Post by Morreion on Jul 27, 2010 9:25:38 GMT -5
Second Life official site
Second Life (Wikipedia)
Second Life (SL) is a virtual world developed by Linden Lab that launched on June 23, 2003, and is accessible on the Internet. A free client program called the Viewer enables its users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars. Residents can explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one another, or travel throughout the world (which residents refer to as "the grid"). Second Life is for people aged 18 and over, while Teen Second Life is for people aged 13 to 17.
Built into the software is a three-dimensional modeling tool based around simple geometric shapes that allows a resident to build virtual objects. This can be used in combination with the Linden Scripting Language which can be used to add functionality to objects. More complex three-dimensional sculpted prims (colloquially known as sculpties), textures for clothing or other objects, and animations and gestures can be created using external software. The Second Life Terms of Service ensure that users retain copyright for any content they create, and the server and client provide simple digital rights management functions.
Built into the software is a three-dimensional modeling tool based around simple geometric shapes that allows a resident to build virtual objects. This can be used in combination with the Linden Scripting Language which can be used to add functionality to objects. More complex three-dimensional sculpted prims (colloquially known as sculpties), textures for clothing or other objects, and animations and gestures can be created using external software. The Second Life Terms of Service ensure that users retain copyright for any content they create, and the server and client provide simple digital rights management functions.
Second Life's User Transactions Hits Record $57M In March (Gamasutra)
During a time when many other virtual worlds are closing (e.g. Vivaty, There.com), Linden Lab's Second Life enjoyed a record month last March as user-to-user transactions reached $57 million -- and transactions for the quarter hit $160 million, a 30 percent year-over-year jump.
Second Life's emphasis on virtual goods has kept its virtual economy growing, as evidenced in 2009 when user-to-user transactions increased 65 percent over 2008's total to $567 million, despite the falling popularity of virtual worlds and the real-world recession. Increased user-to-user transactions benefit Linden Lab, as the company takes a cut from the sale of virtual land, premium subscriptions, and the world's virtual currency Linden dollars.
San Francisco-based Linden Lab says the population of the nearly seven-year-old virtual world is growing, too; Second Life hit its monthly unique user peak in March at 826,000 users, up 13 percent compared to the same period in the previous year, according to an interview with the company's CEO Mark Kingdon conducted by VentureBeat.
Second Life's emphasis on virtual goods has kept its virtual economy growing, as evidenced in 2009 when user-to-user transactions increased 65 percent over 2008's total to $567 million, despite the falling popularity of virtual worlds and the real-world recession. Increased user-to-user transactions benefit Linden Lab, as the company takes a cut from the sale of virtual land, premium subscriptions, and the world's virtual currency Linden dollars.
San Francisco-based Linden Lab says the population of the nearly seven-year-old virtual world is growing, too; Second Life hit its monthly unique user peak in March at 826,000 users, up 13 percent compared to the same period in the previous year, according to an interview with the company's CEO Mark Kingdon conducted by VentureBeat.
Can people actually 'own' virtual land? (CNN)
Zed Drebin has a pretty fantastical life.
He owns a house on the beach, which he's styled to be part Barbie castle and part medieval lair. In addition, he is the landlord of two island colonies, both of which feature spaceships, amusement parks and all kinds of futuristic buildings. About 80 renters pay to live in themed condos at his getaway resorts.
For all of this, Drebin pays only $390 a month, he said.
But there's one big flaw in this space-themed paradise: None of it is real. Zed Drebin is an avatar in the virtual world of Second Life. He's controlled by Arthur, a 44-year-old who lives in New York City, and who didn't want his full name used for fear it would hurt his business.
Despite the fact that Arthur pays U.S. dollars to "own" virtual land in Second Life, and that his renters also pay him in real money, it's unclear whether he, or any of Second Life's "residents," have lasting rights to these virtual tracts.
That worries him.
"We've invested a great deal of money and an even greater amount of time; literally hundreds of people have contributed to creating our regions," he said.
Now, in a sign that virtual issues increasingly are bleeding into the real world, some "residents" of Second Life are taking virtual property rights to real-world court, citing California consumer protection laws to make their case.
On April 15, four Second Life property owners filed a class-action suit against Linden Lab, the online world's creator, alleging the company misled players into thinking they owned their virtual lands. People pay real dollars to Linden Lab for access to virtual land.
He owns a house on the beach, which he's styled to be part Barbie castle and part medieval lair. In addition, he is the landlord of two island colonies, both of which feature spaceships, amusement parks and all kinds of futuristic buildings. About 80 renters pay to live in themed condos at his getaway resorts.
For all of this, Drebin pays only $390 a month, he said.
But there's one big flaw in this space-themed paradise: None of it is real. Zed Drebin is an avatar in the virtual world of Second Life. He's controlled by Arthur, a 44-year-old who lives in New York City, and who didn't want his full name used for fear it would hurt his business.
Despite the fact that Arthur pays U.S. dollars to "own" virtual land in Second Life, and that his renters also pay him in real money, it's unclear whether he, or any of Second Life's "residents," have lasting rights to these virtual tracts.
That worries him.
"We've invested a great deal of money and an even greater amount of time; literally hundreds of people have contributed to creating our regions," he said.
Now, in a sign that virtual issues increasingly are bleeding into the real world, some "residents" of Second Life are taking virtual property rights to real-world court, citing California consumer protection laws to make their case.
On April 15, four Second Life property owners filed a class-action suit against Linden Lab, the online world's creator, alleging the company misled players into thinking they owned their virtual lands. People pay real dollars to Linden Lab for access to virtual land.
The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life (Massively)
As a part of the rush that built through May and June, several large groups of new users came from the *chan communities, but never seemed to get beyond small scale goo attacks, cage-guns, flying penises and annoying noises. It was all schoolyard stuff that didn't end up posing any widespread inconvenience, unless you were one of a small number of particularly outspoken and well-known users who were routinely griefed.
Ginko Financial was an apparent Ponzi scheme offering too-good-to-be-true rates of interest, operating out of Sao Paulo, Brazil – where it would have been in violation of Brazil's banking regulations. During 2007, the operation folded up along with an estimated 750 thousand US Dollars in user's funds.
My So-Called Second Life (Time Magazine)
Thegrowth of Second Life is particularly impressive considering that the program takes forever to download, requires a computer with a graphics card for gaming, sucks up hours just to design your character and—this is the genius part—has created the perfect capitalist system in which you pay for fake stuff (clothing, housing, hookers) with real money. People make thousands of U.S. dollars selling designs for cars or flipping virtual property. Many companies, seeing an opportunity for marketing and sales, have created virtual branches on Second Life: American Apparel has a clothing store, Adidas hawks shoes, Starwood previewed a new line of hotels, Reuters has an embedded journalist, Jay-Z played a concert and the Sundance Channel is setting up a virtual screening room. Apparently, people want to cram their second lives full of the same stuff they have in their first.
But Second Life is different enough (flying! teleporting! cloning!) that it functions as a therapist's couch on which you learn about yourself by safely exploring your darkest desires. Mine, I was shocked to find, do not involve sex. In fact, in my ultimate fantasy life, I do not have a penis. And since genitalia do not come without charge in Second Life, I could free myself from the gnawing distraction of a sex drive. Which meant that for the first time, I would be able to focus all my energy on a quest for power. I planned to put the Reuters guy out of business, own some kind of island where drone armies did my bidding and force people to follow laws based on my insane whims. Unfortunately, the other thing I learned about myself on Second Life, after spending half an hour learning how to walk, was that I'm too lazy to do any of those things. Or even draw my hair and eyebrows right.
But Second Life is different enough (flying! teleporting! cloning!) that it functions as a therapist's couch on which you learn about yourself by safely exploring your darkest desires. Mine, I was shocked to find, do not involve sex. In fact, in my ultimate fantasy life, I do not have a penis. And since genitalia do not come without charge in Second Life, I could free myself from the gnawing distraction of a sex drive. Which meant that for the first time, I would be able to focus all my energy on a quest for power. I planned to put the Reuters guy out of business, own some kind of island where drone armies did my bidding and force people to follow laws based on my insane whims. Unfortunately, the other thing I learned about myself on Second Life, after spending half an hour learning how to walk, was that I'm too lazy to do any of those things. Or even draw my hair and eyebrows right.
) but when searching around, I found that there's at least 15 or so designers of log cabins already who are well established, have a ton of available models and own entire landscapes that I could never imagine being able to afford on real world money.