Unsuccessful first life? You can always try again..

At first glance, the online virtual reality world of Second Life looks like nothing more than a lonely persons game... but read more into it and you’l find its a massive money making scheme. For those of you who havn’t heard of Second Life before, its a massive multiplayer online world. In the article “My virtual life” published in Business Week , one journalist explains how he takes a look around this popular online world.

At the start of the article, he explains how he meets Anshe Chung. He described Anshe’s Chinese country house vividly, down to the polished wooden floor to the steaming cups of tea sitting on the table. It is only then the reader is told that Anshe’s house and everything in it is part of the virtual world of Second Life. We are told that Chung is only an avatar(a computerized charactar) of a chinese born language teacher living near Frankfurt.

The article then moves on to explain how Chung makes real money from selling online real estate. It works by online players of second life trading in Linden Dollars (the games currency) which can then be traded back into american dollars. The article explains how Chung has made up to $250,000 of real money and has even upscaled her online business.

The article also talks about how Second Life is only one of many so called “massive multiplayer online games” which have become quite popular on the web due to the ability of millions of players to play at once. This feature is a massive change to regular computer games where only one or two players can participate. The journalist talks about how this online industry generates alot of money in revenue with players of games like “World of Warcraft” paying $15 dollars a month to play.

The article finishes off by talking about some of the successful business’ that have popped up on Second life. One business he talks of is that of Mead who joined Second Life for fun when he left his job after the birth of their third child. He creates animations that can be bought by other users for around $1 each. The animations come in the form of an onscreen ball that when clicked on an embed animation occurs. Mead earns around $1900 a week from this online venture and says “its a dream come true”

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_18/b3982001.htm