Eclipse Magazine ran a really good interview with me recently (well, February, I'm bad at self-promotion), worth a look if only for the excellent questions and writing by Cajsa, and seriously smashing profile photos by Lessthen Zero (avatar name as GenX signifier alert!). Cajsa asks me a lot about journalism in SL, SL from my perspective working at Linden Lab, and how Project Sansar will probably impact SL. Here's a couple samples:
For Au, there are two reasons it is important that people understand SL is a game. First, the entire “Second Life is not a game” premise is Linden Lab marketing spin to help position SL as a work platform in the real word. He knows this because he helped write it. That may have been the theory, but it did not work out in practice and the corporations who initially rushed to SL quickly retreated. For Au, that is detrimental to Second Life, “Both SLers and Linden Lab have forgotten that fact, and keep treating SL more like a platform, than a game, which is a key reason it hasn’t grown. SL would have way more users if Second Life was architected much more explicitly as a game -- without losing any of the things which make it special.”
... He predicts that without drastic changes, Project Sansar will cannibalize SL, eroding its user base by somewhere between 100,000 or 200,000 people. Losing 25 to 50% of its dedicated users would cut the legs out from under the economic base that sustains land ownership in SL, taking everyone over what insiders call “the cliff” and push the Lab into desperate measures such as cutting tier so the remaining people are enticed to stay. Au points out that Second Life must continue for some time to finance Sansar through its launch and growing pains.
Interesting that that tier decrease prediction came true 4-6 weeks after the interview. Anyway, read the rest here.
Please share this post:
Comments