Making Virtual Worlds: Linden Lab and Second Life

1. THE PRODUCT

Sitting at a free desk in Linden Lab’s Second Street offices, I have just finished some work on my avatar, ending up with some slightly spiky red hair that I like and a frame more human than superhuman (though perhaps a touch more trim than my own). A Linden on the QA (quality assurance) team walks by, and I catch his attention to point proudly at my handiwork. “Very nice,” he says, “but, my friend, you need clothes.” I look at my avatar. It is (I am) not naked; I am wearing the jeans that one begins one’s Second Life wearing, and a T-shirt I picked up at a special event a few days before, with the name of the dance club on it. “What do you mean?” I ask, perplexed. “Look,” he says, “let me tell you a few places that sell good clothes, you know what I’m sayin’? Now, let’s start with what you want. What look are you going for?” Feeling that I had fallen into the deep and treacherous waters of fashion, I hemmed for a moment before mentioning that I admired the crisply tailored white suit that the avatar of Wagner James Au (then-“embedded” journalist at Linden Lab) wore. “I know someone who makes gorgeous suits,” he answered, “Now here’s where you go.” Shortly thereafter, and a couple of thousand L$ poorer, my avatar sported a beige linen suit, complete with white dress shirt and stylish 1_THE PRODUCT Second Life, Capital, and the Possibility of Failure in a Virtual World 1 8 _ C H A P T E R O N E red and teal tie, along with sunglasses whose lenses could change color at a command and teal sneakers, to make the look just a touch more casual. “There. Now you’re ready to be seen,” he said, and headed back to his desk. The bulk of media attention that Second Life and other virtual worlds have received has concerned the surprising “reality” of their markets, the way they generate goods that are exchanged for familiar currencies (or for local, virtual world currencies that can themselves be bought and sold in currency markets; Castronova 2005, Lastowka and Hunter 2003). Trade in virtual items is still a new idea for some, but it should not be as unfamiliar as it may seem. After all, many people regularly pay for items that have no tangible existence, such as mobile phone accounts or downloaded computer software. The items in Second Life are in this respect no different, but what makes things a bit more complicated is the fact that almost everything you can buy in Second Life, at least at first glance, can only be used in Second Life. (Interesting exceptions include PDF files, which can be printed out, and images or video files, which can be distributed beyond Second Life quite easily). This might lead some to think of the objects in Second Life as more like tokens in a game than valued possessions, things that are owned by the venue owner, like the putters at a miniature golf course. According to this view, users of these virtual worlds are players, effectively renting use of the in-game objects, which must then be returned. But there are a number of reasons why such objects accumulate “real” value in Second Life, and this changes the attitudes of users to “their” stuff. We can recognize why this is so by beginning simply with the fact that these objects and other things, like Second Life, persist. Access to them by the user persists as well, and in this sense they are a resource for that user’s action in Second Life. What is more, these objects can have different properties that shape this social use. The creator of something has a number of options available when making an object. It can be set as copyable or not copyable, modifiable (meaning others with a copy of it or the original can change it) or unmodifiable, and transferable or nontransferable. For transferable objects, a price can be T H E P R O D U C T _ 1 9 set, and sellers can in fact set their stores up as virtual vending machines , requiring no one on-site to make their sales. I bought my suit by right-clicking on a picture of the suit and then...