L$700 Billion Question
October 2, 2008 2 Comments
What effect will the financial crisis have on virtual worlds like Second Life? Given that the economic underpinnings of the Linden dollar are flimsy enough to make CDOs look like Krugerrands in comparison, I fear that the grid may not survive the looming depression.
Others are more optimistic, seeing spaces like SL as a escape from the harshness of the real world, where we will all be able to forget our worries in the perfect sunny landscapes of the grid, in the same way that our great-grandparents sought refuge from the bleakness of life in the 30’s by flocking to the cinema to lose themselves in dreams of Hollywood.
Time will tell I guess, but I wouldn’t be surprised to wake up one morning to find that Second Life has disappeared. I wonder if the bailout bill covers L$ deposits?
Second Life Shrink 
Pingback: Guardian Technology section: this week’s letters and blog pingbacks in full | PolBay Webcenter Blog
hard to imagine the $L having a liquidity crunch. But, you are right that the SL economy is a bubble with a lot of pressure on it. Most of SL is tied to land sales and clearly growth in land has outstripped new users. So the price of land which is really just prim storage and virtual world services is headed downward. Disk storage is already a commodity on the web, so how much are the SL services really worth and what other services alternatives are there? Land bubble gonna burst. How soon is only question.