I have to admit, I hadn’t understood the weapons in Second Life thing. For me, there were so many gaming worlds around where you can engage in combat that I just didn’t see the point of Second Life weapons.

I spent some time tonight being guided around the showroom floor for the Second Life Combat Expo by its creator, Australian Apollo Case. It then started to dawn on me why weapons are such a big deal in Second Life. There’s the obvious testosterone-laden image side of it, but it’s also another creative outlet. The level of design and scripting with some of the weapons is as complex as anything you’ll find in Second Life. As Apollo Case said during the guided tour, “weapons are a very competitive business, so the people in it need to be very good at what they do”. From my time browsing I don’t doubt there’s some real talent here.

The Expo has two workshops and five product demonstration sessions with at least three products per demo. I was interested in whether any real life weapons manufacturers had explored opportunities in Second Life. Case’s repsonse: “not directly, but I have suspicions a lot are playing around the edges and need their hand held coming into SL”. Then he couldn’t resist saying “and we can do that”.

The expo kicks off Sunday morning east coast Australian time (5pm SL time May 17th).

Check it out in-world.

(Disclosure: Apollo Case is an intermittent advertiser on The Metaverse Journal)