Yes, while The Otherland Group GmbH is a brand new company, there has been a business called 'The Otherland Group' within the virtual world of Second Life for quite a while. And, yes, those two are related. You could say that the Second Life company was kind of the first incarnation of a vision. It has grown to be something larger now - but the old Otherland Group is still part of the new one. It will grow and go through a kind of metamorphosis in the next months, probably. But those, who know it, will still recognize it.
But first a few words about the history of the Otherland Group brand. It is an important part of my life in the realm of virtual worlds, too. The first Otherland Group was a real estate firm in Second Life. It was founded in the autumn of 2005, nearly two years ago and a little more than half a year after I discovered virtual worlds. This virtual (but somehow very real) company has been a great hobby for me in the last 2 years. It wasn't the business side of this company, which I enjoyed most. I have enough of that in my first life. If was the creative side, which lead to the creation of this business - and, which made me spend so many weekend hours in Second Life especially during 2005 and 2006. Some of the results can be seen in the pictures of this blog entry, btw. They are all pictures taken on The Otherland Archipelago.
I know a lot people who might ask "But whats the 'creative' side of a land business in a virtual world?" Be assured: there is a lot of it. Just read on ...
Technorati Tags: second life, virtual worlds, web 3.d
What has been the most fun for me in Second Life
There were two occupations in Second Life, which were extremely fun for me - besides connecting to people from all over the world, which has been the greatest "feature" of Second Life for me until this very day. These two occupations are scripting and landscaping. When you look into these activities, you might diagnose a certain hubris with me, because scripting in a virtual world is magic - and landscaping is playing god. :)
Why this? Simple. A scripter in a world like Second Life only has to make the right incantations (write down certain lines of code) and things will appear out of nowhere, others will disappear, change completely - and if you want, smoke and flashes will fill the air, too. Implementing the scripting-projects I envisioned, would have taken much more time than I could afford, though. And, yes, I have to admit it, I can be kind of ... impatient.
Then there is landscaping. And, when I say "landscaping", I don't mean decorating a little garden. I mean creating "lands", mountains, lakes, rivers, whole islands, small continents. Yep, like only the gods do. And you can do that in Second Life. Whow!
I started small of course, relatively small. I licked blood on my first sim (short for "simulator"; a hosted server, represented as an area of 65,000 sqm in Second Life) On this first sim, Verloren, I could only do small changes - I could not destroy the marvelous castle there. Later I bid for and won a few sims at Linden Labs land auctions. And this is how the first The Otherland Group started. The firm was created by an avatar called Dana Bergson which I created expressly for this business. (But that is another topic for another post some time.)
This first incarnation of The Otherland Group is one of the larger real estate firms in Second Life now with some 6.5 million sqm of virtual land. We started small, though, with only a few 100,000 sqm which were bought and sold quickly.
Landscaping was very limited with my first sims, though. Linden Lab only allows to change the land some +/- 4m on the so called "main land" of Second Life. This was not exactly what I wanted but ... buying main land had the great advantage of being able to easily resell the land. The latter was a necessity, of course, as I could never afford to pay the monthly fees for all the land I "consumed" for this hobby. I did not make much money with this business - actually I lost money, according to my books - as others, like the famous Anshe Chung, were much better with the "business" side of the real estate game.
It was still a satisfying experience; one, which gave me the chance to play around with landscaping, foresting and planting at a relatively small cost. I still get melancholic, when I accidentally visit one of "my" old sims like Campanula, Astylus, Brocade or Huckleberry.
The switch from dealing with land to land creation
It was very disappointing after a while, though, to see what happened to "my" land after I sold it. Most areas of the main land are not a very pretty sight after a while, resembling a colorful trailer park more than anything I would call a "landscape". Yes, this is my outing as a boring, middle class bourgeoise. I know that many people like the creative freedom the main land of Second Life offers. But that’s not my cup of tea - I love pretty landscapes and buildings which "flow with the land". Each to his own.
When Linden Lab changed some features of the so called "private estates" in the spring of 2006, I immediately bought a bunch of simulators and started to really create land. Using Photoshop, Bryce, and some other specialized tools I designed terrains, polished them inside the virtual world, put down, plants, flowers and trees. Now, that was real fun. And the new features mentioned above allowed me to resell the land, while still maintaining a certain level control by making customers sign a Covenant.
The result of all these long weekend hours spent in front the screen of my PC (and "inside" Second Life) can be seen in Second Life as The Otherland Archipelago these days, some 100 connected "sims" with a few hundred residents living on them. It is a profitable business today - although not wildly profitable; still more of a pastime than a business. Please feel free to visit our cluster of sims, if you have a little time. We always welcome visitors and put a lot of effort in making our land beautiful and "visitor friendly".
I could not create all of this all alone, of course - as I can not handle the business with all of the resulting customer requests today. There is a team of three estate managers inworld, Ghoti, Mikayla and Sylvia. Without them the old Otherland Group would have been impossible. Thank you, Gals! :)
The future of the Otherland real estate division
In the past, The Otherland Group has focused on the real estate business. As of September 2007 this is a small part of a larger organisation with a different focus. In the coming weeks our new consulting and construction devisions will take shape and will probably soon be larger business-wise and demand more of my attention.
The real estate devision will be part or these activities, too. Terraforming, landscaping, water effects, like lakes, rivers and waterfalls etc., for our customer projects, will all be done by the Otherland Real Estate team. And we are discussing at least two ideas, currently, on how to expand the real estate business in innovative ways.
The detailed plans are not yet in a state, where we can publish them, though, but ... stay tuned!
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