Second Life – Page 118

June 23, 2014

Linden Lab’s New World Gets Early Publicity Thanks To New World Notes

One of the reasons Ebbe Altberg cited for breaking the news about Linden Lab’s planned new world was because he had been talking to the press, implying that he had mentioned it to them. I decided to google the news and didn’t find many news stories featuring Ebbe Altberg. I did find one from San Francisco’s SFGate : Just how real can virtual reality get? This is largely about virtual reality itself and talks of the Oculus Rift. However Linden Lab have been in the news because of Second Life’s adoption of Oculus Rift and in the SFGate story they quote Ebbe Altberg :

This week, new Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg demonstrated for the first time how his company’s virtual online world Second Life looks when redesigned for an Oculus Rift.

Since taking over in February, Altberg has tuned the company’s focus to developing a next-generation Second Life that will include immersion technologies.

“We want to be part of it and help it succeed because it gets us closer to what we have in mind for what a virtual world should be,” he said.

However the press stories regarding discussions with Ebbe aren’t appearing in droves. The story that is appearing is the news of Linden Lab’s planned new world and those stories are largely based on Hamlet Au’s confirmation of the news over at New World Notes.

Digital Spy Uk : Linden Lab building spiritual successor to Second Life. That story doesn’t cite Hamlet, it cites Gamasutra’s story about the new world :

The team behind Second Life has given a statement to New World Notes about its next major project, saying that it is aiming to build the next generation of virtual world.

Polygon go with the spiritual successor headline too and say :

Second Life developer Linden Lab is currently working on the spiritual sequel to the massively multiplayer online social title, according to a statement the developer provided to Polygon.

This new game, first reported by New World Notes, is a “next generation virtual world” that is “in the spirit of Second Life,” an open-world game that will focus on user-created content and interactions. The San Francisco-based studio noted it is actively hiring for this project, which is still in its “very early days.”

The Gamer, gets itself a little confused in a couple of areas in their reporting of the story :

Linden Lab’s highly successful social experiment Second Life is today celebrating it’s 10th birthday, and what better way to celebrate than announcing to the world that a follow-up to the unique online sandbox is in the works?

According to a statement released by the developer’s New World Notes blog, this new ‘spiritual sequel’ will be “an open world where users have incredible power to create anything they can imagine and content creators are king.” Stopping short of admitting that the new game will be identical to it’s predecessor, Linden expand on the statement and say that “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.”

I think we can forgive them for not realising Second Life is celebrating its eleventh birthday but New World Notes hasn’t officially been part of Linden Lab for many a year!

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June 23, 2014

Beware Of Sequels

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.

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June 23, 2014

SL11B Kicks Off With A Bang

SL11B kicked off on Sunday with a feast of events ranging from talks, DJ’s, Live musicians and many a funny hat. The scale of the events taking place is extremely impressive and I haven’t even started look at the exhibits.

Draxtor Despres’ two hour live show was rather impressive as the talk with Jo Yardley, Superflufee, loz Hyde, Skypinner Soulstar and Maxwell Graf went largely without a hitch.

Meanwhile DJ Mikedacook Dinzeo was spinning tunes in the extremely impressive sim of Impressive .. no that’s really its name!

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June 22, 2014

SL11B Opens Today

Today sees the start of SL11B, to celebrate the official eleventh birthday of Second Life. A bit like The Queen, there’s more than one birthday for Second Life, which is why avatars such as Steller Sunshine are already older than eleven, but June 23rd is the anniversary that is officially recognised based on a Philip Rosedale post from June 23rd 2003 :

Residents and prospective residents,

Welcome to Second Life!

I am pleased to announce that today, Monday June 23rd, we are releasing Second Life version 1.0, and opening the service for general availability.

We’ve been able to reach this milestone through a combination of very hard work in creating a unique new technology and product, and the amazing efforts and engagement of our Early Creators and beta residents.

A ‘ball-drop’ ceremony was held in-world last night to celebrate the release.

Along with the many early residents of Second Life, let me salute our entire team of ‘Lindens’ for bringing this amazing experience to life. It has been a tremendous effort and, well worth it.

Philip Rosedale

aka Philip Linden

This year the theme of the birthday celebrations is based on a quote from Winston Churchill – “The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.”

A whole host of events are planned for today to get things started with a bang.

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June 21, 2014

Bagman Linden On Why The Virtual World Market Is Ripe For Bigger And Better

It’s a comparison I’ve made many times before, Second Life and World Of Warcraft both sit proudly at the top of their respective classes. Despite technologically superior newcomers arriving, they have both fought them off, they both contain the social ingredient that has allowed them to thrive and enjoy greater longevity than many believed they could. I made the following point in a post at SLUniverse regarding the hurdles a new venture faces :

Second Life has a lot of similarities to World Of Warcraft, right place, right time, and they bagged those interested and despite falling numbers continue to have more than enough to make other ventures jealous beyond belief, despite others offering more modern options.

Along came Bagman Linden, AKA Jeff Petersen, Vice President of Engineering at Linden Lab who on his arrival at Linden Lab introduced himself via a blog post :

For me, the challenges and the opportunities at the Lab are a perfect fit for my background. I come to the Lab with over 20 years of experience as a game developer and engineering lead, primarily in the MMO area. Prior to joining Linden Lab, I spent 10 years working for Sony Online Entertainment doing MMO RPG development (with a focus on the networking, servers, and core technologies), along with PS3 and PSP development. Some of the titles that I worked on include: Everquest, Everquest II, Star Wars Galaxies, Planetside, Untold Legends PS3, Field Commander PSP, FreeRealms, and CloneWars Adventures.

Bagman disagreed slightly with my comparison of Second Life and World of Warcraft, Bagman feels that virtual worlds haven’t reached the World of Warcraft stage and that Second Life is more akin to Everquest, as he explained in a reply :

It’s interesting that you compare Second Life to World of Warcraft, as I have made similar comparisons myself, but come to different conclusions.

Before I joined Linden Lab a little over 3 years ago, I was at Sony Online Entertainment for over 10 years. I was part of the EverQuest development team for years, and at the time, EverQuest was the biggest MMO RPG on the market by far, and with the revenue it was generating, it was the envy of the industry.

For years EverQuest had similar user engagement and revenue to what Second Life has. I remember well at the time the common belief at Sony and in the rest of the industry was that EverQuest was a smashing success and people would be thrilled to match it.

Then Blizzard came along and created World of Warcraft, a product that was ultimately over 30 times more successful than EverQuest. We can speculate why that is, but I personally believe it came down to the quality and polish of their product. Fundamentally, the game was very similar.

The comparison that resonates with me is between Second Life and EverQuest. Both are similarly aging products with similarly sized user bases. Both at the top of their market segment. Both had countless people trying to bump them off with little success. We know how the story ends with EverQuest.

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.

Interesting stuff. I haven’t played Everquest, but I can see where Bagman is coming from here. He’s basically making the point that the virtual world market is ready for something really big to catch people and that what’s happened before is impressive, but possibly way below potential.

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