You can establish an account for free, but only get L$250 to start. (Linden dollars are the unit of currency in Second Life.) SL has its own economy, complete with merchants and fees for services. (Not to mention a screamingly successful adult industry. Not for the prudish to be sure. Fortunately areas are broken into PG and M rated categories.) You can purchase L$ with real money. The current exchange rate is something like 300 lindens to 1 USD.
There's a good amount of free or near-free stuff that you can get, like clothes, hair, wings (very popular), and so forth. I established a free account and then got $20 worth of Lindens (over L$6000.)
You can customize your avatar in endless ways; people have created skins to change your appearance in a myriad of shades, types, colors, etc. That's where the fun part starts
The free accounts can't own land, however. That's right, you can buy land and build a home, or a store, or a dance club, or whatever you want. Building is set up through a set of "primitives" that you can apply textures to to build just about anything you'd want, from a house to a rollercoaster to anything else you can imagine. You can create accessories for your avatar (jewelry, wings, power armor, etc) out of these primitives too, and then "wear" them on your avatar.
It's endless fun. And there's lots of cyber.
Not a "game" per se but more of a toy. And right now it's pretty obscure, so there isn't a lot of HURR LOL NEWB HURR happening. Also, you will need a credit card or verified PayPal account to set up an account; this tends to keep the riff raff griefers out.
