Icarus Studios News

Second Life 

(Continued from Part 1) 

When writing about developments in the virtual worlds/MMO industry, there are two subjects that are almost impossible to avoid: World of Warcraft (WoW) and Second Life. They dominate the news about simulated environments, and, thus, it’s very easy to use them as points of reference when discussing other virtual worlds. Since we’re going to be mentioning them, it’s worth an entry to explain why we consider them relevant. This week, we talk about Second Life.

Where World of Warcraft is a direct successor to the highly gamelike Diku worlds, Second Life is an inheritor of older social worlds such as LambdaMOO. Much less like a game than a 3D approximation of the Internet, Second Life features spatially-linked regions with content fully driven by user creation. These capabilities are linked to a full-scale embrace of real-money transfer (RMT): currency used within the world can be freely traded for U.S. dollars through Second Life’s developer, Linden Labs. Expansive user creative controls combined with a possibility to earn real money by trading these creations has resulted in an interesting environment, where Internet entrepreneurs, freeform roleplayers, 3D artists, and juvenile pranksters all share the space.

Second Life’s success is also very different from WoW’s. World of Warcraft’s advertising has been almost entirely based on one-to-one word of mouth: new players largely try WoW because their friends encourage them to play, not because they hear about it from an ad or news story. Conversely, Linden Labs exerts a powerful marketing influence for Second Life, getting it media attention independent of its subscription numbers. Despite likely having a smaller audience than kids’ virtual worlds Club Penguin and Habbo Hotel, and having a much smaller audience than WoW, Linden Labs has been hugely successful in making Second Life the primary virtual world that many news outlets and bloggers discuss

World of Warcraft demands reference because it is the default MMO for those educated about the space. Second Life demands reference because it is often the only virtual world those outside the space have heard of. When talking about virtual worlds, it’s easiest to explain them in relation to Second Life since that’s the only virtual world one can assume that the audience recognizes. While MMOs reference WoW as a target for subscriber numbers, virtual worlds reference Second Life as a target for simple recognition.

-Stephen Cheney, Virtual Worlds Team