Tag: Linden Lab

In the film industry sequels are generally found to be lacking in terms of the original film in the series. There are obvious exceptions, such as The Godfather II and The Empire Strikes Back, but generally the sequel doesn’t seem to quite reach the heights of the original film.

When it comes to remakes, it’s even worse. People cringe when they read about their favourite film receiving a reboot and with good reason. A remake often lacks the edge and ingenuity of the original, again not always, but all too often that’s the case.

So news that Linden Lab are talking of their new world should be treated with caution until more details emerge. So far Linden Lab have said things like :

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.

They’ve also said things like :

I can’t tell you much more at this point. Very general stuff. It’s too early. So for now it’s just the fact that we’re investing a lot in a next generation platform, in the spirit of SL, that will be better…better quality, better performance, more devices, enable incredible experiences…with time we’ll talk about it more and more and you will all have a chance to provide a ton of input before it’s anywhere close to complete…

They’ve also said things like :

I believe the virtual worlds market is ripe for their own ‘World of Warcraft’ to come along and show us just how much bigger this market could be. And I don’t think you need to leave behind anything (concept wise) that made Second Life successful in order to see that growth. But you do need to raise the bar, and that is exactly what we intend to do.

The thing is that a lot of people seem to think we’re heading for Second Life 2.0, that there will be links between the old world and the new frontier. However there is no indication that this will be the case. The new world looks like just that, a brand new world. A place that may well be very different to Second Life, one that may well attract a very different audience and one where expectations and economic models are likely to be very different. They will certainly be looking to attract a larger audience to their new world.

Continue reading “Beware Of Sequels”

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.

Continue reading “Ebbe Talks Of Linden Lab’s Next Generation Platform”