Inara Pey, on the ball as always, has posted an update for Linden Lab’s Patterns, namely that Linden Lab are discontinuing their development involvement. However, in a sign that someone at Linden Lab has grasped that software doesn’t need to be buried on a dusty old shelf when a company decides to stop updating it, Linden Lab have put the feelers out to see if anyone else is interested in taking Patters onboard.
The official press release from Linden Lab, entitled The Conclusion Of Patterns, states :
Recently, Linden Lab announced that we are working on an ambitious project to create the next-generation virtual world, while we continue to improve Second Life and grow Blocksworld. As we focus on these priorities, we have ceased development for Patterns, and we will be no longer offering the game for sale.
We at Linden Lab are extremely grateful for the adventurous early players who explored the Patterns genesis release. Those who purchased the Patterns genesis release will still be able to play their copies of the game, but features relying on server connections, such as world-sharing, will not be functional.
Patterns had early promise, and while Linden Lab focuses our efforts on our other offerings, we are still evaluating the future of the Patterns technology. Interested parties are welcome to contact us with proposals.
This is quite a brave and bold move by Linden Lab and shows that Linden Lab do seem to take notice of situations in the not too distant past, as Inara points out :
The most interesting point of note with the announcement, however, is that the Lab appear to have taken on-board the Versu situation, and rather than simply closing the door, have indicated they’d be willing to hear from third parties who might be interested in taking Patterns on – albeit with the caveat that the company is still evaluating the technology used in Patterns at this time.
Linden Lab’s decision to close development of Versu earlier in the year raised eyebrows because the platform showed great potential. Initially Linden Lab couldn’t agree a deal with Emily Short and Richard Evans and the product seemed dead and buried, but eventually a deal was struck and Versu lived on :
After Versu’s cancellation, it looked for a long time as though neither the underlying technology nor the finished stories had a future. However, we are delighted to be able to announce that Linden Lab has negotiated a new arrangement that will allow us to release these stories and explore a future for the engine.
Whatever the long term future holds for Versu, Linden Lab have given the platform a fighting chance and the same is true of Patterns. Those who feel that Patterns could have a future have the opportunity to contact Linden Lab with a proposal to keep the platform alive. I wish more companies would follow Linden Lab’s lead here because whereas a company may not see a future in the product themselves, fans, developers and others can sometimes see a way of adding new life to a platform.
Patterns was of course a product of the Rod Humble era and I still think Linden Lab were right to look at other products beyond Second Life. Indeed I still think they are right to look at other products. However it does seem that Linden Lab’s main focus now is their new virtual world, although they are still firmly behind Blocksworld and Second Life too.
Eventually, I really think Linden Lab need more than three products, but I say that as someone who has no idea whatsoever just how grand, ambitious and adventurous Linden Lab’s new virtual world will be. That virtual world itself could indeed equate to being many different products, time will tell.
Sure. Let’s applaud LL’s bland, over-paid, lily-white, uncreative approach to things which include getting some sucker to work on their project or provide great ideas all for free.
Yes, let’s all applaud that.
The thing is Joe I’ve seen many a complaint when companies let a platform die. When City Of Heroes closed players and even some of the devs were crying out for the company to do something like Linden Lab have here.
I am more concerned with companies ruining Early Release sales & kickstarter/gofundme systems for promising games by charging for vaporware that they obviously had no intention of supporting. The updates on this game were spotty (and that’s being nice) since most “2 step forward” updates came with “2 step back” feature nullification. Gravity anyone? The advertising and trailer/gameplay videos coming from the developer (or their bought-and-paid-for youtubers) included features not released to the public or builds that never saw the light of day. They are only just short of being Hammerpoint Interactive level (The War Z/Survivor Stories developer) liars with the number of errors in advertising and game mechanics posts at their own site and the Steam site in conjunction with releasing an obviously lackluster game for sale before it was even in the Alpha build phase. I am just about done with seeing larger indie houses/smaller mainstream companies sell “potential” for a premium. Granted, 10$ is not much when compared to AAA titles, but amongst the indie crowd where finished Roguelikes, 2-d action, and even 3-d FPS/RTS/etc. games go for 5-10$ after the developer puts in tens of thousands of hours of coding and troubleshooting time, a 10$ “idea” that sucks money from other Early Release games is yet another phantomware slap to the face.