Second Life vs. First Life

About 3 weeks ago, 'Second Life' made it into the top 10 of Google Zeitgeist. Searching the web soon revealed that I am quite old fashioned, not having heard about it before.

Second Life is a virtual 3-D world inhabited by millions of residents. It’s current population of about 1.4 million inhabitants makes it one of the fastest-growing online communities. In Second Life, people can create their own characters—called avatars—to do a variety of things they can do in the real world, and lots of things they cannot do in the real world (e.g. flying like a bird). Characters can participate in meetings and conferences, work, play and shop just as they do (or don’t) in their everyday lives. One of the driving forces is that players can create their own in-game content (it can only be created within the game itself), and you can then sell it. Such in-game content can be 3d objects (e.g. virtual clothes, jewelery, houses etc.), body motions (guess what...), or little in-game programs (e.g. a casino).

Firms like Dell also participate in Second Life. Others, e.g. Fortune, BusinessWeek and CNN, benefit from just writing about it. On the front page of Second Life, you see how many US$ have been spent during the last 24h. Right now, while writing this, it is more than half a million US$! Second Life uses its own currency - Linden Dollars - but you can exchange them directly with real money.

One evening, I gave Second Life a try. From a programmers and a conceptual point of view, the game is amazing. It is fun exploring the world and meet people, and as a programmer I instantly felt teased to also explore the possibilities of making money with creating and programming stuff and... ...but wait a minute... ...why is it called Second Life? This somehow implies that there must be a First Life too?

Second Life is a disguised one-armed bandit. Instead of inserting coins, you feed it with the time of your First Life. The more time you have spent, the more you will feel like you have to spend even more (to get anything back). And the longer you play, the harder to stop, because you then have to admit that you have wasted a whole lot of your time for what? Nothing!

Follow my example and delete your Second Life account right now, and have a good time with your First Life friends or family.