Coobico disses hard on Second Life
by Akela Talamasca 
Jan 30th 2008 at 9:00AM
Filed under: Interviews, New titles, Opinion, Second Life, Free-to-play, Browser, Casual, Virtual worlds
Coobico is a Flash-based MMO with social networking features that's purported to be set for release sometime early this year. Following a link embedded in this Gamasutra interview with Lutz Winter, Coobico's founder, I found the 'Videos and Animations' section of Coobico's website. At the top of the page was a small post whose sole purpose appeared to be to stomp all over Second Life. It talks about SL's technical problems without going into specifics, links to a bunch of articles detailing SL's woes, and ends by mentioning that the company that made SL's physics engine, Havok (which it misspells), will be acquired by Intel, but to no point other than to mention it.For a product that isn't even available in beta yet, this is some serious dirt slinging. I'm not defending SL here, but why bother shooting off your mouth about a company that you claim to have no competition with? There's really no better way to look defensive and insecure, so if that was the intent behind this weird article, then Mission Accomplished.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Duane Roelands said on 9:53AM 1-30-2008
It's hard to disagree with much of the content of that post, to be honest. Second Life's retention rate - around 10% - stinks. Further, the retention rate hasn't changed in a year.
Second Life isn't getting better at the things it needs to improve, and the most-frequently-trafficked locations on the grid are still the free money islands and the free sex rooms. Sure, there's a lot of interesting and creative things being done on the grid, but those rarities are overwhelmed by the junk.
Reply
Lutz Winter said on 11:53AM 1-30-2008
Umh, seriously, it's not our intention to fling mud at SL -- or anybody else, for that matter. I apologize if the posting appeared to be unapropriate and will add some lines to that article to point that out -- thanks Akela, it's always good to get feedback from a fresh angle.
Our blog contains some completely biased opinions, admittedly -- we're gamers too, and besides reporting on the progress of our product Coobico, we write about things we like or don't like on the internet from time to time.
I don't fully agree with Duane (but hey, thanks for agreeing with our article ;) ...). SL is making progress at getting better, even if their improvements seem to be slow; but they've got a very complex product, so I guess it's a quite tough job.
Cheers and thanks,
Lutz Winter
Linking People
Reply
TigroSpottystripes Katsu said on 9:18PM 1-31-2008
I love when the people mentioned on a post come and explain and stuff :D