'Second Life' Players Face Real Financial Losses
If you find the recent economic news depressing, imagine what your avatar might be going through. The online game Second Life has shut down its virtual banking system.
Second Life is a fantasy game in which people have alternative selves, called avatars, who hold jobs, fall in love, own homes, play sports and run businesses.
Real people who play the game put real money into it, so the closing of Second Life's banking system has had some genuine economic consequences.
Robert Bloomfield, a professor of accounting at Cornell University who hosts the virtual television show Metanomics in Second Life, talks with Scott Simon.
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