“griefers,” tossers of rotten tomatoes — instead of creators. Since it was all for play, there was no good way to take the audience behind the curtains of Wheel of Virtual Fortune: Second Lifer Chandra Page game design and turn them into game designers makes and sells imaginary vehicles, such as this unibike, themselves. which she sells for cash-convertible Linden dollars.
people have chafed to break the limits of the gaming experience. But the rule-breakers have generally come across as hecklers — cheats, player-killers,
Enter Second Life ( secondlife.com), which is massive, online, and multiplayer, but not a tradition- Second Life are the maker’s intellectual property. al “massive online multiplayer game.” Second Life, The game doesn’t claim to own them — the maker which has 20,000 participants and the goal of a does. This means the maker can sell them — for million users by 2007, is probably best understood fake money within the game, and, uh, for real as a platform for development. Development of money, too. The “Linden dollars” that circulate with-what? Well, pretty much anything people can think in Second Life are swiftly convertible into actual U.S. up for the platform, really. dollars, on, say, eBay or the “Gaming Open Market”
Second Life has a graphic design engine on board. (
gamingopenmarket.com), where 1,000 Linden dol-
Any player can use that — you can practice in a lars can be exchanged for about US$4.
“sandbox.” If you build something permanent that Trading game money for real money isn’t new
you want to show off to players — a nice church, let’s — it happens in EverQuest, Ultima, Anarchy Online,
say, or a mall store or casino or strip-joint — then Lineage, Camelot, and many other games, but in
you pay rent or buy virtual property. That’s where Second Life, makers are, in some sense, in the design
the owners of Second Life make their own money and manufacturing business. The skills they learn on
— they use real estate taxes, like a town does. the Second Life website are remarkably akin to those
Most of the people “playing” Second Life simply in genuine 3D product design, the programs the big
swan around goggling at the stuff done by the local boys use: CATIA, formZ, Solid Works. Those are the
creatives, maybe buying virtual clothes, toys, or digital CAD-CAM specs behind actual objects.
tickets to public events. But the movers and shak- So it would seem pretty likely, maybe even inevi-
ers in Second Life are the people who make stuff. table, that the making of virtual assets has to cross
You might call them franchise game developers. over into plans for genuine products that can also
Prosumers. Creative-class hackers. Otaku hobby- function outside the context of a game. We’re not
ists. Role-playing game athletic stars. Salonistas. talking about the licensed ancillary rights to a toy
Minor celebrities. Culture-industry entrepreneurs. Darth Vader lightsaber here — no, I mean the spon-
They’re also a bit like bloggers who can work in taneous creation of real stuff from a highly unreal 3D. I’m running out of synonyms here, so let’s cut world with, let’s just say, a million people living in it. to the chase: Second Life is more centered on user Then what? Do we play? Or do we just watch? creativity than any “game” has ever been before.
Now come some weird implications, which are Bruce Sterling ( bruce@well.com) is a science fiction writer mostly economic. The virtual things one makes in and part-time design professor.
Photograph by Chandra Page
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