As revealed yesterday, Rod Humble has departed Linden Lab after three years at the helm as CEO. Who the new Linden Lab CEO will regenerate as is not yet known, but Rod was the third or fourth regeneration of the Linden Lab CEO. This depends upon whether you count Bob Komin’s temporary stint as CEO. Fans of the franchise are divided upon whether Bob Komin was a legitimate regeneration.<\/p>\n
Linden Lab announced Rod’s arrival in December 2010<\/a>, although it is my understanding that he officially started work in January 2011. There was also a blog post in January 201<\/a>1<\/span>\u00a0when he arrived in Second Life in a toga. Early in his tenure he gave an impressive interview with Rock,Paper,Shotgun<\/a> in which he explained some of the positives of Second Life:<\/p>\n What makes Second Life so intriguing to me is its hard to define nature. I have heard people call it a virtual world, a game, the 3d internet, a social media platform.. the list goes on. I like that kind of unresolved ambiguity, I think it shows something that is not yet fully evolved and has exciting new roads to discover.\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n That interview also revealed that Rod had worked at Electronic Arts for six and a half years, which was the longest period he had worked anywhere, this is worth bearing in mind considering the recent news. Just shy of a couple of years into his tenure Rod gave another interview, this time to Giant Bomb<\/a>, which shed light on this reasons for joining Second Life in the first place:<\/p>\n “When I was thinking about leaving EA,” said Humble during a recent meeting. “I was going to do my own company, and it was going to be around creative spaces–games that emphasize creativity tools more. When the opportunity came up and Linden Lab got in touch…first of all, Second Life? Is that still around? [laughs] I looked, and it was really, really healthy. Also, it was a company that was ready made to do a whole bunch of other products, which I wanted to do.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is also worth bearing in mind as Hamlet’s blog post on Rod’s departure<\/a> includes his Facebook announcement about his departure in which he says:<\/p>\n I am starting up a company to make Art, Entertainment and unusual things! More on that in a few weeks!<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Which sounds like he’s doing the sort of thing that he wanted to do before joining Linden Lab, the sort of thing he thought he could do with Linden Lab. Rod’s time at Linden Lab looks, on the face of it, to have been very good. He expanded the Linden Lab empire and put the Lab back into the Linden. However there were downsides during his reign.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The downsides revolve around policy and communications. Recent policy decisions such as the terms of service debacle will leave some with a bad impression of Rod. Another issue has been the tax and account issues that have recently arisen. These policy decisions come at a time when Linden Lab’s communication with their community have hit an all time low. I find myself having to poke Inara Holmes<\/a> into sending a telegram to Gray Of The Lab in San Francisco to get answers all too often.<\/p>\n This lack of communications, user group meetings for community reasons and having to drag information out of the Lab kicking and screaming has caused great consternation, confusion and indeed anger amongst the community, which could have been avoided had Linden Lab engaged with said community.<\/p>\n However the pluses of Rod’s reign far outweigh the minuses in my view. He expanded Linden Lab so that they now have products such as Versu, Dio, Blocksworld, Patterns, Desura etc. Not all of them will be a success, some may stumble but Linden Lab are now known for more than Second Life and for Linden Lab as a company, that’s a bloody good move.<\/p>\n Second Life though is the main money earner for Second Life, it’s their star product. In terms of Second Life Rod Humble’s reign was indeed impressive. We saw the introduction of Mesh and then later, Materials, to allow content creators to create new and improved products to make Second Life look modern. For example old builds from the pre-mesh period do in some cases look dated.<\/p>\n There were hardware improvements galore, Linden Lab engaged in their largest ever capital spend during his period, improving the architecture behind the scenes, introducing new servers. This is exemplified by the vast increase of the number of Class 8 sims on the grid today.<\/p>\n There have been viewer improvements, performance improvements and Monty’s HTTP project has been in the works under the hood for some time and is now coming to fruition. Therefore I find it odd to see people commenting that Rod’s reign saw too much focus on other products, Second Life was far from ignored.<\/p>\n There were improvements to the views, improved graphics options, making for a more pleasant experience. Not all of these attempted improvements worked as well as one would hope and changes to the viewer always divide opinion, but on the whole the changes were positive.<\/p>\n When you look at everything that happened under Rod’s reign, he comes out the right side for me. He is a man who very much believes in user generated content and I think you’ll see this theme continue with his new venture,I also wonder whether Will Wright will be involved in this new venture as he appears to have recently departed the Linden Lab board of directors.<\/p>\n However the communication issues, the lack of community engagement, these are important issues for Second Life users and are areas that have been sadly neglected. This is made all the more frustrating when you read the many interviews Rod gave during his time as Linden Lab CEO, he gives great interviews but those interviews were on third party sites, away from Second Life users and they will therefore have missed many of them.<\/p>\n Rod was of course unable to halt the decline in private regions, they slipped below the 20k mark on his watch. However I’m not sure anyone can halt this decline, Linden Lab do have a decision ahead that may mean they need to think again about how to balance revenue streams, the tier is still too damn high.<\/p>\n However I really want to thank Rod Humble for his time as CEO, as I said earlier, the positives far outweigh the negatives in my opinion.<\/p>\n I’d also like to say one last thing to Mr Humble, a thing of the utmost importance, but a last thing all the same, Mr Humble, Up The Villa!<\/p>\n