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MR ONDREJKA IS A FIRM BELIEVER in the transformative powers of Second Life. The chief technology officer of Linden Lab, which created the virtual world, is excited by the possibilities of the game and the amazing talent of the people who enter the domain. -- MAY LIN LE GOFF
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A RECENT jaunt through virtual world Second Life proved to be a mind-boggling experience.
After checking my sense of reality at the door, I flew through gardens of whispering trees, malls selling art and desolate alien landscapes with rolling dunes - all thronged with fantastically shaped avatars, or virtual characters, who have made Second Life the playground for their imagination.
Watching a motley group of furry animal-shaped and gothic human avatars mingle beneath a 12-storey-tall manga-inspired sculpture, it is a relief to discover that its creators at Linden Lab had decided to ditch their original plans.
In town recently for technology festival imbX, Linden Lab's chief technology officer Cory Ondrejka revealed that Second Life was first conceptualised as something very different.
Founder Philip Rosendale, who set up the San Francisco-based company in 1999, hired Mr Ondrejka in 2000 to work on a game with a lush forested ecosystem with plants and animals in it.
But after a year of letting people at board meetings experiment with the game, they realised the interest was in something more than that.
'Everyone in the room would just stop talking and watch people build things in the world. We saw they wanted to create cities, cars, planes, discos, schools. Second Life really changed course at that point,' said Mr Ondrejka, an ex-naval officer.
With the 37-year-old developing the technologies crucial to Second Life, they changed tack and launched it as an interactive virtual world in 2003, where users can do anything they want.
The game caught on rapidly.
From just a few hundred users - called residents - in its first year, the Second Life population has now exploded to more than 7.6 million people worldwide. Residents shop, socialise, play games and build everything from beer cans to beach discos.
With an estimated US$1.9 million (S$2.9 million) being spent each day in Second Life - gamers use a currency that can be converted to real money - it is no wonder that companies such as Mercedes-Benz and IBM have set up shop too.
Celebrities such as rapper Chamillionaire and author Dean Koontz have made virtual appearances, the BBC recently streamed live footage from a music festival and even Sweden and the Maldives have opened embassies there.
Last month, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos sank US$11 million into it, while millions more came from other investors, including veteran infotechnology entrepreneur Mitch Kapor.
While Mr Ondrejka declined to give numbers, acknowledging only that it just turned profitable this year, past reports pegged its revenue at US$7 million last year. That sum is expected to balloon to US$30 million this year.
But even as the hype about Linden Lab and Second Life builds, it is quickly being overshadowed by reports of crime in the utopic online world.
Belgium police are investigating a rape case, while German police have opened a probe after receiving pictures of an adult avatar having sex with a child avatar.
Every day, a police blotter on Second Life's website reports at least a dozen warnings and suspensions doled out by the handful of moderators to residents who have committed crimes ranging from assault to sexual harassment.
And there is growing concern about the seedier side of Second Life. About 15 per cent of the virtual world is marked as having mature content such as strip clubs. Residents can also pay others for virtual sex, or indulge in sadomasochistic fantasies.
'Should harassment in a virtual space be treated seriously? Absolutely. When local laws are broken, and law enforcement asks for our cooperation, we cooperate. We conform to local laws,' Mr Ondrejka said firmly.
Linden Lab has not banned unsavoury elements because different countries have their own interpretations of what is illegal in a virtual world.
Mr Ondrejka said such bans would constrain the creative potential of Second Life. 'I do not think there are blanket solutions. Trying to block things a priori means we will damage the educational capabilities and the benefits of the system in a disastrous way.'
He remains a firm believer of Second Life's transformative possibilities, citing his personal favourite places online - an island dedicated to helping stroke survivors called Shockproof and the International Spaceflight Museum.
Such places exemplify the best about Second Life and its capabilities to change the way we communicate, said Mr Ondrejka.
'You step back and see what is been built in Second Life, and you realise, people are amazing. They go in, and they build things which you just cannot believe. That, to me, is pretty exciting.'
twong@sph.com.sg
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