METAVERSED ISLAND -- Calling Second Life a game or a service can destroy residents' trust in the platform say businesspeople who work in Second Life. Several speakers on the Metanomics panel this week including Mike Lorrey (IntLibber Brautigan in SL), CEO of Ancapistan Capital Exchange (ACE) were against calling SL a game while others such as Thanh Ho (Arbitrage Wise in SL), Chairman of SLCapEx have a disclaimer on their company Web site.

The SLCapEX disclaimer reads: “The SL Capital Exchange is a FICTITIOUS STOCK MARKET SIMULATION operating SOLELY as an Element to an online GAME. It is NOT a REAL WORLD SECURITIES ENTITY and does NOT offer ANY opportunity for REAL WORLD PROFITS or INVESTMENT.

“I don't see it as a game. I don't see Linden dollars as a fiction,” Brautigan said. “It is 100% as fake as the U.S. dollar is and no less real.”

Brautigan went on to say that speaking about Second Life in these terms amounted to “disingenuous evasions” and suggested that people using “game” and “fiction” were trying to “avoid something,” looking like “fools” and making their companies look “foolish.”

The panel was rounded out by David Karsbøl (Daviid Karlsbar in SL), Market Strategist for Denmark's Saxo Bank and Jillian Sayuri Falconi (Jillian Barth in SL), Innovation Consultant for Saxo Bank as well as Gigs Taggart, SL developer and virtual worlds blogger.

Panel moderator Professor Robert Bloomfield (Beyers Sellers in SL) of the Johnson School at Cornell University started the discussion asking Falconi about Saxo's plans in Second Life. Falconi explained that the Danish investment bank wants to understand the future of virtual worlds but sees SL as a mode of communication, using it primarily as a tool to communicate with their customers and future customers.

“(Communications) is the most stable aspect of Second Life at the moment,” Falconi said. “When it comes to economy, security, we're taking it one step at the time, considering the safety of our traders first.”

Ho said his company, SLCapEx, wants traders and investors to know that the economy in SL is unregulated.

Said Ho, “The market is pretty young in comparison to the real world. We don't want people to assume they can jump into the SL market and treat it as the real world and assume they can make profit from the same assumptions.”

Bloomfield seemed surprised when Ho described SLCapEx as “an educational process to how the trading environment works.”

“Why are listing firms actually listing? Are they doing it for entertainment? Are they truly raising capital? Or are they engaged in a long term scam taking advantage of the lack of regulation? What are your responsibilities as the head of the exchange?” Bloomfield asked.

Ho said that his company performs due diligence on the listing companies, meets with the companies, assesses their business plans, and try to uncover any scams. He also said that the company's main business was the banking, not the exchange.