Second Life: Creating a Connected World

From wsuwiki

1 Overview
2 History
3 Developed Economy
4 Connecting The World
5 References

Overview

Second Life is a 3D virtual world that was launched in June 2003. It was developed by Linden Lab and is accessible through the internet via a client program called Second Life Viewer. Users of Second Life are called Residents and interact with each other and the virtual world through 3D representations of themselves called Avatars. Within the world of Second Life users can socialize with other users, explore the world, create and trade virtual property, and various other individual and group activities. There are built-in modeling tools that further fuel these creation activities. When these tools are coupled with the Second Life’s custom scripting language known as Linden Scripting Language created objects can be given functionality. The Second Life client provides DRM functions with Second Life’s Terms of Service agreement giving users the right to copyright any of their created content.

History

Second Life began its existence as an idea in the head of Philip Rosedale, former CEO of Linden Lab and Founder. Work on Second Life began in 2001, with the hope of creating a 3D virtual world where users could generate content and interact with each other. In its early development it was known as LindenWorld and Avatars were referred to as Primitars, so called because they were created out of prims. Its name got changed to Second Life prior to any sort of public release.

March 2002 Second Life got its first Resident, seven months later its public beta began. The map of Second Life or grid as it was called, consisted of 16 regions the first of which being called Da Boom a possible reference to the Big Bang of Second Life. Second Life’s land and population size slowly expanded in volume with Linden Lab releasing Second Life in June 2003, still with no in-world currency in sight.

At the end of 2003 the Linden Dollar was introduced, with the LindeX currency exchange following a couple years later. In an effort to restrict over use, a tax system was introduced based on how many objects a Resident had in-world how this setup was easily tricked and was later abandoned for a much more stream lined system. While originally Second Life’s business model was based paid memberships it was later moved to in-world land sales. As of October, 2006 there is now over one million residents in Second Life. In January, 2007 the Second Life client was open sourced* and Residents were invited to join the Architecture Working Group to help further its development. Windlight rendering was announce on May, 2007 to become part of that current release drastically improving Second Life’s graphics.[1]

Developed Economy

Second Life economy started out pretty bleak seeing as how there was no in-world currency to speak of in the early days and Second Life’s business model was based off of membership fees. Later however it moved to a massively more active economy using Linden Dollars, that could quite easily be converted over to actual real world funds. After this change many Residents began making their own interesting little business services in-world, some even made a hefty profit in Second Life from this system. On May 1st 2006, a fair example of these hefty profits could be seen, Second Life Resident Anshe Chung was reported to be the first person to become a real life millionaire due to Second Life business.[1] While Second Life’s business model switched over to be based off of various other in-world exchanges of currency.

Second Life's business model fits very nicely into the Free or almost Freemium ideal, being based on only a few through ‘pro’ features actually paying money to the business.[2] Users can join free of charge, they have access to a multitude of free objects in-world along with access to all the creation tools within Second Life. However, if one wants to own land or buy anything in-world they must use Linden Dollars that get created out of real world money. Land owned within Second Life is purchased with a one-time fee then subsequently charged a much lower monthly fee hence forth. These fees along with small conversion charges for whenever anyone wishes to convert Linden Dollars back into real world money help to fuel Second Life’s business.

Connecting The World

Second Life’s biggest contribution to the world however has been to act as a creative and collaborative platform. Because of the ability of the Residents within Second Life to create whatever they choose and that they have rights to whatever they create there is a strong base for allowing any and all walks of life to find a place(or perhaps make one) in Second Life’s world. Everyone from businesses, entrepreneurs, and programmers to people just trying to be creative and charity organizations have found uses for Second Life’s virtual environment. Second Life owes a great amount of its success just like Wikipedia, Youtube, and the internet in general to people’s undying willingness to create and participate, not just observe. As was said in Kevin Kelly’s article We Are the Web, the enthusiasm the participate and interact with things is still strong in people and growing stronger. In that article the point is made further by all the reasons that are stated for the internet’s success, these very same reasons are what have driven Second Life’s every growing community.

Speaking of community, Second Life has lead to a very distinct lot of communities within its world, which is due to it going through the same stages as the web where adoption was slow but now there are thriving and separate communities within.[3] Second Life has seen its most prestigious use however in the form of a collaborative platform. Programmers from anywhere in the world can collaborate on everything from object creation solely for entertainment within the virtual world to full on projects. Charities have found ways to make use of Second Life, the American Cancer Society now organizes sponsored walks/tours through the virtual world that pass through commercial spaces that donate their proceeds to the cause.[4] Businesses have begun making use of Second Life for conferences and some business in general. A good example is when a high-end home was put up for sale in Washington in which a potential customer from Italy toured virtually using Second Life. After this incident and a few others like it, businesses are starting to realize the value of this type of virtual tour over the standard ‘slideshow’ variety.[5] In acting as not just a collaborative forum like some but a full and completely separate 3D environment, Second Life in a way can be seen as another of the “Steroids” mentioned in Friedman’s “It’s a Flat World, After All” article. It has helped bring the world closer together (flatten) by making an entire virtual world that anyone from anywhere can come to, to communicate with anyone from anywhere else.[6] In fact the actual majority of Residents within Second Life are, in the real world, located outside the United States.