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RP final outline

Page history last edited by Ryan Papera 14 years, 3 months ago

 

Real Money in a Fake World (Outline)

 

For my final project I am going to write about the real money possibilities within Second Life.  I am going to research the few cases where people have made it big. Big to the point where they are able to quit their jobs in real life and exist solely in Second Life.

 

 

I am also going to explain why griefers could be such a major problem when real money and credit cards are being used. If they are able to crash a server when real money is mid-transaction, where does it go? Who loses the money? And what do they have to gain from a potential banning from Second Life?

 

 

Obvious parallels between Second Life and Real Life, but I want to know specifically what they are in businesses. Are there prime hours to be working? Prime places to work? How much do things cost? And what can they do to stay competitive?

 

 

Other questions I would like to know is how much to people in Second Life spend weekly, monthly, in total, etc… Also what types of programs do they use? Photoshop, Auto Desk etc?

 

 

I am going to try to avoid such suitcase claims that anyone can make money in Second Life. Currently I do think this, but after some research I may have to re-think this statement.

 

 

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Comments (2)

Joe Essid said

at 10:00 am on Nov 6, 2009

FAKE WORLD! I just love calling SL that. It makes so many overly serious SLers angry at me. They don't understand that movies are "fake" too yet we enjoy them. And no one really becomes a tycoon playing Monopoly. That does not mean that we stop doing those activities.

Perhaps the difference is that real money can be pulled out of SL. I recently banked my first-ever $55 payout, for blogs I'd written for pay. That bought a few groceries, so SL felt a little more "real' suddenly.

You will want to cover the current debate over "Nebraska," a behind-the-firewall solution for corporations that Linden Lab has just announced. Essentially, it's a version of SL that one could run like Heritage Key, apart from the main world of SL, so business could invite employees and customers to experience simulations, have meetings, and so forth.

Here's Tateru Nino's post on the new product, and you can follow her links to Linden Lab's announcement and rationale for this new service:

http://www.massively.com/2009/11/04/linden-lab-launches-second-life-enterprise-beta-second-life-wor/

Have a look at Castronova's books and Julian Dibbell's book Play Money (the author quit his day job for a year and made a living from virtual worlds). You may see how hard it can be to make money in VWs, and you may see who can succeed and why as you look at the sources. There is an issue on economics in the Journal of VW Research as well.

Joe Essid said

at 12:03 pm on Nov 8, 2009

Some obvious links to Harris' book about the relative permanence of communications technologies occur to me. Why must I use Linden Lab's software to extract real dollars I make in SL? They go to PayPal, which I trust, but I don't have a direct method of going from Iggy's stash of Linden Dollars directly to PayPal.

And why can't Linden Dollars be directly deposited, through a software tool, into my Wachovia account so I can keep copies of the transactions for, say, the IRS? I trust Wachovia more than PayPal, and I trust either of them more than I do Linden Lab.

Money, after all, is exchanged in a global communications network.

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