Brian Boyd enters Second Life, an online community where your virtual creations can earn you real money in the real world
The game is virtual but the profit is real at Second Life. The hugely popular online virtual community, Secondlife.com, currently has 100,000 "residents" and growing from more than 80 countries. They've bought land and built on it, made their own clothes, constructed casinos and nightclubs and even slain their own dragons. There's nothing virtual about the freedom here, it's absolute. The experience is what you make of it. You can hang out in the garden, go shopping, start a business, build a skyscraper, buy a raccoon outfit.
The idea is you get paid just for spending time on the site. The more hours "residents" spend there, the greater the financial reward of "in-world" currency, Linden dollars, they will earn. Those who don't want to hang around in order to accumulate Linden wealth, but want instant gratification, can buy Linden dollars in the real world - typically on eBay - at the exchange rate of 252 Linden dollars to $1. Such is the growth of Second Life that it is now possible to earn a full-time wage, in real money, from virtual transactions such as selling jewellery or renting property on the website. Residents can then convert Linden currency to dollars in the real world - it's a case of science fiction turned economic fact.
Anyone can become a Second Life resident. Just go to the site and log on for free. You have to be somebody to exist "in-world" so you'll need to create your own avatar - a three-dimensional character on screen that can take the form of human lookalikes, animals or fantasy figures. All you have to do is give your avatar a name (your own one or a made-up one) and then go for a stroll around this virtual world.
The more you get drawn in by this strange parallel universe, the more you might want to consider buying a plot of land to build your own residence, where other avatars can come and visit you. Or you can build your own business, where you can sell valuable virtual commodities to other avatars.
BBC2's Newsnight programme recently broadcast part of its show from inside Second Life. Presenter Jeremy Paxman and business correspondent Paul Mason had their own real-life looking avatars made up (so real they even had stubble) and talked about virtual communities from a specially-built Newsnight set within Second Life. If anything, it was an improvement on the original.
To advance from being a tourist to a full-scale resident (complete with voting rights - residents recently voted down new tax measures) you pay about $10 (€8) a month in lease fees - but this depends on the amount of land you own. You can build whatever you like and, crucially, you retain intellectual property rights on in-world creations.
It can all be very confusing at first, but Second Life has an updated daily list of public events - including games, parties and contests - and regular bulletins about all aspects of "in-world" life.
Gaming is a big deal in Second Life and you can join in any amount of shoot-'em-ups, strategy games, puzzles and quizzes with other residents. Be careful how you behave, though - those who "misbehave" while in-world (by not playing by the rules and so on) are sent to a virtual prison called The Corn Field, which contains nothing more than a black and white television playing a continuous feed of the educational film Boy in Court (1940).
SHOPPING, THOUGH, IS the main draw. You can buy and sell everything - from clothes to jewellery to furniture to buildings to avatars themselves. To sell your virtual goods, you can rent out a space in one of the shopping malls, and the challenge here is to build a reputation that earns a steady stream of customers.
It's surprising how vibrant this virtual economy is. Residents are always buying clothes and property or even minor items, such as swords (handy for the ever-popular dragon fights). Obviously, if you're selling, you have to make your goods using three-dimensional modelling, and if that doesn't come too easy to you, there are always classes and tutorials in Second Life to show you how.
This virtual economy was all a bit meaningless until the Linden dollar was directly linked with real US dollars. The New York Times recently reported on Jason Ainsworth, who runs a virtual real estate development business on Second Life. He charges Linden dollars for his services, but now that he can convert his profits into real money, he makes an average of $1,800 (€1,480) a month.
Increasingly, Second Life residents are now using real money to buy virtual currency or desirable virtual items. These transactions take place on eBay and other websites. Payments are made through the secure PayPal system.
In Ainsworth's case, it probably helps that in real life he is a property developer, so he can easily transfer his expertise to the virtual world. Most of his real money profits come from renting space in Second Life to virtual retailers, who typically sell jewellery, clothing and art (all virtual, of course).
SECOND LIFE WAS created in 2003 by the San Francisco-based Linden Lab company. They now estimate that the value of each resident's transactions - if converted to real money - is more than $1,000 (€825) a year and is growing by 25 per cent a month. It is understood that at least one Second Life resident has made a real profit of $100,000 (€82,450) in a recent 12-month period.
This virtual-into-real economy is replicated in scores of other MMOG's (massively multiplayer online games) such as the popular Ultima Online (UO.com) community. These virtual economies are now taken so seriously that tough questions are being asked about how Second Life residents conduct their business.
Some residents have claimed that a particular group of players, known as the FIC, or Feted Inner Core, are allegedly using their connections with Linden Lab staff to trigger policy changes that are beneficial to their own businesses at the expense of others.
There are also complaints about "rack rents" and "land scams". The latter refers to people buying small areas of land in public areas, placing ugly objects on them to deface the view and then selling the land for extremely high prices. Some seasoned Second Life residents have been accused of charging new residents a fee for "showing them the ropes". The phrase "rogue businessmen" is now on everyone's lips.
A Second Life tribunal of inquiry can't be ruled out.
The important point here is that the developers and owners of MMOG's do not encourage the buying and selling of virtual goods - but neither do they forbid it. The more utopian residents are contemptuous of those who use Second Life as a marketplace, arguing that wealthy people have an in-built advantage. However, the virtual economy is now going mainstream. Sony has just set up a service that allows players of its EverQuest 11 game to buy and sell items through an official Sony site.
There are now real-life conferences held, attended by games designers, lawyers and economists, to discuss issues arising from virtual economies and how they fit into real-life legal systems and economies. The US government now has officials studying the behaviour of people on MMOG's and is looking in particular at how laws are regulated in these virtual worlds.
www.secondlife.com