

Linden Lab is building a spiritual sequel to Second Life - Red_Tarsius
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/219609/Linden_Lab_is_building_a_spiritual_sequel_to_Second_Life.php

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unoti
I'm currently making my living on a game that's hosted within Second Life,
[http://mossms.com](http://mossms.com). I used to work for Linden Lab. It's
good to see them trying to move forward. I've long felt like the people there
mostly don't understand Second Life, what draws people to it, what makes it
special, or what it could be. There's a future in virtual worlds, but I'll be
very surprised if that future is brought to us by Linden Lab. They've been
kind of adrift for a few years. Maybe they'll get their groove back!

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moron4hire
I'm very curious to hear your thoughts on what this future for virtual worlds
would look like. The entire notion of Second Life has perplexed me. Perhaps
you could write a blog post about Second Life, the issues with Linden Lab, and
your vision.

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LaikaF
I was a hardcore Second Life player for a few years.

It's a chat room with a built in 3d building and scripting language.

Or at least that's what it was most days to the people I played with.

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CapitalistCartr
That read as a press release a la Paul Graham's "Submarine" article. I've been
a member of Second Life for about seven years now, and for all its original
promise, its dying. Soooo slowly, but it is. I doubt it will actually fold for
many years to come, if ever, but the rosy picture in this release sounds more
like a desperate PR move than anything.

[http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

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pekk
All the article really says is that they are beginning to build a successor to
Second Life. Do you dispute this?

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Karunamon
One must look behind the release. It's not as if there's some kind of
deception here, but more "Wait, if their main game, their bread and butter is
in great shape, why are they releasing a direct successor instead of improving
the main?"

It is a valid question.

Second Life is truly dying - I've been there on and off for ten years.

If not through Linden Lab's horrible mismanagement, through simple attrition
as there simply isn't anything to do there anymore. The novelty has worn off.
We're well past the days when a well scripted game gets ported outside of that
ecosystem and turned into a Gameboy title[1]. We're well past the days where
someone can make a ton of money selling virtual land[2].

The value proposition isn't there anymore. The starry-eyed excitement that
surrounded both Linden Lab and the player base when the world was in its early
days has been replaced by cynicism and apathy.

I'd say rebuilding the game with what they've learned in mind is probably the
only way to shake things up. Hence the upcoming sequel.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tringo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tringo)

[2]
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/eb/AnsheChung_Bus...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/eb/AnsheChung_BusinessWeek_Cover.gif)

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paulhodge
From a business point of view, Second Life is a huge success. Just in the last
few years, it's been massively profitable. Hence why Linden Labs has been able
to fund so many new projects at once (I think they are working on four new
games now?)

So, saying that it's "dying" is overstating things a bit. They found their
niche (whatever the hell niche they are serving), and there's little
motivation to change.

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unoti
The article mentions that it could be a reference to High Fidelity, Philip
Rosedale's new project. However, it couldn't be that, because Hi Fidelity is
totally open source, and the article also mentions that this world will be
closed source.

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azakai
SL could be using High Fidelity code (it's permissively licensed), we can't
tell. But yeah, I assume these are separate things. There are lots of next-gen
virtual worlds platforms, 1 or 2 more is not that surprising.

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brokenparser
Spiritual sequel to SL, so this time the flying dicks are to be worshipped?

~~~
narag
If a joke about the spiritual thing was needed, I would have worked in the
_second_ life angle. Looks promising.

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zerr
I still can't get why people waste life in virtual worlds.

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egypturnash
Escaping from a shitty real life. Overworked and underpaid? Clinically
depressed? Cut off from social contact? You can leave it all behind and step
into a fantasy where you are beautiful, live in a comfortable place, and where
there are people who will actually talk to you. Do it long enough and your
entire social circle lives online.

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makomk
From what I recall one of the groups that seemed to be heavily represented in
Second Life was stay-at-home mums, who were obviously limited in how much they
could go out and socialise in the real world.

