Inside those MMRPGs – that's "massive multiplayer role-playing games," and if you knew what that stood for without Wikipedia, consider yourself cemented in Loserdom – like Ultima Online, Lineage, or Everquest, real people are doing fake things. Avatars design and sell clothing. Faux species build and sell homes. Sims go to the salon, get their hair did, then wait for their baby's daddy to pick 'em up in his hooptie. Everyone from Business 2.0 to Wired has already profiled the non-existant-but-real microeconomies that exist inside MMRPGs (and eBay, it seems). The next matter the media tackled in these virtual worlds was advertising: Marketers have been slapping clients' logos on virtual billboards, virtual packaging, and virtual T-shirts (though clothing with real brands, we're told, doesn't sell as well).

And now, Reuters breaks its own news with the announcement of a newly fabricated news bureau — in Second Life. Yep, the news agency is outfitting the popular MMRPG game's 900,000 users with its very own news outlet, where news from the outside world (how novel!) will be broadcast into their virtual lives.

Adam Pasick, a Reuters' media correspondent based in London, will serve as the news organization's first virtual bureau chief, using a personal avatar, or animated character, called "Adam Reuters," in keeping with the game's naming system. [...]

Reuters will have journalists reporting and writing financial and cultural stories within and about "Second Life" as part of the London-based company's strategy to reach new audiences with the latest digital technologies.

The best part is where Second Life users interested in discussing a Reuters article all gather in the Reuters Atrium, kick up their feet on a virtual Design Within Reach coffee table, order virtual grande skim vanilla lattes, and ignore each other while hovering over their virtual BlackBerrys.

Reuters Opens Newsroom in 'Second Life' Game [Reuters]