blog.sparetomato.com

There has been an awful lot of media attention in the last few months about the ‘virtual reality simulator’ Second Life. Mainly articles about how people have made or spent ‘real world’ money in a virtual environment.

This is a far cry from the reports of Mr. Zhu who was killed in real life when he ’stole’ a virtual sword and sold it.

The same article linked above mentions that in 2003, the Internet Games section on eBay saw over £5m in transactions. Not all of this was for virtual assets, but there is no doubt that there are people daft enough to spend real money in a virtual economy.

As a World of Warcraft player, I’ve received in-game mail offering me virtual currency for my real-world cash. Some regard this practice of ‘gold farming’ cheating, others justify it by saying that because they work, they don’t get to spend as much time in-game as other people, and therefore need the virtual cash to spend on in game equipment just to keep up with their peers.

But what is the appeal of Second Life?

Part of the appeal would be the fact that you can create almost anything - from in-world art and clothing, to minigames. you can then sell these items on to other players for virtual money. However, in order to get the virtual money, you need to put in your real money.

Like a fruit machine, you get a sniff of some of the prizes for putting your money in, and you feel compelled to put more in. It can become an addiction.

I’m not saying that World of Warcrack is any different - I know people who are addicted to that game, and you do pay a £9 a month subscription to the online service. However, I believe that what you get for your money is far superior to any other online game. £9 a month is the equivalent of buying a new PC game every three months, which was average for me before I started playing the game. However, since buying the game, I’ve not bought a single PC game, and I’ve not been tempted to.

I’ve played Second Life, and in comparison, it is light-years behind WoW. It is slow, glitchy, and the avatars walk like the bizzare offspring of Kryten and Robocop. It is possible to walk and even fly(!) through the environment (and possible to fall through the world too). This is partly the problem in that the virtual environment is all user-created, wheras the Blizzard Empire employs hundreds of professional programmers to ensure that the floor is as solid as it can be.

SL is advertised as a life simulator (not disimilar to The Sims), and the appeal of adding your own user-created content to what is effectively an open-source world is appealing. However it is also time-consuming, and unless you have a super-powerful PC, it is slow…

However, like a rabid murloc, the media have jumped on the SL bandwagon, building it up and overhyping it. This leading to more people trying it, and the game world getting more cluttered and disorganised. The appeal of making money by ‘playing games’ is obvious, but the truth of the matter is, that aside from these few people who have made and spent a fortune in the game, the rest of the populace have not been as successful. But the end result is no matter how successful these virtual entrepreneurs have been, the only winner is the creator of the game, who has achieved more publicity than they ever thought possible, and are now actively encouraging real-world businesses to advertise in game. How much longer before SL becomes the equivalent of a 3D MySpace?

It could also be the fact that it doesn’t yet have a Mac Client that puts me off SL :p