I’ve long felt that virtual worlds are an ideal technology for senior citizens. Virtual worlds allow seniors who are no longer as mobile or as agile as they once were to lead active lives as members of a community even if they find it difficult to leave their home in the physical world. Yet until now, virtual worlds have been regarded as more for the young even though in my observation in Second Life, OpenSim worlds, and There.com, older people account for a surprising percentage of active participants. Despite this, virtual worlds have pretty much ignored them.
That’s why I am so excited about the SeniorCan Care corporation asking me to build an OpenSim grid that’s explicitly for senior citizens, with the intent of creating a virtual world where seniors can lead active lives as contributing members of a community. Working in conjunction with a medical device maker, it will initially be marketed to Chinese living in Canada and later in the United States. My hope is that it will be successful enough to expand to the general population of seniors.
The SeniorCan Care grid is buying creative content of just about every type – houses and other structures, avatars, vegetation, clothing, animations, etc. There are three ways you can sell your content or services to the new grid:
- Selling from your existing inventory.
- Custom building to order (there could be some interesting custom building jobs)
- Selling your goods to members of the new grid. We recognize that this is a side business for most creators and that you lead a busy life, so we will set up a store for you if you don’t have time to do it yourself.
For content creators and builders, SeniorCan Care presents an unusual opportunity to sell content to an OpenSim world that’s relatively well funded, has a positive social purpose, and is committed to protecting intellectual property rights. The company behind the new grid is committed to its success and will be publicizing it. this could be an opportunity for your work to be seen by a wider audience.
If you’re a Second Life or OpenSim content creator and any of this interests you, please get in contact with me by using the contact form on my personal website, erikbainbridge.com/formmailer.
A word about my own background: I’ve had my own OpenSim grid since 2011 (formerly Diva, now standard OpenSim), I’ve been in Second Life since 2004 and I’ve been writing about it for examiner.com since 2009, I was a beta tester of There.com in 2003-4, and my Master’s thesis in 1995 dealt with future virtual worlds.