second life this article is about the virtual community for the portuguese film see second life film second life serverdeveloperslinden labinitial releasejune23 2003 15 years ago20030623stable release180824519036 august24 2018 2 months ago20180824 platformlinuxlicenseproprietarywebsitewwwsecondlifecom second life is an online virtual world developed and owned by the san franciscobased firm linden lab and launched on june 23 2003 by 2013 second life had approximately one million regular users the virtual world can be accessed freely via linden labs own client programs or via alternative thirdparty viewers second life users also called residents create virtual representations of themselves called avatars and are able to interact with places objects and other avatars they can explore the world known as the grid meet other residents socialize participate in both individual and group activities build create shop and trade virtual property and services with one another the platform principally features 3dbased usergenerated content second life also has its own virtual currency the linden dollar which is exchangeable with real world currency second life is intended for people aged 16 and over with the exception of 1315yearold users who are restricted to the second life region of a sponsoring institution eg a school built into the software is a 3d modeling tool based on simple geometric shapes that allows residents to build virtual objects there is also a procedural scripting language linden scripting language which can be used to add interactivity to objects sculpted prims sculpties mesh textures for clothing or other objects animations and gestures can be created using external software and imported the second life terms of service provide that users retain copyright for any content they create and the server and client provide simple digital rights management drm functions history philip rosedale founder of second life in 1999 philip rosedale formed linden lab with the intention of developing computer hardware to allow people to become immersed in a virtual world in its earliest form the company struggled to produce a commercial version of the hardware known as the rig which in prototype form was seen as a clunky steel contraption with computer monitors worn on shoulders in 2005 and 2006 second life began to receive significant media attention including a cover story in businessweek magazine featuring the virtual world and second life avatar anshe chung by that time anshe chung had become second lifes poster child and symbol for the economic opportunities that the virtual world offers to its residents at the same time the service saw a period of exponential growth of its user base on december 11 2007 cory ondrejka who helped program second life was forced to resign as chief technology officer in january 2008 residents spent a total of 28274505 hours inworld and on average 38000 residents were logged in at any moment the maximum concurrency number of avatars inworld recorded is 88200 in the first quarter of 2009 on march 14 2008 rosedale announced plans to step down from his position as linden lab ceo and to become chairman of linden labs board of directors in 2010 kingdon was replaced by rosedale who took over as interim ceo after four months rosedale abruptly stepped down from the interim ceo position it was announced in october 2010 that bob komin linden labs chief financial officer and chief operating officer would take over the ceo job for the immediate future in 2008 second life was honored at the 59th annual technology engineering emmy awards for advancing the development of online sites with usergenerated content rosedale accepted the award in may 2009 concurrent users averaged about 62000 in june 2010 linden lab announced layoffs of 30 of its workforce in november 2010 213 million accounts were registered although the company has not made public any statistics regarding actual longterm consistent usage in 2015 alone second life users had cashed out approximately 60000000 60 million us dollar and second life had an estimated gdp of 500000000 500 million us dollar higher than some small countries classification during a 2001 meeting with investors rosedale noticed that the participants were particularly responsive to the collaborative creative potential of second life as a result the initial objectivedriven gaming focus of second life was shifted to a more usercreated communitydriven experience second lifes status as a virtual world a computer game or a talker is frequently debated rosedale said so we dont see this as a game we see it as a platform second life used to offer two main grids one for adults 18 and one for teens in august 2010 linden lab closed the teen grid due to operating costs since then users aged 16 and over can sign up for a free account other limited accounts are available for educators who use second life with younger students there are three activitybased classifications called ratings for sims in second life general formerly pgno extreme violence or nudity moderate formerly maturesome violence swearing adult situations some nudity adult may contain overt sexual activity nudity and violence residents and avatars resident second life a human female avatar several avatars together there is no charge for creating a second life account or for making use of the world for any period of time linden lab reserves the right to charge for the creation of large numbers of multiple accounts for a single person 5 per household 2 per 24 hours but at present does not do so a premium membership us995 monthly us2250 quarterly or us72 annually extends access to an increased level of technical support and also pays an automatic stipend of l300week into the members avatar account and after 45 days that resident will receive a l700 bonus making it l1000 for that week this amount has decreased since the original stipend of l500 which is still paid to older accounts certain accounts created during an earlier period may receive l400 this stipend if changed into usd means that the actual cost for the benefit of extended tech support for an annual payment of us72 is only about us14 depending on the currency exchange rates however the vast majority of casual users of second life do not upgrade beyond the free basic account avatars may take any form users choose human animal vegetable mineral or a combination thereof or residents may choose to resemble themselves as they are in real life they may choose even more abstract forms given that almost every aspect of an avatar is fully customizable second life culture consists of many activities and behaviors that are also present in real life a single resident account may have only one avatar at a time although the appearance of this avatar can change between as many different forms as the resident wishes avatar forms like almost everything else in second life can be either created by the user or bought premade a single person may also have multiple accounts and thus appear to be multiple residents a persons multiple accounts are referred to as alts avatars can travel via walking running vehicular access flying or teleportation because second life is such a vast virtual world teleportation is used when avatars wish to travel instantly and efficiently once they reach their destination they may travel in more conventional means at various speeds avatars can communicate via local chat group chat global instant messaging known as im and voice public private and group chatting is used for localized public conversations between two or more avatars and is visible to any avatar within a given distance ims are used for private conversations either between two avatars or among the members of a group or even between objects and avatars unlike chatting im communication does not depend on the participants being within a certain distance of each other as of version 11812 voice chat both local and im was also available instant messages may optionally be sent to a residents email when the resident is logged off although message length is limited to 4096 bytes identities in second life can relate to the users personality or creating their own character it is based on their decisions on how to express themselves most avatars are human but they can choose to be vampires or animals sometimes what they choose does not relate to their offline selves economy economy of second life an avatar in the virtual world second life usergenerated content in the virtual world second life second life has an internal economy and closedloop virtual token called the linden dollar l l can be used to buy sell rent or trade land or goods and services with other users the linden dollar is a closedloop virtual token for use only within the second life platform linden dollars have no monetary value and are not redeemable for monetary value from linden lab a resident with a surplus of linden dollars earned via a second life business or experiential play can request to refund their linden dollar surplus to paypal linden lab reports that the second life economy generated us3596674 in economic activity during the month of september 2005 there is a high level of entrepreneurial activity in second life residents of second life are able to create virtual objects and other content second life is unique in that users retain all the rights to their content which means they can use second life to distribute and sell their creations with 21 million items listed on its online marketplace major tech corporations have tried to use second life to market products or services to second lifes techsavvy audience ibm for example purchased 12 islands within second life for virtual training and simulations of key businesses processes but has since moved on to other platforms due to maintaining costs virtual goods include buildings vehicles devices of all kinds animations clothing skin hair jewelry flora and fauna and works of art services include business management entertainment and custom content creation which can be broken up into the following six categories building texturing scripting animating art direction and the position of producerproject funder l can be purchased using us dollars and other local currencies on the lindex exchange provided by linden lab customer usd wallets obtained from linden dollar sales on the lindex are most commonly used to pay second lifes own subscription and tier fees only a relatively small number of users earn enough profit to request a refund to paypal according to figures published by linden lab about 64000 users made a profit in second life in february 2009 of whom 38524 made less than us10 while 233 made more than us5000 profits are derived from selling virtual goods renting land and a broad range of services technology second life comprises the viewer also known as the client executing on the users personal computer and several thousand servers operated by linden lab client linden lab provides official viewers for windows macos and most distributions of linux the viewer renders 3d graphics using opengl technology the viewer source code was released under the gpl in 2007 there are now several mature third party viewer projects that contain features not available in the linden lab official client target other platforms or cater to specialist accessibility needs an independent project libopenmetaverse offers a function library for interacting with second life servers libopenmetaverse has been used to create nongraphic third party viewers there are several alternate viewers published by linden lab used for software testing by volunteers for early access to upcoming projects some of these clients only function on the beta grid consisting of a limited number of regions running various releases of unstable test server code server each full region an area of 256256 meters in the second life grid runs on a single dedicated core of a multicore server homestead regions share 3 regions per core and openspace regions share 4 regions per core running proprietary software on debian linux these servers run scripts in the region as well as providing communication between avatars and objects present in the region every item in the second life universe is referred to as an asset this includes the shapes of the 3d objects known as primitives the digital images referred to as textures that decorate primitives digitized audio clips avatar shape and appearance avatar skin textures lsl scripts information written on notecards and so on each asset is referenced with a universally unique identifier or uuid assets are stored on isilon systems storage clusters each server instance runs a physics simulation to manage the collisions and interactions of all objects in that region objects can be nonphysical and nonmoving or actively physical and movable complex shapes may be linked together in groups of up to 256 separate primitives additionally each players avatar is treated as a physical object so that it may interact with physical objects in the world as of 9july2014 linden lab pursues the use of open standards technologies and uses free and open source software such as apache mysql squid and linux opensimulator opensimulator in january 2007 opensimulator was founded as an open source simulator project the aim of this project is to develop a full open source server software for second life clients opensim is bsd licensed and it is written in c and can run under mono environment in 2008 there were some alternative grids using opensimulator applications arts arts in second life second life residents express themselves creatively through virtual world adaptations of art exhibits live music as well as other art forms competitive entertainment a wide variety of recreational activities both competitive and noncompetitive take place on the second life grid including both traditional sports and video gamelike scenarios education education in second life second life is used as a platform for education by many institutions such as colleges universities libraries and government entities since 2008 the university of san martin de porres of peru wvu started a pilot program in the colleges computer lab in spring 2011 embassies the maldives was the first country to open an embassy in second life in may 2007 in september 2007 publicis group announced the project of creating a serbia island as a part of a project serbia under construction the project is officially supported by ministry of diaspora of serbian government it was stated that the island will feature the nikola tesla museum the gua trumpet festival and the exit festival on tuesday december 4 2007 estonia became the third country to open an embassy in second life malta and djibouti are also planning to open virtual missions in second life religion religious organizations have also begun to open virtual meeting places within second life in early 2007 lifechurchtv a christian church headquartered in edmond oklahoma and with eleven campuses in the us created experience island and opened its twelfth campus in second life the first unitarian universalist congregation of second life was established in 2006 services have been held regularly making the fuucsl congregation one of the longestrunning active congregations in second life the egyptianowned news website islam online has purchased land in second life to allow muslims and nonmuslims alike to perform the ritual of hajj in virtual reality form obtaining experience before actually making the pilgrimage to mecca in person second life also offers several groups that cater to the needs and interests of humanists atheists agnostics and freethinkers one of the most active groups is sl humanism which has been holding weekly discussion meetings inside second life every sunday since 2006 relationships relationships are common in second life including some couples who have married online second life relationships have been taken from virtual online relationships into personal realworld relationships booperkit moseley and shukran fahid were possibly the first couple to meet in second life and then marry in real life booperkit travelled to the united states to meet shukran and he returned to england with her after one week they married in 2006 had twin boys in 2009 and are still married some couples meet online form friendships and eventually move to finding one another in the real world relationships in virtual worlds have an added dimension compared to other social media because avatars give a feeling of proximity making the voyeur experience more intense than simply a textual encounter the complexities of those encounters depend on the engagement levels of the people behind the avatars whether they are engaging disassociatively entertainment only immersively as if the avatar was them or augmentatively meaning they engage for a real life purpose roleplaying roleplay at the 1920s berlin project there are many destinations within second life which are dedicated to those who enjoy roleplaying some of these are sexual in nature while others focus on themes such as fantasy history science fiction or other subjects many of these types of worlds have very specific sets of rules that each avatar who visits is expected to follow such rules can include things such as a dress code a code of behavior and world guidelines if these rules are not followed the avatar can be booted from the world by a game administrator one example of one of these roleplaying worlds is the realm of valahari this particular world takes place in a fantasy medieval setting in order to exist within that world your avatar must be dressed in fantasy or medieval attire in case your avatar does not already own such clothing the world provides clothing shops for you in an area which you visit before you actually enter the world however none of these clothing shops provide free items all of them cost linden dollars l within the world everyone is also expected to maintain the roleplaying atmosphere anyone who is using regular or everyday language tends to be frowned upon and seen as an outsider by the other members of the realm regular language is to be kept in private chat windows so that the fantasymedieval atmosphere is not polluted by it another example are historical roleplaying sims such as 1880s victorian london and the 1920s berlin project while only encouraged to do so in 1880s victorian london visitors to the 1920s berlin project are required to dress accurately as part of the history based immersive experience sims may incorporate rules that have less to do with thematic realism and more to do with adhering to community guidelines for instance one rule that is commonly seen is the prohibition or restriction of underage avatars in roleplaying sims that feature sexual content these rules are separate from linden labs sim restrictions as they restrict underage characters played by adult players second life also features roleplay worlds based on other successful fictional franchises one such example would be midgar a roleplay sim based on popular video game final fantasy vii which has been established since 2007 roleplay sims are usually either nonmetered script metered or use the sim server health meter in nonmetered combat sims all fighting is done through paragraph rp usually with the assistance of roleplay dice or the players may determine the outcome they desire privately in ims and then roleplay out the ending in character using public chat in metered combat sims players carry weapons that are scripted to act in conjunction with the meter players are then able to fight using these weapons andor any capabilities built into the meter itself until one players health expires and they die they are either resurrected by another player automatically revive after a certain period of time or are returned to their home sim position with their full health restored some metered combat sims allow for nonmetered combat to be used under certain circumstances in these cases the method of combat used depends upon preferences of the participants in a given scene the integration between content purchases and provision of roleplaying content has occasionally caused controversy in second life some examples include a user may use real money transferred via l to purchase clothing or items for a roleplaying area only to be banned from that area and have the value of those items wiped out intrusive roleplay in which avatars roleplay in a disruptive way in areas that are not intended for roleplaying has caused problems in the past examples include avatars dressing as police officers and claiming to have authority over areas that have nothing to do with them or a previously sold system which allowed avatars to play vampires and bite any other avatar to steal their soul some new users were convinced this would have a permanent effect on their avatar and even paid to purchase roleplaying items to restore their soul unaware that the effect was entirely irrelevant if the player did not wish to participate in the vampire roleplay the range of avatar costumes and items available is much greater than the range of roleplay areas and the range of playable social roles meaning that users may purchase items not realizing that the role they are advertised as providing cannot exist this also applies to weapons which are regulated differently across different roleplaying sims or chains of sims some metered combat systems allow affiliated merchants to develop weapons using their systems api this allows those merchants to develop and sell weapons that deal additional damage or have other mechanical effects on combat these weapons are often more expensive than similar weapons that do not incorporate these enhancements depending upon the specifics of the api a merchants weapons may end up being more powerful than the combat systems developer intended in these cases the merchants api privileges may be revoked resulting in both the developers new and preexisting weapons losing their special abilities this eliminates much of the value of the weapons which have already been purchased by users using l science second life is used for scientific research collaboration and data visualization examples include scilands american chemical societys acs island genome virginia techs slate and nature publishing groups elucian islands village social network second life can be a realtime immersive social space for people including those with physical or mental disabilities that impair their first lives who often find comfort and security interacting through anonymous avatars indeed some academics believe using second life might even help improve motor ability for people with parkinsons disease an example of how second life has been used by disabled people is wheelies the widely publicised disability themed nightclub founded by simon stevens work solutions second life gives companies the option to create virtual workplaces to allow employees to virtually meet hold events practice any kind of corporate communications conduct training sessions in 3d immersive virtual learning environment simulate business processes and prototype new products criticism and controversy criticism of second life second life has seen a number of controversies as well issues range from the technical budgeting of server resources to moral pornography to legal legal position of the linden dollar bragg v linden lab security issues have also been a concern regulation in the past large portions of the second life economy consisted of businesses that are regulated or banned changes to second lifes terms of service in this regard have largely had the purpose of bringing activity within second life into compliance with various international laws even though the person running the business may be in full compliance with the law in their own country on july 26 2007 linden lab announced a ban on inworld gambling due to federal and state regulations on internet gambling that could affect linden lab if it was permitted to continue the ban was immediately met with inworld protests in august 2007 a 750000 inworld linden dollar bank called ginko financial collapsed due to a bank run triggered by linden labs ban on gambling after the ban a few companies continue to offer noninterest bearing deposit accounts to residents such as the ecommerce site xstreet which had already adopted a zerointerest policy 3 months before the linden lab interest ban technical issues second life has suffered from difficulties related to system instability these include increased system latency and intermittent client crashes however some faults are caused by the systems use of an asset server cluster on which the actual data governing objects is stored separately from the areas of the world and the avatars that use those objects the communication between the main servers and the asset cluster appears to constitute a bottleneck which frequently causes problems typically when asset server downtime is announced users are advised not to build manipulate objects or engage in business leaving them with little to do but chat and generally reducing confidence in all businesses on the grid another problem is inventory loss in which items in a users inventory including those which have been paid for can disappear without warning or permanently enter a state where they will fail to appear inworld when requested giving an object missing from database error linden lab offers no compensation for items that are lost in this way although a policy change instituted in 2008 allows accounts to file support tickets when inventory loss occurs many inworld businesses will attempt to compensate for this or restore items although they are under no obligation to do so and not all are able to do so a recent change in how the company handles items which have lost their parent directory means that inventory loss is much less of a problem and resolves faster than in recent years loss to recovery times have gone from months or never to hours or a day or two for the majority of users but inventory loss does still exist second life functions by streaming all data to the user live over the internet with minimal local caching of frequently used data the user is expected to have a minimum of 300kbits of internet bandwidth for basic functionality due to the proprietary communications protocols it is not possible to use a network proxy service to reduce network load when many people are all using the same location such as when used for group activities in a school or business fraud and intellectual property protection although second lifes client and server incorporate digital rights management technology the visual data of an object must ultimately be sent to the client in order for it to be drawn thus unofficial thirdparty clients can bypass them one such program copybot was developed in 2006 as a debugging tool to enable objects to be backed up but was immediately hijacked for use in copying objects additionally programs that generally attack clientside processing of data such as glintercept can copy certain pieces of data such use is prohibited under the second life tos and could be prosecuted under the dmca linden lab may ban a user who is observed using copybot or a similar client but it will not ban a user simply for uploading or even selling copied content in this case linden labs enforcement of intellectual property law is limited to that required by the safe harbor provisions of the digital millennium copyright act which requires filing a reallife lawsuit although a few highprofile businesses in second life have filed such lawsuits there have also been issues with the use of false dmca takedown notices once a dmca takedown notice is served reversing it requires an individual to expose his personal information to the filer filing a notice does not require this for the penalty of perjury to be enacted a lawsuit is required anything less the false dmca claimer can just claim it from a different account every week causing legitimate business unlimited losses in addition the technical process of removal and reinstatement of content on second life is subject to failure which can result in content becoming unusable to its owner this does not effectively prevent content theft a thief who is subject to a dmca takedown notice will not challenge it but will simply create a new account and reupload the content often releasing it with all permissions available to maximize propagation out of spite most users in the world as paying private individuals are likewise effectively unprotected common forms of fraud taking place inworld include bogus investment and pyramid schemes fake or hacked vendors and failure to honor land rental agreements a group of virtual landowners online have filed a class action lawsuit against the company claiming the company broke the law when it rescinded their ownership rights the plaintiffs say a change in the terms of service forced them to either accept new terms that rescinded their virtual property ownership rights or else be locked out of the site the emerald client and inworld logging scripts the emerald client was developed by a group of users based on an opensource branch of the snowglobe viewer several groups alleged that the emerald viewer contained trojan code which tracked user details and demographics in a way that the developers could later recover via inworld logging scripts one of these groups was banned from second life by linden lab after publishing their discovery the support staff and a developer the main developers left second life developmentwere barred from further development of the emerald project left to work on a new viewer project phoenix simply a rebranded emerald that did not contain any malicious code the phoenix team are now the developers behind firestorm viewer and work closely alongside linden lab holding biweekly joint meetings with all third party viewers ban of woodbury university the controversial campus of woodbury universitys school of media culture and design which was deleted in 2010 by linden lab linden lab has twice in 2007 and 2010 banned a california educational institution woodbury university from having a representation within second life on april 20 2010 four simulators belonging to the university were deleted and the accounts of several students and professors terminated according to the chronicle of higher education professor edward clift dean of the school of media culture and design at woodbury university told the chronicle of higher education that their campus was a living breathing campus in second life including educational spaces designed mostly by students such as a mock representation of the former soviet union and a replica of the berlin wall according to professor clift the virtual campus did not conform to what linden lab wanted a campus to be the article in the chronicle of higher education concluded with meanwhile many people in second life expressed on blogs that they were glad to see the virtual campus go arguing that it had been a haven for troublemakers in the virtual world the alphaville herald the alphaville herald in 2004 the newspaper the alphaville herald founded and edited by the philosopher peter ludlow migrated to second life and in the following years the newspaper played a prominent role in reporting on second life and in the public discussion of the game in popular culture since its debut in 2003 second life has been referred to by various popular culture mediums including literature television film and music in addition various personalities in such mediums have themselves used or employed second life for both their own works and for private purposes in september 2006 former governor of virginia mark warner became the first politician to appear in a mmo when he gave a speech in second life in the american sitcom the office dwight schrute rainn wilson is known to play the game most notably in the episode local ad research much of the published research conducted in second life is associated with education and learning unlike computer games second life does not have a predefined purpose and allows for highly realistic enactment of real life activities online situated learning has also been examined in sl in order to determine how the design and social dynamics of the virtual world support as well as constrain various types of learning healthinfo island provides tips on staying healthy to second life residents healthinfo island offers second life residents tips on how to stay healthy second life has also offered educational research potential within the medical and healthcare fields examples include inworld research facilities such as the second life medical and consumer health libraries healthinfo islandfunded by a grant from the us national library of medicine and vnec virtual neurological education centredeveloped at the university of plymouth uk there have also been healthcare related studies done of sl residents another focus of sl research has included the relationship of avatars or virtual personas to the real or actual person these studies have included research into social behavior and reported two main implications the sl avatarself relationship was also studied via resident interviews and various enactments of the avatarself relationship were identified the study concluded that sl residents enacted multiple avatarself relationships and cycled through them in quick succession suggesting that these avatarself relationships might be shaped and activated strategically in order to achieve the desired educational commercial or therapeutic outcomes active worlds anteworld blaxxun cyberformance playstation home simulated reality smeet social simulation the sims online virtual reality worldscom hillis ken 2009 online a lot of the time durham duke university press see chapter 40 kaplan andreas m haenlein m 2009 consumer use and business potential of virtual worlds the case of second life international journal on media management 113 kaplan andreas m haenlein m 2009 the fairyland of second life about virtual social worlds and how to use them business horizons 526 olsen per li gang qin 2011 second life love a dialog between two partners in second life new york lulu press martin neo second life fraud fraud and intellectual property protection in second life new york public journal robbins sarah and mark r bell second life for dummies hoboken nj wiley pub 2008 print rymaszewski michael second life the official guide sybex inc 2008 print zerzan john telos 141 secondbest life real virtuality new york telos press ltd winter 2007 sk alamgir hossain abu saleh md mahfujur rahman and abdulmotaleb el saddik interpersonal haptic communication in second life in haptic audiovisual environments and games have 2010 ieee international symposium on october 1617 2010 phoenix arizona usa pp1 4 ta d diner d the creation of academic consulting environment in virtual worlds and an assessment of challenges faced by learners in this environment conference proceedings of elearning and software for education 01 2011 p290296 second lifeat wikipedias sister projects definitions from wiktionary media from wikimedia commons news from wikinews quotations from wikiquote texts from wikisource textbooks from wikibooks resources from wikiversity official website vtesecond lifemain articles linden lab teen second life second life grid culture arts businesses and organizations economy education libraries related criticism patriotic nigras bragg v linden lab opensimulator 