Whilst pondering the many theories on the TOS change, I’ve speculated wildly and with absolutely no clues that it may be feasible that Linden Lab could have been working on a Second Life game engine. The thing with wild speculation is that you begin to convince yourself that it makes sense.
Desura, the digital distribution platform Linden Lab own lists a number of game engines for devs to get their hands on. There are big players such as Unity 3D , Unreal Development Kit and CryEngine3. However there are also much smaller players such as Ren’PY for visual novels and Adventure Game Studio for those who want to make point and click adventures. These latters ones are the ones where I think opportunity could knock for Linden Lab.
Second Life is more than capable of being used for point and click adventures. Second Life is not suitable for all action first person shooters, but for point and click adventures it could work. People are still making and selling point and click adventures.
Now going into further speculation mode, where would people who used a Second Life game engine want to get their content from? Well a readily available marketplace would be a real boost in those terms. Extending reach of Second Life concepts, assets and ideas to communities outside Second Life could also be beneficial to Second Life itself.
This sort of speculation is chaotic in its nature and I’m not linking this sort of concept to the TOS changes, more on those later, but I’m sure Second Life’s content creators would welcome the opportunity to sell to other markets, as long as the terms were agreeable.
Desura looks to me to be a very decent purchase by Linden Lab, it has real potential, there’s potential with Desura to really grow amongst the indie developer community for games and content.
Hi Ciaran, I have mentioned your idea in my latest post on an SL adventure experience: http://sl-playinstinct.blogspot.be/2013/11/lokis-well-sollicitus-second-life-as.html.
I do not agree that SL can’t be used for 1st person shooters. There are however not many people who managed to create a good HUD system. One fantastic 1st person shooter game mod is this: http://sl-playinstinct.blogspot.be/2013/03/the-amazing-maze-new-claimant-to-sl.html
Thanks for the feedback Estelle and especially thanks for the links, some far more interesting development going on in this area than I realised.
i think a successful game engine would need a fairly easy way within the platform to keep score, track/give levels and rewards
the best candidate i think would be scriptable groups
if groups were scriptable then a game isnt necessarily tied to land altho many/some would be. like arena shooters racers mazers etc
HUD games would become a pretty hot ticket i think. so you can play a game from anywhere on the grid just by wear the HUD and activate the group
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also: i think groups is the key to the “experiences” like autoteleport and auto/temp attach etc. “experiences” script functions only work when llSameGroup() == true. for NSFW then llSameGroup() && llParcelIsAdult() == true
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can understand why linden wanted to make “experiences” parcel-based (for the tiers) but i think groups is the go over the longterm for that same reason
like linden could charge a monthly fee to the owner of the scriptable game group based on membership numbers. then game owners could monetarise on top of that if they choose
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scriptable groups would also be pretty good for merchants i think. able to script move customers by spend to Gold Platinum levels etc and able to dish out regular rewards based on level. stuff like that
just another thought about Desura and user created content
i dont think linden are ever going to allow content to be transferred to a server not under their direct ownership and control
if did/do have a new Desura/SL game engine then a game maker would only be able to access content bought from others using that viewer. same the players/buyers of that made game
the same way the SL viewer works now. there is no legit way to export stuff to my own drive or server (excpet what i made myself) and i doubt very much that linden will ever allow this differently
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is possible that linden might come to some contractual arrangement with a 3rd world provider but doing so i think would signal that linden is exiting the virtual content hosting business
edit to add:
by 3rd parties i don’t mean asset storage services that linden rent. i mean 3rd party game/world provider servers
Some interesting concepts. For groups to work as some sort of storage location for points or awards there would need to be some sort of Linden Lab provided database storage, which wouldn’t be bad at all.
From there people could keep track of progress, it’s certainly feasible.
As for content, a marketplace for Desura devs would need to be able to be exported from Linden Lab’s control to prosper, which is a challenge to say the least in terms of an appropriate TOS that would make all parties happy.
Second Life needs an overhaul before any such things like above can be done. The engine is old and outdated and the client is a mockery compared to modern advancements like Unreal Engine 4, Voxel Engines, Unity and others. The entire concept of a new SL game engine would have to be developed away from the IMVU/SL social-chatroom thing.
This is why i like EQN next. It gives me voxels, ability to build my own creations, is an actual game, and is modern.