In January we experimented a bit in the virtual world called Second Life (SL).
You could call it a game and yes, lots of aspects probably originate from games as they were played in the past and even now. But SL is more.
For those who do not know what SL is, I ‘ll give a brief description. It is a virtual 3D world that exists on the Internet. People that go in SL do this as a ‘virtual person’ called avatar. You can be a man, woman or some kind of animal. Apart from walking and running, you can fly and you can teleport yourself or be teleported to different locations (like in Startrek ; beam me up Scotty …)
Avatars can rent or buy land and houses. They can shop for practically anything you can do in the real world and more. SL has a currency called Linden $ and a real economy. One real US $ is approximately 270 L $’s.
After the ‘invention ‘ of the PC came Windows, the Internet and then there was the wave created by Google and E-bay. A lot of people think SL-like environments will be the next 100.000 billion $ market. I guess they are right. The potential is there.
Especially with the quick emergence of Internet TV possibilities we see in parallel with this development.
Reuters, ABN Amro, Dell, the Swedish Embassy and lots of other companies think so too. They are present in SL.
Why? Because this a new way of not only communication but also interaction and target marketing.
For example we as JoliSoleil could show you our houses in 3D. You could even walk thru them yourself to form an opinion. You can ask us questions and get an immediate response.
You could make a reservation on the spot and pay in L $’s if you want.
The extension of a real life with these kinds of things would be the big thing I would say.
At the moment there are some limitations too.
- Bandwidth, speech, movies, it is all improving but it is still a bit well like a child’s game…
- SL is controlled/ managed by a few big companies like Linden and Anche Chung. They can buy and arrange things you just can’t or not for the same price. They control the economy so to speak.
- Another problem is that SL is also a big chatbox for the lonely hearts and hunters. Lots of people completely separate their real life (RL) from SL to be able to do naughty things. As long as you sell products in that same virtual world that is fine.But it is hard to interact about real life things in SL with people that won’t tell you who they are or what they really want. We cannot make a rental contract with an avatar/ virtual person. (what if they really paid …)
- Hiring people to work with in SL has also been a strange experience for us. In a normal business relation you would exchange business cards, make plans even contracts etc, etc. Communication is vital. SL adds the opportunity to do for example conference calls in a different (better) way. But ….in SL these kinds of business relations seemed impossible, because people seem afraid. They want to stay avatar for ever. No phone numbers, no names, just IM (instant messages like in a chat). Whilst we were completely open in who we are and what we want, it was almost impossible to communicate in a normal way. It will change though. There will always be the group of people that want to escape and hide. But we feel confident that more and more people will embrace the possibility to ‘grow’ and to extent their person from the real world in the virtual world. Of course they will not constantly show their passport. You wouldn’t in a bar or mall too! Yet in serious exchange of information people will be happy to explain who they really are and how you/we can be of service.
We will be back in SL in a while. And see how the virtual renting market is developing.
Maybe we are wrong and the RL and SL worlds stay very separated. We feel there will be more and more overlap though.
And you know: in the distant future, yes one day your brain will really be able to make the trip in the body of your choice in a beautiful virtual world. Better for you health to keep the connection.
One last thing: there is no decay in SL, everything stays perfect.
Sigh… we are planning some paint work and small repairs in the Real World tomorrow.
Life goes on.
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