Flexpetz purveys prim pooches

by Tateru Nino Feb 16th 2008 at 10:30AM

Filed under: News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds

Flexpetz is a ... well, let's call it a timeshare club for dogs. Rent-a-pet, if you will. Face it, some of us like to have canine company, and just don't have the time or the circumstances to own. It's one of those concepts that can be done really badly or really well. We don't know a whole lot about Flexpetz, so we'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they do it really well.

Their new site in Second Life, however - now that trips the odd-ometer a little.

Their island, Flexpetz Dog Park, is a workmanlike enough build, apparently by Designing Digitally Inc, one of Second Life's lesser metaverse development businesses. The build is attractive enough, explorable, not overscripted and shows no significant flaws in execution of prims, textures or spelling (although some of the furniture is perhaps a bit oversized).

Flexpetz gives you the opportunity to rent a prim version of a dog, though we just can't figure out why. For L$500 (a little under US$2) you can rent (for example) Tofu the prim poodle facsimile. How long for? It doesn't say.

We're not really seeing the value proposition in renting synthetic canines, when other such hounds can be purchased outright for between L$300 and L$5,000 depending on quality and functionality.

Tags: designing-digitally-inc, dogs, flexpetz, second-life, second-life-places