The View From Down Here

If you could be anything you wanted, what would it be?

Some of you may know, but I’ve been playing a game called Second Life in my free time (what little there is). Perhaps calling it a ‘game’ is a misnomer. It’s really more of an online virtual environment that the ‘players’ can control. The game developers give players the power to create virtual objects, program them, and (if desired) sell them to other players for real money. Some players have made playing Second Life their full time money job, and, as reported in Business Week and elsewhere, are making enough money to support themselves.

As for myself, I have drifted through several SL ‘careers’, none of which have been particularly successful (it should be noted that success in this game requires large time investments, just like the real world, which I do not have).

First, I built airplanes. Yes, virtual airplanes that fly in a virtual sky. I soon discovered that my programming abilities were not up to the task of virtual airplane design (though they are now – I intend to give planes another whirl during the next school break).

Next, I built houses. Very cute virtual buildings for all the virtual people staking out a virtual homestead in Second Life. “Why buy a virtual house?” you ask. I don’t know, but you don’t get paid for asking virtual questions. Virtual people buy them, so I built them. I was moderately successful at the house building, but there was such a glut on the market (house makers are virtually everywhere – ha! OK, you’re right, bad pun) that I didn’t have the time to keep ahead of the virtual competition.

After that, I tried my hand at being a land baron. All these virtual people are buying virtual land from a virtual someone right? Might as well be the virtual me. I bought virtual land cheap on foreclosure auction, developed it, broke it up, and sold for a profit. I made money at that, but the margins were not large, meaning that you’d have to increase the total number of land ‘flips’ to make real profit. Again, that means time and time is something I do not have in large abundance.

Following land, I made a great deal of virtual furniture. Oh come on, you knew this was coming, right? Virtual land… virtual house… virtual furnishings. Personally, I think my virtual furniture beats the pants off the competition, (most of it is natively programmed with sliding doors, special sit scripts, lights that turn on and off, etc) but I seem to be having a problem with advertising. Err... imaginary advertising.

Now, I make flags. That’s right, flags like fly outside office buildings and banks and homes on flag day – just a virtual version. I designed a virtual flag that orients itself to the virtual wind. None of my virtual competitors seems to have figured this out yet (Shh, don’t tell them that once you figure out the vector mechanics, the program is only 6 lines of code. Hopefully none of them read this blog.).

So, I’ve made my largest profit yet selling imaginary flags. Not just any imaginary flags, but the best darn imaginary flags that exist.

I love the irony of that last sentence…

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