Ghost towns and boom towns

“We thought of Second Life as complementing your first life,” Hunter Walk, one of the original Linden Lab team members working on the universe from its launch, tells me. It was conceived as a space that gave you a set of choices that were missing from reality. “In your first life you don’t necessarily get to fly. Here you can fly. In your first life you can’t choose what you look like. Here you can choose what you look like — and it’s malleable.”

That changeability extended right back to the developers. “The story of the internet in general is one of unintended consequences,” begins Boellstorff. “It’s about repurposing and doing things the original designers did not design for.” As the custodians of an internet-based community, Second Life’s developers were little different. When they began sketching out the universe early in development, Linden Lab deliberately left things open-ended. “The early users showed us the way to where the community was,” explains Walk.

That community is now being overlooked, believes Berry, who began working for Linden Lab making textures and music in June 2008, and was fired in June 2013 after a dispute over money. “After five years working quite closely with them, I still don’t feel I really know what the culture is,” she says. “They simply never seem to understand their own product. It’s ludicrous that they don’t understand how people use Second Life, what they like it for, what they want it for.”

There’s no such thing as an average Second Lifer, but some people just don’t get it, no matter how long they spend in-world. Berry tried, years back, to convince her mother and siblings to join the world. “I’ve had very little luck. If I can’t get them to try it they’re obviously not going to understand it. And it’s really hard to explain it to anybody else.”

A giant bubble floated down from on high. “Step in,” she said

For the longest time I didn’t get it. I’d spent several weeks pottering about, teleporting from one place to another. I stood on a dock of a bay, overlooking an azure sea and hearing the whistle of the wind. I walked through a cold, gun-metal gray futuristic world full of walkways that reminded me of any number of first-person shooters. I’d chased a woman, inexplicably sprinting, arms flailing, through the palazzos of Milan, looking at the fashion boutiques. I’d visited London — in reality a tired collection of worn cliches, a cardboard cut-out of the Beatles crossing the street down from a roundabout with a red telephone box on one corner. It was kind of cool, but it was also corny.

Then Berry invited me to Nemesis. It’s where she lives in-universe, all rolling green hills and gated houses. Berry — or Pendragon, as she was in this world — wanted to show me just how magical Second Life could get.

She had in her possession Starax’s Wand. Created by a user, it was at the time the most expensive item a user could buy in Second Life. Clever coding meant that if its possessor mentioned certain words in-game — “money,” for example — the universe would change around it (a briefcase full of cash would descend from the heavens and spit out greenbacks, for example).

The wand has been largely outmoded by updates, but some commands still work. We were standing outside the perimeter wall of Berry’s house, green grass beneath our feet. Her avatar hunched over and moved her hands on an invisible keyboard: the animation shows when the real person is typing. In the chat box appeared a word.

“Bubble.”

A giant bubble floated down from on high. “Step in,” she said. I did. And the bubble rose, and I saw a bird’s eye view of Nemesis. I was suspended in mid-air in a giant bubble, and could roll over the shoreline high above the sea. I couldn’t help but smile; finally, I’d found my niche.

People come to the Second Life universe for different reasons: some go there to escape their reality and to stretch the boundaries of their lives in ways forbidden by the constraints of their bodies or the norms of society. Some go to meet friends and family; there are some who want to create buildings, paintings, and whole new worlds. And some — big companies and small entrepreneurs — hope to make a living.

There’s no such thing as an average Second Lifer, but some people just don’t get it

Even after the deluge dried up there’s a booming economy in Second Life: Berry began taking meetings in 2006 with companies looking to extend their reach into the universe. Her knowledge of the world was her selling point, helping companies avoid missteps in this strange, new place. “Reportedly Adidas spent a million dollars on their sim in Second Life,” Berry says with a laugh. What it got them was a single store selling sneakers. Problem was, the sneakers slowed down the universe: “Anybody running an event would say if you’ve got Adidas trainers on, take them off because they were lagging the sim so bad!” Ironically, Berry says, it was when the big companies descended on Second Life that the place felt most like a ghost town, and not a boom town: they didn’t get the ethos, didn’t engage, and left empty offices and buildings.

Berry’s earnings from Second Life have varied enormously: a poor year can see her earn £5,000 ($7,600) for her consultancy work, as well as creating music and textures for avatars and locations in-world (a few years ago she specialized in providing Christmas trees to those looking to get into the festive spirit). “It’s not a fortune,” she explains. “I haven’t earned a lot of money from it.” But it pays the bills.

Second Life isn’t a whole new world — that’s something everyone, from Berry, to Walk, to Boellstorff, has been keen to stress. For those truly committed, who have property, and cash, and a business, and money invested in the universe, it’s simply an ongoing extension of their lives: “That’s why we chose the name,” Walk says.