To me, Second Life is a 3D version of the internet - a place to socialize, a place for creating and building, and a place for social studies. Ultimately these different aspects come together to form the next natural step - a place for business. I’ve touched upon part of the basics of Second Life in my post A Cursory Look at Second Life.
As I described previously, you can meet up with your friend across the world and go virtual-clubbing. But wait - what shall you do about your avatar’s clothes? What about your avatar’s hair? Interestingly, most people are emotionally attached to their avatar because it represents them. Take Sheado’s comment “when my pants don’t render fast enough I do feel a tinge of embarassment =D”. I agree with that - I feel my avatar is an extension of me.
(This is NOT my avatar - she’s too sexy)
While your avatar represents you in Second (another) Life, you can control how you look. Wish you were skinny? tall? blonde? a horse? My avatar happens to look like me, and I won’t have it any other way (maybe this also explains why I’m emotionally tied to it).
You have total control of how you’re represented in the world because you have the power to create. Remember - anything you see in the world you have the ability to reproduce. Perhaps you have limited artistic or scripting talent that prevents you from creating the exact same thing, so what if you could buy it? The best thing about the buying process is that it’s completely automated - as a store owner, you don’t need to be present in order for the transaction to happen.
For an idea of what types of things people are selling, visit XStreetSL.com - Second Life commerce site. Typically, about $1 USD = $300L. I want to address the topic of “perceived value”. In this world, as a creator, it’s so easy to make copies of what you’re selling, therefore, things that are rare and expensive in the real world (diamonds, paintings, porsche cars, etc) are not necessarily expensive in Second Life. It’s pretty funny, but I was very excited about getting a free mansion when I joined Second Life! Hahaha, was I misguided!
From my experience, things that cost real life money in Second Life: uploading a sound ($10L), uploading an image ($10L), owning land and/or paying rent (necessary for selling things), advertisement (to get people to visit your land, much like getting people to visit your web site in real internet), and obviously, buying stuff from stores. Otherwise, if you don’t need any of these things, you can still experience Second Life completely for free.
About paintings - I have found some stores that sell paintings for ~$100L each. This is surprising to me - I figured paintings are expensive (in real life) because they are hard to reproduce. Moreover, if I could find this painting on a web site in real life (without any watermarks it), I can save the image and upload it for just $10L. Even worse, if their sample painting does not have a watermark marring the sample, I can capture it with a screenshot, clean up the image, and then upload it. Second Life, so far, has been apathetic about copyrights.
That’s why you will see Nintendo characters like Mario, Kirby, etc. being created and sold as avatars or pets. For more creative and unique (as well as hilarious) items check out Absolutely Amazing Second Life Discoveries.
About Second Life - let’s say I went to college and got a degree in computer science and just figured out that that is not what I’m interested in doing for the rest of my life. Maybe I wish I were more artsy, like a furniture designer. I can realize my artistic dreams virtually by opening up a furniture shop.
But who says my store needs to be constrained by being inside a building? I can have my furniture shop out on the lawn if I wished to. I’m not afraid of rain, termites, sun rays, or supplies (no trees were harmed in the making of these chairs). No, these are not my furniture shops.
Speaking of realism, have you ever bought clothes from signs hanging on the wall? Clothing and accessories are commonly sold from signs - it takes a lot of work (and prim space) to create a mannequin (that doesn’t look as good as a human avatar) to wear the clothes.
Prim space is important due to land restrictions - if the avatar is not wearing the object, it takes up land prim space, and there is a limit. Hence, a pet store will often sell their pets from signs but have sample pets rezzed on land like so.
THAT is my avatar. See all those shopping bags? I’m carrying them so they’re not factored into the land’s prim object limit. However, the black and white dogs behind me take up prim space, therefore, the less prims they are made out of, the better.
I’ll end this post by saying there have been successful real estate tycoons in Second Life - just Google “Ansche Chung“. Also, this is a valuable blog from a guy who was so successful in Second Life, he retired early (before he was 30!) check out Virtual World Business to see his thoughts, philosophies, and tips on how to have your own successful Second Life/virtual business.
No, I don’t regret getting a degree in computer science. Yes I am getting artistic freedom by creating stuff in Second Life. Creating what? I’ll leave that for a future post.
