Second Life?

[Keygrip]

I really did do a search on this - and found nothing, either here or Jet Blast.

There was a moderator thread running recently that was discussing (?) the merits (??) of "Second Life" (???).

I saw an editorial on it recently whilst flying in zoo class on a regional airline - and finally had a look at it.

It's advertising some six and a quarter MILLION subscribers.

Any PPRuNers subscribing? Anybody know what the it's all about?

[Turn It Off]

I did a bit of onlime gaming until recently, and, some of my team mates used to play second life. Basically its exactly that, a second life. You build yourself a character and get a job and stuff!

Some people actually make money on the game by buying land and reselling it, or, buy being ablke to build things from tools and weapons to computers or making clothes!!

I played it for all of about an hour and lost patience with it and went back to shooting people in Day Of Defeat : Source. Thats much more my type of thing!

TIO

[robdesbois]

Yeah I had a go at it for a while, it's true some people are actually making a good living from jobs in SL - property, entertainment, creating game enhancements.
It's an amazing idea (although the whole thing makes me wonder what's wrong with these people's 'Real Life' that they feel they're better off most of the time in SL), but I just found it all rather dull - the interface was nasty and I couldn't figure out what to actually go and do without spending money.
Worth an hour of faffing. If you really have nothing better to do.

[Bushfiva]

It's a virtual reality game that can be played at many pricing points, including free. Although there is a huge registered user base, there are way fewer regular users. Land and goods can be traded. The in-game currency is fully convertible thanks to a couple of exchanges that have set up. Quite a few companies are using it to research interaction in virtual communities: Dell is in there, as are Reuters, Toyota, Nissan, IBM and many others. Some of the experiments include quite interesting indeas: if you buy clothes for your avatar in-game, one shop gives you a discount on the same product in real life.

It's a good sandbox for experimenting if you're the sort of company that thinks people will spend a lot of time in virtual environments.

Some happenings in there are quite interesting: when the French Right Wing set up an office there, protesters started lobbing exploding pink pigs at them.

[planecrazy.eu]

I think the fact that only around 10% of users are "active" as such paints a picture of:

SecondLife is a great concept, looks interesting and is wanted by masses as such, but to do anything interesting on secondlife you need real $$$ and i cant justify that cash per month on playing an online version of the sims, as its pretty similar aint it.

I didnt bothering registering when i looked, Sony has there version coming out that you can access from a PC or PS3, may just be the ps3 i cant remember.

And if i read right, Microsoft have a vesion in the works for Vista and X360.

But this type of platform is pretty common in some ways, as theres runescape and a collection of other online rpg's.

Its great fun to kill an hour with 2nd life, but after that, you need your wallet out to carry on having fun...

[airbusthreetwenty]

Hey all;

Here is an interesting online doco on the subject for those who may be interested.

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/special_eds/20070319/


Cheers,

A320.