UK Guardian: China launches virtual universe with seven million souls
Lean Doody
Watch out Second Life:
China launches virtual universe with seven million souls
· People to work from home in alternate reality
· Entropia Universe will create 10,000 'real' jobs
Vic Keegan
Saturday June 2, 2007
The Guardian
This week may mark a coming of age for virtual worlds - the
three-dimensional spaces on the internet where people have their own
avatars, or on-screen characters. Last night BBC2's The Money
Programme was screened in Second Life, the best known of the dozens of
virtual realities that are springing up. This week Sky News opened a
replica of its studio in Second Life and IBM sponsored a ballet.
Yesterday the Swedish virtual world Entropia Universe announced that
it was teaming up with CRD, an offshoot of the Beijing municipality,
to build a virtual universe able to handle 7 million users at any one
moment. David Liu, chief executive of CRD, claimed that virtual worlds
would generate about 10,000 jobs in China.
He added: "An important aspect for this project is also the positive
effects on our environment that we foresee. People will actually be
able to work from home inside Entropia Universe as many people do
today, even from rural areas, thereby decreasing the amount of
pollution generated by travel."
Entropia beat other bidders, including, it is understood, Second Life,
for this venture. Even Second Life, with a claimed 7 million members,
rarely has more than 40,000 on simultaneously, which means that the
Chinese venture, if it succeeds, would have a population greater than
all but the biggest countries. This raises the prospect that such
ventures could become major economies in their own right with no
allegiance to any particular administration (or tax gatherer).
Second Life, which is still in its early days, has a daily turnover of
$600,000 (£302,000) and claims to have created the equivalent of 6,000
full-time jobs as its residents make furniture or clothes or sell land
or services. It is talking about having its own chancellor to control
the money supply and manipulate interest rates when its banks start
lending money.
Second Life and Entropia are three-dimensional reproductions of almost
anything in the real world, virtually all of it created by users. At
first Second Life was a barren landmass divided up into lots of 500 sq
m. It is now so big that it is reckoned that no person could see it
all in a lifetime as businesses, universities, arts institutions, pop
groups, casinos and, of course, the sex industry start to colonise it.
Corporations such as IBM have found it is a good place to hold
international meetings without needing to burn aviation fuel.
Thousands of other individuals are working on projects, often in
partnership with people in other countries, raising the prospect that
virtual worlds could not only boost the trend for home-working but
also give globalisation a human face bringing individuals as well as
corporations together on a big scale.
Second Life's supporters claim it has three "killer" applications.
First, unlike the internet, it has a system for micropayments using
its own currency, Linden dollars, which are convertible into real
dollars. Second, unlike other virtual worlds such as the massively
popular World of Warcraft, it lets residents keep the intellectual
property rights to what they create. Third, its owner, Linden Lab,
recently welcomed the "open source" movement, allowing anyone
qualified to create their own applications whether games, education or
business projects.
These could generate the kind of conditions which lead to massive
growth, even, it is sometimes argued, to the emergence of new economic
sectors comparable to agriculture or manufacturing - unless China gets
there first.
One of Entropia's claims is that it is more secure than other virtual
worlds. Mr Liu says that it provides a secure operating platform for
business transactions and cultural exchanges. Its virtual universe has
two planets but intends to expand this to hundreds by September next
year.
It recently launched a cash card enabling users to convert virtual
dollars into real dollars at high street cash machines.
Last month MindArk, the owner of Entropia, raised $404,000 in an
auction for banking licences in its virtual world. If the recent
explosive growth of virtual worlds continues, the distinction between
real and virtual may become very indistinct.
Governments don't seem to have got the message yet - except for
Sweden, where Entropia is based. On Wednesday it became the first
major country to open an embassy in Second Life.
Olie Wastberg, director general of the Sweden Institute which promotes
interest in the country abroad, said: "Second Life allows us to inform
people about Sweden and broaden the opportunity for contact with
Sweden." There are no plans to issue passports.
Léan Doody
Arup Communications
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