Get a Second Life?

From The Observer "How to get the life you really want"

David Smith, technology correspondent
Sunday July 9, 2006
The Observer


A loft in New York City. The singer Regina Spektor is performing songs from her new album. People wander in, sit down and discuss the music. Everything seems normal. But then so did life for people in The Matrix

Like the world inside the hit Hollywood film, the loft is a 3D computer animation - but in this case it exists only on the internet. The audience is made up of virtual representations of real people. The real people sit at their computer screens around the world, living their lives through avatars, the characters that appear on the screen. Regina Spektor and her music are real people selling themselves in a virtual world. Her company, Warner Brothers, has decided that releasing her album to this 'virtual listening party' is the marketing strategy of the future.

This is Second Life, the social networking website now recruiting up to 3,000 members a day, attracting the interest of American politicians and threatening to give MySpace a run for its money. Second Life has more than 300,000 residents, an estimated third of them British. Some demonstrate their talents in designing virtual buildings or fashions. Some form mutual support groups because in the real world they have a disability or are victims of rape. Some run businesses and convert the profits into money in the real world, and some do the same for charity. They do this chatting and trading under an assumed identity - their second life.

All this is played out in a sprawling virtual country, with its own simulated cities, streets and red light districts. Participants choose their avatar's identity - potentially changing sex and ethnicity - then guide it wherever they choose: down streets, into nightclubs, gatecrashing weddings. When they meet another avatar they can start a conversation. And so friendships, love affairs and entire subcultures develop.

There is nothing new about what are known in industry as MMORPGs: Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, in which thousands of people play at once. But the most popular, World of Warcraft, is a fantasy of swords and sorcery, while variants such as The Sims also have a defined endgame. Second Life, however, is not a game. It is an internet community, where people can flirt, do business or go off and build their own virtual Las Vegas. Women make up 43 per cent of the residents, and the average age is 32.

'It's the best combination of social networking, chatrooms and a 3D experience,' said Justin Bovington, chief executive of Rivers Run Red, a London branding agency helping to shape Second Life. 'It's such an immersive experience that people get it quicker than anything else. We'd been looking for the broadband killer application, and Second Life is it.'

Last month Regina Spektor's album was the first virtual record release by a major company. BBC Radio 1 has 'rented' a tropical island within Second Life for a year, where the world's biggest virtual music festival was staged in parallel with the One Big Weekend event. While people attended the real concert in Dundee, the music by Franz Ferdinand, Pink and others was streamed live into Second Life, where 6,000 avatars crowded around a virtual stage, hosted by an avatar of DJ Chris Moyles and stewarded by computerised bouncers. Each left with a virtual digital radio to carry about inside Second Life.

The premiere of X-Men 3: The Last Stand at the Cannes Film Festival was also streamed into Second Life. It is rumoured that a senior US politician - possibly Hillary Clinton - is planning to set up a campaign office within Second Life, using a virtual town hall to address young voters. There is now a virtual Camp Darfur aimed at raising awareness of the real genocide.

Second Life is built from user-generated content: its software provides the tools to design a dress, construct a building or sell an avatar's body for virtual sex. Second Life's population includes a wedding planner, pet manufacturer, tattooist, nightclub owner, car maker, fashion designer, jewellery maker, architect, tour guide, and property speculator. There is a detective agency, which can be hired to check whether your virtual spouse is cheating with a virtual lover - such cases are reported to have caused marital rows over whether online cheating counts as real-life cheating.

From these services, an entire economy has sprung, based around Second Life's currency, Linden Dollars. This is not so virtual, as Linden Dollars can be converted into US dollars and back again at fluctuating exchange rates. Just as thousands of people now make a living off the online auction site eBay, many are doing the same by trading virtual goods and services on Second Life. Anshe Chung, the avatar of a Chinese-born language teacher living in Germany, has a virtual land development business with holdings worth an estimated £135,000. In January, transactions between residents of Second Life were worth £1.5m.

Linden Lab, the San Francisco company which launched Second Life in 2003, has rules against offensive behaviour in public, such as racial slurs or overtly sexual antics. Its punishment is unique. 'If someone is regularly abusive, we have a prison,' said vice-president Dave Fleck. 'They are put in a cornfield and made to watch black and white television Fifties public service announcements in a constant loop.'

Alayne Wartell, 42, of Harrogate, met her real-life husband in Second Life and now works full-time within it, earning a living from her virtual shoe and flower shop. 'In the beginning people got involved because they liked making things,' she said. 'But now it's become very social, a place to hang out with your friends.'