Life as a Full-Time Second Lifer

Almost four years after the launch of the online world Second Life, some people are reaping the rewards. From businesses to individuals, nonprofits to colleges, they're using the online space to reach out to each other, customers, givers and students, creating an online life that is a mirror of the real thing -- and yet totally different. As in:

• A Detroit woman makes up to US$350,000 a year creating clothes, items, even islands for individual and corporate customers in-world.
• Software created by the University of Michigan 3-D Lab is being built into Second Life.
• Students from Detroit to Mt. Pleasant, Mich., are learning in-world and working on projects with students from other places.
• The American Cancer Society's wildly successful Second Life Relay for Life in-world foot race last year raised $118,000.

Second Life is an online world, run like a computer game but without the competition. You can create an avatar -- a person that represents you -- and then wander the virtual landscape, visiting islands run by other people, businesses and organizations and talking with the other people you see.

The technologically apt can use basic computer programming to create their own items in-world, ranging from clothing and accessories to furniture and utensils to buildings and even islands.

You can buy real estate and items in-world using Linden Dollars (Linden Labs is the game's owner), which you can in turn buy with real-world cash or earn from other residents in-world. After earning Linden Dollars, you can cash them back out for real-life currency according to a daily exchange rate, which means that some people in-world are earning a real-life living.

A Full-Time Gig

Teasa Copprue of Detroit, 31, quit her job as a graphic designer two years ago to focus full time on Second Life. She designs everything from boots to buildings for her customers in-world, and has been richly rewarded, earning up to $350,000 a year.

Last year was a bad year, she says, because she parted ways with her in-game partner of some years and had to rebuild. Still, she ended the year with two in-game islands and $150,000 in real-world cash. Her stores include Asri Falcone Originals and House in a Hat Box.

"I haven't left since the day I got here," she says, chuckling, estimating that she spends about 15 hours a day in-world. Designing new products takes her an hour or two a week; the rest of the time is spent minding the store. "I like the creativity of it. You're not limited like other games, where you're told what you have to choose from. You choose your own destiny -- anything. I've been designing since the day it came in.

"This is my full-time gig. This is what I do."

Prior to Second Life, Copprue was a successful graphic designer, handling projects like hip-hop album covers. But she'd always been a closet online world game addict, ranging from "Star Wars Galaxies" (where she was one of the first players to reach Jedi status on her server) to "World of Warcraft." She'd always been able to figure out how to make some real-life money on the side by playing and selling things in-game, she said, but it had always been on the sly, since most games frown on exchanging real-world currency.

When she learned about Second Life and its real-life cash connection, she knew she was home.

"If it doesn't make dollars, it doesn't make sense," she said. "I make money while I sleep. That's my favorite part. I had no idea it would be this lucrative."

Second Life at U-M

At the University of Michigan 3-D Lab, Second Life is becoming a whole new three-dimensional reality.

The lab has at least three major SL projects under way. First, it developed a program that allows Second Life users to see the world in 3-D, using traditional bicolor stereovision glasses. That program has been so successful since its release a few months ago that Linden Labs is testing the idea of building it right into the world as a checkbox that people can turn on or off at will.

"Things seem to float in front of you," lab director Klaus-Peter Beier said. "It's a wonderful experience. People love it very much. You put the glasses on and it's like, `Wow, my avatar's really flying!' It's very exciting. We got enormous response from all over the world to our little experiment."

Second, the lab has worked with Virtual Products of Ann Arbor, Mich., to create a slippery ramp that people can walk on in the real world to move around in-game, adding some extra reality (and a little exercise) to Second Life.

And finally, they're working on making SL compatible with the Cave, the three-dimensional room that would allow users to actually walk around inside a life-size SL world.

The lab's been using its rapid prototyping printers -- devices that can print three-dimensional plastic representations of parts and other items built inside a computer -- to make little copies of staffers' in-world avatars for them to set on their desks.

The 3-D Lab isn't the only U-M department to use Second Life; the university actually owns an island, Wolverine Island, and uses the facilities there for classes and meetings from all over campus.

In-World Classes

Students from around the state are learning real-life lessons in Second Life. Michigan State University's Confucius Institute, for example, has a joint program with Michigan Virtual University to teach Chinese classes in-world.

Lesley Withers' communications course at Central Michigan University is held in-world as well, in conjunction with a similar course taught by the University of Nebraska-Omaha. The CMU associate professor stumbled across Second Life a couple of years ago, created her in-world avatar and, she said, "basically got hooked."

Now her students attend in-world lectures (complete with podiums and PowerPoint presentations) and complete in-world exercises with their peers and other students from Nebraska, ranging from scavenger hunts to interviews with residents in-world to the creation of plans for nonprofits to effectively use the space.

Their "classroom" is an open-air space on the beach, part of an island owned in-world by the University of Nebraska.

"They sit in chairs. They can raise their hands. They can type in questions. There's a large PowerPoint screen to show presentations," she said. "Usually we send them into the world to interact with people from all over the (real) world."

Charitable Application

Nonprofit organizations are leaping into Second Life as well, although thus far, the focus has been on national groups instead of local charities.

The American Cancer Society, for example, coordinates an annual charity run in its Relay for Life series of real-life runs inside "Second Life." The Second Life Relay for Life earned $118,000 last year from virtual runners all over the world, and the money was spent all over the country.

Megan Bracket, copy writer for the United Way for Southeastern Michigan, said that while she's had some interest in trying to get her organization into Second Life, she's been stumped by the world's built-in international audience and how difficult, technically, it can be to get started.

"It's definitely stayed on our radar," she said. "I think the biggest barrier is how much time it takes to learn Second Life. You have to learn coding and technical stuff to make it powerful and useful. Here, we don't have that kind of time."

ACS was lucky enough to get volunteers already familiar with the world to help out, Bracket said. That help was key to their quick start.

Meeting Place

The Michigan Library Consortium used Second Life to solve a problem: How do you hold meetings for far-flung libraries from everywhere in the state, when some of those libraries are too small to spare a librarian to travel to Lansing?

The solution: hold monthly meetings in Second Life, instead.

"It is a rather large state, and we have 600 member libraries throughout the state," said Evette Atkin, manager of the Michigan Library Consortium Virtual Branch. "The travel is too much for them to come down here."

So MLC offers symposiums, live online workshops and self-paced study.

"It's one more way to reach people that are hard to reach," she said. As a result, "Libraries all around the country and the world know about the MLC. We've made connections with librarians in Second Life that I never would have made in real life."

Second Life's Second Life

Second Life is itself starting a new phase. Rapidly adopted when it started almost four years ago, it's become a more stable environment now, inhabited by about 1.3 million active users (12.7 million total accounts).

Technology analysts the Gartner (NYSE: IT) Group estimate that by 2011, 80 percent of active Internet users will be members of non-gaming virtual worlds like Second Life.

As the early adopters move on to the next big thing, others are finding out how to make use of the world and platforms like it to reach out to each other, clients, students and donors.

In a very real sense, they're giving a new life to Second Life.