As online communities go, it’s hard to get more ambitious or, frankly, bizarre than Second Life. Isn’t it all a bit passé, though? Sarah Dobbs looks into the state of the virtual world…
Remember Second Life? Sure you do. When the online virtual world was launched by Linden Lab back in 2003, it was meant to be revolutionary. Not quite a game, not quite a chatroom, Second Life was supposed to represent, well, a second life. It was a forum for users to reinvent themselves, to create avatars that represented themselves – physically accurate or not – and meet other people. It caused any number of headlines; couples met in Second Life and got married, fraudsters found victims in Second Life and ripped them off, psychologists debated whether or not spending time in Second Life was healthy.
Then, well, most people sort of lost interest. Once Second Life was no longer the next big thing it just became a thing, and users moved on. Facebook launched, Twitter launched, people got into Instagram and Snapchat, and Minecraft filled the creative sandbox niche for people who missed the world-building bits. We forgot all about Second Life. Or did we? After all, Second Life still exists. So who’s still using it, and what for? Let’s find out…
A Second Look
Since there’s nothing like a bit of first-hand research, I decided to log into Second Life and take a look around for myself. Having picked an avatar more or less at random and doing zero customisation to her, I jumped straight in and landed on a beach where various other people seemed to be standing around – but all of them had “away” signs floating above their avatars. Which was a bit disappointing, but Second Life is a sprawling world with lots of different locations, so I optimistically assumed I’d be able to find people elsewhere.
My first teleport destination was another beach, supposedly a social location. And sure enough, there were a group of people standing on a deck chatting to one another. The conversation wasn’t going anywhere, though; one guy was trying to sell something called ‘fairy weed’ and other people were either asking him what it was, or laughing it off. I loitered around them for a bit but it wasn’t much fun, so it was time to find more people.
Clicking through the various “editors’ pick” locations didn’t find many other Second Lifers, though. Whole landscapes were barren of people and, while the scenery was nice, it was a bit disappointing to see there were only one or two other people in any given place. Granted, it was about 2pm on a weekday when I went looking, which probably isn’t peak Second Life time, but still, I thought there’d be more people somewhere.
Eventually, I found them: in the Adult locations. Having teleported into a beach party, only to find I wasn’t welcome because my avatar didn’t have a bikini, I watched a few animated dance routines, and clicked through the other populated worlds. None of them sounded my cup of tea, and after accidentally dropping into a pretty disturbing one, I logged out in a hurry. As investigative journalism goes, it’s not the most insightful, but I did find out one thing: there are people still in Second Life, but it’s the specialised worlds that are getting traffic.
A Second Chance
Admittedly, one anecdote about during a random one-hour period doesn’t tell you much, but trying to pin down any facts on exactly what’s going on in Second Life at the moment is trick because there isn’t much information, and what there is seems contradictory. Here’s what we do know: back in 2013 Linden lab claimed more than 36 million Scond Life accounts have been set up, and users had jointly spent the equivalent of 217,266 years logged in (about two days per person, roughly); at its peak, it had 1.1 million active users (and, as of this March, it had around 990,000).
That last comparison is interesting, as it isn’t a devastating drop in numbers. It makes one wonder why everything seems to have gone so quiet on the Second Life front, though, and why Linden Lab stopped publishing its once-regular reports on user levels.
Frustratingly, it’s also tough to know who those 990,000 users might be. Demographics for such services are always a bit unreliable, because all anyone knows is what users disclose. You’re required to fill in a bit of info when you first sign up for Second Life, including your date of birth, but no-one actually checks, so there’s nothing to stop you lying.
Second Thoughts
What we do know, though, is that the brands and institutions who flocked to Second Life when it was being reported as the essential place for online networking have all but given up on the platform. Reuters used to have a virtual office in Second Life, with two reporters on the beat reporting on Second Life news, but that was closed down in 2008. American Apparel opened a shop in Second Life, but closed it after a year. And Harvard Law School held an experimental class in Second Life, but several students had trouble accessing the class thanks to the school’s firewalls, and the experiment was abandoned. There are plenty more stories like those – brands steamed in all vigour and enthusiasm, then realised it was harder or less profitable to run events in Second Life than in real life, and steamed back out again.
Despite the lack of headlines and perceived interest from the general public, though, Second Life still seems to be making money. According to Linden Lab, there are 1.2 million transactions carried out daily in its virtual world; despite the global financial crisis, the exchange rate still stands at 247 Linden dollars to the US dollar. At the time of writing, the daily market data showed a volume of L$18,330,581 – meaning about $74,213 had changed hands inside Second Life that day.
What’s really changed might be perception. When Second Life first launched, it was exciting and new and everyone wanted a piece of it. Then its limits started to become obvious, and, well, human nature kicked in, with people looking for the same kind of illicit thrills in their avatars as they might fantastise about in real life.
A couple of years ago, following a staff reshuffle at Linden Lab (Philip Rosedale stepped down as CEO and was replaced by Mark Kingdon, then Rosedale took over again, then resigned again to be replaced by Bob Komin) Second Life was re-organised and ostensibly cleaned up. In-world casinos were shut down, and porn-related material was shunted off to a different part of the ‘world’. Did anything really change though? Nope. People were still using Second Life for its explicit content, but instead of that being everywhere, it was sectioned off, leaving the rest a of virtual ghost town. Nothing really stepped in to fill the gap, and while regular users still met up with their friends there, the buzz was gone. It wasn’t exciting any more.
A Second Try
That might be set to change soon, though. Linden Lab is working on something new that might re-ignite all that Second Life excitement all over again. According to a press release it issued last year, the new project is going to be a “next generation virtual world” in the spirit of Second Life. Again, users will be able to create anything they want, and those who generate popular content will, we’re told, be able to monetise it within the community.
Those who’ve stuck with Second Life over the years don’t need to panic, though. Linden Lab has moved to assure them that this doesn’t mean it’s planning to abandon its first virtual world. It’s making it clear that this new version will be mostly compatible with the original Second Life, but will take advantage of the ways in which technology has changed since 2003. There’s even meant to be integration with current virtual reality cutting edge, in the form of the Oculus Rift – which harks back to Linden founder Philip Rosedale’s original vision for the project as a 3D virtual world users could move around inside via a virtual reality headset.
Oculus Rift has done a pretty good job of grabbing headlines of its own over the last year or so, so the tie in might well attract more attention to Linden’s new baby. The newest new CEO, Ebbe Altberg, reckons the upcoming iteration of Second Life will be more robust, more accessible, and way more appealing to the world at large than what is currently on offer. So, while Second Life might feel like a ghost town right now, Linden Lab will be hoping it won’t be leaving it that way for long.
Still, unless you’re into virtual beach parties with explicitly named avatars, it’s probably worth waiting for the reboot before paying it another visit.
Second Life Timeline
1999 – Philip Rosedale set up Linden Lab. Initially, he imagined creating wearable hardware that would let the user interact with a virtual world through a headset; that vision was eventually replaced with a computer based model.
2003 – The first iteration of Second Life launched!
2004 – Second Life user Anshe Chung (real name: Ailin Graef) starts developing animations and selling them to other users. She would go on to become Second Life’s first millionaire – making $1,000,000 purely through selling virtual goods.
2006 – BusinessWeek featured Anshe Chung on its cover, and mainstream coverage of Second Life came rolling in. As a result, Second Life’s sign up rate skyrocketed.
2006 – Twitter launched, and Facebook also opened itself up to anyone over 13 – not just university students – and as they grew in popularity, Second Life started to fall out of favour.
2008 – Second Life won a Technology And Engineering Emmy Award, but Philip Rosedale stepped down as CEO to be replaced by Mark Kingdon.
2009 – Second Life hit its peak, with more users than ever before.
2010 – Things started to look wobbly, and Linden Lab laid off some 30% of its employees in an effort to cut costs. Mark Kingdon stepped down, replaced temporarily by Philip Rosedale again, before Bob Komin became CEO.
2014 – Ebbe Altberg was hired at CEO, and vowed to lead the company into a new stage of growth – his plans included creating a next-gen virtual reality version of Second Life.
The Linden Dollar
Part of the reason Second Life was so interesting to the media was that people made money from it. It wasn’t just that people were using it to communicate – they were using it to generate an income by selling things that didn’t really exist. Existing solely in the virtual world, independent of any country, Second Life has its own economy – and its own currency, the Linden dollar.
To buy or sell things inside Second Life, users need to buy Linden dollars using real money, and then use Linden dollars to buy goods or services. Like in many MMORPGs, Second Life users can buy custom items for their avatars, like clothes, body modifications, or even pets; they can also buy custom animations that let their avatars do things or move in new ways.
And then there’s the real estate market. Land isn’t unlimited in Second Life, though Linden Lab can make more of it, but people have made fortunes by buying empty plots of land inside the virtual world, developing it by building virtual buildings – sometimes extremely elaborate ones – and then either selling it on or renting it out. The better you are at creating in-world content, then, the more money you can make out of it by finding people who want what you’ve got.
Turning Linden dollars back into real-world cash involves going back through the currency exchange, LindeX. Despite the massive fluctuations on the real markets, especially during the financial crisis that began in 2008, the rate of exchange on the LindeX exchange has remained pretty stable – in the region of 250 Linden dollars per American dollar.
Think about this system for too long and you might find your head spinning. It’s a made-up currency that people actually spend time and effort earning, and then turning into real money; it’s also an economy that can’t really be affected by much, beyond the spending power of Second Life’s user base (at least no-one’s going to starve if they don’t have any money to spend inside Second Life for a few weeks). Recent figures are hard to come by, but in 2009, Second Life’s economy was around $567 million. Considering signing back up again now?