It may just be me, but that's the reverse of my reaction. I think most people can get the idea of what's fun in running around as a blood elf and killing monsters, even if they think it's nerdy. But when I saw a long piece on ABC about second life, I was kind of shocked. Doing normal things and interacting with companies in a game? I was like, that's what "outside" is for. I didn't get it at all.

There are more people into furries out there than you think. No, not me, perv.

I tried it for a week when they were having some kind of free trial period, although I think it's free for the most basic subscription right now anyways.

I was also looking at it from the perspective of a gamer. I had a hard time finding anything in there interesting or compelling enough to want to actually play, except for a Bingo + Tetris hybrid some guy created called Tringo. Oh, and there were stores where you could shop for genitalia for your toon.

I found a zone where people were playing some guy's idea of a mini-RPG, but by that time I was mostly turned off by the long load times. When you enter a zone for the first time, it's empty. Slowly over the course of 10-15 minutes or so, stuff begins popping in, textures start to take on more features. The problem is that you don't know when this process is over and when you should start to try to appreciate what you're seeing as the final product of the zone owner's vision.

Mind you, I tried it out probably 2+ years ago. I'm hoping the game's technology has improved since then.

The idea of making a real-life salary in the game is intriguing, and I think the trick is to view it as a glorified virtual chatroom/sandbox instead of as a game that consistently delivers fun. I'm sure there's fun to be had in there; finding it is the trick.

I dunno. When I think non-gamers as a class, I don't think of them as wanting to engage in an alternative real world. Wouldn't it be more accurate to call it a game for people who like to play around in a virtual community rather than the one they live in? I'm not criticizing anyone for doing this, but it seems to me that would be the attraction given the way it's been described to me.

That's my whole point. It is the reverse of your reaction; you are a gamer. Of course running around as a blood elf and killing monsters makes sense to you, but to your average 40-year-old housewife or 50-year-old dad of four? Probably not so much. But a game without any weird elves or monsters or whatnot, a game where you get to make up what you want to do, like real-life but better - that's much less threatening or offputting. (Just don't tell them about the vibrant SL cybersex community!)

So, while there are plenty of gamers who play Second Life, the idea of it, at least, appeals to non-gamers more than World of Warcraft does. That's why you see more news stories on SL than WoW, to answer the OP.

While I'd agree that I don't think there'd be much of an audience for this kind of thing, I don't think that your random person who doesn't play games would rather be an Orc. I think they'd be more comfortable as something closer to home.

Of course, this is all conjecture.

If only one of us knew a non-gamer we could ask. *sigh*

Of course, there's also the problem that non-gamers aren't totally uniform. There oughta be a law!

I dont get second life at all. I know the technology company I work for is experimenting with it as a place to hold virtual training sessions. The CEO even has a Second Life avatar in his likeness.

I sure wish someone could convince them to contract with Blizzard for team building activities/raids in Azeroth, but that would just be too much fun.

Blasphemy!

People are drawn to Second Life for a lot of reasons and almost none of them are 'game' related. Creative types go there attracted by stories of people earning money with virtual creations, scripts, animations etc and they want to go see if they can tap into that while they look for a real job (my initial excuse). I wanted to try out the builder. If my 3d skills could translate then I'd try to do some cars or something and see if I could turn it into cash.

I didnt like the in-game builder so I left pretty quickly. I've seen screenshots of more advanced stuff now but I imagine that comes from folks who've mastered the archaic lego system over the course of a few years.

To game nuts it looks like a laggy attempt at a game with a bad frame rate. To the people who spent years in AOL chatrooms it looks like Nirvanna. To amateur real estate speculators, programmers, artists, animators, it looks like a potential gold mine. And guess what, they outnumber gamers. The website says they had over a million unique users online in the last 60 days, with 22k on right now and $1 million US Dollars spent in the last 24 hours.

This is an interesting page, especially the part about the number of users with positive cash flow broken down to different amounts over time. The number of users who earned at least $1 doubled over the last 6 months, yet its like .1% of the total population.

I don't know, sounds dumb and boring to me, but if enough of my friends start using it, it may kill instant messaging and such. Who knows, I've never gone in there, seems completely lame.

There was some hubbub a few months back that the numbers like that Linden keeps pushing around are false, drummed up to make their alternate reality seem superior to their competitors.

What is the deal with airline food?