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Second Life Opens Public Beta

Posted by simoniker on from the dont-have-a-first-life-yet dept.

thehossman writes "A friend of mine works for Linden Lab, and for the past few months he's been hyping their upcoming product: Second Life. I've just been nodding my head, and ignoring him, but last week he logged in and gave me a mini-tour of the VR world (and some things their alpha-testers have helped create) and I was blown away. Now they've announced their public beta, and if you've got a machine that can handle it, I highly advise you to check it out." This is another of the lifestyle-focused massively multiplayer titles that seem to have very big (venture capital?) budgets backing them - can they succeed?

3 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. credit card number? by kLaNk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They require a credit card number to sign up for an open beta? That seems a bit extreme if you ask me. There are other ways of making sure that your users are unique without requiring everybody to trust you with your credit card number!

  2. Second Life, First Girlfriend? Last Job? by Nathan+Ramella · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Why is it nobody has harnessed the MMORPG model to get humans to do something useful. Like parsing, culling data or inputting data to get 'money' in the game.
    If somebody would just come up with the right setup, they could get the 'Matrix' harness developed to use people as the engine for their business model.

    Marketing people could test new music out in Virtual 'Bars' to see what people like, You could capture all the conversations and find out who's drinking coke and who's drinking pepsi..

    And the instant gratification as you talk to someone in a virtual bar and a passer-by auspiciously mentions that the new poster on the wall can be purchased online at the following URL..
    -n

    --
    http://www.remix.net/
  3. Re:Credit card?! by amaprotu · · Score: 3, Informative

    You don't pay RW $$.

    So much misconception. Here is an overview of the economics of SL.

    SL is a virtual world where the real limited resource is server sersources (cpu cycles, memory, bandwith etc.). So they create in game money and tie it to those resources.

    They use the standard US/Canadian/AU $ sign for their money. You want to upload a texture it costs $ ... in game/fake money. Same to upload a sound.

    It also costs money to build stuff - in game/fake money. At no point is it Real World money.

    There is a set pool of money, some things are taxed and that money goes into the pool. Buying land costs money but you can always sell it to get all your money back. 'Rezing primitives' costs money, but you can get it back by deleting them. AND IN BOTH CASES IT IS LINDEN $, SECOND LIFE $, NOT REAL $.

    Real money doesn't enter the equation. The credit card is only for age verification.

    Please take the time to learn what you are talking about before spouting to the world absolute nonsense. Thanks