About Virtual Worlds
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What is a Virtual World?
A
computer-based simulated environment which users can inhabit and interact
using avatars (the virtual bodies that they walk around in). Rather than
looking at 2 dimensional pages on a screen, the user is able to move around
a 3 dimensional space travelling between different locations where he/she
can look around buildings, whole towns or tourist attractions and even perform
actions such as running, flying, dancing, fighting and even romancing with
other users.
Why do people use Virtual Worlds?
Many reasons. Some simply want a break from the stresses of real life so they build themselves a whole other life in a virtual world with friends, homes, jobs, businesses and almost anything else they want their other life to contain.
Others go there to buy virtual land and sell it at a profit, or they build houses to sell to other people, make clothes or create other objects that others may be interested in buying from them.
Others take their real life business into a virtual world and take advantage of the newest and most exciting opportunity for years to market their products and services in ways which have never been possible before (see Business in Virtual Worlds).
How many people are using Virtual Worlds?
At the moment, Second Life® is the fastest growing virtual world with around 200,000 new users signing up each week. Second Life® now has a population approaching 6 million users. Other vitual worlds are Entropia, There.com, Whyville and Habbos. Each virtual world has different features. Second Life's® popularity is likely to be down to the freedom given to users to create what they like and the fact that there are few restrictions on what users can do in the world.
How does Second Life work?
All objects in Second Life® are created entirely by its users, or residents, as Linden Lab, the creators prefer to call them. Second Life® has a whole economy which uses the Linden Dollar (or simply Lindens for short). A resident can buy Lindens at around 250 per US Dollar, although, like all currencies, this rate fluctuates.
Any resident can create objects 'in-world' with some very simple to use building tools and most have a try at some point while some go on to be very skilled.
It is not necessary to pay to be a Second Life resident, although most residents get there to find that there are things they would like that cost small amounts of money.
Residents customise the default avatar they get on entering Second Life® for the first time by buying new shapes, skins, hair and clothes for it and some people are making a real life living from the money they make creating and selling such items.
Many buy virtual land, build or buy homes, go to the pub, go dancing and a few even get 'married' to other residents they meet.
The number of experiences in Second Life® is vast and, like real life, there are always new things to discover.
Is this not a fad or only for computer geeks?
10 years ago many businesses made the mistake of failing to recognise the potential of the World Wide Web! While they sat back and waited for the fuss to die down, others took the initiative and new companies like Amazon and LastMinute.com took a large part of markets that had previously been dominated by traditional companies.
Virtual worlds are very clever but still very crude in many ways and, like the world wide web, they will become more sophisticated over the next few years. Businesses can take the risk of ignoring them or get involved now.
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