Tired of an overload of errands, crappy chores, severe overwork and the other ‘evils’ of our crazily hectic modern lives? Maybe it’s time for a new one… for the uninitiated, ‘Second Life’ is a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) where citizens chat, play games, be mall rats, go dancing, and even lounge around on their own island paradise… basically, where you can avoid the things that drive you nuts about real life. Recently Second Life hit the millionth resident milestone… that’s a lot of people enjoying fake lives.
Added to this, real live companies are either doing real marketing or earning real dollars in this fake virtual world. Big businesses like Sony, Nissan, Toyota and Adidas, promote and hock their virtual wares… and recently, Reuters has sent a live in-world news reporter to staff a virtual news office. However, like real life, there’s not many free lunches… residents earn and spend their own ‘linden dollars’ - which conveniently can be converted from US$. In total, residents spend a combined $500,000 US each day just by clicking their mouse…. yes, even your fake life doesn’t come cheap! If you’re intrigued enough to download a copy of the program and gave it a whirl, it seems like a glorified chat/game client - quite a few jumps up from some of the early avatar-based chat programs around in the late 90s, but still a chat program at its core. This said, it looks like the Second Life creators are onto something… if you go by the stats, almost 30% of students were unhappy with their current lives last year. Given a virtual world where you can control your own gender, your appearance, and your ‘life’… plus, there’s no bosses around… maybe real-life heaven is just a virtual world running on some server in the middle of nowhere??
