Linden Lab's "Lab Chat" Launches

Yesterday, Thursday November 19, was the first session of "Lab Chat," the new Q an A show organized by Linden Lab. The show started at 10:30 AM, taking place at the LEA Theater, and went "well over an hour." Jo Yardley and Saffia Widdershins hosted the show with Ebbe Linden.

Due to real life, none of the Newser reporters could attend the show. But Ciaran Laval was there, and wrote some about the event on her blog. She described it as going "quite smoothly, which was quite impressive with a four region setup that attracted over 150 people. The show launched on time, without any technical issues ... The questions had been selected from a pool of 46 questions submitted via the official Second Life forum."

Ebbe was described as talking "about land, commerce, Marketplace, experiences," and other topics. Of the Grid's land, of which there was a drop in sim set-up fees earlier this week, Ebbe stated that the Lab was continuing to look at options, but there were limits that could be done. Ciaran wrote that "reading between the lines," Ebbe was essentially saying there would be no drop in sim prices.

Ciaran reported there were a number of other Lindens there, "some lurking backstage where they were also joined by some of the Lab Chat production team, bloggers and of course residents who found backstage a less taxing location for their graphics stage than the main theater." She stated the team was "taking unscheduled questions and even asking their own questions."

The official page of Lab Chat (https://labchatsl.wordpress.com/) stated they hope to have a transcript of the event soon, and hope to have a recording of the event available by Tuesday.

Source: Ciaran Laval

Image Credit: Torley Linden

News and Commentary: Blizzard Cancels Titan, Will Linden Lab Follow With SL 2.0?

By Bixyl Shuftan

For about a decade, Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft has dominated the Multiplayer Online Game market. Although no longer getting twelve million players, it's still the top of it's class. But back in the prime of it's prize product in 2007, it was revealed that Blizzard was working on another MMO unofficially known as Titan. So when will this game be released? Apparently the answer is "never," as last week Blizzard stated the project was shelved.

There are a few reasons for Titan's cancellation. One was that those in Blizzard assigned to the game's development "didn't find the passion" for it. The success of it's recent smaller game "Hearthstone" was another factor, evidence that not everything by Blizzard has to be "colossal summer blockbuster-type products." Then there's the obvious: if the Titan MMO was a success, would it not be taking players from it's current hit World of Warcraft?

So Blizzard has made the decision to stick with what works, at least for now.

But does this mean that Linden Lab will soon be following up by scrapping its development of it's next generation virtual world, known as SL2.0?

Ciaran Laval wrote an article suggesting that Blizzard's move was a "warning bell" the Lab shouldn't ignore. Ciaran quoted Blizzard's cofounder, "We had created World of Warcraft, and we felt really confidnent that we knew how to make MMOs. So we set out to make the most ambitious thing that you could possibly imagine. And it didn't come together." A VP was quoted of their decision, "We were losing perspective and getting lost in the weeds a little. We had to allow ourselves to take that step back and reassess why the hell we were doing that thing in the first place."Ciaran suggested that Linden Lab needed "to ensure they don't find themselves in this position with their future virtual world, that they don't find themselves making something that isn't fun, that isn't really progressing how they would like it to, and that it might not be worth their time at the end of the day."

In a sense, the Lab has more to loose as Blizzard's big product's revenue model is millions of users paying $15 a month, while it relies on several thousand users paying $300 a month per sim and content creators whose wares get the masses of users to buy virtual currency to purchase them. One reader responding to Hamlet Au's article commented, "a content creator needs several years to get respect, establish their brand and gather a customer base. ... This takes a lot of time and effort. Once that gets destroyed, the creator will get burned. That creator did work at a very low hourly rate for years to get to the point where they were now. Telling that creator the place where he does business will get shut (down), but he can come and rebuild it all over again on new tech, you can be sure about 70 to 80% will say thanks but no thanks."

Ciaran concluded, "Linden Lab, with a combination of luck and judgement, struck gold with Second Life. The new virtual world has for more ambitious aims, but Linden Lab need(s) to ensure that don't tie themselves in knots trying to make it happen. Second Life is still there, and many people will be happy to engage with (it) for many a year yet."

Hopefully the Lab will take heed of Blizzard's decision, and concentrate on making it's customers happier with it's current product instead of developing a product that given the transition from it's classic viewer to Viewer 2.0 is likely to be neither fun for them or it's customers.

Sources:  PC Gamer, Polygon, New World Notes, Ciaran Laval

Bixyl Shuftan

Reactions to the News of SL 2.0

It's been a week since Ebbe Linden casually announced during a third-party viewer developers meeting that Linden Lab had another virtual world under development, one with next-generation technology. Word quickly spread not just across Second Life, but across forums, bulletin boards, social media, blogs, and other places Second Life users had a presence. Far more has been spoken than we have time to write about, but here are some reactions.


Jessica Lyon, the head of Team Firestorm, was at the meeting where Ebbe made his remarks. Later on the Firestorm Blog, she stated what she knew so far:

The new platform will not be open source, at least not at first, and so no third-party viewers.

Linden Lab will continue and maintain Second Life for as long as they consider it profitable. Second Life will be continued to be improved, but on a smaller scale.

The new platform will be made "in the spirit of Second Life," and will focus on content creators.

The new platform is still in it's very early stages. She guessed (correctly) that no beta would be around for at least a year.

One detail Jessica was unsure about was objects and items people have in their inventories and on their sims. The Lab had originally stated that they didn't want to limit the new Grid with backwards compatibility with items from the old one. But she felt this wasn't stated with 100% certainly. So maybe one's content, so maybe some content would be allowed over she reasoned.

Jessica appealed to Second Life residents not to stop renting land or making purchases, but to keep on doing so. She also appealed to residents to come up with ways to make Second Life a better place, "Your opinion matters more than ever! Think of one thing, whether a feature, fix, improvement, or whatever ... We are looking for a magic bullet silver bullet to give Oz that can be introduced to SL to make it bigger and better than ever before!"

For Jessica's post, "Second Life Needs You," in full, click here: http://www.firestormviewer.org/second-life-needs-you/

Whitburn Blackburn of the 'SLikely fashion blog was anxious and worried about not just about the Lab having the best interest of it's customers at heart, especially longtime users whom have invested much in the old Second Life, but that in trying to change from one Grid to another for another it will end up stumbling "along with two nonviable platforms to an eventual descent into mediocrity." If the Lab fails, "it may well be time to move completely back to real life and spent my money on other things."

For Whitburn's "The End of SL?," click here: http://whitburnblackburn.wordpress.com/2014/06/24/95-the-end-of-second-life/

Prokofy Neva had quite a few things to say on the issue in his "Second Thoughts" blog. Some moves he felt were good, such as not making the new Grid open-source. He wasn't impressed with Oz Linden as the choice to head the part of the Lab in charge of maintaining "Legacy SL," calling him "the main open-source cult guru ... watch the JIRA close again." But the main point was "What can you take with you to the next world?" What will happen with those whom have invested years and thousands of dollars into Second Life? Prokofy felt the Lindens had an obligation to compensate them for their losses in some manner, "no company wants to have a compensation policy, but they must, and large land-owners should compel them to as they are losing big."

Read Prokofy's post in full here: http://3dblogger.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2014/06/linden-lab-must-compensate-land-owners-and-content-sellers-of-legacy-sl-before-transition-to-new-wor.html

Ciaran Laval talked about Ebbe Linden's own answer to the increasing questions on his post in the official forums, then went on, "People seem to be reading between lines that don't exist ... if Linden Lab wanted to force-migrate people to their new world, a lot of people wouldn't go because their virtual world love is Second LIfe. ... it would be extremely foolish of Linden Lab to close Second LIfe, in the next few years, and to be fair to Linden Lab, there are absolutely no signs whatsoever that they intend to close Second Life."

To see Ciaran's post "We Will Continue to Invest in SL" in full: http://sl.governormarley.com/?p=4045

Tonya Souther, Team Firestorm's head of the Apple viewer developers, made a comparison with the Osborne Computer Company, of which after the CEO announced better computers were on the way, the sales of their existing ones took a dive and eventually the business went under. Tonya felt the announcement, calculated or not, put Second Life at "risk of triggering the Osborne Effect. ... the only thing that could make it worse is the user community bailing prematurely."

Tonya felt Linden Lab's release dates for the new Grid were optimistic, "I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't really viable until Christmas 2017. Until that happens, LL will need money. Guess where they're going to get it? They have no other source of income. ...LL will continue to support, and ... enhance SL. ... They're hiring a bunch of people to take on a big challenge that will take years to pay off, and whether it will pay off at all is very much an open question." She would go on, "I'm not aware of any company that made the transition from open source to closed source and survived. ... keeping (the new grid) closed source would be a big 'f**k you' to a large part of the user community, and community is what LL has to have above all."

"No, the sky's not falling yet. It could though ... fortunately there's lots of time between now and then."

For Tonya's post, "The New SL Announcement" in full: http://secondden.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-new-sl-announcement-is-not-end-of.html