Second Life?
The internet is certainly a wonderful place full of interesting opportunities for enrichment and entertainment. Among these, there are so-called “Second Life” games. These wonderful pieces of internet-based software allow you to effectively leave this world and immerse yourself in a virtual alternate dimension where you can pursue just about anything you can in this world, only without ever leaving the comforts of your home.
For those of you not familiar with this - and I’ll use the game aptly called “Second Life” as my example - the basic idea of the game (more of a simulator, really) is that you join up, download the free software and get your free account and then create what’s called an avatar. This avatar is basically a virtual representation of you which you can create, edit, and custom-design to be as close to the real you as you like - or as far from it.
Once you’ve got your avatar, you can begin “playing” around in this world. Among other things, you can chat with people, explore exotic places with them, buy and sell land, attend concerts, build any object you can imagine with their advanced polygon construction tool, open up stores to sell services, and make some good money at it.
That’s right, you heard me correctly, you can make money at it. And I don’t just mean the game’s “Linden” dollars, I’m talking actual, real-world money. How is this possible? Well, Second Life features a thriving online economy which trades millions worth of $US every month in its various marketplaces. This economy is all based on the players and how much they buy and sell. In this way, people can actually win and spend large sums of REAL money in a completely virtual world.
The question then arises…is this a good thing or is it leading to something bad? People have argued that it’s a good way to escape the real world for a while and enjoy the freedom of the world that Second Life can offer, but then there are those who take such things to extremes and try to devote their entire lives to it.
Depending on how open you are to new ideas, this could be either a positive step in the direction of virtual reality systems of the future, or a negative step away from the meaning of life and the value of appreciating a natural existence. I guess time will tell who is right.
For more information on Second Life, visit their site at http://secondlife.com/
December 15th, 2006 at 11:21 pm
…interesting…