Bonus Mission 2

Yes, it's just a game," says Joi Ito. "The way that the real world is a game."(Levy, 2007)This is how the World of Warcraft was described in an article which discussed whether this massive multiplayer game was actually a 'game' or not. The same could be said about Second Life. The difference between the two, Second Life and WoW, is that there is a peak that can be reached in the latter. Second Life is a completely open ended virtual world, which is in many ways similar to the real world we live in. Orientation Island is where one learns to walk, talk and get a hang of the basics. Once we reach the main land, we have very little money and it depends on what we want to do. People could waste everything away, or could work there way up to become millionaires and live the good life.While Second Life is sometimes referred to as a game, it does not have points, scores, winners or losers, levels, an end-strategy, or most of the other characteristics of games (WikiPedia,2007). Apart from lacking the common characteristics of a game, Second Life offers people a wide variety of activities to engage in which can be immensely profitable. Second Life hurls all this to the extreme end of the playing field. In fact, it's a stretch to call it a game because the residents, as players prefer to be called, create everything (Hof, 2006).Anshe Chung is a resident in Second Life and a lot more than that. The name previously mentioned is not her real name and is used in the virtual world. She is a Chinese born language teacher living near Frankfurt, Germany. Anshe started buying and developing land in Second Life and now rents these spaces to people within Second Life. She has turned the concept of a game around and proven how profitable the virtual world can be. Her estimated net worth is close to 250,000 US Dollars (Hof, 2006) However, I feel that this is the tip of the iceberg. Second life is relatively new and people like Anshe Chung will try to capitalize this virtual world. Second life offers places to gamble, and online gambling is a multi billion dollar industry. If improvements could be made to the interfaces of these activities within the program, it could be exploited. Sale of goods and trading within the community has a lot of potential to attract big businesses into its economy. Once this virtual world is examined in this way, the concept of it being a game fades further away.

References:

Robert D. Hof (2006) My Virtual World. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_18/b3982001.htm

Second Life. (2007, April 4). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved, April 6 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Second_Life&oldid=120268909

Levy, S. (2007). In World of Warcraft: Is It a Game. Retrieved April 6 2007, from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14757769/site/newsweek/page/3/print/1/displaymode/1098/.