Second Life provides its users with a persistent, ubiquitous economic system in which goods and services are bought and sold on a daily basis. Anyone is allowed to trade using money made either through dollar-to-Linden conversions or in-game sales. Individuals are given the tools to create any item and script any behavior to make it smart, interactive and in some ways better than the items that can be bought in real world stores. But given that the economy has existed for ten years and affords its users so much creative control and freedom, why would it not become a more mainstream option for revenue and economic participation? What are the systems limitations?

Most of the goods are virtual, to begin with. There are no real world analogues for purchases made in Second Life, despite the fact that the economy is based at least partly on the US dollar. Real world consumers use currency all the time to buy or rent products that do not have “real” properties, otherwise known as services; going to the movies or banking would be examples. No physical analogues exist for these services, so in a sense they mimic the same economic activity as what a user takes part in when buying something in Second Life. Yet are services provided for a player in the real world and those provided for a player;s avatar in a virtual world different, from an economic perspective?

Avatars themselves are not responsible for buying and selling goods and services. Sales and purchases are attributed to the holder of the virtual account, at least on a strictly economic basis, and as such any services enjoyed or bought in Second Life belong to the avatar's real world identity, the user. Many times the services provided in both real world and virtual world purchases are very similar, in that dancing in a club and dancing in a virtual club may have the same enjoyment factor. But what about goods like houses and vehicles -- do they represent the same enjoyment on both a virtual and real level? If not, this inconsistency in the level of enjoyment of goods would pose a problem to mainstreaming economic activity in Second Life, as many will want to enjoy the goods (not services) on both a physical and virtual level.

Another problem to mainstreaming Second Life’s economy is the way in which users make money in-game. Virtual goods predominate the economy, and as such in real world economic terms, Second Life is largely oriented toward industry, as opposed to agriculture or services. To put this in a real world perspective, the CIA World Factbook 2006 identifies several countries in Africa and the Middle East as predominated by the industrial sector, with little provision of services; in contrast, North America, South America and Europe are the centers of the world's largest services-based economies. If Second Life were to exist in the real world, it would fall in the former category, thus placing many users who are new to the game in the mindset that money can be made solely through the creation of goods rather through a mixture of goods and services.

Given that many of Second Life's users are from the latter countries (services-based), this is either a welcome change to the real world situation or a strange reversal of the norm. Consider the common American citizen who enters Second Life: literate, at least high-school educated, with a job most likely in a services industry (offices, restaurants, malls, etc.). They build nothing on a daily basis, nor do they aid in industrial practices; they are participants of a real world economy that is largely services-based. The freedom to create and sell goods is liberating, if that is a desire of the user. But for others, who understand only the world to which their accustomed, the absence of any services sector in Second Life as a way to make a virtual living is daunting and unfamiliar.

The lack of a services sector is in large part due to the automation implicit to selling goods in the virtual world: there are no shopkeepers to make sure the customer does not steal because scripts ensure safe and reliable transactions; there are no offices because most communication is also done through scripted objects that interact and inform users who enter a sim. Services-oriented jobs are limited to hostesses and dancers, which is unquestionably biased toward women and fraught with humiliation and sexism. For many new users, an option to make money by providing the services they know and trust in the real world would be an assured source of participation in the economy, yet its implementation is the hardest question of all, as scripts often take the place of the human touch in Second Life.

However, perhaps assuming users will want a familiar, largely services-based economy is flawed. Many users may find liberation in the freedom to create and sell, and the economy could become a highly sophisticated post-services economy (as opposed to post-industrial) where services are ensured (through scripts) and users are allowed to prototype and sell a myriad of different goods unavailable in the real world. If this were the case, though, the interface and its deathly steep learning curve would have to change. Currently, there are two issues: most users are not interested in learning LSL scripting or building 3d models, and learning how to build them for the programming or modeling-illiterate is near impossible. These contribute to the vast problem of making Second Life a largely consumer-heavy economy, which is unsustainable and unrealistic. If the economy were to become mainstream, participants would need to identify ways to make money as well as spend their money, otherwise it would be a poor extension of the real world economy tied solely to its users’ ability to pay in dollars rather than through self-generated Lindens.

Bottom-line: differences in the enjoyment of real world and virtual goods (rather than services), the lack of a services-based economy, and the unequal participation of users, i.e. consumers and producers, all contribute obstacles to mainstreaming the Second Life economy.