Last week, we solicited your questions for Second Life creator Philip Rosedale. Your questions were excellent, as are his answers. Thanks to all.
Q: Do you have macroeconomists regulating the supply of Linden dollars? [Some virtual worlds do.] Are they Keynesians? Monetarists? Does the economy experience inflation?
A: We don’t have an economist on staff yet, but we’d love to hire a great one. That said, we do take macroeconomic analysis and the management of the economy very seriously. We have a dedicated team that monitors financial transactions in-world, as well as some automated circuit-breakers that help to keep the Linden dollar stable, at around L$270 to US$1. The GDP of Second Life is growing rapidly relative to the “outside” world, meaning that we have to aggressively increase the money supply to match velocity or we would see a rapid increase in the value of the Linden dollar. We do this transparently; you can see the changes made to the money supply and how they match economic growth here.
Q: What security measures do you take to prevent fraud and abuse? Do you have a dedicated security team?
A: Yes, we have a large team dedicated entirely to dealing with fraud and abuse. It is an important competence for us to build — any platform offering the capabilities of Second Life must necessarily also afford some ability to break the rules, and tracking and managing those cases is important to our success. However, much of the overall “security” of Second Life is provided by those using the platform, such as communities in-world that set their own “zoning” guidelines around content use.
Q: What is your position on “Rule of Law” in Second Life for promoting a stable economy? What role should the Lindens play in assuring that SL is a fair and just place to do business? I left SL a while ago because running a business eventually became too frustrating.
A: We need to create tools as a platform that allow people to self-govern. Though that process may be a bit rockier at the start, it is ultimately the only one that will scale. The Web, for example, felt similarly unregulated at the start. As time went by, people created their own customs and rules.
Q: What steps have you taken to prevent collusive or otherwise anticompetitive activity in Second Life? Do you have personnel dedicated to regulating that aspect of the economy? Do you ever wonder if we are simply characters in a Second Life in some other world?
A: Second Life as a platform is inherently less supportive of anticompetitive or monopolistic activities, which I think is one of the things that makes it so appealing. For example, there are really no “natural resources,” meaning that no one can corner the market on them. Genuine appeal and intellectual value tends to drive Second Life pricing more than distribution muscle and brand.
Q: How do you feel about accusations that by providing a literal “second life,” you’re contributing to a trend of physical isolation that’s damaging the social abilities of an increasing number of teens and adults?
A: Whether sitting in front of a computer is bad for you is a function of whether what you are doing there is more or less challenging than real life. If you are mindlessly shooting monsters, the environment has the risk of making you oversimplify the real world. If, on the other hand, you are confronted with a complex human environment with people from all over the world who are demanding of you in your interactions with them, you could actually be better off in front of the computer. Second Life can teach people new skills and connect them with new cultures in a way that the real-world environments of many places cannot.
Q: Linden Lab has talked before about the future possibilities (and challenges) of connecting to or communicating with other grids and virtual worlds. Do you feel that this is an actual possibility? What impact do you think this connection would have on Second Life’s economy?
A: We believe that virtual worlds with the kind of power and features that Second Life has will be a big benefit to human society, and also that we can continue to run a great business in a very open world. The Second Life economy will hopefully continue its strong growth regardless of our openness and interconnection with other worlds, because there is a tremendous “network effect” that will make people seek out the world with the largest economic opportunities. This is similar to the way eBay, as an auction site, enjoyed network effects that kept it largest in the face of strong competition.
Q: Have you ever read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson? I don’t know much about Second Life but it sounds similar to the Metaverse in the fiction novel.
A: When Snow Crash came out, I was already really intent on the idea of creating a virtual world like Second Life — I had been thinking about it and doing what small experiments I could since I was in college. But Snow Crash certainly painted a compelling picture of what such a virtual world could look like in the near future, and I found that inspiring.
Q: What plans does Linden Lab have for educators who want to use second life as a virtual classroom?
A: There’s actually a vibrant community of educators already in Second Life, and we’re happy to see it continuing to grow. We’ve seen a range of academic and educational uses of the platform, from research to modeling to distance learning to real-time collaboration, and we offer a program called Campus: Second Life, which provides semester-long virtual land grants to educators that want to try teaching in the virtual world. Additionally, we have a very active e-mail list dedicated to education, on which Residents discuss best practices for in-world educators.
Q: How do people find the time for a Second Life? It seems like most people are too busy working multiple jobs and trying to keep up the payments on their credit cards and upwardly-adjusting mortgage payments.
A: Quit your real job and get one in Second Life! It isn’t possible for everyone, but there are more than 40,000 people who make money in Second Life every month.
Q: Are there any virtual goods which actually cost more than their real world counterparts (at Linden dollar/USD conversion rates)?
A: What a great question! Well, not too many yet, but unique items like virtual clothing from top designers have been sold at in-world charity events for thousands of real dollars.
Q: What has your experience led you to believe about the value, or lack thereof, of having a game-like goal orientation? Would you agree that most activity in SL involves games that people have created out of the materials available (i.e., running a business, speculating on real estate, trading custom content)?
A: People in Second Life have created over 1 billion in-world “objects” occupying total storage space of about 100 terabytes. I wouldn’t agree that these are mostly game-like; most derive their value from their intellectual, utility, or artistic appeal. If anything, Second Life is more diverse than the real world in terms of types of activities, not less.
Q: Why not open up Second Life and allow it to run on game consoles?
A: It is a great idea! We’ve open-sourced the Second Life client software in part with the hope that we can get it onto things like game consoles faster.
Q: If you do open-source, how will you make money? I’m sure there are a lot of developers waiting in the wings for this to happen, but can it be a win-win situation? Is an option like finding a middle ground between open API’s on one end and completely open-sourcing the code on the other a more realistic probability?
A: Because of the network effects that will tend to cause most people to prefer spending their time and doing their business in one virtual world, we think we can have a great business, even in a very open source/standards environment.
Q: Second Life is a fantastic place, and one of the reasons is the freedom residents enjoy to create their own environments. On the other hand, for those who are not yet experienced in Second Life, the learning curve is steep and a lot of first-time visitors seem to get lost. Do you consider it a task for your company to make Second Life a more welcoming place for newcomers, or should this issue be tackled by the residents themselves?
A: A little bit of both. We need to design the software to be friendlier, easier, and more pleasurable to use. The open-sourcing of the viewer code will definitely help with this as well – we’ve already seen a full alternative Second Life viewer created by a third party. But people are already making the content experience in-world better and better, which is exactly the idea behind the Resident-created world.
Q: Do you have a Second Life alterego?
A: Not one that I will tell you about 
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I see Philip Linden ducked my question about whether he believed in God, whether he considers himself god-like (he has talked about this), and what then the restraints on him should be. I’m not surprised. I will keep asking it, as I think it’s important to find out the views and philosophies of people who have such tremendous influence on the world with a very powerful machine that will change the way people think.
I’m not finding the answers to the questions about open-sourcing the server code (as distinct from the client viewer, which was already done) very persuasive. It’s been nearly a year since this was first discussed openly in February 2006 at Davos, and indication was given that open-sourcing could have a serious effect on the virtual land market.
Just assuming that people will stay on one virtual world platform because it was first and biggest isn’t enough. There has to be a compelling business plan, and there have to be assurances that intellectual and virtual property established by the residents of SL are protected not only by forcing people off the platform to launch lawsuits, but on the platform itself with meaningful and workable tools that both prevent theft and griefing (vandalism) and devaulation (16 m2 sign extortion and land bots).
It’s a bit scary that it takes the real-life major newspaper of record, The New York Times, to put questions — and get answers — from our game-god, who has not spoken to us residents of Second Life since August 2007, when he gave a keynoter at the SL Community Conference about plans to improve performance of the platform.
Now that the CTO has been fired, I really think it’s time for Philip Linden to come inworld and hold a town hall, and answer questions in Second Life itself.
Prokofy
I see Philip Linden ducked my question about whether he believed in God, whether he considers himself god-like (he has talked about this), and what then the restraints on him should be. I’m not surprised. I will keep asking it, as I think it’s important to find out the views and philosophies of people who have such tremendous influence on the world with a very powerful machine that will change the way people think.
I’m not finding the answers to the questions about open-sourcing the server code (as distinct from the client viewer, which was already done) very persuasive. It’s been nearly a year since this was first discussed openly in February 2006 at Davos, and indication was given that open-sourcing could have a serious effect on the virtual land market.
Just assuming that people will stay on one virtual world platform because it was first and biggest isn’t enough. There has to be a compelling business plan, and there have to be assurances that intellectual and virtual property established by the residents of SL are protected not only by forcing people off the platform to launch lawsuits, but on the platform itself with meaningful and workable tools that both prevent theft and griefing (vandalism) and devaulation (16 m2 sign extortion and land bots).
It’s a bit scary that it takes the real-life major newspaper of record, The New York Times, to put questions — and get answers — from our game-god, who has not spoken to us residents of Second Life since August 2007, when he gave a keynoter at the SL Community Conference about plans to improve performance of the platform.
Now that the CTO has been fired, I really think it’s time for Philip Linden to come inworld and hold a town hall, and answer questions in Second Life itself.
Prokofy
“Quit your job and start one in Second Life!”
Whatever. Even the author of An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Second Life found about two dozen people who make a full-time living off of SL.
Some questions I would like answered:
1. To what extent is SL’s growth dependent on the sex industry?
2. What is your *actual* user number, not just total signups? A good figure would be “number of users who were active a month after signup.”
3. Does getting rid of Mr. Ondrejtke mean you’re getting rid of the Virtual Property rhetoric?
“Quit your job and start one in Second Life!”
Whatever. Even the author of An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Second Life found about two dozen people who make a full-time living off of SL.
Some questions I would like answered:
1. To what extent is SL’s growth dependent on the sex industry?
2. What is your *actual* user number, not just total signups? A good figure would be “number of users who were active a month after signup.”
3. Does getting rid of Mr. Ondrejtke mean you’re getting rid of the Virtual Property rhetoric?
Nice questions, intriguing answers!
I have a question (I know it’s too late, but maybe some Second Life staff will look here) — some percentage of the population (including me) cannot look at Second Life for more than about 5 seconds without getting vertigo and nausea. (“Simulator sickness”)
Will Second Life eventually have facilities for the disabled? (Both simulator sickness and the visually impaired)
Nice questions, intriguing answers!
I have a question (I know it’s too late, but maybe some Second Life staff will look here) — some percentage of the population (including me) cannot look at Second Life for more than about 5 seconds without getting vertigo and nausea. (“Simulator sickness”)
Will Second Life eventually have facilities for the disabled? (Both simulator sickness and the visually impaired)
Not everyone can make money running a Second Life business, but there is an entire industry growing up around virtual worlds technology like Second Life.
For example, numerous marketing companies, 3D production companies, and management consulting companies have set their sights, sometimes exclusively, on developing within Second Life. I started VRWorkplace to advise enterprises on how virtual worlds like Second Life can be used to bring employees, customers, and other geographically dispersed people together, as if in person.
So, no, most people cannot make a living on in-world business, but many are doing quite well with real life businesses related to Second Life. As we consider the many ways to leverage a virtual environment like Second Life to enhance our real lives, it is certain that virtual worlds advisories, development shops, service providers, event planners, etc. will spring up and become quite prosperous.
Not everyone can make money running a Second Life business, but there is an entire industry growing up around virtual worlds technology like Second Life.
For example, numerous marketing companies, 3D production companies, and management consulting companies have set their sights, sometimes exclusively, on developing within Second Life. I started VRWorkplace to advise enterprises on how virtual worlds like Second Life can be used to bring employees, customers, and other geographically dispersed people together, as if in person.
So, no, most people cannot make a living on in-world business, but many are doing quite well with real life businesses related to Second Life. As we consider the many ways to leverage a virtual environment like Second Life to enhance our real lives, it is certain that virtual worlds advisories, development shops, service providers, event planners, etc. will spring up and become quite prosperous.