Games
Games
Establishing Trust in the Second Life Financial Markets
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 12/06/2007 - 12:18A key commodity necessary for the smooth functioning of any market is trust. The less trust, the greater the difficulties. In Second Life, where we only know people by the pseudonyms of their avatars, where we don’t know if someone has an alternative avatar, and where recourse is much less than in other aspects of life, trust is all the more necessary.
Unfortunately, between various scandals, fraud and stupid mistakes, the financial institutions of Second Life are not highly trusted. In order to address this, people banded together to create the Second Life Exchange Commission. It is a noble idea, that so far, has failed to live up to its promise.
IPOs in Second Life
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 12/05/2007 - 18:20Last night on the Atlas Virtual Capital group in Second Life, there was a lively discussion about various IPOs in the Second Life stock markets. What leads to a successful IPO? What role should the exchange take, and many other topics. I thought this would be a worthwhile subject to explore a little bit.
As I write this, there are fourteen companies that have IPOs going on in Second Life, a fifteenth just completed its IPO. Over the past week, at least L$ 1.2 million have been invested in IPOs. So, what do we know about these companies and the exchanges they are listed on?
ACE has four companies in IPO, including KAU, the company whose IPO just closed. Nearly L$ 800,000 of the money invested into IPOs were done on ACE. The biggest was WJUV Radio, which accounted for nearly 60% of the IPO shares bought. KAU brought in L$ 200,000, which accounted for about 25% of ACE’s IPO volume.
The second largest player in the IPO market over the past week was VSTEX. Over L$ 250,000 was invested in IPOs through VSTEX. BNF is the company that raised the most on VSTEX, bringing in over L$ 83,000.
The World Stock Exchange (WSE) has three companies in IPO right now. Between them, they’ve raised just under L$ 140,000. The vast majority of it coming for Fund Second Life (FSL) which raised over L$ 100,000 over the past week.
The International Stock Exchange (ISE) has only one IPO, VLADA. Over the past week, they brought in around L$ 42,000.
The Second Life Capital Exchange (SLCapEx) does not currently have any IPOs underway.
Beyond all of this, there are various private placements which take place, as well as people making deposits in banks, and so on. Clearly, financial services are an important sector of the Second Life economy. However, there is a lot more that needs to be understood about these companies, which I hope to explore over the coming days.
Atlas Virtual Capital sets up fund to explore CentralGrid
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 12/03/2007 - 14:51Saturday in Second Life, Atlas Virtual Capital (AVC) announced the formation of a Grid Exploration Fund. This fund is intended to raise L$ 500,000 to help AVC “enter the virtual worlds via Central Grid's new virtual grid to establish AVC as a pioneer in this new community.”
Central Grid is one of many efforts to use open source grids. It will be based on OpenSim, but unlike some of the other emerging OpenSim based grids, it is intending to fully support inworld currency. Efforts will be made to connect with currency exchanges so Linden Dollars will be exchangeable with CentralGrid dollars, or whatever they end up being called there.
Aldon in Wonderland
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 12/01/2007 - 21:16She's the best one that we've ever had
She sits on her hair and she's tall as my dad
And she tie-dyed my shirt and she pierced her own ear
And it's peace, man, cool, yeah, the babysitter's here.
Today was a different sort of day for me in Second Life. A friend invited me to storytime. Seven kids sat around in Second Life. Some on the floor, others on their parents lap and listened to a teenager with magenta hair read parts of Alice in Wonderland.
Most of the stories about people portraying themselves as children in Second Life have a distinctly unsavory aspect to it. However, there is another side to people portraying themselves as children in Second Life. My friend who invited me had previously pointed me to a blog post entitled Mere Child’s Play, which puts the whole subculture in a very different context.
Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit, and a blessed Advent
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 12/01/2007 - 09:52Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit. A new month starts off with the traditional lapin petition for beneficence. Fiona’s first request this morning was for that calendar with the chocolates in the windows, you know that we do every December. Yes, December. Advent. A time of expectation and longing.
Normally, as we enter Advent, I would find myself humming Joni Mitchell’s river,
Its coming on Christmas
They’re cutting down trees
They’re putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
Yet these years of hoping for a miracle has left my ability to hope somewhat dull and blunted. Nonetheless, hope remains. It is rekindled by emails I receive, like one from the ‘Social Issues Games’ mailing list I’m on. The writer highlights a few different organizations that he felt were worth pointing out during this season of giving.
Coming from a list of people interested in using games for positive social change, it isn’t surprising that the first charity listed is Child’s Play. This is a charity that delivers video games to children in hospitals, led by a group called Penny-arcade. Bill France, who wrote an article critical of video games is quoted on their website noting,
Penny-arcade published a letter from one of its readers. He is the father of a 5-year-old boy who had spent most of the previous five months at Children’s Hospital getting chemotherapy for lymphoma.
Almost every parent can immediately identify with that father’s distress, and with his heartfelt "thank you" to Penny-arcade for its Child’s Play toy drive.
The email went on to note that
Child's Play has also given support to programs that look at behavior
change (such as maintaining your visit schedule for dialysis) and
Robert Khoo biz manager for Penny Arcade/Child's Play attended last
year's Games for Health Conference.
A similar group is Get Well Gamers which accepts online donations through Network for Good.
Another site highlighted is One Laptop per Child. They have a program where you can donate $399 to their program and they will send a laptop to a developing country and one to you. These are not the typical laptops you get in the United States. They are specially designed to perform in areas where there is little access to electricity, WiFi and educators. The laptop gets mixed reviews. People used to the powerful laptops that many Americans have access to complain about its limited functionality. Yet the laptop is much better than having nothing.
So, we wait to celebrate the miraculous birth. We wait for miracles in our own lives, the lives of our friends and the lives of our nation. Yet we can celebrate the little miracles, the joy of children opening the their Advent calendars, and the charity of people who are helping out children in hospitals and children in countries where laptops are not easily accessible.
Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit, and a blessed Advent.
