[W Forum] Virtual World Craze, Lessons from Second Life

The metaverse craze is sweeping the world. A similar frenzy occurred 20 years ago. It was Second Life, the world's first virtual reality service launched by Philip Rosedale in 2003. Of course, there were services classified as virtual reality even before that. There were role-playing games (RPGs) where players enjoyed games with rules and competition in virtual spaces, and Cyworld, which provided networking in a virtual space. While the virtual world offered by Cyworld was an independent world with a certain distance from reality, Second Life’s virtual world is connected to reality. The avatar, as the subject expressing oneself, is at the center of the virtual world, and the virtual economy of Linden Dollars is exchanged with the real economy of US dollars.

Second Life grew rapidly from the end of 2006. The virtual world proposed by Rosedale was so beautifully imaginative that people could not help but be drawn in. People were excitedly debating the territories, avatars, and Linden Dollars within Second Life out of curiosity. The commercial success story of AnsheChung, who invested 10 dollars and became a millionaire in two and a half years, further fueled the enthusiasm.

However, reality was harsh. Compared to Cyworld’s 20 million users in February 2007, Second Life had only 4.4 million users in May 2007. The average income one could earn in a week in Second Life was only 16.6 dollars. Companies paying development costs ranging from 5,000 to over 100,000 dollars could gather at most between 50 and 100 people.

Excessive commercial expectations stemmed from misunderstandings about the essence of Second Life. Second Life was not designed as a space for economic activities aimed at profit. Commercial profit was limited to acting as a lubricant to activate the network. This was due to Second Life’s architecture, which copied the spatiotemporal constraints of the real world. Second Life had spatial and temporal limitations that prevented gathering a large number of people simultaneously in one place.

Removing illusions, the essence of Second Life was a social network service. Despite its exciting imagination and charm, users chose easier-to-use SNS services like Twitter or Facebook that stayed true to their essence. Thus, Second Life seemed to fade into history.

Twenty years later, the virtual world has been summoned again under the name metaverse and has become a theme stock in the stock market. Rosedale has returned to the virtual world, and Zuckerberg has changed his company’s name from Facebook to Meta, declaring it the new future.

The virtual world that Zuckerberg’s Meta envisions seems like an upgraded version of Second Life. It aims to increase computing power, make graphics more realistic, and lower language barriers with simultaneous translation services. It is as if challenging the limits and weaknesses of Second Life. In addition, with the VR headset Oculus, Meta is eyeing a new weapon (platform) independent of Apple.

Because the profitable metaverse was thought to be the most dystopian, Second Life did not operate as a platform, and Rosedale could not make the necessary investments. Now Zuckerberg is making an infinite metaverse with astronomical investments. What will the infinite metaverse he is creating look like?

Baek Youngran, CEO of History Bookstore

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.