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Seven days in Second Life

Posted on 27 Nov 2006 at 11:35

"Follow me," beckons a lofty, intimidating chap called Kweefus Kleene. He leads me to a "dance spot", where I can earn L$10 simply by gyrating for five minutes. At this point, I'm beginning to wonder whether Kweefus is the type of person my mother would call "a bad influence", but he assures me it's all perfectly innocent - club owners pay proles like me to dance, fully clothed I may add, to make their venue look popular. However, given that one US dollar equals about L$270, I'm stripping my dignity for an hourly rate that makes the minimum wage look like Richard Branson's take-home pay. There's got to be a better way to make money...

Day 2

Struggling to navigate around the vast virtual world and already regretting my fast-track approach to training camp, I decide to find a friendly face to help me. I type "English" into the in-game search engine, in the hope of finding a compatriot, and up pops a link to the Three Lions, an English theme pub. I teleport there, and before my eyes appears a packed traditional boozer, with working pumps, fruit machine and a DJ stand belting out Cars by Gary Numan. Only a squad car outside could make it more authentic.

The Three Lions is run by the distinctly un-English-sounding Phil Plasma; according to his profile, a 38-year-old Brummie musician in real life. Phil and the locals couldn't be friendlier, offering me advice, a game of darts (I struggle to hit the board, let alone treble 20) and a free pub T-shirt, which I wear with pride.

Second Life isn't all beer and skittles, however; it has a serious side too. I heed the advice of a new-found friend and head for intellectual stimulation at the Second Life Library. Stacked on the shelves of this impressive building are copyright-free books to read at your leisure, including Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, which I start reading while perched on one of the library's leather sofas. There are also reference terminals linking to documents such as the US Constitution and World Census data, which, when clicked, lead you to web pages containing the relevant information - a clever way of encouraging people to access educational material they might otherwise ignore.

The Info Island on which the Library sits is also home to an ICT centre, with display boards teeming with information for real-life programmers as well as in-game developers. A 65-strong group of Ruby developers, nattily dubbed the Rubyists of Second Life, meet twice a month here to share their experiences. I wander outside and stumble across a brainstorming session for a technology assistance agency called www.tech soup.org, which helps non-profitable companies with their IT. The discussion is lively and generates ideas, probably because none of the participants are scared to make fools of themselves with a silly suggestion, as they might be in a real-life meeting. It's easy to see why companies are building Second Life boardrooms for corporate meetings.

Day 3

With only a faltering, fully dressed lap-dancing career to fall back on, my financial prospects are grim. So I go cap in hand to the Second Life press office and ask for some free Linden dollars and a premium account, which allows me to buy land, take jobs and all manner of goodies. I know it's cheating, but by the time I've earned enough cash to fully exploit the game we'll be on to Third Life.

With almost L$5,000 in my virtual wallet, I embark on a spending spree. I head to a casino and throw away L$100 or so on Blackjack, poker and slot machines. Gambling is endemic in Second Life, with variants on bingo, lotteries and peculiar pigs that collect L$10 from each player and spit out winnings to a lucky few, all more common than a Burberry baseball cap.