A typical building in Second Life
An Avatar been 'created' or perhaps born?
I read a report recently about this virtual world called Second Life. The article talked about a woman in the States called Anshe Chung who became the first Virtual Millionaire. Infact she is a millionaire in real life because of her clever business sense in virtual reality.
What could this mean? Out of curiousity and a student yearning to make a few bucks myself I downloaded Second Life and within half an hour I was creating my own Avatar.
An Avatar is your own character which you use to move about this world. It allows you to change every facet of your Avatar's physicality. This was fun. Needless to say my Avatar was a muscular male model.
You then teleport to whatever land takes your fancy. It takes a bit of time to get used to the system, but can be interesting. Some of the other Avatar's take all shapes and forms. Those that are human in form are all gorgeous. There are no fat people in second life. Then you have fantastical Avatars which range from flying dragons to unicorn-women. As I moved about a Victorian virtual scape I was greeted by a talking cat. Clearly the human behind this Avatar decided to represent him/herself in this form. Ok.
The money making in Second Life is very real. The game, if you can call it that, has its own currency called Linden Dollors. As a rough translation, every 100 Linden dollors equates to 1 US dollor. You can browse everything from clothing to new body 'skins' and everything has a price, a Linden price. The interesting thing is that items for sale are relevant to the virtual world. Users of Second Life or residents as they are called buy products to dress their Avatars and even buy homes for them to live in.
This is what interested me. I wondered could this be my angle? Become a virtual architect/landscape architect? I went to a training land to learn how to build. I was surprised at how accurate the building tools are. You start with a geometric shape (a prim) and go from there. The system allows you to add various textures or even import your own from photoshop. The measurements are pretty accurate to the metre. I guess as a 3D form of modelling its not bad.
I spend a little time playing with the building programme but found that it required alot of time to get used to. This of course is spend within the virtual world. So as your Avatar stands there building, other Avatars walk past. Some stopping to say hello or running into you. I was soon seeing the addictive nature of Second Life.
Imagine a world where everyone is beautiful? Imagine a world where your every desire is fufilled and your every fantasy realised...Second life seemingly offers all this. But who are the people behind Avatars? Are they sad lonely freaks who have given up on succeeding in the real world? Second Life was very quickly becoming weird to me. I wondered in reality how much time would it take me to make enough Linden Dollors to see a profit? I wondered what the price might be...
I also have read about people who spend too much time in Second Life, it ends up screwing with their perception. Apparently there have been a few cases at UCL of students not knowing which life they were actually in. I was only a 'resident' for less then two weeks and despite it been a game, it has a strange draw. At one point I was changing my Avatar's clothes. I thought I'd give him some style. By accident he ended up naked and I felt a sudden burst of embarrasment. It gave a new dimension to dreaming about been naked. It was at that point I decided I'd stick to my first life...
Perhaps I will get stabbed on the No. 29 bus, perhaps I'll be short changed somewhere and perhaps I'll meet the love of my life in Waitrose (which won't happen as I'm a student and can't afford to shop there. Perhaps Asda.) but I think I'll take a risk in the real world.
Second Life offers something unique and I do think it is a picture of what the future will be. I can imagine the internet will become a virtual world. So instead of buying products for your Avatars, you will instead buy for your real life. Until that moment comes, I choose control panel, uninstall Second Life. Delete.
PS. Worth noting James Cameron's AVATAR movie coming out on the 18th Dec 2009
