Second Life

How the Virtual World “Second Life” is a Showcase of the Metaverse

A 17-year history of digital culture shows what to expect from the digital future

Ifyou could design your every physical feature from the ground up, what would you look like? In the immersive virtual world Second Life, you can be anyone and anything you want. From a sculptured muscular physique to tattoos, exotic hair colors, and animal parts, if you want it to be a part of you, all you need to do is click, drag and drop to create it.

That’s a major part of the appeal of the virtual community built within Linden Lab’s Second Life. Think of it like an infinitely large, more elaborate, community-oriented, and adult version of the video game, The Sims. It’s an online, massive, and explorable world. Averaging some 40,000 concurrent users at a time, it has developed its own unique culture.

Second Life is a 17-year-old digital world and an early version of an immersive Metaverse. Because its been around for so long and developed its own history and norms, it’s an interesting case study in how Metaverse communities evolve over time.

“Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successfull personality and duplicate it.”
Bruce Lee

What is the Metaverse?

The Metaverse I’m referring to here is a digital reality created through the social networking of devices.

It’s often a shared reality but can be a small or individual construct

It’s persistent in that it cannot be simply shut down or “off”

A Metaverse is comprised of vast, bordering on infinite amounts of information

It increasingly interacts with the physical world

Here are the elements of Second Life and how they create a Metaverse.

1. A Metaverse can be an expansive virtual world

Second Life is massive. It’s an infinite space where users can continuously develop their own land, homes, and experiences.

2. A Metaverse is an immersive experience

Users create customizable avatars as a virtual representation of themselves. These avatars can take on almost any shape, size, or form. They are highly customizable and allow for unprecedented levels of self-expression.

In Second Life, visitors embrace their avatars as a transition from the physical world to virtual reality. Exploring the massive expanse using their avatars to walk, ride, fly, and teleport to various locations.

“disconnecting a player’s virtual identity from their physical identity in mind” Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human by Tom Boellstorff

3. A Metaverse doesn’t necessarily have objectives

Like the prototypical Metaverse in Snow Crash, Second Life has no objectives or game focus. Instead, it’s intended to foster a social and collaborative life. Residents can interact with one another and conduct various forms of exploration, create and exhibit artwork, attend concerts, events, and public gatherings. In mature regions of the virtual space, users even conduct sexual activities.

4. Metaverses are constructed from user generated content

Second Life empowers users with no-code and low-code software to give individuals with no coding skills the ability to create their own digital products. At the core of the no-code movement is User-Generated Content (UGC). This is a model where the customers also develop and share content right alongside the developer organization (Linden Lab).

No-code platforms create flexible and easy to understand design tools for different purposes. Like Minecraft or Fortnite, in Second Life users can design avatars, items, and digital locations.

Users are given the tools and encouraged to sell prefabricated features and digital assets to other users. These prefabricated items and features allow for the customization of the experience with minimal friction.

UGC is a critical element of any Metaverse.

5. Spaces for unique subcultures

Second Life manifests as a fringe, frontier, and experimental community. It pushes the boundaries of what’s possible and acceptable. Like any frontier movement, users are searching for a particular way of life and build unique kinships with the people they meet on their respective frontiers.

Second Life and internet culture in general lends itself well to anonymity. A valued attribute for social groups on the periphery of society.

As a result, Second Life communities enjoy a reduction in the preference falsification characteristic of non-digital life. Users are able to express themselves without fear of social repercussions. Activities that may seem odd or frowned upon by mainstream culture are often embraced in the infinite expanse of the internet and its Metaverse.

Events, art, interactions, and unique forms of self-expression are common elements of the Metaverse and are unique within Second Life.

This plays into the themes of the modern internet. It also creates a mode for commerce to exist between users and captured by the platform organization.

6. Commerce and digital economies

Second Life’s Linden Dollar is the in-world currency that is exchangeable for real-world money. Like the physical world, users can perform various tasks and activities to earn Linden Dollars. The most common services are the prefabrication of avatar skins and virtual experiences.

Commerce within Second Life has given rise to a new digital gig-style economy. Like other MMO style environments, Second Life showcases the pros and cons a Metaverse can experience with digital asset commerce.

Ultimately, users create their own content and sell it to other users facilitating a robust digital economy. Some are even able to become quite wealthy doing it.

An example of in-game commerce includes when members provide the community clothing designed for unique avatar customizations.

7. Digital assets: the Metaverse is like a digital mall

Digital assets are created, bought, and sold within the digital universe. Avatar skins, vehicles, buildings, and artwork are just a few of the types of transactions that take place within Second Life.

We are starting to see that the next iterations of the Metaverse will present users with access to infinitely large commerce hubs that function like malls. Like in Second Life, users meet up to socialize and transact digital assets within these spaces.

Takeaways

In researching Second Life, I was struck by how passionate the users are about their digital lives. The common theme appears to be a passion for an infinite universe that empowers users to be whoever they want to be. It’s the truest form of escapism.

Second Life isn’t a game. It’s a fringe community experimenting with a new way of life. For the people that participate, it’s a chance to escape their regular lives and build a world they want to live in. The appeal is to experiment with self-expression. It’s a place where a robust Furry community can propagate.

The Second Life community probably won't ever achieve mainstream adoption. It’s too fringe and the technology doesn’t support easy access to a casual user. But it does represent an incubator for what the Metaverse can become.

As new technology supports the fringe cultures that develop within Second Life it lays the foundation for what we can expect to be adopted by the mainstream. Ie: Freedom of expression and the intimacy of communities found on an infinitely scalable internet.

That’s an element worth cultivating in any form of Metaverse.

From: https://superjumpmagazine.com/how-the-virtual-world-second-life-is-a-showcase-of-the-metaverse-5bd9fb67450

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