Jennifer Grinnell, Michigan furniture delivery dispatcher turned
fashion designer in cyber space, never imagined that she could make a
living in a video game.
Grinnell's shop, Mischief, is in Second Life, a virtual world whose users are responsible for creating all content. Grinnell's digital clothing
and "skins" allow users to change the appearance of their avatars --
their online representations -- beyond their wildest Barbie dress-up
dreams.
Within a month, Grinnell was making more in Second Life than in her real-world job as a dispatcher. And after three months she realized she could quit her day job altogether.
Now Second Life is
her primary source of income, and Grinnell, whose avatar answers to the
name Janie Marlowe, claims she earns more than four times her previous
salary.
Grinnell isn't alone. Artists and designers, landowners and currency speculators, are turning the virtual environment of Second Life into a real-world profit center.
"It's not just a game anymore," said online artisan Kimberly
Rufer-Bach. "There are businesses, nonprofits and universities" taking
advantage of the online world.
With users now numbering over 130,000, game-maker Linden Lab
estimates that nearly $5 million dollars, or about $38 per person, was
exchanged between players in January 2006 alone. Working in Second Life is "the same as working in London and sending money home to pay the rent for your spouse," said company CEO Philip Rosedale.
Just ask Rufer-Bach, known in Second Life as Kim
Anubus, who works full time making virtual objects for real-life
organizations. In a recent contract with the UC Davis Medical Center,
Rufer-Bach created virtual clinics in Second Life to
train emergency workers who might be called upon to rapidly set up
medical facilities in a national crisis. The work is funded by the
Centers for Disease Control. "In the event of a biological attack ? the
CDC have to set up emergency 12-hour push sites, to distribute
antibiotics," said Rufer-Bach.
To create the most realistic simulation possible, Rufer-Bach crafted
about 80 distinct objects, "from chairs (to) a forklift, plumbing,
wiring," she said. The end result is a training environment that's not
only lifelike, but relatively inexpensive. "There are substantial
advantages to doing this training in the virtual world," said UC Davis
professor Peter Yellowlees. For one thing, it's "incredibly cheaper."
Of course, most of the business opportunities in Second Life
don't involve anything as weighty as medical training. The game has a
significant market in specialized avatars: People pay as much as 2,200
in-game "Linden dollars," or just over $8, for stock avatars -- with
custom work commanding prices that can go much higher. Rufer-Bach
ordered a special avatar for her mother, "a knee-high lavender warthog,
with a tiara and wings and a big fat spleef with smoke effects."
The game world's mixture of fancy and serious business can lead to
some incongruous scenes. "We joke that you just don't show up at a
business meeting as a mermaid," said Rufer-Bach. "One guy is a furry,
with an animal head. Another's a ball of glowing fuzz. There's a giant
two-story robot transformer."
Wharton professor Dan Hunter, an expert on law and virtual worlds, said Second Life's
relatively small size makes its economic future hard to predict. But
virtual worlds are becoming spaces where "globalization of services can
occur," he said. "In SL, services are valued. 'Hey, I can
provide something that someone else wants! And I can make money from
it!' The expansion of the economy is almost certainly going to be
dependent on expanding the service opportunities."
With more and more people cashing in on Second Life, the most pressing question may be, how many can benefit before the boom times end?
