John Lindal’s Blog

Second Life

If you haven’t already seen it, you ought to check out the new virtual world called Second Life. Personally, I’ve been waiting for this for about 10 years, ever since I started designing such a system in grad school. Second Life works pretty much the way I dreamed of doing it. It’s a social place, but it also has an economy.

Since it’s virtual, anybody can create stuff and then either keep it, sell it for whatever the market will pay, or give it away. Duplication costs are obviously zero, but you control who has the right to duplicate your creations, so you can be the sole supplier of an object — at least until somebody else figures out how to build it from scratch

The physics engine and scripting language seem quite well designed. Scripts lets you attach arbitrary behaviors to the objects that you create. The language includes the concept of state, so you don’t have to build a state machine yourself.

Basic access is free. If you sign up for a paying account, you are allowed to own land. You control who has the right to create objects on your land, so you can either build a castle and defend it against all invaders, or you can open it up for everybody to play.