Business & Games: The Blog

REPERES Second Life is the 1st market research institute on Second life. REPERES Second Life is meant to accompany companies in the development of their products and offers on Second Life thanks to:
- A watch on this new universe in full expansion: behaviours, innovations, new codes being established,
- A space of free and continuous expression for avatars: their opinions, expectations,
- The creation of a community: a panel of avatars which may be called upon to address issues faced by brands seeking to establish themselves or develop their offer on Second Life,
- A space for tests and innovations: the place for novelties to be tried and evaluated.

Reperes Second Life will benefit from all of the expertise of the Reperes First Life teams, all passionately involved in studying and developing their knowledge of consumers: qualitative experts, ethologists specialised in observation, quantitative experts, Web specialists…

Also, the agency's website offers a 3 pages^[1] "main research finding of their 1st exploratory study", in pdf format.  The study was conducted between the 16th and the 19th of November, on a group of 137 residents, during a panel.

Quotes:

• The main conclusion was that the perception of Second Life propels it beyond its initial reason for being. The slogan “Your world, your imagination” announced a total and all-powerful freedom which might make one fear the negative effects of egocentricity, isolation or transgression. Such phenomena occur very rarely. On the contrary, what we are witnessing is the emergence of a highly constructive approach and world.
• What transpires here is that Real Life (physically, materially and socially) is limited and therefore limiting for the human mind. The latter being in a way oversized in relation to RL finds therefore in SL a dimension that matches its potential. Hence the conviction for certain residents that Second Life is the future of Real Life.
• Second Life is a place for creativity and production which challenges “Real Life”, inviting it to reflect and opening it up to interesting prospects for the future.
  Among the questions residents wish to ask other residents are issues concerning the notion of the contribution of SL to RL, of the changes and evolutions that SL operates on RL. We see that RL and SL are intimately interwoven and complete one another thus becoming the new human space that RL was unable to embrace on its own. Sometimes there is even the regret expressed of RL coming to contaminate SL (and not the other way round!) with its shortcomings (consumerism, capitalism, competition and domination)[...]

Notes:
1 - while the report consists of 4 pages, the last one is a short presentation of the agency.