons... so the way they get you is taxing you to own land ($5 per month above 512 sq meters). The only way to get more prims is to own more land and pay more money.

If this all sounds complicated it is because it is... it took me about 2 days of research to really get a handle on what the deal was. I bought the land, paid my $10 per month fee, but then found out that my house was 60 prims and the rad modern furniture set I bought from SLBoutique.com was another 60 prims... so by the time I had my couch and a few rugs put down... there was no room for anything else... not to mention any space to park my Enterprise on the roof... even my helicopter was too many prims...

Most of the time I found myself flying around buying things... Second Life is the ultimate consumer-whore game. There are tons of empty malls with shops full of display cases. You simply walk up... click on it... pay your money and the object is placed in your inventor. I went an bought some clothes at The Buzz and was feeling pretty fly.

Of course a big part of the game is adult material... a few wrong terms and you can find yourself into a porn mansion quite easily. But I guess any virtual world is bound to have it's red-light district. What are you going to do right?

So yeah... If you think of Second Life as an operating system, the sky is the limit. Many businesses that you wouldn't think (Wells Fargo for instance) are busy building entire virtual experiences that educate and entertain within this virtual world. I will definitely keep an eye on the whole project. It continues to grow each day and it really is fun to load up my Starship and cruise around looking and the insanity that passes for architecture in that virtual space.

If you happen to drop in, look me up. Trapper Nolan is the name...

Comments

[techbee]

Hello, could you do me a favor in second life? Could you check if my avatar still exists? I was called a god awfull name: Briconcella Davenport, if I remember it right. I gave up Second Life after one hour because I don't need another expensive addiction (I smoke) but I wondered, reading your post, if half a wig and part of a leg still hovered in Second Life. Thanks.

[Trapper Markelz]

I did a search for that name in game and no profiles are coming up... so you may be gone!

[Matt Stratton]

Thought you might find this interesting - my friend Rik blogged recently ( http://www.rikomatic.com/blog/2006/05/do_i_need_a_sec.html ) about his Second Life experiences.

****
Today I attended a webcast of a briefing by David Eisenberg speaking on Network Neutrality, which was rebroadcast in Second Life at the Berkman Center's island facility. It was a very strange experience "sitting" in an outdoor amphitheater with various other avatars, listening to Mr. Eisenberg speaking at Harvard. Meanwhile we were engaging in all sorts of side chatter, introducing ourselves, and posing questions to him. He couldn't hear us, but a couple of the SL participants were also physically at the briefing in Harvard, so they were able to convey our questions for us.

It's a brave new virtual world.
***

[rikomatic]

"There isn't really any game to play."

Actually there are lots of games to play: http://www.tinypirate.com/wiki/tiki-index.php

Thanks for the shout out, Matt.

[Trapper Markelz]

Well yeah there are "mini-games" but Second Life has no real macro game in the traditional MMO sense... there isn't leveling... or skills... or questing... or at least anything that is clearly related to some larger objective. It is more a social space with opportunities for varying levels of entertainment and interaction.

[Alex]

Hi, Im trying to figure out what the optimal ratio of prim size to land size is and I am thinking maybe 10x so a 4000 sq.m. land parcel would go with a 400 prim house, leaving 515 prims for other stuff. Any thoughts?

[Trapper Markelz]

I honestly have not played around with it enough to have any real guidance there. All I know is that it is definitely something you have to plan out... otherwise you end up like I did with a house but no prims to put anything in it.