Second Life is Now (Arguably) 10 Years Old: This Version of "Linden World" Was Running in August 2001

I recently did an interview with France's Le Monde about Second Life, and the journalist Laurent Checola raised an interesting point: As of this month, August 2011, Second Life is 10 years old. Arguably so, that is: That's when Linden Lab had a version of "Linden World", its very very early version of what became SL, working. Here's James Cook (now an engineer at Google) explaining what the world was back then:

"So, I made that demo in 2006 or so for a company lunch event," James told me a couple weeks ago. "I don't remember why. Maybe it was a 5-year anniversary thing. Andrew [Meadows] and I put it together. He had backup CDs of the Linden source code at his house." They actually had code going back six months before August 2001, but couldn't get it to run out of the box. "I'm glad we made it," James says, "it's been one of the longer-lasting historical artifacts of Second Life."

So if there was a version of Linden World working before August 2001, how old is Second Life? Depends on how you define it:

"We launched SL publicly in 2003," says James, "but we had a beta period before that for a while... 6 months? Earliest someone outside of Linden saw anything like SL would have been 2002, probably late 2002. I mean, we had a 3D world (with spaceships flying over barren terrain) when I interviewed in December 2000. There was always something running internally. I think that time period (mid-2001) was the first time we had humanoid avatars and the ability to build things like buildings, with prims. It's hard to put a start date on things."

Me, I'd say the ability to build with prims in Linden World is the best start date, so I'm going with mid-2001. And since earlier versions of Linden World have been lost in time, August 2011 is as good a date as any to say: Happy decade anniversary, Second Life.

Comments

[Jjccc]

wow it actually kinda looks better then than now, its a shame all the cool stuff that you could do then hasn't been developed a bit instead of being cut out as too difficult to do. i guess that why that other game was made mine craft

[Eggy Lippmann]

The first user was Steller Sunshine which joined Lindenworld under the Early Creator program, which was later known as the "Alpha" version, as opposed to the Beta ones. Steller started on March 2002, private beta was in November, public beta on April 03, which was when I joined.
Some objects from Alpha were manually transported to the grid. These contain an invalid string of characters "`a `a" in their description field. I own some - Steller and I were actually pretty close 8 years ago, but then she got busy with work and we drifted apart :(

[Nyoko Salome]

maybe semi-related then to your news item - SL VIEWER 3 (beta) just launched! :0 i just started up and got prompted to update.

[Hamlet Au]

Good catch, Nyoko!

[David Cartier]

I never knew Stellar; she was already gone when I started, but she put her stamp on the grid, and everywhere you went you saw evidence of her creativity. Eggy was very much there, charging around like a maniac, tearing down mountains and building mountainous club. SL is still a lot of fun. I don't know if I will ever have as much fun as we did then, when we could still smell the fresh paint and a new sim was an event, and Lindens walked the earth. I have great hopes for mesh.

[Hitomi Tiponi]

That was an interesting vid - seemed like a cross between Second Life and Minecraft then.

[edgar proto]

quick q.. i am trying to find my original avatar i was i believe one of the first fifty or a hundered members but no way to find it as it will be a disused email address and only have a prayer by looking at a list of the first names to spot my own... i remember earlier than shown in the video a long glass building??? a tiny castle (maybe) and tree and pool lots of steps that it !! oh and water but it feels like it was maybe one tiny island. anyway if anyone can help ! many thanks