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Second Life

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Second Life
Second Life
Developer(s)Linden Lab
Publisher(s)Linden Lab
Designer(s)Linden Lab
Engineproprietary
Platform(s)Mac OS X, Windows, Linux (alpha)
Release2003
Genre(s)MMO
Mode(s)Multiplayer
File:Seclife-logo1.gif
Second Life Logo

Second Life is a privately-owned, subscription-based massively-multiplayer online game (MMOG) that went online in March 2002 and was released to the public in 2003 by San Francisco-based Linden Lab. Founded by former RealNetworks CTO Philip Rosedale, Second Life gives its users (referred to as "residents") tools to add to and edit its world and participate in its economy. The majority of the content in the Second Life world is resident-created. Linden Lab actively promotes the concept that residents retain the intellectual property rights to objects they create (although they are required to offer Linden Lab an open license to it ).

Avatars

Residents of Second Life are represented in the environment by an avatar, which may be customized in a variety of ways. The basic avatar is humanoid in shape and, through a series of GUI controls, allows for a large amount of modification as to size, build, color and hair style. Residents can also create or buy clothing, and attach 3D objects to their avatars to further customize them. The result can either be faithful to the original humanoid avatar, or can result in a completely non-humanoid representation of the character.

Attachments can be something as simple as a pair of glasses, or a complex series of objects in order to make the avatar look like something else entirely. It is also possible for residents to upload and apply animations (in BVH format) for their avatars. These animations can be made with the free program Avimator that is made specifically for SL, Poser, or they can be acquired via motion capture using a third-party application.

Common applications of altering character appearance have included animals, robots, mechs, furries, Star Wars related characters and "tinies", which are just "folded up" (via a static animation--a "pose") regular avatars.

Objects

Second Life includes a built-in object editor tool that allows residents to create complex objects out of a set of basic building blocks known as primitives (prims). The environment includes a set of textures that users can apply to their objects, and residents can upload and apply their own images as well (for a 10 Linden dollar fee). Uploaded images can be in JPEG, Windows bitmap (BMP), or Truevision TGA format. JPEGs, although smaller in file size, are not recommended since images will be converted to JPEG2000 format on upload regardless of original file format. TGA files have the added advantage of alpha channel transparency.

Residents can apply scripts to created objects, thereby controlling the behavior of the objects within the environment. Second Life uses its own scripting language, called Linden Scripting Language (LSL). LSL has a syntax similar to C, and allows objects to interact with the Second Life world, as well as the Internet (via email and XML-RPC). Second Life uses Havok for simulated physics, though not all objects in the world respond to physics. An upcoming update will supposedly include Havok 2 support, an improvement that Second Life residents have awaited since its announcement by Linden Lab before June, 2002.

All objects and 3D information are streamed in real-time to all clients. This allows for real-time editing of 3D objects so any resident can view what is being created as it is being created. The interface for creating and editing objects is integrated with the world and requires no external program to use, but editing textures requires external software from third parties (e.g. Adobe Photoshop, Corel Paint Shop Pro, or The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)).

Although there is no additional charge for creating objects in Second Life, there is a $L10 cost for every image, sound, or animation that is uploaded.

Requirements

Second Life is available for PCs (1 GHz Pentium III or better, with at least 512MB RAM) with Windows XP (SP2) or Windows 2000 (SP4) and Macs (1GHz G4 or better, with at least 512MB RAM) with Mac OS X 10.3.8 or higher. A Linux alpha client (i686) that has been tested on Debian, Fedora Core, and Knoppix is currently available for download and testing, and runs with a few limitations.

The graphics require either an nVidia GeForce 2 or better graphics card or an ATI Radeon 8500 (9000 for Macs) graphics card. Second Life also requires a 21MB (Windows) or 32MB (Mac OS X) client download, and will consume up to 1GB of disk space for cache. A broadband Internet connection is required. Dial-up users will find that their connection speed does not allow them to view the world at anything approaching an acceptable framerate. Current system requirements are posted at the web site.

Pricing

Second Life currently has 4 pricing tiers (all prices in United States dollars):

  • Basic Access — Basic Account is free
  • Premium Monthly — $9.95/month (billed monthly)
  • Premium Quarterly — $7.50/month (billed quarterly)
  • Premium Annual — $6.00/month (billed annually)

Basic memberships receive $L50 each week they log on; premium memberships receive $L500 every week, regardless of logging in or not, and also have the ability to own up to 512m of land without additional cost. Owning larger areas of land ("parcels") attracts an increasing additional charge (known to users as "tier") ranging from $5 a month up to $195 a month for an entire 65536m "simulator" ("sim").

A credit card, compatible mobile phone (the mobile phone option doesn't appear to be available in Europe yet), or PayPal account is required on all accounts for age verification, and 7-day free trials come with all paid accounts. Second Life requires users to be at least 18 years of age; access to Teen Second Life is limited to individuals between the ages of 13-17 and requires the consent of the individual's parent or legal guardian and a valid credit card.

It should be noted that the pricing plan for Second Life has varied over time. Previous versions did not feature free first-time Basic Accounts. Early pre-SL version 1.2 users had the option of a lifetime subscription for a one-time payment of $225, which, at the time of SL 1.2 launch and the introduction of tiered land payments, turned into a lifetime tier-free ownership of 4096m of land.

Subcultures & Countercultures

Second Life is comprised of rich, diverse, user-driven subcultures and countercultures.

Some Second Life cultures revolve around established "groups." Groups can be created by any user for a fee of 100$L. Users are then given 3 days to recruit an additional 2 members, or their investment is lost and the group is deleted. A group must then maintain a membership of at least 3 members at all times in order to remain active. The groups that each user belongs to are displayed in that user's profile.

Each group comprises officers and members, with titles determined by group leadership. The officer or member title may appear superimposed above the name of the user's avatar. Users may participate in up to 15 groups, and may choose which group's title to display at any given time. Group activity is usually centered on a particular interest, so creating groups can give people a common ground for discussion and provide an easy way to break the ice. Some groups maintain websites to bridge the gap between real life (referred to as "first life", or abbreviated to "RL" for "real-life") and Second Life interests.

Groups are allowed "ownership" of land and resources, so they comprise the closest thing to a corporation within the Second Life environment.

Aside from groups, many of the subcultures found in Second Life revolve around events. Events include many activities related to arts/culture, charity/support groups, commercial, discussion, education, games/contests, nightlife/entertainment, pageants, sports, etc.

Second Life is also being influenced by many Internet phenomena which include the Moskau Dance, Ulae, and Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Many of these memes are in the form of gestures, which are animations that the avatar uses. Often humorous, but usually annoying, these gestures are a cause of Internet culture spread in Second Life.

Second Life blogs are also rapidly popping up across the Internet. Here, users detail their second lives, sometimes more extensively than their first lives.

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, and a weekly stipend thereafter--the amount depending on the type of account. Additional L$s are acquired by selling objects or services within the environment. Residents may purchase L$ directly or convert between Linden currency and U.S. currency through Linden Lab's currency brokerage, the LindeX Currency Exchange. The ratio of US$ to L$ fluctuates daily as residents set the buy and sell price of L$ offered on the exchange. Linden Lab has stated that the Second Life economy generates an average of $500,000(US) in economic activity each week.

Issues and criticism

A number of difficult issues have arisen within the operation of Second Life, both as an online game and a virtual world.

  • The nature of roles and enjoyment in the economy: Because there are no entry-level jobs, and creating content requires the user to have real-world talent, many users find themselves with very limited amounts of money and the source of enjoyment for such users is not clear.
  • The role of the in-world currency: Linden Lab has been criticized for marketing SL as a viable business channel for making real money, while at the same time including provisions in the Terms of Service which give Linden dollars no legal value, so that (for instance) Linden Lab is not required to pay any compensation if $L is lost from the database.
  • The effect of changes made by SL's developers upon the in-world economy: Certain changes made or proposed by the developers have had the effect of creating new markets, but also have on occasion destroyed or removed the value of existing ones, or given the market leader at a particular (often arbitrary) time unique advantages that entrench them as a market leader in the future, thus creating a coercive monopoly.
  • Favoritism: Some have complained that a group of residents referred to as the "FIC" (Feted Inner Core) use their connections with Linden Lab staff to trigger policy changes that are beneficial to themselves at the expense of others and that these policies by Linden Lab staff are arbitrary and selective. The phrase "Feted Inner Core" was coined by Second Life resident Prokofy Neva. In addition, users who own large amounts of land (and thus pay larger subscriptions) are generally seen to have greater influence on Linden Lab due to the financial loss in removing them.
  • The balance between users' ability to edit the world and their ability to damage or disrupt it: Second Life has been attacked several times by groups of residents abusing the creation tools to create objects that infinitely reproduce, eventually overwhelming the servers.
  • The land sales system: Building any permanent in-world object requires the purchase of land and an increased monthly subscription. A number of people deliberately "play" the land market for profit, leaving other people who just want to build resentful of being forced to pay extra money to a middle man. Also, the high monthly charges have resulted in buildings being focused on those which can make money in-world, reducing the variety available.
  • Lack of zoning: With minor exceptions, Linden Lab has not placed any zoning or content restrictions on what land owners can place on their real estate. This has resulted in a wide variety of architectural variations, frequently with mixed success. The lack of zoning is also a prime target for graffiti, deliberately obstructive and/or offensive content with the intent of defacing the local view. Such proneness to vandalism has been leveraged on occasion as a low-level form of extortion, destroying the quality of the local view in an attempt to force neighbors to buy the offending parcel of land at greatly overpriced value.
  • Land cost: SL real estate is seen as expensive and very limited in terms of primitive count and size, considering the in-game (and real-world) cost associated with land ownership.
  • The Mac version is just a port of the PC version, so no matter what Mac is using it, it will never match the PC version in terms of graphics. Some people have petitions, but none are big enough to make Linden Labs make a Mac version to take full use of the resources.

Residents who achieved notoriety through Second Life

Listed alphabetically by first name

  • Ailin and Guntram Graef, entrepreneurs/virtual land speculators, AKA Anshe Chung.
  • Nathan Keir, known as Kermitt Quirk in Second Life. Developer of the game Tringo. Keir licenced the game to Donnerwood Media, however retains rights to the game inside Second Life.
  • Philip Rosedale, Founder and CEO of Linden Lab, AKA Philip Linden. Semi-jokingly referred to as "God" by some long-time players.

Notable people who have become Second Life users

Listed alphabetically by first name

Most Second Life users prefer to keep their first life and second life separate. This anonymity makes it difficult to determine the identity and number of users who live notable first lives.

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. The stated goal of Linden Lab is to create a world like the metaverse described in the novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, a user-defined world of general use in which people can interact, play, do business, and otherwise communicate.

In many ways, though, Second Life more resembles the less polished environment of The Other Plane in Vernor Vinge's early novella True Names. External websites such as SL Census allow residents to locate each other from outside of the virtual world.

Open Standards

Linden Lab is currently replacing several proprietary portions of Second Life with open standards; open source technologies such as Apache and Squid are already being used. Throughout 2006, the built-in instant messaging system will be replaced with Jabber, and the current proprietary built-in virtual machine will be replaced with Mono. Linden Lab is also working on an Open GL port of the web browser Mozilla, called uBrowser, that will be included in the SL client to enable using webpages as textures on the in-world 3D objects. 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 .

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. An open source second life library is being worked on.

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.

Trivia

  • Linden Lab itself is named after Linden Avenue, 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.
  • The list of available avatar family names includes a large number of references to Doctor Who, including the names of both characters and actors from the British TV series.
  • The list of available avatar family names also includes many of the most famous C20 economists.

Competitors

Screenshots

External Links

Forums

Wikis

Artists in Second Life

Books

Blogs

Newspapers

Podcasts

  • SecondCast: A weekly panel discussion podcast about Second Life culture, content development, and upcoming events. The first episode of SecondCast was published February 19, 2006. The show is hosted by avatar Johnny Ming.
  • MuseCast: A regular discussion podcast about Second Life's live music scene. Features interviews with performers and broadcasts of performances.

Videos

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