Having been immersed in Second Life for the better part of two years now, I first ventured into the virtual world due to the initial impressions that PlayStation Home was a clone of the popular online community for the PlayStation 3. Now having spent a significant amount of time exploring what PlayStation Home has to offer, I decided to take a look at how wrong or right those initial impressions were.

A warning to readers: The following article contains video of an avatar with ears and a tail break dancing, and a heaping portion of naked furries. Depending on where you work, the very end of the post might be not safe for it. You have been warned.

Differing Goals
To understand the differences between PlayStation Home and Second Life, first you have to look at the reason behind the existence of both virtual places.

Second Life is a large virtual world where the majority of the content in the game is generated by the user. Linden Labs lays the groundwork, so to speak, but nearly everything you see while wandering about Second Life came from the mind of one of the game's residents, from clothes and hair to buildings and vehicles...a Second Life resident not only created it, they've probably made a bit of cash off of it as well. It's a living, breathing world, complete with it's own economy and different societies based on factors such as nationality, interests, and even sexual fetish.

PlayStation Home, on the other hand, is a purely commercial construct. While one of the services goals is fundamentally the same – to provide a place for PlayStation 3 owners to make friends and socialize – the aspects of Second Life that make it a true virtual world aren't present. You have no economy to speak of, with new items and customization options coming at a cost from Sony and its partners. While the addition of Clubs and Clubhouses does add to the social aspects of the service, the program's architecture really doesn't allow for communities on the same scale as in SL.

In Phil Harrison's keynote speech at the 2007 Game Developers Conference where PlayStation Home was first announced, it was said that users would be able to eventually create their own content and auction it off to other users in order to make money, though so far no such features have been implemented. If they are, it could very well lead to a nice stream of income to talented creators.

Avatars
Appearance is just as important in the virtual world as it is in the real world. PlayStation Home and Second Life diverge greatly when it comes to allowing players to define who they are in the virtual setting.

PlayStation Home offers a wealth of options during initial character creation. You can adjust your height and weight, change your facial structure, style your hair or get a dye job, and pick from a limited but capable selection of clothing in order to flesh out your Home persona. The you take your first steps out into the world, where you still look like everyone else.

This is because Home is running high-end graphics on a high-end piece of hardware, so variations in avatar appearance have to limited in order to insure the service runs at all. It's the same sort of structure you'll find in an MMO like Sony Online Entertainment's Everquest II. All female Wood Elves are the same, save for some slider changes. It's a very elegant solution to having large numbers of characters in a single space, but it doesn't allow for much variety.

Initially, creating a character in Second Life worked much the same way. You'd log in, adjust some sliders, and suddenly you are a slightly less hideous mutant person with chunky hair than you started out with. Give players tools to make themselves look better, however, and soon you start seeing characters and creations not far removed from modern-day video game characters.

Second Life residents have made huge leaps in avatar creation since the early days of the service. Chunky, single-polygon hair has given away to prim hair, consisting of a number of polys linked together into one object. Blank skin textures have given way to photographed or hand-painted skin textures. Clothing has evolved from simple textures overlaid on your avatar to designer outfits complete with polygon collars, sleeves, and cuffs, giving things a much more realistic look and feel. Flexible prims allow for hair and clothing to flow, adding a dash more realism to the mix.

The ability to create 3D objects and attach them to avatars has led to some truly fantastic avatar creations. Giant robots, tiny cartoon animals, gigantic dragons, and even popular video game characters can be created using attachments. Keeping in mind that every avatar has at its core that basic humanoid shape, it's really quite amazing what SL residents have accomplished.

Even character movement is controlled by players, with some very wealthy folks making a killing off selling motion-captured walks, stands, and dances to a community constantly striving to blur the line between real-life and Second Life.

Of course, all of this versatility comes at a price. To look pretty in Second Life, you have to spend money, either earned through working in-game or purchased with real-life cash through Linden Labs. This little anime-inspired guy below is wearing probably $20 worth of clothing, with another $10 worth of animation enhancements to make him move like a real boy. Yes, I am indeed rocking an NES controller belt and blaster combo. That's how I roll.

The World
Second Life's environments will never look as good as the locations in PlayStation Home. Home is a tightly controlled environment, where resources are monitored by servers, instancing locations when they get too crowded, and the limited amount of character options make it so that Sony can create lush 3D locales without worrying that a gigantic dragon wearing 250 prims (polygons, basically) worth of scripted attachments isn't going to pop in and crash the whole thing.

In Second Life, primitive count is everything. Land is not only measured in size, but also in the amount of objects you can place on it at any given time. This is to help maintain stability and cut down on lag issues in the game. Unfortunately, avatars don't technically have a prim count, so while a parcel of land might be limited to 500 prims worth of objects, that doesn't stop someone with 300 prims worth of stuff attached to their body from coming in and slowing things down. SL environment builders have to build efficiently. Between that and the relatively limited engine powering the virtual world, you'll never see anything quite as polished as the PlayStation Home main gathering area...though they still manage some pretty spectacular sights nonetheless.

Gaming
Is Second Life a game? No. Is PlayStation Home a game? No. Neither qualify as a video game, but both allow visitors to play games within their confines.

Right now PlayStation Home is just beginning to tap its gaming potential. Mini-games and bowling are what we've seen so far, with the promise of additional gaming content to come down the line.

The main gaming focus of PlayStation Home is the PlayStation 3 itself. This is a place where PS3 owners can meet up with other PS3 owners and get their game on. It's much easier to find players with similar tastes when you can actually see them. It could very well wind up one of the most compelling gaming lobbies ever created.

There is gaming on Second Life, though you have to dig a bit deeper to find it, and sometimes a little imagination is needed. There are large communities or role players in the game who uses combat huds – interface attachments showing hit points, power levels and such – in order to simulate RPG gameplay. There are weapons you can purchase that will do damage to people using the same combat system, and all sorts of themes out there to chose from, from post-apocalyptic wastelands to vampires and werewolves running amok in a dark city.

There is a lot more, if you're willing to hunt for it. Second Life used to be a haven for gambling, but last year rules went into effect outlawing that popular pastime, so alternative games have popped up to replace it. Just recently I've discovered a nifty little fishing game that has you leveling up your skill in order to catch increasingly rare fish, which you can wear on your character or display in a fish tank. There's even a large-scale tower defense game called PrimWars, played on a patch of land nearly the size of a football field. Wherever you find bored people with creative power, you'll find games of some sort.

Music And Video
One of the major points made during the initial presentation of PlayStation Home was the ability to add your own pictures to your living space, or place a television in your house that would play videos streamed from your console. This idea has yet to come to fruition in Home, so for the moment we are left with the music Sony chooses to stream into designated areas, and game-related videos playing in the movie theater and central plaza. Whether or not we'll see those features in the near future remains up in the air, but they were certainly a major selling point of the original PlayStation Home idea.

Meanwhile, in Second Life, internet movie and music streaming is alive and well. Residents can purchase televisions and internet radios that play streaming music or movies from the internet. There's actually a brisk trade in DVD rentals in Second Life, with many locations available where users can pay Lindens in exchange for the ability to stream a movie to the player set up in their home.

The ability to stream music over the internet into Second Life has given rise to a large number of dance clubs, complete with live DJs, which leads us directly to our next topic...

Socializing
As it stands, socializing in PlayStation Home at the moment consists of standing or sitting in various places and typing at each other, often while participating in some rather robotic dances. You're bound to find people congregating in the services main areas, and there is almost always dancing. Oh the dancing they do! Home users can also invite friends into their living spaces for more of the same, which the addition of clubs and clubhouses promises to give players with similar interests places to hang out and chat.

There are designated locations in Home where users can gather together an listen to music, but these are pretty much limited to one specific area at the moment. Perhaps the popularity of said places might convince Sony to introduce a dance club into the mix later on down the line.

Second Life, on the other hand, nearly has too many clubs, with new residents picking out plots of land and erecting what they believe will be the next big Second Life hot spot every day. I highly recommend the industrial / goth stylings of Club Industry to those new to the SL scene, though in the interest of full disclosure I must point out that I actively work there. No, I am not a stripper.


Aside from dance clubs, there exists a great number of spots for residents to meet others of like mind. You'll find virtual coffee shops, theme parks (with bumper cars, yay!), biker hangouts complete with ridable motorcycles, and yes...you might find the odd sex club now and then. From science fiction to furry fantasy, there really is something for everyone in SL.

You've already seen what dancing in PlayStation Home looks like during our recent podcast, so here's a look at some Second Life-style dancing, courtesy of yours truly. Yes, I am breaking it on down.

Adult Content
You will never see naked furries in PlayStation Home. Whether this is a plus or a minus, I leave up to you. Yes, this is the bit I warned you about. Incidentally, that's a real-live Japanese woman in all of those shots (Hi Keiko!), proving once again that Japanese women have a tendency to be wondrously odd when no one is looking.

So, Is PlayStation Home Sony's Answer To Second Life, Or What?
PlayStation Home and Second Life are two completely different animals, even if they do share several similar characteristics. The main difference between the two virtual societies is really control.

Linden Labs manages land, maintains the servers, holds special events, and handles technical issues, but for the most part they've handed Second Life over to the residents, and the residents have crafted the world in their image. If there's something a creative resident wants to add to the world and the scripting language can handle it, there's nothing they cannot do.

PlayStation Home reflects on Sony and Sony's advertising partners, so it's doubtful we'll ever see the amount of user-control in that service as we see in Second Life. There'll be no nudity, no naked furries, and no unicorn sex, but at the same time users will be hard-pressed to express themselves quite as freely as the can in Linden Labs' world.

The majority of regular Second Life users who've seen videos of PlayStation Home in action have laughed at the robotic avatars, the staid environments, and the overall uniformity of Sony's virtual space...which parallels the general gaming populace's notion of Second Life as a place for perverts and freaks to hand out. While there are admittedly a good number of twisted people hanging about, folks intrigued by the social aspects of Sony's service might actually find something worthwhile amidst the clutter of user-created curios littering the SL landscape.

Or they could just make disparaging remarks about furries. They're used to it.

If the computing media — not to mention Linden Labs themselves — were to be believed, we should be deeply immersed in our Second Lives by now. Companies are using it for press conferences, people are having sex inside it — Sweden even has an embassy in it, for goodness' sake. Although early in the primaries there was a flurry of SL activity, things seem to have quietened down.

The author believes that this is largely due to the difficulty in raising funds from within SL — it is difficult to check where donors are based, and many are from outside the US.

Perhaps Linden Labs' estimates of the number of SL users is a little on the padded side, too. If you are unsure just how many of the 14 million or so residents actually log in on a regular basis, how much time are you going to devote to talking to them?

Both McCain and Obama have criticized video games — most notably McCain, although Obama has made repeated pleas for parents to 'turn off' their kids' consoles and get them outside — and might be wary of seeming to endorse such a controversial medium by actually appearing inside it.

And then of course there are the griefers. Honestly, if I were running for president I would want to do so in a public forum that carried the lowest possible risk of being buzzed by a flock of winged penises.

Presidential candidates overlook Second Life universe [Houston Chronicle Game Hacks)

"To me, the CEO role at Linden Lab combines perfectly my passions for art and design, business and technology. Until Second Life, we experienced the digital world passively in two dimensions. By enabling users to create a rich and immersive virtual world, Second Life is transforming the way we connect, collaborate, learn and transact online.

Linden Lab Appoints Mark Kingdon As Chief Executive Officer Former CEO of Organic to Lead Company into Next Phase of Its Evolution

SAN FRANCISCO—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Linden Lab®, the developer of the 3D virtual world Second Life®, today announced that its board of directors has named Mark Kingdon to serve as chief executive officer. In his new role, Kingdon will lead the day-to-day management and operations of the company, working closely alongside Linden Lab founder, former CEO and current chairman Philip Rosedale.

Since 2001, prior to joining Linden Lab, Kingdon served as chief executive officer of Organic Inc., a leading digital communications agency, establishing its reputation as a groundbreaking, innovative provider of user-centered design. Prior to Organic, Kingdon worked with idealab!, providing strategic guidance and operational support to emerging companies. Before that, Kingdon was a partner with the consulting division of PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP (PwC), where he held a variety of senior roles throughout his twelve-year tenure. He received an MBA from the Wharton School of Business and a BA in Economics from UCLA.

"Our search for the leader of Linden Lab demanded both tremendous business skills and a deep understanding and passion for Second Life and where it is going. Mark is the perfect choice," said Philip Rosedale, founder and chairman of the board, Linden Lab. "His management style, unwavering leadership in the face of great challenges, and approach to team-building exactly matches Linden's needs. He is a passionate believer in the potential of virtual worlds to change the world, and I look forward to working by his side while we watch it happen."

"We wanted to find someone with an exceptional blend of strategic, analytic, business and leadership skills, but also with endless creativity and a passion for the company and growing the virtual worlds category," said Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corporation and a Linden Lab board member. "Mark has demonstrated all of these attributes throughout his career, particularly at Organic, which, like Linden Lab, puts an incredible emphasis on overall user experience and design."

"Joining Linden Lab at this moment in its evolution, with so much growth and opportunity on the horizon, is incredibly exciting and I look forward to working with Philip and the Linden Lab team to help Second Life realize its limitless potential," said Mark Kingdon, Chief Executive Officer, Linden Lab. "To me, the CEO role at Linden Lab combines perfectly my passions for art and design, business and technology. Until Second Life, we experienced the digital world passively in two dimensions. By enabling users to create a rich and immersive virtual world, Second Life is transforming the way we connect, collaborate, learn and transact online. I am thrilled to be part of this epic transformation."

Kingdon assumes the position full time on May 15, 2008.

I will be 100% involved and fulltime at Linden Lab. Second Life is my life's work, and I am not going anywhere.

Despite near-continuous coverage in the popular and business press, metaverses like Second Life are experiencing slowing growth and limited impact because of the tethered nature of their virtual world experience.

Fans praise Second Life as a virtual hangout where you can meet and chat and buy sneakers and real estate (that's fake stuff for real money) and dance and go bowling and have sex — suggesting that "virtual humans" doing "human things" online in Second Life is somehow less pathetic than, say, cooking Kaldorei spider kabobs or making magic pantaloons in World of Warcraft.

eHarmony, MySpace, Evite.com, and Meez.com round out the list. A sign of mainstream media backlash to come? I doubt it.

5 Worst Websites [Time Magazine]

Granted, I've never actually "played" Second Life, as online social interaction is two spots higher than attending a Russian-American "bear" cuddle party on my list of enjoyable pastimes, and the closest I've come to partaking in Linden Labs' eyesore of an alternate reality was an aborted download of the client this past winter. When I think of Second Life and its ilk, I think of this.

The case will still need to play out and only concerns the sum of $8,000. However, it appears that greater scrutiny and enforcement of commerce within Second Life and other virtual worlds is possible and may be necessary. The "commerce" (largely characterized by pyramid schemes, faulty valuations, and unreal exchange rates) could be subject to real world law.

It's too bad there aren't any court shows filmed in Pennsylvania. I would love to see Judge Judy wrap her head around this one and then explode. She's a robot, I tell you. Kim Phu

The Virtual World Just Got a Little More Real [Valley Wag via C|Net News]

Add atmospheric conditions to things MMO Second Life offers. SL's creator Linden Labs has acquired atmospheric rendering tech WindLight and 3D cloud simulator Nimble. WindLight gives 3D environments realistic haze and Nimble creates, well, realistic 3D clouds. Said Linden Lab's Cory Ondrejka:

Our core development team is tightly focused on improving the Second Life experience in terms of stability and scalability, but open sourcing has enabled external developers to integrate additional enhancements that are also hugely valuable; WindLight is one of these.

Sounds good. Bring on the realistic in-world pollution! Brian Ashcraft

Better Haze Coming to SL [Next-Gen]

We are working to fix bugs and enable incremental improvement. At the same time, we are building the foundations for the next-gen architecture that will radically improve our ability to scale.

I can think of only one way this problem can rectified. It's time to call upon Furry Fahey to lead the resistance. Viva Le Caliban! Kim Phu

Second Life Publisher Responds to Open Letter [C|Net]

We remain fully supportive of Second Life and are more than willing to continue doing our part to help, but our confidence is steadily being eroded due to a general lack of communication and the apparent failure to successfully address the many issues detailed above. What we are asking for is that these problems are addressed immediately, ahead of new features, and that we are able to see tangible improvements. We accept that this will not happen overnight but it also cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely either.

There must be some kind of inner-peace you can buy in the virtual markets because if I had all those problems in one of my games, I would be pissed. Alec Baldwin kind of pissed. Kim Phu

'Second Life' Users: Fix It, Already [C|Net]

Okay, I know SL. You know Second Life. But a good chunk of Japan has no friggin' clue. That's all about to change. The game's maker Linden Labs is rolling out a version for The Land of the Rising Sun. What do the pundits think? Real money at stake, an active virtual world — the scare factor is just kicking into gear. An IT expert tells tabloid Shukan Shincho:

The Japanese version is on the way, but the American subsidiaries of automakers like Toyota and Nissan have already put cars on the market in the virtual world. They do it for promotional purposes, but performance in the virtual world is said to reflect performance in the real world, too. If a Japanese language version starts running, more Japanese companies are gonna get involved... This is the first large-scale online game where real money is involved. It'll be interesting to see whether the cops will be prepared to deal with disputes that have occurred within the game. I can see all sorts of social problems coming out of this.

Just wait till they find out about the furries. Brian Ashcraft

SL Hitting Japan [Mainichi via Japanator]

The beauties of Second Life get portraits. Based on Andy Warhol's films 13 Most Beautiful Women and 13 Most Beautiful Boys comes a series of canvas-mounted portraits by Italian artists Eva and Franco Mattes. These avatars were created by actual Second Lifers. Most likely, the inevitable pictures portraits of these avatars' creators to follow. Brian Ashcraft

13 Beauties [Aeropause]

The VIP area of the party, while disturbingly artsy, was filled with what I will go ahead and crown the best food of any party this GDC, including delicious miniature cakes, various little things stuffed with mysterious stuffing that you only find at this sort of event, and what I am relatively sure was lamb. Note the strange, ghostly glowing rising from the meat tray. Is it simply a hand holding tongs, desperately trying to get to the food before me, or is it, perhaps, the lamb of hell?

Are these, perhaps, the tiny cakes of hell?

The point I am making here is that no matter how swank the party might be nor how nummylicious the pear cider they have at the bar may be, once you see your face reflected in a prophetic art piece describing a man with one tooth munching on corpses, whatever other theme you are trying to set for your party fails. It was really an excellent get together despite the underlying spookiness and the fact that i had convinced myself that half of the people there had either just finished having weird cybersex or were looking about for a laptop to get some started. Michael Fahey

Game Politics has unearthed an interesting story on the Counterterrorism blog about the potential Second Life has for nefarious people.

While the makers of Second Life (Linden Labs) pursue an admirable utopian ideal these metaverse systems can potentially also be used by those seeking to pursue a radical agenda... The rapid and potent way in which communication takes place would seem to be an ideal platform for recruitment into radical groups, especially given the age range of those engaged in the world, which is typically 18-34...

Streaming video can be uploaded into Second Life and a scenario can easily be constructed whereby an experienced terrorist bomb-maker could demonstrate how to assemble bombs using his avatar to answer questions as he plays the video... Just as Real Life companies such as Toyota test their products in Second Life so could terrorists construct virtual representations of targets they wish to attack...

By far the most useful tool currently available to radical groups is the ability to transfer in-world money between avatars that can be translated into real currency...

Yeah, but that real currency thing really isn't straight forward, it's more like trading with other users and then paying Linden Labs and then having it transfered to a PayPal account and then paying PayPal. Yeah, I don't see terrorists screwing with all of that, not without snapping. Brian Crecente

MMO Terror

By: Wagner James Au

Second Life's embedded journalist reports from SL's annual real world convention

The first time I met Nethermind Bliss, she was a woman with fire engine red hair, WWI flying ace goggles, and Wolverine wrist claws. The next time I met her was last weekend at the Second Life Community Convention in San Francisco, so this time, the meeting was in-person, and she was more or less the same, just flesh-based. (Though she still had the goggles and claws.) And even though I could have asked her real name, I still called her Nethermind Bliss. Which seemed to be the standard way of addressing people at SLCC. When meeting in person, SL residents— even staff members with Linden Lab (the world's owner)— call each other by their avatar names. That's whether they look like a version of their alter egos, or come without the fur, devil horns, alien skin, robot gear, and other enhancements you've come to identify them by in-world. What's amazing is how natural this feels, and how familiar you can quickly get with hundreds of people you've only known through 3D graphics.

It was two and a half days of fascinating SL-to-RL encounters (much of it alcohol-fueled), Silicon Valley utopianism, and perhaps causing the most audience glee, a demonstration of what appears to be the first MMO-based sex toy. These highlights and more after the break.

When Baccara Met Nick
Clockwise from left, here's Nick Rhodes, DJ Nexeus Fatale, architect/fashion designer Asri Falcone, your reporter, and Baccara Rhodes. This is the first time Nick and Baccara have met in person; in real life, Nick is a photographer from Paris, and Baccara is a retired wedding and bar mitzvah planner from New Jersey. In Second Life, Nick is known for his glamour screenshots of women avatars, while Baccara is famed for, well, being Baccara— the high-born lady in a Versace evening gown whose SL weddings and spectacular events have put her, in my estimation, among Second Life's power elite. For awhile there, Nick and Baccara shared an adoring relationship in-world, and hosted intellectual salons in Nick's art gallery. Until, that is, Nick's wandering ways became too much for Baccara ("I'm not gonna sit around here like Rapunzel!", as she recalls thinking) and she piled up their keepsakes and mementos and turned them into a giant bonfire. He took her punishment in good spirits— which is a relief, because Nick flew from France for SLCC, and to meet her. So that's where they sat together for the first time, idly chatting like old friends reunited (which they are), the handsome Parisian and the Jersey spitfire. "He's a very sweet man," Baccara told me indulgently.

Down to Business

In the premiere SLCC last year, the world had a spare 60,000 or so registered users; now it's approaching some 250,000 active users, and has become a darling of next generation Internet commerce. So the Convention is no longer just a fan con, but a business expo, too, with several metaverse development companies that create experiences and branded items in Second Life for major corporations, educators, and government contractors— including products from Addidas and Toyota both of which were announced at SLCC 06.

Sexual Rezzing

SLCC probably has the unique distinction of being the only mainstream MMO convention sponsored in part by a sex shop. Then again, Strokerz Toyz is a homegrown success story, a hardcore Macy's of animations, working organs, and play equipment for the discerning avatar. During the "Sex and Relationships in Second Life" panel, CEO Stroker Serpentine (bald shaven, dark glasses, Southern drawl) regaled the audience about becoming a successful simulated sex entrepreneur, which involves getting technical support questions via Instant Messages like, "How do I attach my penis?" and, "My vagina won't shut up!"

Stroker was followed by mad scientist inventor qDot Bunnyhug, who proceeded to demonstrate a mini-revolution in peripheral hacks for the horny. Inspired by Jane Pinckard, who famously used the Trance Vibrator from the PS2 music game Rez as a, well, actual vibrator, Bunnyhug showed how he'd managed to wire a Trance Vibrator to a laptop running Second Life, then scripted it to respond when an avatar touched a giant green vibrator in Second Life. Between fits of giggles and a suspenseful pause, Bunnyhug's avatar touched the virtual vibrator—and lo, the physical Trance Vibrator on the other computer whirred to life. (And verily, a whole wealth MMO-to-real world interaction was revealed.) For good measure, qDot held the Trance Vibrator up to the mic, so the whole crazily cheering audience could hear the buzzing— and when he was through, fired up a cigarette. Keep an eye on qDot's site, where he plans to run a video of the event, and provide schematics for creating a SL-to-vibrator interface of your own. ("All completely open source," he added proudly. "There should be no DRM to your fucking!")

There were so many other highlights, including a visionary speech by Lotus founder/initial Linden Lab investor Mitch Kapor, and Linden VP Cory Ondrejka's demonstration of Second Life back in 2001, when it was still known as Linden World, and your avatar interacted with the environment mostly by blowing it up. Not to mention the convergence of so many musicians who've made a name for themselves by using SL's audio streaming capability to perform live, for the first time performing both live and in person. (My personal favorite being, of course, Frogg Marlowe.)

The first SLCC brought in a hundred-plus real life residents; this year, nearly 500 attended. (I began reporting from the world when the entire population was barely that number.) I'm continually impressed how diverse the group is, artists, entrepreneurs, educators, developers, gamers, from all kinds of real life backgrounds. At current growth rates, SLCC '07 will be several thousand strong. What happens then is anyone's guess.

Wagner James Au continues to cover the inner life of SL at New World Notes and online games at GigaOM.

'Second Life' scores $11 million in funding [Cnet]

Only instead of a jail, it's a giant, empty cornfield that Linden Labs uses as a virtual "timeout" according to Clickable Culture (we grabbed the image from there, too). The cornfield is a place where temporarily suspended accounts are sent, folks the game has banned are just unable to log in. What's in the cornfield? An extremely un-fun and slow moving tractor and a host of TV's playing a 1940 film, Boy in Court - it sounds perfectly awful, like jail should be.

Hidden Virtual World Prison Revealed [Clickable Culture]