Filed under: Second Life

Virtual environments have a generally poor reputation in many quarters, particularly in the mass-media. Much of that reputation is ill-deserved, and some of it is entirely fabricated (eg: by the mass-media).

I have to ask, what's the big deal?

This week, we cover the final installment of our summarized history of Second Life and Linden Lab (check out the first installment or the second, if you missed them). It's only possible to cover a tiny fraction of the events that took place in the space we have here, but the highlights paint an interesting picture.

We'll be working our way from 2008 to June 2010, and looking at what future directions we expect from there.

Service-based viewers for Second Life are a little different to the standard kind of viewer software that users might be used to. Standard viewers are downloaded to your PC, run on them and talk directly to the servers. Service-based viewers (also sometimes referred to as 'cloud-based') are either running on a remote server through a web interface, or running on a cloud (or other remote system) and sending data and graphics to a thin client that you run locally. The ill-fated Vollee client was one such example, and Comverse is another.

Most Some of the (relatively few) extant viewers for mobile devices (iPhones, iPads, et al), and web-based Second Life viewers like AJAX Life are service-based viewers (as are a number in development), and Linden Lab seems bent on closing them down.

This week, we cover the second installment of our summarized history of Second Life and Linden Lab (or check out part one, if you missed it). From 2005, there's an impossible amount of material to cover, but there are some interesting stories lurking among it all.

Join us as we work our way through some of the interesting highlights from 2005, 2006 and 2007.

The last time we saw any statistical data on overall awareness of intellectual property issues, it seemed that awareness of copyright and trademarks was quite appallingly low – and actual accurate knowledge about them was a very rare thing indeed.

Surprisingly few people seem to know their way around the don't-do basics, and with record numbers of trademarks being registered in recent years, it is actually nice to see that some online operators have got a firm grip on things this year.

Honestly, if you tossed a press release on our collective desk touting your virtual environment or MMOG having items or outfits available in support of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ ... well, it'd probably cause an avalanche of pizza boxes ... but after we got the mess cleared, we'd probably assume that your promotional stuff was littered with unlicensed FIFA trademarks. It's happened before.

Second Life has just seen its seventh anniversary (called its seventh birthday, only it technically isn't -- the original birthday is in March, but the anniversary is in June. There's history there). It's also traditionally a time when Linden Lab and Second Life users most often treat each other as enemies and obstacles; and it is a time for retrospectives and for considering the future.

With the departure of Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon (the press release release says "stepping down," but the day prior to the release many Linden staffers were saying that Kingdon was fired) Linden Lab has hit a turning point -- or the end of another era.

Accordingly, over the next couple of weeks, we're going to look at the history of Second Life, starting back in 1999 and continuing to the present day. Or at least as much as we can cover the ten-year history of something so rich and diverse in the available space.

Second Life is quite legitimately a phenomenon (and even won an Emmy award). It was also something of an accident, since it wasn't what Linden Lab started out to make.

TechCrunch has announced more changes in the works for Linden Lab's troubled Second Life virtual world. On the heels of a move that laid off 30 percent of its workforce, the company has announced that CEO Mark Kingdon will be stepping down and giving way to Linden founder Philip Rosedale in an interim capacity. Additionally, CFO Bob Komin has taken on the role of COO.

Linden has yet to announce a definitive reason for the upper-management restructuring, but many are speculating that the company will be looking to add a CEO with experience in the burgeoning social networking scene.

Rosedale, posting on the Linden blog, had the following to say regarding the moves: "Our thinking as a team is that my returning to the CEO job now can bring a product and technology focus that will help rapidly improve Second Life. We need to simplify and focus our product priorities - concentrating all our capabilities on making Second Life easier to use and better for the core experiences that it is delivering today. I think that I can be a great help and a strong leader in that process."

	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

Most things in the world operate on faith. Governments, currencies, intellectual property, human rights and brands all require certain minimum levels of belief and confidence in order to function.

When it comes to virtual environments, as I've maintained in the past, faith is critical.

Hot topic of the week would be the Linden Lab layoffs. 30% of the staff (roughly 110 or so individuals) were laid off this week in a round of layoffs that we spotted ahead of the official announcements. Additional staff have been shed since the beginning of the year.

Staff have been dropped from market-development, business development, engineering, quality assurance, human resources, community and executive management. Hardest hit this week are community and customer-advocacy roles and quality-assurance/testing.

What isn't hard to see is why these cuts were made, and in fact, why they are vital to Linden Lab as a going concern. At least it isn't hard to see when you're looking in the right place.

Back in April, we observed the departure of what we estimate to be approximately 5% or so of Linden Lab's total headcount. Some churn is to be expected, of course, especially in a tech company. It seemed a little odd that the positions didn't appear to have been advertised or refilled, but sometimes that happens out of sight. Last week, a Lab spokesperson confirmed for us that the Lab still had in excess of 300 staff.

This week, however, we're actually becoming quite concerned as there are signs of what seems to be a significant series of layoffs in progress at Linden Lab.

It has long been a matter of considerable debate among virtual-environment pundits about what constitutes an 'active user'. In some ways, subscription MMOGs have it a lot easier than many other kinds of virtual environment. You can always count paying subscribers, and that's all that matters.

In a general-purpose virtual environment, free-to-play or 'freemium' model, though, counting active users is important. Trends in active users measure the health of your user communities, as well as allowing you to credibly measure your virtual-world's e-peen compared to that of the competition.

The online arm of the San Francisco Jose based "The Tech" museum has been announced as the winner of this year's second annual humanitarian Linden Prize. The Tech Virtual museum will collect the US$10,000 prize for projects that "[elevate] the human condition through using Second Life," and "improve the way people work, learn, and communicate in their daily lives outside of the virtual world."

The Tech Virtual (which has been open now since 2008) acts as a center for the creation of reusable (and frequently interactive) science and innovation based concepts and exhibits, and offers US$ design prizes for exhibits which demonstrate fundamental principles in a variety of areas. Even the museum design itself is a collaborative effort, and the museum is providing prototypes for the construction of physical museum spaces.

Every two weeks, Massively Mobile brings you the latest news, guides and analysis about MMOs on mobile devices. Covering iPhone, iPad and Android platforms, we're on the lookout for the next generation of MMOs.

In the last column, I covered a number of iPhone apps for MMOs. Some kept you connected to the game world, others offered you information at your fingertips, while still others were entire games unto themselves. Today I continue with the second half of the list starting with Final Fantasy XI all the way through Wizard101. In the next Massively Mobile column, I will focus specifically on World of Warcraft mobile apps for both the iPhone and the Android.

I have to admit that in the process of researching this column, I became obsessed with one particular app, Warrior Epic: Sagas. I don't even play the MMO, but I found the app to be one I returned to again and again throughout the week. It's very addictive, has an engaging storyline and is a dream come true for equipment micromanagers like myself. Check it out along with the rest of the apps after the jump.

In just a few more days, the winner of the second annual Linden Prize is going to be revealed, and the ten finalists have been announced. The stated criteria for the Linden prize are projects that "[elevate] the human condition through using Second Life," and "that improve the way people work, learn, and communicate in their daily lives outside of the virtual world."

Therefore, I feel it only natural that I was rather astonished to see sionChicken/sionCorn in among the finalists, since it apparently does neither of these things.

Second Life is an immersive virtual environment. That is, it fosters attention and a quality of focus. You might subscribe to alternative definitions of the word "immersion", but focus and attention are the sense being used when developer/operators talk about an "immersive environment". They might intend one of the other meanings at other times – the word is a pretty slippery one.

The problem is that for most general-purpose virtual environments (eg: Second Life), that immersivity – that quality of attention and focus – kicks in pretty late. Only after you understand the basics of the context in which your actions, activities and experiences are taking place, do you have the satisfying sort of immersion that comes so easily to flat spaces like the Web and Facebook.