Second Life

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This article explains the virtual world. For the theory of multiple lives, see Reincarnation.
Second Life
Second Life
Developer(s)Linden Lab
Publisher(s)Linden Lab
Designer(s)Linden Lab
EngineProprietary
Platform(s)Mac OS X (10.3.9 or higher)

Windows

Linux i686
Release2003
Genre(s)MMO Virtual world
Mode(s)Multiplayer (online only)
File:Seclife-logo1.gif
Second Life Logo

Second Life (SL) is a privately-owned, partly subscription-based 3-D virtual world, made publicly available in 2003 by San Francisco-based Linden Lab,[1] and founded by former RealNetworks CTO Philip Rosedale. The Second Life "world" resides in a large array of servers that are owned and maintained by Linden Lab, known collectively as "the grid".[2] The Second Life client program provides its users (referred to as Residents)[3] with tools to view and modify the SL world and participate in its virtual economy, which concurrently has begun to operate as a "real" market. At precisely 8:05:45 AM PDT, October 18th 2006, the population of Second Life hit 1 million Residents.[4]

Second Life as the Metaverse

Second Life is one of several virtual worlds that have been inspired by the science fiction novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, and the Cyberpunk literary movement. The stated goal of Linden Lab is to create a world like the metaverse described in the novel Snow Crash, a user-defined world of general use in which people can interact, play, do business, and otherwise communicate. Despite its prominence, it has notable competitors, among them Active Worlds, considered by some to be the founding company of the 3D internet concept in 1997, There and newcomers such as Entropia Universe and the Dotsoul Cyberpark.

External websites such as SL Census allow Residents to locate each other from outside of the virtual world, and SLURL allows external links through the Second Life World Map to locations in-world.

Pricing

Second Life has three membership plans. [5]

  • Basic - Free
  • Additional Basic — one time fee of US$9.95
  • Premium — There are three billing options for Premium accounts:
    • Monthly — US$9.95
    • Quarterly — US$22.50 (US$7.50/month)
    • Annually — US$72.00 (US$6.00/month)

All account types receive a signup bonus if payment details are provided — L$250 for Basic and Additional Basic, L$1000 for Premium. Providing payment details for Basic and Additional Basic accounts is entirely optional.

The pricing plan for Second Life has varied over time. Earlier versions did not feature free first-time Basic Accounts, or required a fee paid for every basic account beyond the first. During the beta period, Residents had the option of a lifetime subscription for a one-time payment of US$225.00. After the release of SL 1.2 and the introduction of tiered land payments, this turned into a lifetime tier-free ownership of 4096m2 of land.

Stipends

Eligible Residents receive stipends once a week - Basic and Additional Basic accounts have to log in during the weekly period in order to receive theirs, Premium accounts do not (they receive the stipend regardless of account activity).

Basic and Additional Basic accounts are not currently eligible for a stipend:[6][7]

  • Those registered before May 29, 2006 receive L$50/week
  • Those registered after May 29, 2006 receive no stipend

Stipends for Premium accounts have also changed over time:[8][9]

  • Those registered before July 21, 2006 receive L$500/week
  • Those registered before November 1, 2006 receive L$400/week
  • Those registered on or after November 1, 2006 receive L$300/week.

Land Ownership

Premium members also have the ability to own land (up to 512m2 without additional fees). Owning larger areas of land attracts an increasing additional fee (what Linden Lab calls "tier") ranging from US$5 a month up to US$195 a month for an entire 65,536m2 of land or individual island.[10] [11]

Residents

Main article: Resident (Second Life)

Residents are the users of Second Life, and their appearance is their avatar. A person may have multiple accounts, and thus be multiple Residents (a person's multiple accounts can be referred to as alts), and a single Resident may have multiple avatars. All scripts and 3D content are created by Residents using nothing but the client, and even though animations, textures and sounds have to be created outside the client, every experience in Second Life is entirely user-created.

Recent improvements

The group tools received many improvements:

  • Ability to be members of up to 25 groups; previous limit was 15
  • Minimum group membership count reduced to 2; previous requirement was minimum of 3
  • Improved communication
  • Sending objects to everyone in a group (also possible to implement with LSL)
  • Defining roles and capabilities of roles (roles will be similar to the current Officer and Member title system)

These improvements were implemented on August 23, 2006, with the release of Second Life client version 1.12.0

Open standards

Linden Lab is an avid user of open standards technologies. Open-source technologies such as Apache and Squid are already being used. [12]

Open Standards improvements throughout 2006

The plan is to eventually move everything to open standards and standardize the Second Life protocol. Cory Ondrejka, Vice President of Product Development, has stated that a while after everything has been standardized, both the client and the server will be released as open source [13].

  1. Throughout 2006 the built-in instant messaging system will be replaced with Jabber[14]
  2. The current proprietary LSL virtual machine will be replaced with Mono [15].
  3. uBrowser, an OpenGL port of the Gecko rendering engine, has been used in the client since version 1.10.1 [16] to display the Help documentation, will also be used to display webpages on any of the surfaces of any 3D object the user creates.

Second Life protocol

In May 2006 it was revealed that the Second Life protocol had been reverse-engineered. A wiki was set up to further the effort [17]. An open-source Second Life library is being worked on [18].

The Second Life Protocol Wiki had two tools anonymously donated to them: snowcrash and slice, which quickly furthered the effort. Snowcrash is a tool for decrypting the file comm.dat, which contains a description of the communication protocol. Slice is a tool for dumping the content of Second Life's cache files.

Since Linden Labs has allowed third party programs to access Second Life[citation needed], a project called libsecondlife [19] has been established. Among functions developed are a map API, recently-removed the ability to create objects larger than normally allowed, and other unforeseen capabilities. [citation needed]

Economy

Second Life has its own economy and a currency referred to as Linden Dollars (L$). Residents receive an amount of L$ when they open an account if they supply credit/debit card details,[20] and used to receive weekly stipends thereafter — only premium accounts and basic accounts that were already receiving stipends currently receive stipends. Additional L$ are acquired by selling objects or services within the environment.

Linden Lab has stated that the Second Life economy generated US$3,596,674 in economic activity during the month of September 2005.[21] According to a September 2006 Popular Science article, Second Life, through currency trading, shopping and land sales, has a GDP of $64 Million.[22]

LindeX Currency Exchange

Residents may purchase L$ directly through the client, or convert between Linden currency and U.S. currency through either Linden Lab's currency brokerage, the LindeX Currency Exchange, or other third-party currency exchanges [23].The ratio of USD to L$ fluctuates daily as Residents set the buy and sell price of L$ offered on the exchange, and it has fluctated between L$240/USD and L$350/USD over the past 12 months (October 2005 to September 2006).

The current lowest yearly membership fee in Second Life is $72 (USD).[24] A premium (user receiving a L$400/week stipened) would accumulate enough L$ over the course of their subscription (L$20,800/year if they did not spend any of it), and they would be able to recoup their subscription (not taking exchange fees into account) if they were able to obtain an exchange rate of L$288/USD. At L$289/USD and above, the user would start to make a loss on their investment.

As of October 16, 2006, the exchange rate for selling currency was L$243/USD according to the National Public Radio show, Marketplace. [25].

Land sales system

Linden Lab usually sells land in small 512m2 blocks (16 by 32 meters) through its First Land program, or as entire 16 acre (65536m2) regions. Residents also buy and sell land to other Residents, generally intending to make a profit by selling the plots of land at a price higher than the original purchase cost.[citation needed]

First Land

The First Land program is used to reserve small blocks of land for first time land buyers, intending to decrease the cost of land for new premium accounts.[citation needed] This program also serves as an incentive for new Residents with free accounts to upgrade to premium accounts. A Resident pays a fixed fee of L$1 per 1m2 [26] for a 512m2 plot.

These First Land plots are frequently consolidated into larger plots when the original owners sell them to other residents.[citation needed]

Regions

  • Regions put up for auction are usually accesible from the main continent (e.g. by crossing the simulator boundary) of Second Life.[citation needed]
  • Regions purchased privately are not allowed to be accessible directly from the main continent of Second Life, multiple regions can be purchased and placed next to each other creating their own island or small continent.[citation needed]

The high land tier fees (US$195 a month) associated with owning a 16 acre region have resulted in many privately purchased simulators being focused solely on content that can return a profit, reducing the variety available.[citation needed] There are exceptions to this behavior, such as Svarga (an artifical eco system driven by LSL, created by Second Life Resident Laukosargas Svarog.[27]

A region can theoretically hold up to 100 users at a time [28], but performance can severely degrade at these numbers, and factors such as the amount of prims and active scripts running on the server also factor into performance.

Openspaces

Whereas normal private islands run on their own dedicated CPU, the Openspace regions run four per CPU: this limits their performance. Each of the four is limited to only 1875 prims. Openspaces only ever share with other openspaces on a server. Openspaces must be anchored to a normal existing Island or be used in a series to create space between islands. In other words, they cannot be used to “float” space on their own. [29]

Teen Second Life

Teen Second Life was developed in early 2005 for people aged 13-17 to play Second Life, without entering false-information to participate in the Adult Grid.

On January 1, 2006, the teen grid opening hours were increased to 24 hours a day, whereas it was previously open only during Linden Lab's office hours [citation needed].

Differences

The 13-17 Teen Grid and the 18+ Main Grid are different in many ways.

Age

  • Teen Grid users are transferred to the Main Grid once they turn 18, taking all content and private islands with them. [citation needed]
  • Underage users found to be fraudulently accessing the Main Grid (e.g. by being under 18) that are transferred to the Teen Grid lose all their inventory, in an effort to prevent Mature content being transferred to the Teen Grid. [verification needed]
  • Overage users found to be fraudulently accessing the Teen Grid (e.g. by being over 18 and lying on the registration form) face banning from all areas of Second Life (website, Teen and Main Grid) designated teen only Teen Second Life Terms of Service section 2.2
  • Open Registration was implemented, but quickly removed for the Teen Grid, to increase security against users over age 18 from entering the Teen Grid.[verification needed]

Land

  • The Teen Grid is significantly smaller in the size of its userbase, the amount of land and concurrent Resident population at any given time. [citation needed]
  • The Teen Grid is a fraction of the size of the Adult Grid, and has significantly fewer Resident owned estates- compare Teen Grid 2006-10-01 with Main Grid 2006-10-01.

Content

  • The Teen Grid has a zero-tolerance policy for mature content, including gambling[citation needed] and nudity- see Teen Second Life Community Standards- sections 1,5,7 and 8.
    • Since nudity is not allowed on the Teen Grid, Teen Residents are unable to remove their underwear. However, Teen Residents can use textures with transparent sections for clothing — just as Main Grid Residents can — so that using completely or partially transparent underwear in combination with skins featuring genitalia, their avatar can appear to be nude. Such actions are against the Teen Second Life Community Standards.
  • The client differs slightly, in terms of user-interface. [verification needed]
    • The real life info -profile tab is disabled.
    • The web page in profile function is disabled.

Economy

  • The Teen Grid, lacking the economic support of gambling and other mature content, has a much different economy. Land prices and in-world object prices are known to be different, as the average income for the people that play these grids differs. [verification needed]
  • LindeX (The Linden Lab endorsed trading service), however, takes from the same pool of Linden Dollars (L$) for both the Main Grid and the Teen Grid. [verification needed]

Businesses and Organizations in Second Life

This section regards businesses and organizations in real life that have operated in Second Life, either having existed prior to Second Life, founded specifically for Second Life, or originated from the Content Creation market within Second Life
For information on Residents who achieved notoriety through Second Life, see Resident (Second Life)

Originating from Second Life

Aimee Weber Studio

Provides virtual content creation and services for companies looking to use the Second Life platform for marketing, education, and other purposes.

Run by Aimee Weber, owner and creator of the wide variety of content in Second Life, including the *PREEN* clothing line and the Midnight City island.

Aimee Weber Studio has worked with The United Nations [30], American Cancer Society [31] , American Apparel [32], National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Exploratorium [33] and various universities.[34]

Anshe Chung Studios

A virtual real estate business founded by Ailin Graef and her husband in Second Life. It has now evolved into a real company that is said to employ more than 20 people. [35]

The Electric Sheep Company

A design, building and scripting firm that creates content for three-dimensional online worlds. Originating in Second Life, they have also done work on the Virtual Laguna Beach project for There.com [36]. Other clients have included Reuters [37], New Media Consortium [38], Starwood Hotels/aloft [39], and Sony BMG Music [40].

Operated inside Second Life

0-9

A-F

  • Adidas Reebok will be creating a permanent presence in Second Life with assistance from Rivers Run Red [42] [43]
  • American Apparel opened a branch inside the game selling digital renderings of clothings modeled after real-life merchandise. [44].
  • American Cancer Society has held a version of its Relay For Life national fundraising event inside the game. [45]
  • BBC Radio recreated the 2006 One Big Weekend event on a 64 acre virtual island in Second Life [46]
  • Bite Communications
    • Bite hosted the first-ever virtual press conference held by a Fortune 500 company in Second Life in October 2006. The press conference represented the first client work done by a PR agency in Second Life.
    • Bite facilitated the first "in-world" press briefing for Sun at the CNET headquarters in Second Life in October 2006. [47]

G-L

  • IBM recently met in Second Life to discuss the effects of MMOGs on business.[51]
  • Intel
    • Supported Second Life with Demo systems at Siggraph 2006 in Boston, Intel Jason Powell
    • Supported Second Life with Demo systems at Emerce Day in The Netherlands in Sept 2006 and some joint marketing messages, Intel Jason Powell
  • Lichtenstein Creative Media, 16-year old Peabody Award-winning documentary and public radio/TV production company, which became the first broadcast entity to have a permanent presence in Second Life, and the first to produce a live, virtual 3-D broadcast emanating from Second Life. LCM open a sim (a single 16-acre region in Second Life), in July 2006, that includes a broadcast center, offices, recording studios, listening and screening rooms and auditorium. They have produced live broadcasts from Second Life featuring host, John Hockenberry, with singer/songwriter Suzanne Vega, author Kurt Vonnegut, MIT Media Lab's John Maeda, and futurist Howard Rheingold, for three episodes on "Virtual Communities" airing as part of LCM's national, weekly public radio series, The Infinite Mind. The coverage of the programs was extensive. LCM says regular broadcasts for The Infinite Mind are planned. [52]
  • Leo Burnett Worldwide has established a creative hub in Second Life for globally dispersed staff to interact within [53].

M-R

  • MLB.com broadcast the Home Run Derby and a Red Sox-Yankees game into SL, with the help of the Electric Sheep Company.[54]
  • MTV held a fashion show which was later broadcasted on G-Hole, a show on MTV's IPTV channel, Overdrive [55]
  • The New Media Consortium, led by CEO Dr. Laurence F. Johnson, built a virtual campus in the spring of 2006 that includes a library, museum, planetarium, auditorium, classrooms, and a welcome center. In the fall of 2006, the communtiy affilitated with the campus had grown to nearly 1000 educators, and the NMC Campus expanded from 1 sim to 7. Plans included a machinma school and a life sciences center. The NMC has hosted a great many events on the virtual campus including IBM's Global Innovation jam on September 12, 2006; [1] Howard Rheingold, October 22, 2006[2]; an in-world artists event on August 13, 2006 [3]; along with a long list of educational events and activities.[4] A short film about the effort was produced entirely in Second Life.
  • Reef Ball Foundation has a site in Second Life, trying to create more online awareness for their ecological preservation activities. [56]
  • Reuters has a news bureau which reports news in the game universe. [57]

S-Z

  • Starwood Hotels in conjunction with The Electric Sheep Company and marketing firm Electric Artists is premiering their new hotel brand, aloft, in Second Life via a virtual construction of the hotel before the actual hotels are built. The building process was documented on a corresponding website, virtualaloft.com.
  • Sun Microsystems
    • Sun was the first Fortune 500 company to hold a metaverse press conference at the launch of the new Sun Pavilion in Second Life in October 2006.
    • Sun participated in the first-ever "in-world" press briefing at the CNET headquarters in Second Life in October 2006. [58]
  • TELUS Mobility (TELUS) is the first Canadian company to have opened a Second Life retail outlet offering replica mobile phones with in-world specific features. In the near future the store may be offering its real lineup of mobile phones with a twist, to Canadian avatars.[citation needed]
  • Text 100, a leading global technology PR firm opened its virtual office in Second Life in August 2006, becoming the first PR agency to establish such a virtual branch office.[verification needed]
  • Toyota (via Millions of Us) have offered a virtual replica of the Scion xB [59]
  • The University of Southern California's Center on Public Diplomacy owns its own Second Life island. The island is used by the Center's Public Diplomacy and Virtual Worlds Project [60] to host events and displays on the role of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs), in public diplomacy [61][62].
  • The World Transhumanist Association has used Second Life to recruit and organise a transhumanist following within the virtual world and established a large island and conference centre called "Uvvy Island" to disseminate transhumanist ideas and provide unrestricted access to useful materials (including, among other things, videos and webcasts from WTA) to interested but geographically unrelated parties. Uvvy Island is organised like a regional Chapter, and even holds Chapter status within the WTA, holding weekly meetings, talks, and debates on various subjects.[63][64]

Live Music

Live music denotes the performance of vocal and instrumental music by Second Life Residents from their homes and studios, played into microphones, uploaded to audio streams, and played into Second Life for the enjoyment of other residents. It started with performances by Astrin Few late 2004 [65] (page 13) and began to gain popularity mid 2005 [66] (page 5). Linden Lab added an Event Category "Live Music" in March 2006 [67] to accomodate the increasing number of scheduled events.

Live musicians in Second Life are typically already musicians in the real world, using Second Life as a way to reach broader audiences. Most artists perform individually with vocal and one instrument using their Second Life Avatar Name. One multi-piece group has formed that plays regularly, Keltish, using multiple microphones and audio mixing equipment to feed a combined stream into the internet port.

Example setup for live performance of a band in Second Life

Keltish [68] is a four piece band performing together in real world streaming into Second Life. This information on their technical setup is provided by Resident Firefly Nerd.

Personnel

  • Four Performers
  • Four Avatars
  • One Audio Stream Technician (in charge of audio stream settings into second life; coordinates with event producers on timing, stream cutover, messages to musicians)
  • One Sound Mix Technician (in charge of audio mix settings, monitors volumes and mix, records music signal at source as needed for rebroadcast)

NOTE: for single player live musicians these roles are all done by one person, the artist.

Software

  • 4 instances of the Second Life client (one per computer)
  • SHOUTcast server
  • Winamp (used as streaming client)
  • Windows XP
    • Microphones and Mixer Feed to Microphone Jack IN
    • Windows XP - Microphone +20dB boost enabled

Internet

  • Broadband connection (provided by Comcast)
    • Upload Rate (760 kb/s)
    • Download Rate 4,300 kb/s

Hardware

Computer Equipment

  • 4 Computers meeting the minimum requirements to run the Second Life client
Sound Equipment
  • Mackie CFX12 audio mixer
  • Bass, guitar, harp: directional microphones
  • Fiddle, vocals: Samson C02 condenser
  • Multi-instrument mics: Nadi

Sample Live Musicians and Venues

Examples of live musicians who perform weekly include: Astrin Few (Jazz, Pop - Vocal, Guitar), Flaming Moe (Jazz - Saxaphone), Frogg Marlowe (Original Folk and Blues - Vocal, Acoustic, Harmonica, Piano) [69] and Jaycatt Nico (New Age, Boogie, Jazz - Keyboard, Piano, Melodica) [70]. Examples of popular bands include Keltish (Traditional and contemporary Irish Music - Vocal, Violin, Guitar, Harp) [71]. Several Second Life live musicians perform under both Avatar Name and Real Name and include links to their real world web sites for CD and MP3 sales.(For examples see: [72] and [73]) Additionally, several established professional musicians are now beginning to perform inworld as well, including Cletis Carr (Billy Thunders), [Grace] (Cylindrian Rutabaga), James Holland (SinginCountry Commander), and Kevin Burdick (Kevin Noble).

Live music concerts are scheduled daily at multiple live music venues across Second Life. Examples include Lily Pad Lounge, The Blarney Stone, The Roc,Old Salt's Pub, The Hummingbird Cafe.

Some musicians are now experimenting with a "daisy chain" system where the first artist plays into a stream which is picked up by a second artist. This artist plays following the lead of the first artist, sending the the combined music stream into Second Life. The term coined for this is "meta jams" [74] (page 22).

As of Fall 2006 there were about 40 live music artists and 30 live music venues with more being added monthly. The growth of Second Life music is documented in several Second Life media including The Metaverse Messenger published weekly online in PDF format.

Issues and criticisms

Main article: Second Life/Issues and criticisms

Due to constant development, and as an open environment accessible by almost anyone with access to the internet[75], a number of difficult issues have arisen around Second Life. Issues range from the technical (Mac OS X client, Budgeting of server resources), to moral (Pornography), to legal (Legal position of the Linden Dollar, Linden Lab lawsuit).

Trivia

  • When objects are created (or instantiated) in-world and then transferred to the user's computer, they are said to "rez"--a reference to the Disney movie Tron. This also appears in the environment's internal scripting language, where the command to create an object is llRezObject().[76]
  • Linden Lab itself is named after Linden Street[77], the street where the company's first office was opened. Many of the simulators of SL are named after streets or alleys around the San Francisco area; the very first sim of the world to be set up was (and still is) named Da Boom, a combined reference to DeBoom Alley in San Francisco and to the Big Bang.

More trivia can be found at Second Life History Wiki

Competitors

Screenshots

More photos taken within Second Life can be found on Flickr and Snapzilla. Photos from the Teen grid can also be found on Snapzilla.

See also

Media

News coverage

September 2005

March 2006

May 2006

July 2006

August 2006

September 2006

October 2006

Undated

  1. ^ http://www.nmc.org/sl/2006/09/28/jam/
  2. ^ http://www.nmc.org/sl/
  3. ^ http://www.nmc.org/sl/2006/08/13/on-the-green/
  4. ^ http://www.nmc.org/sl/
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