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In the virtual world of Second Life , there are a number of in-world business and user-groups founded specifically for the game, some of which have become legal entities in their own right, as well as preexisting companies and organizations that have involved themselves in the world.
These businesses and organizations are legally registered or recognized entities created specifically for Second Life. Groups affiliated with preexisting organizations are in the Operated inside Second Life section.
Aimee Weber Studio Inc. has provided services for several real-world business, including National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, [1] United Nations, [2] American Cancer Society, [3] American Apparel, [4] Warner Bros., [5] NBC [6] and Save the Children. [7]
Anshe Chung is the main avatar (online personality) of Ailin Graef in the online world Second Life . Referred to as the "Rockefeller of Second Life" [8] by a CNN journalist, she has built an online business that engages in development, brokerage, and arbitrage of virtual land, items, and currencies, and has been featured in a number of prominent magazines such as Business Week , [9] Fortune [10] and Red Herring . [11]
EXAKT - Made in Sweden is run by Tina Bergman since February 2005. It specializes in lighting and in 50-60 style of architecture. It is based in Stockholm, Sweden. [12] [13] [14]
Second Life Left Unity (SLLU) is an international socialist and anti-capitalist organisation which operates entirely within Second Life. [15] Originally established by members of the Scottish Socialist Party, [16] and other left activists, [17] it challenged the Front National when it attempted to establish a base within the virtual reality world, [18] demanding that they were only allowed to operate in adult areas of the game. [19] More recently it has also supported IBM workers [20] in Italy protesting against low pay. [21]
The Electric Sheep Company is a design, building and scripting firm that creates content for three-dimensional online worlds. [22] Originating in Second Life, they have done work on the Virtual Laguna Beach project for MTV, [23] [24] Aloft Hotels, [25] and Sony BMG Music, [26] as well as creating the OnRez version fork of the client software.
World Stock Exchange [ permanent dead link ] (WSE) is a virtual securities exchange developed for use in the virtual world of Second Life. The exchange provides Second Life companies with the ability to raise capital from the global investment market using the in-world fictional Linden currency and the new World Internet Currency(WIC).
The WSE has been surrounded by controversy since it began operation. Due to the difficulty in regulating "companies" that trade on the exchange, there have been a number of "CEOs" who have run off with IPO funds, leaving investors with nothing. Other issues, such as security and downtime have plagued the exchange, including the theft of funds by an "employee" who "hacked" the system and left with stored funds. [27]
These are businesses and organizations originating in real life that have operated in Second Life and were not founded specifically for Second Life, but have involved themselves in the world.
Machinima, originally machinema, is the use of real-time computer graphics engines to create a cinematic production. The word "machinima" is a portmanteau of the words machine and cinema. According to Guinness World Records, machinima is the art of making animated narrative films from computer graphics, most commonly using the engines found in video games.
Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises and is a subsidiary of IBM. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide.
Second Life is an online multimedia platform that allows people to create an avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user-created content within a multi-user online virtual world. Developed and owned by the San Francisco–based firm Linden Lab and launched on June 23, 2003, it saw rapid growth for some years and in 2013 it had approximately one million regular users. Growth eventually stabilized, and by the end of 2017 the active user count had declined to "between 800,000 and 900,000". In many ways, Second Life is similar to massively multiplayer online role-playing games; nevertheless, Linden Lab is emphatic that their creation is not a game: "There is no manufactured conflict, no set objective."
Red vs. Blue, often abbreviated as RvB, is an American web series created by Burnie Burns with his production company Rooster Teeth. The show is based on the setting of the military science fiction first-person shooter series and media franchise Halo. It is distributed through Rooster Teeth's website, as well as on DVD, Blu-ray, and formerly on the El Rey Network and Netflix. The series initially centers on two opposite teams fighting in an ostensible civil war—shown to actually be a live fire exercise for elite soldiers—in the middle of Blood Gulch, a desolate box canyon, in a parody of first-person shooter video games, military life, and science fiction films. Initially intended to be a short series of six to eight episodes, the project quickly and unexpectedly achieved significant popularity following its premiere on April 1, 2003. The series consists of eighteen seasons and five mini-series. Red vs. Blue is the second longest-running animated webseries of all time, behind Homestar Runner. The nineteenth and final season is scheduled to premiere in 2024.
Anshe Chung is an avatar of Ailin Graef in the online world Second Life. Referred to as the "Rockefeller of Second Life" by CNN, Graef has built an online business that engages in development, brokerage, and arbitrage of virtual land, items, and currencies. Her work has been discussed in Business Week, Fortune and Red Herring.
Diary of a Camper is an American short film released in October 1996 that was made using id Software's first-person shooter video game Quake. The film was created by the Rangers, a clan or group of video game players, and first released over the Internet as a non-interactive game demo file. The minute and a half-long video is commonly considered the first example of machinima—the art of using real-time, virtual 3D environments, often game engines, to create animated films. The story centers on five members of the Rangers clan fighting against a lone camper in a multiplayer deathmatch.
The following is a list of notable machinima-related events in the year 2006. These include several new machinima productions, season finales, and the 2006 Machinima Festival.
"Make Love, Not Warcraft" is the eighth episode in the tenth season of the American animated television series South Park. The 147th episode overall, it first aired on Comedy Central in the United States on October 4, 2006. In the episode, named in a play on words after the 1960s counterculture slogan "Make love, not war", Cartman, Kyle, Stan, and Kenny enjoy playing the popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft. When a high-level player goes around killing other players in the game, they start playing the game every day to try to stop him. The episode was written and directed by series co-creator Trey Parker. In 2015, he and co-creator Matt Stone listed it as their third-favorite episode of the series.
Big Brother Second Life (BBSL) was a virtual version of Big Brother, produced by Endemol Netherlands in the virtual world of Second Life.
The virtual world Second Life has its own economy and a virtual token referred to as Linden Dollars (L$). In the SL economy, users buy from and sell to one another directly, using the Linden, which is a closed-loop virtual token for use only within the Second Life platform. Linden Dollars have no monetary value and are not redeemable for monetary value from Linden Lab. However, the presence of a currency exchange has led to the Linden Dollar being recognised as a centralized virtual currency, a fiat currency, or property. A resident with a surplus of Linden Dollars earned via a Second Life business or experiential play can offer to exchange with other users via the LindeX exchange provided by Linden Lab. This economy is independent of the price of the game, which users pay to Linden Lab, not to each other. Linden Lab reports that the Second Life economy generated US$3,596,674 in economic activity during the month of September 2005, and in September 2006 Second Life was reported to have a GDP of US$64,000,000.
Alyssa LaRoche is the owner of Aimee Weber Studio Inc., and the person in control of the Second Life Resident Aimee Weber, for which her company is named.
Silicon Wadi is a region in Israel that serves as one of the global centres for advanced technology. It spans the Israeli coastal plain, and is cited as among the reasons why the country has become known as the world's "start-up nation". The highest concentrations of high-tech industry in the region can be found around Tel Aviv, including small clusters around the cities of Raʽanana, Petah Tikva, Herzliya, Netanya, Rehovot, and Ness Ziona. Additional clusters of high-tech industry can be found in Haifa and Caesarea. More recent high-tech establishments have been raised in cities such as Jerusalem and Beersheba, in towns such as Yokneam Illit, and in Airport City.
The following is a list of notable machinima-related events in 2007.
The Virtual Universe Community or VUC is the internal IBM interest group for Virtual Worlds.
Molotov Alva and His Search for the Creator: A Second Life Odyssey, originally titled My Second Life: The Video Diaries of Molotov Alva, is a 2007 American documentary film created by Douglas Gayeton. Molotov Alva tells the story of a man's passage from his real (analog) life in Petaluma, California into a new (digital) existence inside Linden Lab's virtual world Second Life. The production was filmed entirely in Second Life using machinima, the use of real-time 3-D graphics engines to create animated films.
Arts in Second Life is an artistic area of a 3D social network that has served, since 2003, as a platform for various artistic pursuits and exhibitions.
Deviation is a 2006 short film that was the first short film in the machinima genre to be premiered in competition at a major film festival, the Tribeca Film Festival.
Ian Hughes, also known as epredator, is a British metaverse evangelist, technology industry analyst, and television personality. In 2006, he set about leading a group of like-minded individuals and subsequently many thousands of colleagues at IBM into virtual worlds like Second Life, and beyond. This sparked a massive growth in interest from enterprises and press alike. Hughes was a public figure in Web 2.0 and, formerly, a blogger on Eightbar, a site maintained by former and current IBM employees on the fringes of innovation within their labs.
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