In this post I will review 2014 from a largely virtual world perspective for the months January to June. This is part 1 of 2 as part 2 is still a work in progress but will hopefully appear tomorrow. I’ll combine both posts into another post for easier future reference once they are both completed. These posts will miss lots of big and interesting stories because the nature of the beast demands some brevity. These post may well look longer than they actually are at first glance because of images and pictures. The aim of posts such as these are to give a brief overview of the year, rather than an in depth review. An in depth review is too long for a blog post, it may make for an interesting book.
Anyway, on with the show, as they say.
January
January started with a look back to 2013 and the number of private region losses. The scores on the door from Tyche Shepherd displayed a slow down on the number of regions leaving the Second Life grid, something that would continue during 2014.
- 2012 Net Private Region Losess – 2865 (12.0%)
- 2013 Net Private Region Losses – 1719 (8.2%)
The virtual world of Kitely moved to a different pricing model which largely did away with the pay by the minute options as these had not been popular.
Season 2 of The Blackened Mirror was taking a mid-season break but would return by the end of January. The show was recorded in Second Life.
Linden Lab were Raising The Roof : The HTTP Project. This project, which had started in 2012 was aimed at improving HTTP communications to improve the end user experience. Linden Lab would continue working on improvements during the year.
Second Life users were getting frustrated by tax and account information requests from Linden Lab. They would continue to be frustrated by these requests throughout the year despite Linden Lab improving their communications and information on these issues.
Second Life got a mention in the comedy show, 2 Broke Girls.
Then came the storm to warm up many a chilly January evening, Cloud Party announced that they would be closing their virtual doors on February 21st.
This was quickly followed by even more news to warm up January, Aston Villa fan and Linden Lab CEO, Rod Humble, was leaving Linden Lab. This created a Twitter storm.
@Ciaran_Laval Yes. He contacted me directly via Facebook IM and then announced it to friends and family on his private facebook page.
— Jo Yardley (@1920sberlin) January 24, 2014
@Ciaran_Laval I’ve pinged #LL for confirmation. Might or might not get a response. @1920sberlin
— Inara Pey (@InaraPey) January 24, 2014
Oh, come on. @rodvik can’t possibly have quit from @LindenLab. @InaraPey hasn’t had to wait for an answer for a week from Peter Gray.
— SecondLie (@SecondLie) January 24, 2014
Wow @Rodvik resigned – Rod Humble leaves Linden Lab http://t.co/bwi04qWBAH – #SecondLife
— Strawberry Singh (@strawberrysingh) January 24, 2014
Seriously? RT @Demonkid: Rod Humble has left Linden Lab? #Shocked #Sl via @1920sberlin http://t.co/V0q5cMrr8G — Bear Silvershade (@BearSilvershade) January 24, 2014
Is this for real? RT @Demonkid: Rod Humble has left Linden Lab? #Shocked #Sl via @1920sberlin http://t.co/NFYd1h5KBn — Botgirl Questi (@botgirlq) January 24, 2014
.@rodvik So long and thanks for all the fish! Keep in touch eh? *hugs*
— Honour McMillan (@HonourMcMillan) January 24, 2014
So, who will be the next ex-CEO of @LindenLab?
— SecondLie (@SecondLie) January 24, 2014
Seriously will everyone stop leaving or closing their products, I’ve been trying to write a blog about @Draxtor radio hour all night! — Ciaran Laval (@Ciaran_Laval) January 24, 2014
#SL Blog post: “Rod Humble and Linden Lab part ways” – http://t.co/yrMlWUifdG #SecondLife #LindenLab #RodHumble — Mona Eberhardt (@monaeberhardt) January 24, 2014
BREAKING NEWS: Cloud Party hires @rodvik as CEO, start date is February 22.
— SecondLie (@SecondLie) January 24, 2014
Meanwhile, life went on, EverQuest Next Landmark announced their system specs.
Eve-Online had the mother of all battles, with an estimated $300,000 worth of damage the result of the biggest battle Eve-Online had ever witnessed. Second Life content creator Porky Gorky, an avid Eve-Online fan, was unharmed.
Meanwhile, in a war of another sort, Linden Lab updated their bot policy to make it so that the purchase of mainland parcels by Land Bots was no longer allowed. This policy was years too late for many but sits in the better late than never category.
February
Mitch Wagner wrote an article about High Fidelity for Information Week. The article was interesting but the comments proved surprising when someone said :
Second Life would have fared better if it had appealed to MMORPG fans, the primary proven market for such activities. Philip Rosedale, you need orcs.
This caused me to suggest that Second Life has plenty of Orcs!
Arsenal fan Ebbe Altberg was unveiled as the new Linden Lab CEO. Rumours that part of the requirement to be Linden Lab CEO these days involves supporting an English football team whose name starts with the letter A were strenuously denied.
Linden Lab provided even more information regarding tax and account requirements, users continued to scratch their heads.
LindeX trading limits were quietly moved down, from $2,500 a month to $2,000 a month for regular LindeX users. Those who required higher limits could still apply for them. Hardly anyone noticed this and the reason has never been explained although I suspect it’s linked to the tax and account requirements.
Paul Tassi over at Forbes predicted that The Elder Scrolls Online would be the biggest video game disaster of 2014 due to its subscription pricing model. This prediction proved to be false.
Snapzilla, a photo hosting site built for Second Life turned 9 and received a revamp.
A Second Life advert appeared, which annoyed some people due to its design.
Linden Lab decided to change their product offering, with Dio, Creatoverse and Versu all shown the door :
After careful consideration, Linden Lab has decided to cease development and support for dio, Versu, and Creatorverse. We’re grateful for those who took the time to experiment with these products in their early days, but ultimately we have determined that due to a number of factors, we and our customers will be best served by focusing our efforts on continuing to provide exceptional service and compelling new experiences for the users of our other products.
Versu in particular was mourned. Emily Short announced that she would like to keep Versu alive somehow.
Meanwhile, in OpenSim, The Greyville Colony for writers had caught my eye. Nara Malone was extremely happy to show me around.
Linden Lab announced project zipper, a project aimed at making the Second Life client download and install process even faster. This left many scratching their heads as the Second Life client didn’t take long to download and install anyway, however there are suggestions that the longer people have to wait the more likely they are to abandon ship.
Linden Lab announced changes to the Jira which reversed some of the previous contentious changes. Users would once again be able to see all reported bugs (except security bugs) and they would also be able to comment before an issue was triaged. New Feature requests were also returned to the Jira. Many people cheered, rather loudly.
March
SL Go from Onlive was announced. This would allow people to use Second Life on tablets and older hardware. However concerns were raised amongst the user base regarding the per minute pricing model. As noted earlier, Kitely had largely moved away from this model as it had proven unpopular.
Talking of Kitely, their Marketplace entered closed beta during March. The intent of this Marketplace was to allow people to sell items via a Marketplace to Hypergrid connected grids or Kitely users.
Emily Short announced that her attempts to rescue Versu from a dusty shelf had failed :
So for those who were curious, Linden has now given me a definite no about selling me the codebase and IP.
However like most good stories, this one would have a twist, more on that later.
An interesting Virtual Worlds to real world report appeared. The report, from red centric, compared Eve-Online, World Of Warcraft and Second Life to the real world and came up with some very interesting findings :
Between 2006 and 2011, global internet usage doubled in growth – in the same timeframe, Second Life saw a 4000% increase in users.
The Hypergrid stories project launched. This was a project to tell interactive stories in different virtual world grids. Whereas most of the grids were Hypergrid enabled OpenSim worlds, Second Life wasn’t left out of the project, even though Second Life is not Hypergrid enabled.
Oculus Rift was hot in March and Linden Lab announced a limited beta test for Oculus Rift integration with Second Life would be taking place.
Confirmation of the slow down of Second Life region losses appeared in the shape and form of growth! The Second Life grid grew by 14 regions during one week in March, 15 private regions with 1 Linden Lab region going offline, this was the largest week on week growth since June 17th 2012.
Facebook purchased Oculus VR, the company behind Oculus Rift. Many people were not happy about this, including Markus Persson of Minecraft fame :
I definitely want to be a part of VR, but I will not work with Facebook. Their motives are too unclear and shifting, and they haven’t historically been a stable platform. There’s nothing about their history that makes me trust them, and that makes them seem creepy to me.
And I did not chip in ten grand to seed a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition.
Cultured The Magazine launched. This is a magazine that covers fashion and popular culture in Second Life.
Seanchai celebrated six years of storytelling in Second Life.
April
High Fidelity were talking about Identity In The Metaverse. This wasn’t just about your name, it was also related to who and which services you give your name to. High Fidelity also received a visit from Samantha Murphy of New Scientist, who was rather impressed :
As we face each other, the most obvious difference between Second Life and High Fidelity is immediately apparent. Although it is still in early testing, High Fidelity already has the social presence that was lacking in Second Life.
I’m not 100% in agreement with Samantha there.
SL Share, a feature that had previously allowed Second Life users to share photos, status updates and check ins was extended to Flickr and Twitter.
SL GO, in light of feedback, changed their pricing policy from a pay by the minute billing schedule to offering an alternative of a flat fee monthly subscription.
In a bid to help improve documentation regarding the LSL Portal, Strife Onizuka announced the LSL Portal Poetry project. He announced this on April 1st, which set the alarm bells ringing but this was a genuine project. The idea was to bring Haiku to LSL documentation.
Linden Lab encouraged content creators to assist customers to purchase Mesh clothing that fits their avatar.
In order to make this easier for shoppers, we have worked with Second Life content creators to define a way to clearly communicate this to customers. We have arrived at a scheme that can be used for inworld sales as well as those on the Marketplace and ask that Merchants standardize on this model
I don’t know if this has been a success or not.
The Heartbleed bug was causing panic and Linden Lab updated their users on the issue :
You do not need to take extra action to secure your Second Life password if you have not used the same password on other websites. Your Second Life password was not visible via Heartbleed server memory exposure. No secondlife.com site that accepts passwords had the vulnerable SSL heartbeat feature enabled.
Linden Lab updated the transaction history page on Second Life accounts, much to the annoyance of merchants. Linden Lab announced they would seek feedback.
Seanchai announced that they would be extending their storytelling capabilities to the virtual world of Kitely.
May
Fantasy Faire!! My favourite event of the year by a country mile. The event is part of Relay For Life in Second Life and is simply awesome.
What about the rest of May? Linden Lab announced Project Interesting, a project aimed at improving object loading to make scenes appear to load faster.
Landon Linden explained, in some detail, the recent performance problems that had been causing distress for Second Life users. This was a refreshing and open post.
Another event arrived in the shape and form of The Sci-Fi convention in Second Life, this event is also related to Relay For Life.
June
The Empire Struck Back as Linden Lab announced they were now proud sponsors of The Drax Files : World Makers series. There was even a new trailer on the Second Life website featuring clips from the series.
Versu was saved from life on a dusty bookshelf when it was announced that Linden Lab, Emily Short and co. had indeed been able to negotiate an agreement.
Second Life’s 11th birthday celebrations were in full swing during June and Linden Lab were giving away a very funky robot avatar.
The Guardian were talking about the best video game cities. Linden Lab and Jo Yardley encouraged people to submit Second Life cities to the discussion.
Talking of Jo Yardley, The Drax Files : World Makers episode 2 1920’s Berlin received an award for Best Machinima at the New Media Festival.
Kiely announced that the would be removing metered worlds and introducing Premium Worlds as they continued to tweak their pricing model.
Meanwhile Linden Lab were happily announcing that Project Shining was complete :
So if you happen to notice quicker avatar renderings, faster scene loading, seamless region crossing, or just better overall router stability, these are all objectives of Project Shining.
There was a bit of a hoo-ha regarding a competition for SL11B, it required Second Life residents to enter via Facebook and as many of us know, Facebook is not exactly Second Life friendly. However Gray Of The Lab from San Francisco (AKA Pete Linden) explained :
We realize that a number of Second Life users have reservations about using Facebook and other platforms. In this case, we chose to run the contest through our Facebook page simply because we have a tool on our page that facilitates running a contest with all of the legal stuff (technical term) we need in place to run something like this, and we thought it would be of interest to the more than 366,000 followers of the official Second Life page. Our aim certainly isn’t to discourage participation, and we’ll certainly explore alternative ways to run similar contests in the future.
Ebbe Altberg started to talk about a new virtual world offering from Linden Lab. The project, which remains top secret, has so far not released many details at all but Ebbe went to forums and blog posts to discuss the new virtual world.
Ebbe Altberg made a brave, some may even say very brave, announcement on Twitter :
@ebbealtberg how about you fix this SL chat before you build a whole NEW SL? Grrr
— M.J. (@Belladonna066) June 27, 2014
@1920sberlin @Belladonna066 We’ll fix chat way before then. Top priority for the SL team. — Ebbe Altberg (@ebbealtberg) June 27, 2014
Associated Links