Babbage is Back: Linden Lab Vet Jim Purbrick Leaves Oculus, Starts Sharing His Wisdom on Creating Virtual Worlds

"The Conversation Around Content" is a new blog post from Linden Lab veteran Jim "Babbage" Purbrick, who recently left a leadership role at Oculus to spend more time supporting XR, along with many other personal pursuits. Lucky for us, he's also publishing a series of blog posts that crystalize what he's learned over the last 14 or so years, developing virtual worlds. (Including a stint consulting with CCP, the developers of Eve Online.)

This new post, he tells me, is "inspired by conversations at Facebook about how to bring virtual worlds in to social networks and by conversations at CCP and Linden Lab about how to bring social networks in to virtual worlds. The same conversation, but starting at opposite ends."

For instance, here's Babbage on the importance of player-to-player conversation in MMOs, a feature that's often overshadowed by graphics, gameplay features, and so on:

Games companies typically spend years creating content which is voraciously consumed within a few months. It is typically impossible to build content as fast as it is consumed, so it is crucial that the content promotes communication between players so that relationships form and the world becomes a forum for conversation. The model is similar to a virtual theme park: it is impossible for people to continuously ride on new roller coasters all day and so the park around the rides becomes important. Disneyland is the conversation in the queue as much as the ride itself. Games companies hope that by the time people have completed all the quests, they have made friends and that the virtual world is the natural place to continue to hang out with those friends. 

Read the rest here.

#blog post "The Conversation Around Content" https://t.co/7Koqo3Avy0 #vr #socialvr #virtualworlds #mmorpg #games #socialmedia

— Jim Purbrick (@JimPurbrick) September 9, 2020

As for what Babbage is doing in virtual worlds now that he's left Oculus: "I don't have anything specific to announce, but I'm still interested in helping people make better virtual worlds. If people would like to ask me to help them, they're very welcome." Following him on Twitter is a start.

Disclosure: Babbage is a very occasional pub pal.

Comments

[Alicia]

Honestly, keep social networks and virtual worlds separate. People want to keep their social networking/RL private for personal reasons while losing themselves in virtual worlds for a few hours a day/night depending on where one lives. Remember that there are people who have been stalked online by naively giving out personal info about themselves; or have been doxxed by a vengeful person seeking to create trouble for their victim(s) wherever they are.

Babbage's second comment is actually true as it pertains to players literally devouring content in a matter of months. When that happens, a period of downtime occurs between the devoured initial content and the next patch. Case in point is, literally, World of Warcraft as every time a new expansion is released... there's always the mad dash to become the world first highest level. Then, as it pertains to Mythic Raiding, the best guilds in the world such as Complexity Limit (US, formerly Limit), Method (EU), Exorsus (EU), Alpha (Asia), etc (https://www.method.gg/raidprogress) all prepare weeks in advance before the first raid goes live. These guilds specifically start on Heroic Raiding to get the gear they'll need the moment Blizzard opens the Mythic (highest difficulty) version of the raid; and will literally spend countless hours, with breaks in between, to learn the boss fights... figure out which piece of gear, ability/spell will give them that extra boost of DPS (Damage Per Second)/TPS (Threat Per Second)/HPS (Healing Per Second) to get their raid team on top, and so forth with all the intel they gather and learn with each attempt. As for the other part... theme parks... World of Warcraft has that in abundance as each zone can be considered its own ride.

[Adeon Writer]

There was another Ex-Linden that moved to Facebook as well, wasn't there? Memory is foggy.

[Alicia]

Cody is the person you're thinking of, Adeon.

[Wagner James Au]

Cory Ondrejka -- he left around 2014 or so.

[FlipperPA]

It is good to see Jim doing well - he's always been incredibly friendly and gracious. I was lucky enough to get a tour of London from him years ago, including a visit to the London Science Museum to see the Difference Engine!

[Alicia]

Thanks Wagner... I always keep thinking Cody when it's Cory :p