Open Forum: What Were The Most Important Second Life Stories Of 2008?

Among the many advantages of being in a virtual world community with a truly international membership in every time zone is this: on New Year's Eve, no matter what RL time it is for you, people in-world are welcoming the next year already. 

It's been an eventful year for the metaverse, with the most obvious news items being the departure of Philip Linden as company CEO in March, the subsequent April arrival of M. Linden to replace him, and in recent months, the (partly successful) rebellion over Openspace price increases.  Looking back, what other milestones good and bad will be most important to Second Life and OpenSim in 2009?

Comments

[Ciaran Laval]

The infrequent but at times useful forum engagement by senior Linden's, most notably Zee who deserves a huge pat on the back for having the guts to talk straight, unlike some of the others who simply hid.

Linden Lab must cut the spin, it does them no favours and there has been too much of it.

Next year I think we'll see the background work of M coming to the fore, some impressive people have been recruited, I firmly believe they will pay dividends, whether we will enjoy those dividends is a different matter but I think for the company as a whole they will be good.

Openspaces will fail miserably, they simply aren't fit for purpose. They will have to be repackaged as something cheaper. Homesteads...I just can't see people paying those fees, not in Europe where you add VAT to that charge anyway, it's a really expensive product but I can see them being used more as a bridge between mainland and estate.

[Ann Otoole]

A significant milestone is the decision to conduct a top to bottom strategic review and the probably associated decisions related to priority focus on scaling the system for one million concurrency and the ever so important decision to revamp the viewer (A rewrite is something Mr. Rosdale said was not an option in a press interview forever ago). This has laid the groundwork for major changes during 2009 which I hope are positive. I'm not sure one million concurrency will be achieved but you never know. The right system architecture with he right support people, the right viewer everyone can comprehend and make fun use of, and the right marketing campaign can produce wondrous results.

So to me this is the real story of 2008. A major shift away from "Our System, We will not change anything" to "We really need to get into a competitive position and stay at the top by virtue of the most compelling product" is a major story if not the story of 2008. Naturally all this is linked to other stories. It is all one big circadian rhythm powered machine anyway.