Is the online virtual-reality game Second Life a thrilling social development, or a cynical and slightly sinister money-making scheme?

“I’d hesitate to call it a game,” writes Ant Chapman, and it’s true that the average Second Life session consists of the kind of mundane meandering that occurs in real life, never mind an alternate reality. “Supposedly,” writes Ed Jefferson, “you are free to do anything, but your options seem limited to building an ugly house or dancing with overweight men pretending to be ladies.” Scott Crawford, meanwhile, can’t get enough of it: “I’m having one of the most disturbing yet amazing times of my life playing with Second Life,” he writes. “My first session culminated in dressing up in a Kool-Aid Man costume and having sex with Tinkerbell on a urine-soaked mattress in a jail cell.” Clearly, Second Life’s what you make it.

For the uninitiated, Second Life is an online 3D digital world which is created by its “residents”. To become a resident you download the software, register a character’s name and start exploring; last month the number who have moved in hit the one million mark, and money-making enterprises are not far behind them. Recent weeks have seen such absurdities as a literary agency opening a Second Life office, Reuters launching a virtual news bureau, and Duran Duran purchasing their own virtual island on which they will perform “live”. The currency within Second Life, the Linden dollar, currently exchanges at around 250 Linden dollars to 1 US dollar, and a virtual economy is thriving. You might question the necessity of decking your character out in the latest virtual designer clothing, or shelling out for a swanky bachelor pad that consists of nothing but pixels on a computer screen, but the top ten entrepreneurs within Second Life are currently raking in an average of $200,000 a year from residents hungry for virtual products.

Despite Second Life being very much open for business, there’s a number of anomalies which make its economy fascinating – not least because Linden Lab, the creators of the game, state in their Terms Of Service Credit that the Linden dollar has no legal value. This hasn’t stopped a Pennsylvania lawyer filing a suit against Linden Lab, alleging that they unfairly confiscated thousands of dollars worth of his virtual property, and it has also been reported that the US Congress will be investigating the amount of commerce taking place in virtual worlds such as Second Life with a view to creaming off tax revenue. Dickon Edwards neatly sums up a number of correspondent’s feelings about the commercialisation of what might otherwise be a neat social tool. “The Web already is a Second Life. Forums, blog communities and message boards are all avatars and interaction; Second Life seems just an attempt to make more money from it.” An attempt that seems to be succeeding rather well.