So Linden Lab’s next generation virtual world platform is most definitely more than a rumour and Ebbe Altberg has been leading the discussion. However it should be pointed out, that Rod Humble discussed other worlds too, as Inara Pey points out in her blog post on the subject :
Back in October 2012, I was pointed to an interview with former Lab CEO Rod Humble in Gamesbeat, in which he talked about the Lab’s (then) new products, the Lab and Second Life. In reviewing that piece, I picked up on a statement that Linden Lab is “still investing in 3D virtual worlds.”
In the middle of the comments following that article, Rod himself popped-up to reassure people that the Lab was (and is) still committed to Second Life. In this comment, he also acknowledged the use of the plural – “virtual worlds” – stating:
My comment about also investing in virtual worlds is correct. As you know I don’t like to detail things until we are close to something actionable, but we absolutely are investing in the large virtual world space which I think will make Second Life users, business owners and developers very happy…. but its a ways off 🙂
Inara as usual is on the ball and her blog post carries the audio recording of Ebbe Altberg’s discussion regarding Linden Lab’s next generation platform at the TPV developers meeting. I will also insert the YouTube video of the entire meeting at the end of this post, but more on that later.
Obviously this news has generated a lot of discussion and Linden Lab have been in responsive mode, with first Peter Gray contacting some bloggers to inform them :
Linden Lab is working on a next generation virtual world that will be in the spirit of Second Life, an open world where users have incredible power to create anything they can imagine and content creators are king. This is a significant focus for Linden Lab, and we are actively hiring to help with this ambitious effort. We believe that there is a massive opportunity ahead to carry on the spirit of Second Life while leveraging the significant technological advancements that have occurred since its creation, as well as our unparalleled experience as the provider of the most successful user-created virtual world ever.
The next generation virtual world will go far beyond what is possible with Second Life, and we don’t want to constrain our development by setting backward compatibility with Second Life as an absolute requirement from the start. That doesn’t mean you necessarily won’t be able to bring parts of your Second Life over, just that our priority in building the next generation platform is to create an incredible experience and enable stunningly high-quality creativity, rather than ensuring that everything could work seamlessly with everything created over Second Life’s 11 year history.
Does this mean we’re giving up on Second Life? Absolutely not. It is thanks to the Second Life community that our virtual world today is without question the best there is, and after 11 years we certainly have no intention of abandoning our users nor the virtual world they continually fill with their astounding creativity. Second Life has many years ahead of it, and in addition to improvements and new developments specifically for Second Life, we think that much of the work we do for the next generation project will also be beneficial for Second Life.
It’s still very early days for this new project, and as we forge ahead in creating the next generation virtual world, we’ll share as much as we can.
If we had one message to share with Second Life users about this new project at this point, it would be: don’t panic, get excited! Again, Second Life isn’t going away, nor are we ceasing our work to improve it. But, we’re also working on something that we think will truly fulfill the promise of virtual worlds that few people understand as well as Second Life users.
Ebbe Altberg himself has also been out and about making a visit to SLUniverse to discuss the matter. I know this always rubs some people up the wrong way because they believe Ebbe Altberg should be discussing such issue on Second Life’s official forum, but he chose to go to SLUniverse to chat to the cool kids, so that ruled me out! I’m not going to post all of Ebbe’s SLU post but a few select one’s are below the cut.
On whether people could reserve their SL name in the nextgen world Ebbe said : “Making it easy for people to bring their identity and social connections along would obviously make a lot of sense to do.”
On the timeline for the new product, what this means for Second Life and why Ebbe announced this at the TPV meeting, Ebbe said : “Beta next year sometime.
SL will be here for a long time until we see how people decide between these worlds. Nobody here has even thought of talking about some shut down plan. Too far out to know. But we obviously plan to make something so good ultimately that you will prefer to go there.
I wasn’t really planning to talk about it at the TPV meeting but I’ve been talking to press this week where I do mention next gen platform, so I figured they might as well hear it from me…”
On whether content would be moderate or gated in the nextgen world, Ebbe said : “I’m for freedom. I don’t want to moderate or control it (beyond making sure things are legal). And we’ll probably have ratings (G, M, A) or something like that so one can be “safe” if one does not want some kind of content…again, we’re creating something in the spirit of SL, but just want to make it much better…“
On the costs of the nextgen virtual world (Aka will the tier be too damn high!) Ebbe said : “We’re early in our discussions about business models but I’m thinking lower land tax and higher sales tax and ultimately aim to make things up with volume…(charge less to many rather than a lot to a few). This is possible with better tech and making something more people want to be part of.”
On the controversial Linden Lab TOS Ebbe fielded many questions, without really answering them, almost like a politician until in response to someone asking for the TOS to be updated to meet the spirit of the TOS Ebbe kept implying existed, Ebbe said : “Yep, working on it.”
Short but sweet that last one. The impression I’m getting from all of this is that it’s a bit too early for Linden Lab to talk much about their nextgen world, but as Ebbe has been talking to the press about it and people are likely to read about it, he felt it was best to engage with the community on the issue.
There’s not a lot of detail around but Linden Lab have seized on the opportunity to engage with the press because their embracing of Oculus Rift has got them in the press, so it makes sense to talk more.
Where this will all end up I don’t know, I’ll post more shortly about new virtual worlds and the challenges they face but for now I’ll leave you with the full two hour long TPV dev meeting. The relevant part to this blog post starts around one hour nine minutes in, so if that’s all you’re interest in, please slide that timeline along.
But do you own what you create ?
Microsoft marketing style! “The current version may suck, but the next one will be wonderful!” and “sorry, no, it won’t be a free upgrade; in fact, you won’t be able to migrate your data”.
I think Ebbe’s ESLer skill-lack is showing, as he is obviously still using “virtual” as in “virtual software” – ie undelivered/late/undeliverable – as opposed to the normal understanding of the word in “virtual world”.
Pep (Philip must be laughing his head off.)