What Is Second Life? It's Not A Game.
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From the Desk of Norman The Ripper.
EDITORIAL
== What is Second Life? ==
I discovered Second Life a little over three years ago while chaperoning a middle school field trip to The Museum of Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. I peeked into the last two rooms of the museum before anyone else got there. These two rooms exhibited the future of moving images.
I slipped unnoticed into the darkened first room. An elderly woman was playing a video game with a joystick, a big button, a huge screen and a gigantic smile on her face.
She was controlling her avatar. An avatar is a manifestation of a deity or a person. Human beings have been using avatars for a very long time. Cave drawings are avatars! So are Egyptian Hieroglyphics!
An avatar in Second Life (known as an “avi”) is the manifestation of a woman or a man, a boy or a girl.
I watched the giant screen intently. A female avatar named “Annabelle” was flying over a large English castle on top of a hill overlooking the sea. She was dressed in an elaborate Victorian dress. She was young and she was beautiful. She was made of pixels.
I curiously watched the elderly woman controlling Annabelle. Her frail fingers performed magic with a joystick and a button. Her smile formed deeper lines in her face. Each line had a story of its own. I wondered if any of her stories ever involved a beautiful young woman and a castle. Could this game be a reminder of things that have passed?
Then I noticed her aging body. Could this game become a new life to come? One where you don't grow old? Where you can fly? Where anything is possible?!
What is Second Life?
Later that evening I created my first avatar to find out.
Second Life is a 3D virtual world where every avatar on the screen is a real person and every place where that avatar visits is built by people just like you and me. It is free to play and has over 21.3 million accounts registered. The actual active user database is estimated to be around 600,000. Concurrent user login averages are 30,000 to 60,000. This means that the Second Life community of online “residents” continuously rivals the size of the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands or Bermuda.
Second Life is a user-created virtual world meaning that the “Residents” of Second Life are also the designers of Second Life. Any Resident can be a game designer. Residents can sell their designs, services or virtual properties on the Second Life Marketplace to earn ''Lindens''. The ''Linden'' can be exchanged for US dollars or other currencies on the market-based currency exchange called the Linden Dollar Exchange. Residents can also buy ''Lindens'' directly.
At the core of Second Life is a company called Linden Research, Inc. Residents refer to it as Linden Labs. Linden Labs created Second Life back in 1999. In 2008 Residents awarded the company with the Emmy for Second Life in the user-generated content and game modification category. In 2012, Linden Labs announced two new products, ''Creatorverse'' for the iPad and a desktop application called ''Patterns''.
I recently logged in for the Second Life 10-Year Anniversary Celebration. The Lindens were definitely celebrating. Their reason: They’re here to stay. Some friends got married in-world. Their reason: Same reason.
What is Second Life?
It’s not a game! That’s for sure.
Norman The Ripper
--[[User:NormanTheRipper Resident|NormanTheRipper Resident]] 04:25, 11 August 2013 (PDT)