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Virtual World, Real Money
BusinessWeek's cover story for May 1st has to do with a little place called Second Life. BusinessWeek Online has several stories related to their exploration on online living. My Virtual Life is a first-time exploration of Second Life, with some examination of the property and financial aspects of the gameworld. It's Not All Fun and Games explores the serious side of virtual businesses, as they interview Ashne Chung (notable real estate baron) in a piece called Virtual Land, Real Money. Ed Castronova has his say in a more general article on virtual economies. Finally, for an outside perspective, the obligatory Terra Nova discussion is always useful.
stake this first post as virtual property... get with me after this and we can negotiate a pice.
Second Life itself is, last I checked, still not making a profit. Funny, seems like Linden Labs are the only people unable to make money off of their own creation.
Man, I need to go back and re-read Snowcrash. Apparently the metaverse is upon us. (I guess that's a blinding flash of the obvious).
...what's the price of a condo in a decent online community? I'm considering emigrating; looking for a good neighbourhood, easy commute and reasonable taxes.
This says something pretty significant and deeply disturbing about society yet the article seems to have glazed over it. Second Life has no point, it's not just a game. It's a reality that simply exists, it's the participants that determine everything--just like real life. People are escaping their own lives, why? Because they feel trapped? Trapped by what? The mindless and meaningless jobs that they hold down working for a multinational corporation. The incessant reminder that they need more material goods to be happy. That they aren't as beautiful as the people on TV. Aldous Huxley seems to have been a visionary. Now corporations are looking to tap into this phenomemon? Holy shit! In my opinion, this trend is more scary than DRM ever could be.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
I'd be curious to see, because for what they're charging I don't see how theyre not making money
I have found a way better game to play online. It's a lot more challenging and fun then Wow, Second life, or Ever quest combined! This online game also allows you to earn real money!
It's called running an online business. You can pick from a range of class types, (blogger, storekeeper, programmer) or create your own!
The game content is simply amazing! It is virtually infinite, and changes daily!
You can play as much or as little as you want. Spend an hour, a day or an hour a week, it's up to you!
I've been playing for a few months now and its a blast! Check out my avatar cl1p!
"People are willing to do tedious, complex tasks within games," notes Nick Yee, a Stanford University graduate student in communications who has extensively studied online games. "What if we could tap into that brainpower?" In other words, your next cubicle could well be inside a virtual world.
The matrix has you.
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
In real life I'm a shy, fat, ugly loser. Online I'm a hyper-successful 21 Y/O stud who get's all the attention. I'm living the dream baby!
There are at least a hundred or so avatars with the first name "Hiro" there.
seems like its a great way to commit fraud form the guise of a "company", forget insider stock dealing, just hit ctrl+c+enter a few times and visit ebay to collect your rewards
Couldn't you say the same thing about internet relay chat?
Or television?
Or radio?
Or novels?
Or theater?
If the desire of persons to temporarily escape reality to live in fantasy as embodied by Second Life represents a problem, it is a problem that has been going on for 15 / 75 / 110 / 408 / 2600 years.
Yes. Also, I will gil you the first chance I get. Prepare to have your dog gibbed.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
... the inability to take a shower, hit the gym, and subsequently get laid.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
can't or don't want to make or loose money in a brick and mortar environment.
Just for you, a virtual life. But who is going to change your diaper and refill your feeding tube?
Rick B.
Well, while the apropriate moderation for this comment is probably "Offtopic" (maybe "Funny" for apt use of sarcasm), it does have a point...
This sig rocks the casbah.
I'd love to try it out, but I'm waiting for someone to write a Gamefaq. It's just no fun without an infinite money code...
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Despite the press it gets on Slashdot for some reason, there are really very few people that give a shit about Second Life. The total number of people active in Second Life is maybe (maybe) as much as a single World of Warcraft server. Of WoW servers there's like 88 in the US alone, never mind the ones in other countries. While Second Life is certianly somewhat analogus to the metaverse Stephnson talks about, it's not the same thing. It's not populated by the technological elite, it's populated by some businessmen and some people with more money than sense.
It's only one virtual world of many and it is not even close to the biggest. To the best of my knowledge, less than 200,000 people have ever signed up to use it. Over 5,000,000 people play WoW, or at least choose to send Blizzard $15/month to be allowed to play. There are, of course, plenty of of others that while not as popular, are still more popular than Second Life.
So don't worry about it, the metaverse is not upon us, and you are not missing out on anything.
So Linden Labs gets an infusion of cash (see http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/28/ 1727255) to do more development on their "game," and this just sounds like part of the marketing feed. Don't get me wrong (a cursory check will find I am Second-Life-critical, really just a hardcore cynic), it may be yet-another-good-story about virtual economies crossing the reality border, but smells like it was paid for with that VC.
Yes, we understand these tags always apply: fud, dupe, typo, slashdotted, topic name
This is not an MMO. It's a Massively Online Photoshop Time and Money Waster. MOPTaMW. Don't worry about the name not catching on very well. It will do as good as the "game" will. Truth is, not many people are involved in this experiment, and the only thing that can be learned from it has more to do with how easily entertained some people are rather than a virtual economy. Why look to a tiny unrepresentative quirk of online commerce rather than look closer at the content delivery and virtual sales going on in a popular game, like WoW or EQ2?
This is not a game. Just because you can connect online and it's 3d doesn't make it a game. It's a virtual community, like AOL, except with people with slightly more aptitude for technology, and slightly less of a clue.
SL isn't nearly as great as it's made out to be in the media. Even their best example - Anche Chung was banned from SL and their forums the other day. Moderators were then unleashed to remove any thread about her ban.
... but there are some positives to SL. But the hype is about making money - something that is extremely difficult. Most are lucky to even break even.
The only people making income are the land barons who buy up huge sims (servers) then sell off the land. It's a lot of work to cut it up and sell - and the profits are small unless you do this large scale. To get that kind of scale you'll need 10's of thousands of dollars invested. There is already a land glut and the profits are hard to come by even with a lot of money to invest. Because of the land glut, the market is facing inflation. We're seeing over $300 second life dollars per $1 USD.
If you want to try your hand at developing land to run things like casinos, malls, etc. You will have to upgrade your account to a paid version. You then need to find some land to buy. The monthly fee on a fairly modest 16,000m plot of land is $75. The initial cost for that amount of land is around $300 - $400. Much of the main land has no rules besides "PG" and "R" rated areas. So people build horrible objects and structures. The more prims an object takes up, the more lag the area gets. Anyway, people have issues selling clothing, skins, etc. because there is no way to prevent others from stealing them directly from the local client's graphics cache or directly from video memory. People steal then resell other's work.
You also have to watch out for gotchas in the game. They have rules such as a user needing to belong to a group that owns the land, in order to set "Home" to that location. The problem is, if your land is owned by a group, and you sell the land, all members in that group get an EQUAL cut of the selling price of the land. This is not something they mention to you when you click SELL. So if you're selling a $500 USD plot of land and you get $4 back, you'll not be too happy. Calling SL's tech support will yeld such gems as "If you were planning on making a mistake, you should have called us up before you made the mistake and we'd be happy to help you"
I don't want to rant on too much about it - I haven't even gotten started on the negitives
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Semi-addictive virtual world inhabited by furries, paedophiles, nymphomaniacs, 40 year old fat bald men playing busty teenage-sized females that have sex with anything that moves.
Also existing in this virtual world are those that are so delusional that they think they can make real world money off the paltry exchange rate. They don't realise that charging L$200 slightly less than US$1. Sure, sell a thousand of them and you're set!
There is also the person who sets up a club, like every other club in Second Life: sex, furries, bad internet radio DJs, and little kids. They almost never make any real life money, despite the hundreds of (US) dollars spent on making the virtual club.
Who cares I mean if someone wants to have fun for a while in a virtual world how is it effecting you. I was an online gamar with everquest and it was the most fun I have ever had. I even shudder sold online items. I stop playing because I didnt have the free time to play. I'm not a fat ugly no life whater everyone is stero typing as either! I played for fun wake up its the modern world and nerdo kids dont play monolopy or scrabble anymore. This is the internet. ------------------- Science Fiction Fan girl Lynne's SCI FI news VIDEO podcast WEB: http://lynne.libsyn.com/ Latest show: http://media.libsyn.com/media/lynne/episode13.m4v
-nt-
I've been playing SL for a few months and there are some interesting points that were missed by these articles.
First, many of the signups are free accounts. You only need to upgrade to a paid account if you want to own land. I rent a 'condo' and I still only have a free account. However I have spent a few dollars occasionally, converting them directly to Linden-dollars so I could buy stuff. Many players just get by on the 50 Linden-dollars a week basic stipend that even free accounts get.
Second, probably the most noteworthy aspect of SL is the large number of women participating. Female avatars substantially outnumber males, in my experience, and while not all of them are "really" female, it is clear that the game has real appeal to women. In fact one of the main activities in SL is clothes shopping, which is one of the reasons that hardcore gamers (almost all men/boys) often don't like the game.
Another point not often mentioned is that another popular activity is gambling. There are hundreds of casinos in SL offering slot machines, blackjack, poker and dice games. Because Linden-dollars are convertible, it means that the players at these casinos are gambling real money. Which is illegal, in the U.S. Yet the activity goes on openly, on servers owned by a U.S. company. Plus, the casinos are completely unregulated and there is basically no recourse if you think you are being cheated, other than to go elsewhere.
I do think the money-making aspects tend to get over-emphasized in articles about SL. Most people don't make or sell anything, from what I've seen. And those who do are not too happy lately. The Linden-dollars have been highly inflationary and have fallen from 1/250 to 1/300 of a dollar in the past couple of months. In response Linden Labs is constantly rejiggering the various stipends and payments they make.
Which brings up the last point, the dynamism of the game. Things are always changing. My condo complex now has a medieval castle complete with lava-filled moat on one side, and an open-air art gallery on the other. Neither was there when I moved in a couple of months ago. You may go to a formerly-popular spot and find that an entire mall has picked up and moved to the other side of the world, overnight. Or maybe they just went out of business entirely. Several of my favorite places have disappeared since I started playing, which is too bad. But new ones are always being created so there is always something new to see.
If you have a broadband account, give it a try. Don't expect it to be a structured game, just an enormous and diverse world to explore.
"If you want to try your hand at developing land to run things like casinos, malls, etc. You will have to upgrade your account to a paid version. You then need to find some land to buy. The monthly fee on a fairly modest 16,000m plot of land is $75. The initial cost for that amount of land is around $300 - $400. Much of the main land has no rules besides "PG" and "R" rated areas. So people build horrible objects and structures. The more prims an object takes up, the more lag the area gets. Anyway, people have issues selling clothing, skins, etc. because there is no way to prevent others from stealing them directly from the local client's graphics cache or directly from video memory. People steal then resell other's work."
So in other words. It's a LOT like real life.
The Escapist covered this topic recently. There's a fascinating alternative perspective presented in an interview with the president of RedBedlam, the team behind Roma Victor - another virtual economics-based VW due to launch in July. The interview is here.
NB my sig.
Since your land fees (Called Tier) are based on the amount of land you own, there are people who buy up the 16m of land (very tiny spots an avatar can barely stand on) and put up anti bush signs. They do it under the claim of free speach, but then turn around and sell the land at insane prices. They are essentially extorting money from people because the signs are brought blue, spin around and block the landscape. They then position the signs in front of people's windows and ... well, you get the point.
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Enough about Second Life. It's quite dull. Their PR department gets them press everywhere, but compared to the 6 million people in WoW, it's a miniscule world.
The same story over and over about the same people making money in Second Life. Here's a good post about how dull it is.
The "omfgwtfbbq people are making money off of virutal gold" is a stale story with it going back to Ultima Online and Everquest in the late 90s. In 2006, this kind of story is nothing more than marketing hype.
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ive made about 250 dollers since november just messing around as a stripper and escort in game. for poking around thats pretty good. Nothing to sneeze at atleast. not gonna live of it but its spending money. a doller here and a doller there adds up.
Trickle trickle head I want to be a tricklehead. seriously man where can I plug in my headjack?
Hmm..Second Life might be a perfect place for me to vent my rage against games that want to charge me money to own virtual land. To do this, I will pick a day...let's say May 2nd, where I will resist building anything and not buy anything. That will show them that there are far more of us who don't want to pay than those who do!
I have a feeling that this game is going to get bigger pretty soon. It going to be the next MySpace. And there is still time to get in and make some money. You just have to find a place to make money.
One of my issues with the game is finding stuff to do. The strip clubs get boring fast and I have never set foot in Casino. Where are the other things to do?
> The most obvious example is death and physical pain. Think about how many choices are made in the world directly to avoid death or physical pain. This doesn't exist in Second Life.
This isn't really a valid analysis, since you're simply trying to inject "first life" rules into Second Life, and there's no logical reason for that. Sure, you can't starve to death, but you can very certainly deplete your bank account in the game, leaving yourself without the means to enjoy the game in many ways. The world does have rules. They're just not the rules that control the real world. There's no need for laws against murder, for example, because murder is impossible. It would be like trying to pass a law in the real world to prevent people from turning invisible at will.
> If this is truly an anarchistic society, then laws don't exist. That include game rules.
In a real world anarchistic society, people couldn't fly without mechanical help. Saying that true anarchy has no rules, including rules governing matter, is just as foolish (and just as inaccurate) as saying that Second Life can't be anarchistic because there are game rules based on the programming.
> Also, what if the power goes out and all their servers crash or are destroyed? Playing this game requires A LOT of trust in the people running it. Personally, I think it's a fascinating experiment in human nature and economics (though a flawed one), but there's no way I'm going to give them any of my money.
That's certainly your perogative, but if someone wants to make a living by trading in Linden goods, then there are plenty of ways to make it relatively safe. Any business has risks, but there are companies that offer insurance for a fee, and there's nothing that says you couldn't go to Lloyd's of London and take out a policy on the continued operation of Second Life, so that if Linden Labs pulls the plug you wouldn't be left with nothing. Think of it as fire insurance for a virtual building.
Virg
OK, I am the curious kind, and reading the article, downloaded second life.
...
....
... if not doom or HL, but at least something from the 21st century ....
My net is not perfect 256/128, but this is a damn lagfest. Athlon64 3200+, 1gig ram, and it is like playing quake3 on a 386.
On the other hand, i downloaded Alpha World as well as I haven;t seen it for a long time, and with max detail is just runs perfect and looks better.
I miht ask, if my net and my machine plays BF2 64 player matches without a single lag, how comes that an empty world in the middle of nowhere lags like i can barely move....
The sell/buy idea is great, the implementation freaks me out. If alphaworld had the buy/sell feature like that one does it could beat the crap outta that lagfest horror
I might be missing something, but the last time I saw something running that choppy was when i tried doom on an xp2000+ on 1024x768
Well, no virtual land for me.
I also expected somethin a lot nicer, alphaworld delivered this 6 years ago... something thet looks at least as OK as a modern video game