New Life for Corporate Training - Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments - page 448

AS of October 2008, the purchase price for a
sim in Second Life was $1000 (USD) for corpora-
tions or $700 (USD) for educators and non-profits
(Private Region Pricing, 2009). However in Sec-
ond Life you also have to pay monthly mainte-
nance fees to Linden Labs. This fee was $295 for
corporate private islands and $147.50 for educators
and non-profits. Therefore, just to own an island
for one year in Second Life will cost either $4540
(corporate rate) or $2470 (education and non-profit
pricing). Also, there are additional costs for buy-
ing items to place on the new site and while many
can be acquired free, be prepared to spend some
money implementing any new sim. While these
are not show stopping prices, they do provide a
significant area of concern and consideration when
venturing into Second Life. However, to put this
in perspective, these expenses are comparative to
any other major software purchase but much less
than the estimated cost to build a MUVE from
scratch, which is estimated to be between 12 and
20 million dollars (Ondrejka, 2008).

some corporation may work in locations that do
not have high speed Internet available and again
the experience becomes less than ideal or may
not work at all.
To create the possibility of a more optimal
experience, trainers and designers will need to
ensure the computers being used at least meet,
if not exceed, the recommended requirements
from Linden Lab listed System Requirements. To
ensure this, it may be necessary to upgrade the
computers being used or possibly replace them
with newer models. Doing so should be given
serious consideration as companies weigh the pros
and cons of ensuring a better learning experience
but this means you also have to consider more
upfront costs.

Security Concerns

The fourth and final hesitancy surround Second
Life deals with security concerns, which remains
a huge concern as companies consider launch-
ing ventures in Second Life. This issue is a two
headed beast and deals with both protecting private
resources in Second Life and keeping corporate
networks safe from those that may want to take
advantage of open network settings in real life.
While the first issue can be addressed in Second
Life, the second cannot and this becomes a major
decision point for some corporations.
Since Second Life is available and open to
anyone on the Internet, companies have expressed
concern over protecting their internal resources.
Once a sim is set up, it is possible for other residents
to stumble upon it and explore the area. Likewise
companies also worry about the behavior of their
employees while in-world and have expressed
concern about protecting intellectual property
rights and ensure proper employee behavior to
maintain corporate image. Both of these issues are
valid, but both can also be addressed by putting
certain security measures in place. When creating
a new sim, Linden Lab allows the buyer to request
a general area of the metaverse for the sim to sit

Required Hardware

Another item associated with cost, and also listed
as a reason some corporations are hesitant to
try Second Life, is the fact that Second Life is a
fairly heavy graphic intensive program and may
not run on older computers very well. Therefore,
instructional designers need to ensure that par-
ticipants will be able to run the required software
to access Second Life. In many organizations,
training departments are underfunded and have
a training center full of older model computers.
While these computers might be fine for running
desktop software, they probably do not have the
necessary requirement to run Second Life, which
is currently minimally listed as needing an 800
MHz Pentium III with 512 MB of RAM, a high
quality graphics card and high speed Internet
access ( System Requirements , 2008); though
even with this low end equipment the viewing
experience will be less than optimal. Additionally,