First session – 3D lands of adventure

The first session of the day (@ the crack of 10am) was a panel discussing various virtual worlds (SecondLife as an example) from a number of different angles. If you’re not familiar, SecondLife is a virtual world where you create a new (improved?) version of you, wander around this 3D land, meet people and have adventures. There are very few rules and the platform’s open architecture allows the world’s inhabitants to create just about anything they choose, should they have the aptitude to figure it out. Since its inception in ‘03 there have been a couple of notable developments:

• SecondLife has developed its own economy, with an actual, market-driven exchange rate against the dollar
• people have started making a good living creating virtual items and selling them online. Everything from clothes to real estate to guns can be purchased in SecondLife and savvy virtual citizens are cashing in to the tune of 6-figures a year selling what amounts to 1s and 0s somewhere on the Internet
• A number of “real-world” corporations such as Starwood Hotels, Toyota & IBM have been investing in creating a SecondLife footprint

The last bulletpoint is what interested me in this session. If corporate america is jumping on the bandwagon, I’d like to know why.