Halting of Online Gambling inworld triggers mass hysteria

Following the decision to ban online gambling by Linden Lab, a friend in-world told me of wide spread demonstrations and protest. I went around casinos and banks to check out the seriousness of the situation and to take some shots of the demonstrations.

This sudden decision to apply ban to inworld gambling should be based on the US government's decision to restrict online gambling, hence triggering Linden's decision to impose a ban on the numerous casinos site that had sprouted out all over the world.

Casinos who were once experiencing high traffic and hit rates had by now become grounds for protest and demonstration gathering places. Casino owner hastily put up notices on ceasing and halting of operations. Overnight, these once value 3D assets became virtually worthless empty shells.

I had a chance to interview a casino owner on this issue. No doubt virtual commodities and assets are one of the profitable area in the virtual world, he feels that the economy in Secondlife is propelled by the online gambling and pornography industry. Hence the clamping down on one of such pillar will defintely affect the virtual economy. Well, for what I see in world, I can't help but to agree with him on the last statement. The virtual economy in SL is definetly powered by the 2 pillars that he mentioned.

With that in mind, I went off to my favorite virtual investment bank site, JT Financial, to have a glimpse of what is going on. Wow, by the time I got to the location, there were many avatars congregating around the bank lobby. The shot that I took only covers a small section of the crowd.

The owner of the virtual bank was there answering angry questions and trying to pacify the crowds. It seems that there was a mad rush by the crowd to withdraw money from the bank's ATM machines. While I was there I saw avatar teleporting and walking into the scene and headed towards the numerous ATM machines in the lobby. They were withdrawing their investment funds from the machines. I caught up with one such avatar who withdrew every linden dollar he had from his investment account. He was phobic that the virtual economy may crash pretty soon and was afraid that the virtual banks might be affected, and hence imposed some kind of restriction on withdrawal limits.

Personally I feel that Linden's decision to halted all inworld gambling may be a little too extreme as any such sudden decision will defintely affect other areas of the virtual economy. Although I am not a gambler, casinos in SL are some of the most innovative and interesting virtual places to visit. As in online gambling sites on the internet, casino owners and developers are pretty innovative in how they use the lsl scripting language, with account connection to servers out of the virtual world and simulation of slot machines, etc. The degree of innovation by these developers is simply amazing.

However from a much higher view point, I am quite impress with how the virtual economy had developed to. Over time, this virtual economy had began to mirror the real world economy in most aspect and industry, and how each industry becomes interrelated with each other.