Back in December Rod Humble blogged on the official blog about 2011 and the outlook for 2012, there he confirmed again that Linden Lab would be looking at other projects:
“In addition to delivering new features and increasing our support for Second Life, we will be launching some completely different products next year not related to Second Life. Some of them will be very experimental, but all will fit within our company’s proud history of enabling creativity, which I hope may interest some of you.”
As I said in my previous post, the purchase of Little Text People is the first clear sign to outsiders that the Lab are developing other products, but the nature of the product has taken some by surprise. Hamlet Au on his blog post on the subject said:
“This acquisition is probably the source of the rumors last year that Linden Lab is developing adventure games, which Linden CEO Rod Humble denied at the time. But yesterday’s announcement strongly suggests something like adventure games are being made by Linden Lab (broadly defined as interactive fiction.)”
Rod Humble himself has commented to point out that the rumours last year were incorrect, that this is a different product and that the Little Text People purchased is related to the bland sounding, but still mysterious Product 3, the product that was talked about last year is the bland sounding, but still mysterious, Product 2!
Rodvik posted:
“Hey Hamlet. Just by way of clarification this team is working on product 3.
I first started to talking to them December (although I have known them personally for longer).
When we chatted about IF/Adventure a few months ago it was in relation to product 2, which is also still in production, not this product 🙂
Hopefully things will become less opaque in the near future but yes this team is working on a separate product (one of several we have in development).
Sorry for the cloak & dagger stuff, shouldnt last to much longer. ”
Interesting stuff, leaves us lots of room for speculation for a while longer and, with me at least, generates interest in Products 2 and 3, I’m assuming Product 1 is Second Life, but you never know, it might be something else!
Wherever this leads, it’s encouraging to see Linden Lab developing new products as it indicates Linden Lab is in a healthy state, from a Second Life perspective these products mean very little, although I’d certainly like to see the concepts of Interactive Fiction brought to Second Life, any such development would be a different beast to Product 3, that’s a product all of its own but the whole thing has got tongues wagging and when the cloak and dagger stuff ends, we’ll have a better idea of how useful these products are on their own, it’s rather exciting!