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Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 2646
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, December 30, 2006 - 01:36 pm: | 
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Alright All You Black Computer Nerd Peoples!!! Don't say I've never told you anything!!!
Second Life
By Cade Metz
12.21.06
Like There.com, Second Life is an online alternate universe, a 3D virtual world that exists only on the Net. Using your very own 3D avatar, you can lead, yes, a second life, mimicking everything from a night on the town to a career in real estate. It's a way of interacting with other people, but it's also a way of building a new persona. And if you're serious about it, you can even make some money.
The basic look and feel of the service is very similar to There.com, combining the 3D graphics of a first-person shoot-'em-up with the conversational dynamic of an online chat room. The difference is that Second Life is a much larger service, with a virtual economy that's making an enormous impact on real-world bank accounts. In the past 60 days, according to the company, nearly 700,000 people have used the service, and at least one user claims to have made more than $1 million selling virtual goods and services.
Sound ridiculous? Maybe it is. But the fact of the matter is that Second Life has struck a chord with a pretty significant portion of the population. It started with the same basic idea as There.com, but its users—with almost complete control over the creation of content—have taken the service to the next level. The graphics aren't any better, but there are so many more possibilities.
The basic service is free. At sign-up, you choose an avatar from a handful of prebuilt animations, and in minutes, you're dropped into Second Life's virtual world, free to wander the nearly 95 "square miles" of 3D graphics without paying a penny. Second Life comprises three mainland locales and thousands of smaller islands, all teeming with people looking to socialize—at least in the virtual sense. When you walk up to someone, you can instantly text-chat, just as you would over IM. As I said in my There.com review, you can think of these virtual worlds as first-person chat-'em-ups.
Like There.com, Second Life gives you free rein to change the look and feel of your avatar. You can become almost anyone you want to be. You can change your clothing, hair, and even skin, and you can be a bit more, well, risqué than you would at the PG-13 There.com. Second Life is open only to people 18 years old and older.
Unlike There.com, the core service does not allow for voice chat, but companies such as Vivox are offering voice-chat apps that tie into the service. Even so, there's something to be said for the anonymity associated with text chat. It's harder to become someone else if Second Lifers can actually hear your voice.
Linden Dollars
At its most basic, Second Life serves as a kind of chat room on steroids. But if you really want a second life, you'll need Linden dollars, virtual currency named for the creators of the service, Linden Labs. With Linden dollars, you can purchase anything from virtual clothes and virtual food to virtual land.
When you sign up for an account, you'll receive 250 Linden dollars simply by entering your credit card number. Your card isn't charged at that point, but the company knows that with your number in hand, it will be easier to charge you in the future. If you want additional Linden dollars, you can purchase them at any time. For $9.95 a month, you can also sign up for a premium account that provides 300 Linden a week.
In this virtual world, exchange rates will vary—yes, that's actually the case—but right now, $1 buys you about 270 Linden dollars on the open market. No one signs up for a premium account merely for the Linden dollars. Rather, they do it to gain access to real estate. Switching to a premium account is the only way to buy land in Second Life. And we all know how important land is. Once you purchase land, you can build a house, furnish it, stock the refrigerator, and invite friends for a cookout. Buying land gives you an anchor in this virtual world. Otherwise, you're just a wandering spirit.
The flipside is that you can also make money in this virtual world. Linden Lab has seeded the basic 3D environment, but in effect, Second Life is built and owned entirely by its residents. Once you purchase land, you can sell it at a profit. You can also build and sell all sorts of other goods and services. Linden provides simple 3D tools for creating almost anything.
The design tools are wonderfully simple. You begin with "primitive" geometric shapes, and you're free to color them, change their texture, slap on JPEGs, expand them, attach them together, and more. You can build anything from a moth to a mausoleum. Adding behaviors can take a bit of scripting—Linden offers its own Java-like language—but with a few lines of code, you can instruct objects to move from place to place, play music, respond to commands, and so on. Having trouble learning the ins and outs of these tools? No problem. Tutorials are available from Linden Labs—and from other users.
You keep the stuff you make for yourself or you can sell it. You can open a retail store or start a house-building business, run a casino or become a landscaper. The possibilities are almost endless. With turnover of more than $650,000 a day, it's obvious that numerous individuals and even companies are using Second Life to make money.
Real-World Implications
In December, a Chinese woman named Ailin Graef announced that she had amassed virtual real-estate holdings worth over $1 million. Her 3D avatar, Anshe Chung, made the cover of Business Week.
Meanwhile, big-name corporations are using Second Life's virtual world for marketing purposes. Cisco recently opened up a "virtual headquarters" and shows off real-world products in its virtual amphitheater. Shoemakers such as Adidas and Reebok are selling virtual shoes. And car makers such as Pontiac and Toyota are selling virtual cars. Starwood has even built a virtual version of its new hotel chain.
Then there's the virtual charity work. Organizations such as Save the Children use Second Life to raise real dollars. If you purchase a "virtual yak" at the Save the Children "Yak Shack," you're contributing real money toward real yaks for very real children in Tibet. Laugh if you like. But at the end of the day, those Tibetan children get milk, wool, and much-needed help in plowing fields. That's as real as it gets.
Second Life's 3D graphics are on a par with those of There.com, but when I ran the service on a midrange laptop, it did seem a tad slower than There.com. The system requirements are pretty hefty, and Linden is quite specific about the graphics cards it supports. You may have problem if you're not using a fairly new card from nVidia or ATI. It's also worth noting that, at least for the moment, Second Life will not run on ATI-equipped machines that use Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system. ATI has yet to offer OpenGL drivers for the new OS.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2075949,00.asp
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 6335
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, December 30, 2006 - 02:21 pm: |
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This is fascinating but kinda scary. Will there come a time when everybody will simply occupy a little cubicle in the sphere of virtual reality, freed up to do this by computerized servants that will perform hum-drum tasks? In any case, this wave of the future promises unlimited possibilities and would certainly provide a way to escape one's worldly cares, enabling the pursuit of exhilirating adventure or the seduction of romantic fantasy. It would also provide pedophiles with an unlimited supply of virtual children to molest. But, to each his own. |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 2647
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, December 30, 2006 - 02:37 pm: |
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I have known about Sim Worlds for awhile and was aware that there was money to be had by making, buying and selling sim products, but I had no idea it was this huge. There was a show on MSNBC a few days ago and when I heard that people were making $100,000+ per year in REAL DOLLARS, it caught my attention. Check it out when you're not doing anything. It's fun.
BTW - Children are not permitted in Second Life. It's an adult environment and many areas are rated mature. There is sex in Sim World, after all. And criminal behavior is not permitted so you don't need to worry about getting mugged or kidnapped. 
Here's the link to the real estate millionaire's website:
http://www.anshechung.com
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 6341
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, December 30, 2006 - 02:56 pm: |
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The whole concept boggles my mind! |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 2648
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, December 30, 2006 - 03:07 pm: |
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I've already set up a couple of in-world (sim) businesses and one real world business that feeds off of the sims. Because I shall not let such an easy breezy money making opportunity slip thru my sweet little fingers  oh hell no!
I just thought I'd share this information with the rest of y'all.
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Yvettep
Veteran Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 1520
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, December 30, 2006 - 06:43 pm: |
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Mzuri, I find this fascinating. A few years ago I went to a lecture by an academic economist who wrote a journal article about this phenomenon. At first he couldn't get it published in any reputable journal. It got circulated around, he became somewhat of a cult figure. THen, I think "WIred" magazine picked it up. He then became "It" in his formal ecomomist circles, got tenure, and a new lab set up to study just virtual economies.
Good luck with your own $im-endeavors! |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 2657
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, December 30, 2006 - 07:43 pm: |
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Yvette - Thank you! I invite you to check out SecondLife as well. It's still relatively new so there are tons of opportunities |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 2677
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, December 31, 2006 - 05:50 pm: |
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This is an article about the first person to generate $1M USD from SL
Make-believe money maker
By James Fontanella
November 22 2006 17:41
If you dream of owning a desert island, then Anshe Chung may have just the thing for you. The catch is that you can only reach your private island through the gateway of your personal computer, and the plot of land is composed entirely of pixels.
For Ms Chung is a virtual property developer who sells and rents land and buildings in Second Life, an online simulation game that is creating a wave of opportunities for businesses to make real money online.
She is a pioneer of the Second Life economy, which is today worth more than $60m and growing at 15 per cent a month. Her business now produces $2.5m in real-world annual revenues.
The Second Life phenomenon is not just attracting computer enthusiasts and hard-core gamers: international brands such as Toyota, Vodafone and IBM have launched virtual outlets in the game to advertise their products to its 1m users.
Standing in a Chinese-style house set in an idyllic landscape, the computer- generated Ms Chung makes an unusual interviewee. The flesh-and-blood person who created and controls this “avatar”, or visual persona, is Ailin Gräf, a Chinese-born teacher who lives in a quiet suburb of Frankfurt.
A connoisseur of online simulation games, Ms Gräf spent many years mastering the rules of virtual worlds before spotting her opportunity. “Before I started ‘playing’ Second Life I played other online role-play games, but the money was virtual,” she recalls. “In those games, money was not convertible [to real money] and there were clear rules which separated the virtual life from the real life.”
This changed in 2003 when Linden Lab, a San Francisco-based game developer, launched Second Life and gave players ownership rights over the items they created or bought and the right to sell them for a profit in real dollars.
Second Life gives its users a weekly “stipend” allowing them to invest, trade and offer services for worldly bucks. “My initial investment in this world was $9.95,” Ms Gräf says.
As a teacher in her “first life”, she started earning extra cash by offering lessons on game play to novice Second Life ‘residents’. Ms Gräf also used her computer programming skills to create and sell programmes that give movement to avatars, so that the characters can dance, kick or stand on their heads.
To sell her animation services, Ms Gräf bought land from Linden Lab and opened a shop from which her character, Anshe Chung, could market them.
It was then that the larger entrepreneurial opportunity struck her – Ms Gräf realised that few players in the game had her ability to transform bare pixels into a functional virtual building.
“People who were looking for land often did not find the type of land they wanted on the market or they simply did not have the programming skills to develop it,” she says.
In June 2004, Ms Gräf and her husband decided to put their knowledge of virtual reality into action by starting a Second Life real estate business. They opened an outlet called Anshe Chung Studio and bought more land from Linden Lab using the virtual money Ms Gräf had made from selling animations.
She then developed the bare pixels of land in “Dreamland”, as she named her territory, that could be sold to other players for a reasonable profit.
Using three-dimensional computer modelling tools, Ms Gräf created land and landscapes, including vegetation and infrastructure such as roads and public buildings. “We added value to the land we bought [from Linden Lab],” she says.
In the early stages, she marketed the business through local campaigns in the Second Life community, placing advertisements in the Second Life Magazine, and designing eye-catching “On Sale” or “For Rent” placards on her land.
By August 2004, Ms Gräf says, her business had become so profitable she was the richest person in Second Life. However, she chose not to convert her profits, which were in Linden dollars, Second Life’s synthetic currency, into real dollars. Instead she continued reinvesting in new virtual land and development.
Only in 2005, with the business expanding quickly, did Ms Gräf take money out of Second Life. However, her first real-world investment was entirely focused on expanding her online business.
In January this year she outsourced part of her workload to China, hiring 10 local computer programmers and launching a virtual real estate trading and development company.
“I decided to move to China because of its affordable labour and because the [Chinese] government welcomed us with a red carpet,” she says. “They were very appreciative of our plans to train people and create real value from a virtual business.”
The choice was also determined by the sophistication of the Chinese market. “China is far ahead of Germany when it comes to understanding virtual world economies, as more than half a million people already make a living playing online games in China,” she says.
Ms Gräf has assembled eight teams of programmers to assist with her expansion plans. They are also helping to fight growing competition from others eager to exploit the game’s emerging opportunities.
Each team has between four and 15 members. Five are based in Wuhan and concentrate on creating new landscapes, basic infrastructure, houses and furniture, as well as offering round-the-clock customer assistance for real estate services. Others handle marketing and future projects.
One of the most important tasks for the business is to secure it from potential hackers. This prompts Ms Gräf to reveal her greatest concern – the lack of a governing body in Second Life that can protect her business and the legal rights of residents.
Although Ms Gräf’s business has never been penalised by the “governor” of Second Life – Philip Rosedale, the 28-year-old founder of Linden Lab – she worries that the risks her business faces “are comparable to a business operating in any non- democratic country”.
Yet while the entrepreneur says that Linden Lab, which represents the only agent of law enforcement in the virtual world, could harm her business if it wished to do so, she also acknowledges that this is unlikely; it is not in the interest of Linden Labs to destabilise Second Life’s commercial sector, she says, as Mr Rosedale “has to be accountable to his investors”.
Ms Gräf also offers a warning for those who might think it easy to emulate the development of her virtual property empire. “People who come from the real world and invest real money here, in almost all cases that I have seen, failed badly,” she says.
“Those who come here with a stock market investor mindset and think they can easily take a slice of this booming economy are wrong.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/3e21a6ca-7a37-11db-8838-0000779e2340.html |
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