As Vicki Davis at The Cool Cat teacher Blog puts it, Second Life is suffering from inflation!
Davis was working from a report in the technology section of the Times Online. Second Life sells virtual land inside their game and they recently raise the price of the cheapest available real estate by $50 a month. The irony is That the problem in Second Life is much the same as the problem in the real world: the resell prices for land inside the virtual world are going down instead of up.
If you're not familiar with Second Life, it is perhaps best described as "a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents." That description comes straight from the website of Linden Lab, which owns Second Life. The game is the leading virtual world in cyberspace, although many competitors have begun other virtual worlds in cyberspace in recent years. While technically Second Life is a game, it kind of begs the question of what constitutes a game. Money earned in Second Life can be exchange for real money and transfered back to your personal bank account. Second Life can host real world conference-style events that serve real world purposes. During the Primary Season, Second Life was even part of the political campaign. It's a confusion of reality that Second Lifers seem to relish.
The most recent price hikes in Second Life are evidently part of a trend and many users are responding the way Davis did. She evidently uses Second Life as an educational tool, and she decided that, well, there are other virtual worlds.
© Psycho Al
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