Virtual reality as an accepted political platform

[Frank]

The EU wants to open a virtual office in the MMOG Second Life. I think that's pretty interesting.

Another interesting tidbit is, that there is an unspecified amount of people who earn their money with the "virtual" job they have in second life as well.

Is virtual existence becoming just as real as the real one?

 

[Colourless]

Second Life is... perhaps over hyped. The amount of people actually playing it in a meaningful way is significantly smaller than you'd be lead to believe. Looking at the official statistic, 229,578 people spent money in game this feb. I'm therefore going to say that there is about 230,000 people actively playing. If they aren't doing transactions, I'm not sure how they could really be playing. Of that 230,000 approximately 145,000 are spending less than 2000 L$ which is about $7 USD, and is fairly meaningless as far as economic impact goes. People pay more on MMORPGs subscriptions than this.

So you end up with less than 100,000 people seriously involved in that environment which really is a very small amount of people to seriously focus efforts on trying to reach. Money could be better spent improving even a website than wasting time investing in Second Life hoping to get someone to visit your virtual office (it would be more user friendly too).

About the numbers of people making a living. While not specificially specified, it is indicated that only 116 made more than $5000 USD. That is a really small amount of people and realistically indicates that you can't give up your day job.

In the end answering your question "Is virtual existence becoming just as real as the real one?" my answer is not a chance.

 

[nutball]

Second Life is... perhaps over hyped.

Second Life has caught the imagination of the media and the chattering classes. Second Life is all poncing about, having angst and that other nonsense. Oh and sex too. The media are far more interested in that than in running around smiting ogres and all that jazz with a bunch of pre-pubescent teenagers. The media are interested so it gets a lot of page space.

 

[pcchen]

On the other hand, many people see MMO games as alternate IRC channels. Second Life even more so. IMHO Second Life is just like a 3D IRC channel where you can "easily" (relatively) make your own things. It's sort of like an IRC with a drawing board, but in 3D. It could become a new channel, just like WWW.

So, if most people "play" Second Life as an IRC, they may not want to pay a lot money for it. That may be why only few people are actually paying for that. As for making things in Second Life for real money... it really needs a lot more people "playing" it. Remember for how long after the invention of WWW it's considered profitable running a web site? It could take as long for Second Life.