At CIL last week one of the presenters (I can’t remember which) mentioned Second Life. Don’t know what that is? Well it’s a massively multi-player online role-playing game – but it’s not like the others. There are no adventures, there are no dragons to slay or ogres to fight – there is only a virtual life to live.

I was actually a member of the Second Life beta test back in 2003 (I think). My husband and I would sit for hours at our computers and play together. We built a house and made online friends – we even set up our own little store. Back then things were different though – back then we only had Second Life dollars to play with – not now apparenly people are playing with real money – up to $1000 a month in real money!

What does this have to do with libraries? I’m not sure – I guess we’re supposed to join in the fun and create a virtual library on Second Life in order to advertise ourselves – but $1000 a month is more than I think we need to spend.

Why are people spending so much? Apparently they are paying for virtual land. I’m not sure if they’re making money off of that land – but I only pay a little more than that for my actual mortgage!

What brought this up? Well I keep reading about how Linden Lab – the creators of Second Life have scored $11 million in funding – and I wanted to do a little research to find out why they were able to get funding for a game – and it looks like the reason is because of how much people are spending to play this game.