Sometimes Two Lives Isn't Enough

[rolanni]

OR...
Today, I Met a Guy

Y'all have probably read in RL media like Discover, and Wired, and Business Week how there's honest-to-ghod Real Life Money to be made in Second Life. There's at least one land baron who takes thousands -- that's plural -- of buck$ a week out of the game, converting Lindens (the in-game money) to US Dollars. The current exchange rate is L300=$1.00 which is worrying some virtual economists (the Linden is soft) -- but that's a surreal posting for another day. Today, I want to stick close by this "make real life dollars by playing a computer game" concept.



There are definitely folks out there who are making money off of Second Life -- and not just of the ilk of that land baron I mentioned. Some folks are making money out of SL by giving seminars on how to make money in SL, and selling Their Book explaining How To Do It. Which is fine on the face of it, or until the day you're at home in Beautiful Boreal, surveying your newest land purchase (Kit Jimenez now owns several pieces of land, which is entirely foolish of Kit, but that's yet another topic) and considering if it might not be reasonable and prudent to build a cottage on it and rent it out to a day-gamer. (Day-gamers can't own property, but it's nice to have a place to put your stuff, and to landmark as home, so you don't have to materialize in a public welcome area every time you go into the game.)

Anyhow, so I'm at home, and considering These Mysteries, when I "hear" a small voice in my vicinity, saying, "Kit, are you looking to buy some land?"

"Actually, no," I said. "I've got a little too much land and I'm considering how best to make this bit pay for itself."

"The problem is that it's PG," said the voice, which turned out to be attached to a pleasant-looking green robot.

"Oh, I don't know," I said. "Me, I prefer to live in a PG sim. I can always teleport to Amsterdam if I need a thrill."

The robot laughed politely. "I own the place that says, WELCOME EVERYONE -- over there."

I walked "over there" and duly admired his place -- a 512m piece of land that he'd sunk a bit below grade, making a pleasant grotto complete with hot tub and a little shelter and a couple of doodads that I couldn't see clearly.

"Nice," I said.

"Only 8 visitors," he mourned, shaking his head.

"Well, it takes time," I pointed out. "Sometimes the garden doesn't have any visitors, and then 14 people need to meditate all at once."

"I don't see how you can make any money with a garden."

"Well, you get dwell," I admitted. "But in RL I'm a writer, so I'm not really very practical."

He was off on his own train of thought, though. "I think I need to open a casino," he said.

I said I thought that the upfront for a casino was probably pretty steep. He said that, no, he didn't think so -- he had a book he'd bought, written by the owner of A Big Casino (I forgot the name) in SL, telling all about how to do it. Except -- he, the green robot -- was out of work in RL, and didn't know how he'd cover the extra $10/month to buy a second piece of land in a Mature area to house his casino, and he, like, really needed to start making money, um, NOW.

Clearly, the green robot had not done any homework, other looking through The Book. I mean, casinos in SL require a huge investment in land. They have to, because a 512 parcel of land only supports 117 prims (that's primitives; all things in SL are made out of primitives -- cylinder, pyramid, square -- you get the idea)-- and any casino worth its one-armed bandits is going to need lots and lots and LOTS of prims to work with. A casino on a 512? Maybe a blackjack table.

So, the green robot is clueless. Given. But he's also desperate, and somebody sold him the promise that SL is the way out of his RL troubles. This can only End Badly, and I Worry.

Yeesh.

Comments

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you're getting so much pleasure from this, but I must admit that my life is much too involved to even contemplate doing this... It's not that I don't see the appeal.

But close to that. Designing a game, now, that I dig!

This makes me a hopeless story spinner.