The Reporter Is Real, but the World He Covers Isn’t

See also economist article: Living in a Second Life

October 16, 2006

NEW YORK TIMES By ANDREW ADAM NEWMAN

In preparing to open a Reuters bureau on a bustling island, Adam Pasick has been introducing himself to residents and interviewing entrepreneurs. After finishing such interviews, Mr. Pasick often levitates for a moment, then flies over buildings.

Mr. Pasick, a Reuters technology reporter who was formerly earthbound with the news agency, is heading up Reuters’ first virtual news bureau inside the online role-playing game Second Life. While many independent journalists and bloggers have published inside such virtual worlds, Reuters is the first established news agency to dispatch a full-time reporter to do so.

Created by Linden Labs of San Francisco, Second Life is a realistic world where avatars — animated representations — for its more than 850,000 players interact. Avatars buy islands on which to build homes or businesses, and sell one another everything from homes designed by Adobe Photoshop to virtual sneakers. The currency is Linden dollars; $1 buys 280 of them. In September, user-to-user transactions totaled $7.1 million.

“The fact that it’s in a virtual world doesn’t change things as much as you’d think,” said Mr. Pasick, 30, a Michigan native based in London. “It’s not any different than when Reuters opens up a bureau in a part of the world that has a fast-growing economy that we weren’t in before. The laws of supply and demand hold true, it has a currency exchange, people open businesses and get paid for goods and services.”

Mr. Pasick’s avatar, Adam Reuters, was modeled after the reporter, and sports a press pass so others know he buys his pixels by the barrel. He will set up shop in a virtual building made to look like a hybrid of Reuters’ London and Times Square buildings.

While players who drop in (flying is one of only a few superhuman aspects of Second Life) can access Reuters news from the real world, the articles Mr. Pasick files will be strictly about — and addressed to — Second World players. One of his first examines Second Life’s biggest lender, who charges 40 percent annual interest. His dispatches will be posted at secondlife.reuters.com.

“I’ve been playing in Second Life since it was a relatively small community,” said Thomas H. Glocer, Reuters’ chief executive. Mr. Glocer allowed that some might question the wisdom of parachuting the legendary 155-year-old news agency into such a geekfest.

“This is a very serious, old brand that stands for things and has principles, but that doesn’t take itself so seriously that it wouldn’t play in a gaming space,” Mr. Glocer said. “This appeals to a younger demographic. Even for people who don’t go in and play in Second Life, it shows Reuters has a certain with-it-ness.”

Edward Castronova, author of “Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games,” said it made sense for Reuters to hang a shingle in Second Life. “It’s an easy way for a blue-chip, traditional organization to get virtual world credibility,” he said.

Reuters would get more exposure in the most popular online fantasy game, World of Warcraft, which has more than seven million subscribers, but that game’s players are decidedly less civilized. “It would be more fun, but Reuters would be more likely to end up in a dragon’s belly,” Mr. Castronova said. ANDREW ADAM NEWMAN