In the real world, she's a children's dance teacher in Chattanooga, Tenn. But in an online multiplayer simulation game called Second Life, Torrid Midnight, as she is known there, is a successful clothing designer who makes about $1,000 a month — that's in real U.S. dollars — selling virtual outfits to other players. (The players prefer to use pseudonyms for reasons of privacy and safety.)
Second Life is one of several online games in which it has recently become possible to exchange a virtual currency — in this case, Linden dollars — for real money. Anything that can be drawn in Photoshop can be used in the game, so players also create, sell and buy objects such as buildings, robots and weapons. They get married, have children, go clubbing and even steal each others' ideas and create knockoffs, just like in the real world. When it happened to Midnight, other players shamed the copyists into stopping.
A sudden influx of players in the last year — Second Life now has some 37,000 users — has meant more demand for virtual clothing but also more competition for customers, said Aimee Weber, the pseudonym of another Second Life virtual designer. In real life, Weber works for a Web site developer in New York.
She started playing the game about a year and a half ago. She couldn't find anything to wear, and since she already knew how to use Photoshop, Weber started making her own clothes. Other players complimented her on her outfits and wanted to know where she got them, so she opened a boutique called Preen. Weber specializes in tights — chevron, striped, diamond-patterned, fuzzy and vertical stripes with bows are some of her designs — and started a brief fad for big black nerd glasses.
"The way I describe my style is ‘punk ballerina,'" she said. So far Weber has made the equivalent of about $2,000, but she has yet to cash out. She estimates there are more than 100 virtual designers in the game.
Midnight sells about 15 or 30 items a day and charges anywhere from 25 to 500 Lindens. Now, thanks to her adventure online, Midnight plans to go back to school to study graphic design. "This is something I really love doing even though it's work," she said.
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