Second Life

If you haven't experienced Second Life yourself yet, don't get your hopes up too high about this great new game, because it is not a game. If you enter Second Life thinking you're going to play some great game you will probably be disappointed. If you work your way past that and the often quirky feeling controls, you might discover something else though, that Second Life is quite unique. It's not a game just like the web is not a game. It's 3D-internet, sort of.

A lot of places in Second Life are pretty boring. You'll find yourself clicking on thumbs-up icons on a world map, to visit a Popular Place, only to end up in some casino where no-one is playing but lot's of avatars are just sitting or standing there, their Real Life alter ego's presumably not even at the keyboard. This phenomena is called camping, where land owners actually pay visitors to spend time there, because it will boost their traffic and thus their search rankings. There are more vibrant places, but there too, interaction is mostly limited to chat, having your avatar get into some 'pose' (sitting, having a drink, relaxing and of course a multitude of sex poses) or buying stuff.

This probably makes Second Life appear pretty dull, but actually it's not. It has that certain quality that people may remember of the early web. Even though the current state of affairs isn't that impressive, people realize that this is something new that has a lot of potential. And although interaction is pretty limited at the moment, the potential is there for it to grow. Just like the early web consisted mostly of static pages and the odd contact form here and there, the potential was there for it to grow and evolve, and it did.

And there is that other thing. That addictive thing that makes you want to see what comes next. And something always comes next, because Second Life's world is continually expanding, growing and evolving. And it all happens very fast. I remember buying a 512 square meter plot of land in an empty grassy area one night. When I logged in the next morning I could hardly believe my eyes. My parcel of land was surrounded by buildings and construction of all sorts, all created there overnight.

And that in itself is very interesting. I bought a plot of land in a certain area, only to find it totally transformed the next day. Others too had bought land there and had built all sorts of things, some less beautiful then others, to put it mildly. After spending some more time in Second Life I realized that people there where doing the same kind of things as happen in RL. They buy lot's of land so they can control the scenery. For example, one Second Life inhabitant named Price Pyle buys large pieces of land, terraforms them (shaping the ground), put's roads in them and then sells pieces of it at a time. Most roads survive after all is sold. If you would want to build a road in a simulator (Area of the world, also called a sim) that had many owners, it would be very difficult. Everybody wants to have a piece of land at the road, but no one wants the road on their land, it should be on the neigbour's land right? What Price Pile does is sell parcels of land that have a piece of one lane of the road on it. The neightbour has the piece of the other lane et cetera. People actually pay more money for that kind of land, because it has been pre-developed for them. Price Pyle is acting like a real estate developer, and all new land owners share the cost of the road, because that is how he designed it.

It's market economy at work. If you have played and enjoyed Sim City type of games, Second Life might be something for you, but you would have to please real people that actually chat to you and complain if something is wrong!

And that's another interesting aspect of Second Life. It's real-time (well.. I'll discuss 'lag' later) and you're all there together. You are now reading this blog post, but who else is 'here'? In Second Life you actually see them... standing there. It has a presence that does not exist on the web that could be an opportunity to get past the FAQ section on the website most 'Support' links lead to, to the kind of customer intimacy that was previously only associated with real life stores.

Imagine a webshop where pressing the help button would result in a chat dialog with a store clerk. What is the shipping cost on this item? Do you support such-and-such creditcard? The things you sometimes want to ask when considering a purchase, but can't, forcing you to do 'work' digging up this info, instead of having 'fun' shopping. Now imagine the web shop being fully 3D, allowing you to walk around the items for sale, examine them from all sides, asking questions to store clerks that you can see standing there... I really see opportunity here. When I ran my web company all clients that wanted a 3D web shop for a few hundred euros drove me crazy. Now, with Second Life, i can actually offer them just that.

I could go on for a while, but if you really haven't experienced Second Life yet I don't want to take up more of your time than I already have. Go try it yourself! Now! :-)
And remember, look beyond the surface... the future looks bright indeed.