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Having a new baby in real life sure can cut into your Second Life.

Take it from Lynne Randoll, also known as Kali Quartermass. In real life, Randoll lives in Pflugerville with her husband, Dan Harris, known online as Jher Quartermass. The two are married in both the real and virtual worlds.

In real life, he's a Unix administrator. She's a veterinarian. Now in their late 30s, they met through an online chat group that gathered Thursday nights at Austin's Dog & Duck Pub.

Wes Pryor and Loki, who builds upside-down houses.

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They are side by side in real life, spending time together in Second Life, where they like to build things and buy and sell virtual real estate for a profit.

The Quartermasses like to socialize, make friends and go on virtual dates to oddball events such as Xwing's Giant Snail Race or the Discs of Tron Arena, two of many games that have arisen within the world.

"We still go out together in real life," Kali says. "Just not every night."

It's not a world for everyone, they say, but appeals mostly to a computer-literate and creative crowd.

"When I first played Second Life," Jher says, "I thought, 'This is what cyberspace is supposed to be.' "

Another Austin-area Second Lifer is Loki Pico, an orange-skinned, horned bull-man who likes to build roadside attractions such as maddening mazes and an upside-down house. In real life, he's Wes Pryor. Currently between jobs, Pryor says he has cash reserves to live for a few months, leaving him time to spend up to six hours online at a stretch.

"I've made lots of friends in Second Life," he says.

Philip Rosedale is the CEO of Linden Lab, the San Francisco company he founded in 1999. It launched Second Life in 2003.

Rosedale agrees to be interviewed within Second Life, so he logs on as Philip Linden and meets a reporter on a trolley car in virtual London, where the two ride in circles and chat.

Rosedale says that ever since he was a young man, he dreamed of creating a place like this, where creative people could come together and shape their world.

About five years ago, the mandatory ingredients — powerful computers linked by broadband connections — began to emerge. Rosedale predicts explosive growth for Second Life as the technology becomes commonplace (more than half of Internet users nationwide now use broadband, according to NetRatings, a company that tracks such figures). In a burst of optimism, Rosedale predicts that Second Life will reach a million users in three years.

After 18 months, with about 20,000 registered users and some 1,500 or so logged on at any one time, Second Life is a cult phenomenon within a booming industry.

By comparison, last year's blockbuster City of Heroes, the superhero role-playing game created by NCSoft in Austin (Related Story), boasts almost 10 times that many registered users.

"We're after those early adopters who will help create the world," Rosedale says. "We're not trying to create a consumer experience right from the start."

The slow-growth approach is yielding about 20 percent monthly growth in customers and revenue, Rosedale says.

Demographically, Second Life attracts a different audience from traditional online games. For starters, most online multiplayer games such as Everquest or World of Warcraft draw about 25 percent of their audience from teens under 18. Second Life tries to keep minors out, requiring a credit card and a pledge that the user is an adult.

And, strikingly, Rosedale says, about 38 percent of Second Life's subscribers are women, more than double the average for online games. Women also play longer, accounting for about 50 percent of the time spent online in the world.

• Continued