Cyberlife

You may find it hard to believe but the thing we call the “cyber world” is becoming more popular as days pass. People are jumping into the cyber world with games such as World of Warcraft and Diablo allowing people to compete against each other. Many online games will allow people to live a second life as they can buy, sell and trade property, islands and items making them realistic to the real world.

A game called second life exists and the main difference that makes it stand out from the competition is the fact there is no goal, you simply have to live your life and join in the community. The Chicago Tribune describes it as the matrix meets MySpace.

How does Second Life work?

As mentioned the basic concept of this game is to live out your life and do as you please, first off you join in and create your alter ego that you control in the cyber world. You can communicate with other people through speech bubbles, make friends as well as enemies. In total there are 26,000 acres of virtual cities and towns for you to explore and create businesses.

You will come across a number of bars, clubs, restaurants, libraries and everything else you can think of – you are free to build what you want.

How much does it cost?

Once you have downloaded the software to play this game you can register free of charge, you do have the option to update your software for $9.95 which will allow you to build better objects, buy better clothes etc so it’s up to how dedicated you are to the game whether you want to spend any money on it.

From then the prices of goods in the virtual world vary from a few dollars to a few thousand, for example if you wanted to open up a little shop it may cost you around $5-$10 whereas if you wanted your very own island it may cost up to $5,000 depending on the size. There is often a monthly fee for owning an island so you have to ensure that it’s profitable.

So I can make real money from this?

You can make money from participating in second life, even just by playing the game. Recent statistics have shown that the average daily expenditure from user to user was around $200,000 in September, this has almost tripled over the last few months.

In total there are around 1.4 million users playing second life and it’s been estimated that around 17,000 have become landlords and earn up to $20,000 a year from the game alone. The wealthiest person on the game, Anshe Chung owns a great amount of land and has programmers to help maintain it – she earns at least $100,000 from the game itself.

A virtual Dublin has just been created by John Mahon, he stated that it cost around an e3,600 investment and earns roughly e800 a month for the work so you can see how quickly he will get the money back and begin to make profit.