Linden Lab Developing New 3D Sandbox Game Like Minecraft & Little Big Planet, Code-Named Patterns, Say Sources

Linden Lab is developing a new 3D sandbox game code-named Patterns, multiple sources have told me in recent months. According to them, Patterns is a 3D sandbox game similar in feel and play to Little Big Planet, the Playstation 3 hit, and Minecraft, the cross-platform indie blockbuster that long ago, I compared to Second Life as it was originally conceived.

However, here's the thing:

While some SLers noticed when the cat in this particular bag briefly popped its head out recently, even most insiders have little direct knowledge of Patterns; it's being developed in close quarters within the Linden Lab office, and only shown to the staff in very brief demos. (This secrecy, by the way, is a sharp departure from the internal openness Linden Lab exhibited in its founding years; the direction of Linden Lab as a game studio, however, is reflective of new CEO Rod Humble, an Electronic Arts alum who brought on Will Wright as a Linden adviser.) I'm not even clear if Patterns is the game's code name, but for now I'll assume that's the case. (Because seriously, "Patterns" doesn't exactly scream "name for a big hit game", does it?) It's even possible that there's more (or less) to Patterns than meets my sources' eyes. However, based on what they've seen, they're pretty impressed. One speculated that it has a good chance to become the mass market hit Linden Lab has been hoping for. Another added they were positive it'd be a bigger hit than Dio, the adventure game platform also being developed in semi-secret by Linden Lab. We shall see, we shall see (hopefully soon).

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Comments

[Adeon Writer]

Minecraft and LittleBigPlanet.

Two huge favorites of mine.

[Salazar Jack]

Wait. What? Second Sandbox? MyCraft? RezStop? SkyPrim? The Prims? The Prims 2? The Prims 3D!!!!???

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Always nice to know what folks tier is funding.

[Salazar Jack]

Big fan of Minecraft. Spore was also very intriguing to me. The Creature Creator was so fun. Love the interface.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Cool. I hope they knock it out of the park.

[Kadah Coba]

I've been finding more enjoyment from playing Minecraft with a bunch of mods than I have in Secondlife lately. SL has just been too laggy and unstable to be fun these last few months.

I noticed today that I log in maybe every other day now and when I am on, I'm just standing somewhere empty. I'm still paying for my sim and tier (I do have both), but if they keep up their habit of not improving things, or keep making it worse, I'm eventually going to become more disinterested and want to stop owning land altogether to save money like many others users have been doing since the great decline began.

LL needs to stop pussyfooting around the issues and start breaking things if they want to seriously fix the major issues with the platform.

In theory, SL is that it should be a great place. In practice, SL is spaghetti mess of technical and policy issues.

[Hypatia]

I hear you Kadah. My worry is that they will neglect improvement of SL if they make a hit with "Patterns."