Until a few hours ago I my understanding of the term second life is when you die and go to heaven (or hell if you a bad ass). Second Life is also however a 3-D virtual community where people create avatars and interact with other avatars, create homes, businesses, go to clubs, go shopping, have sex -basically have a normal real life in a virtual space. Basically its the human form of the tamagotchi and every socially inept computer nerd’s dream.
In Second Life you build your own avatars and pretty much anything else you want to like cars, clothes, disco balls, lamps etc. out of building tools. Because you control the IP rights to the things you build, you can sell them to other users with the Second Life currency of the Linden Dollar ($L). But here is where things get a little absurd. Once you have accumulated enough Linden Dollars you can exchange them into real life American Dollars, the exchange rate at the moment is 300 $L to 1 U.S $.
The initial basic membership is free on Second Life, however every additional alternative account is a once off $9.95. But having a basic membership doesn’t let your avatar (or virtual self) to have much of a lifestyle because it means you can’t own land and therefore your avatar (or virtual self) will be homeless. So by signing up for the premium account for $9.95 a month you can buy land and build on it.
So as a South African I would fork out R71.69 (at the current exchange rate) a month to have a premium virtual lifestyle. Plus I would have to spend even more to buy things that I would be too lazy or incapable of building myself. It just seems crazy to me that people are willing to spend hard earn cash on something that isn’t even real. Business savvy people have jumped on the Second Life bandwagon by creating real life businesses that specialise in selling virtual products for characters. It’s mind boggling that people have created a living selling nothing for something. For more of this topic check out Business Week's My Virtual Life.
For another intersting blog see My so-called Second Life
Also check out Second Life's creators blog
1 comment:
Don't you think that Second Life is about taking Social Networking to the next level by allowing the freedom of movement that humans exploit in our daily social interaction with the hypermedia identities that people have on sites like Facebook in a virtual realm where anything is possible (for the right money)?
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