Update, 8:05pm PT: For context on this move and what Philip might advise on the future of Second Life, here's a recent interview with him suggesting Meta shouldn't be the one making the Metaverse and that it's not for everyone anyway, my post on how he started integrating High Fidelity spatial audio in virtual worlds like Breakroom, and (watch below the break), his chat on the Metaverse with Sine Wave's Adam Frisby.
Just got this message from Philip Rosedale, about the future of Second Life:
"I'm not back full-time, but it feels great to get to be talking to Lindens about design! I think the vital thing to focus on is demonstrating that a virtual world can scale to greater capacity while being inclusive and fair and safe for humanity."
He's saying that because yes, Second Life founder Philip Rosedale is now officially back at Linden Lab as a strategic advisor and an investor though this company High Fidelity, which will also share resources and technology with the Lindens:
High Fidelity announced today that it acquired an interest in Linden Research, Inc. (“Linden Lab”), the pioneering developer of the virtual world Second Life. The deal includes a cash investment and distributed computing patents. Members of High Fidelity’s metaverse team are joining the company, and Philip Rosedale, who is a founder of both companies, is also rejoining Second Life as a strategic advisor.
The transaction will help Second Life further scale its operations and strengthen its commitment to growing an innovative, inclusive, and diverse metaverse where its inhabitants’ ingenuity drives real-world value for themselves and others.
"No one has come close to building a virtual world like Second Life," says Second Life founder and High Fidelity co-founder, Philip Rosedale. “Big Tech giving away VR headsets and building a metaverse on their ad-driven, behavior-modification platforms isn’t going to create a magical, single digital utopia for everyone. Second Life has managed to create both a positive, enriching experience for its residents — with room for millions more to join — and built a thriving subscription-based business at the same time. Virtual worlds don’t need to be dystopias.”
It's not exactly mysterious what companies (or company singular) in Big Tech he's alluding to.
Much more soon. In fact, I'm talking with Philip tomorrow for a podcast project where we'll chat about these very topics.
Great scoop, Wagner!
Posted by: Ryan Schultz | Thursday, January 13, 2022 at 11:09 AM
I do hope that the "distributed computing patents" will not jeopardize (*) Open Source viewers...
Time will tell, I guess... :-S
(*) Like KDU and Havok already partly do, since they cannot be part of/used by 100% Open Source viewers...
Posted by: Henri Beauchamp | Thursday, January 13, 2022 at 11:12 AM
OMG! YAY! I've been hoping for this!
Posted by: Riannah Avora | Thursday, January 13, 2022 at 02:51 PM
You want someone with a nice haircut, bring back Philip Rosedale.
You want someone with architecture know-how, bring back Cory Ondrejka.
Posted by: William Romanowski | Thursday, January 13, 2022 at 05:03 PM
Thank you for sharing!
Posted by: geometry dash | Thursday, January 13, 2022 at 06:15 PM
@william for what he had to work with in 2003, I think Phillip did fantastic. Now we need to take the things that were specifically 2003, like bandwidth, server capacity, and prims that were specifically 2003 and ADVANCE then 20 years. Philip, how about prim 2.0 and a new LSL based on LUA or some visual language construct (connect to Unity or Unreal) in 2022??
Posted by: Osiris Indigo | Thursday, January 13, 2022 at 06:18 PM
Any major shift in underlying tech will mean creating a whole new world from scratch (with none of the 18 years worth of existing SL assets being transferable), which they've already tried and failed with Sansar. The longevity of SL is based on a passionate user community and user friendly creation tools right from the start.
I wonder what he means by "subscription-based business." I presume most of SL's revenue comes from real estate (i.e., server) rental and fees from the Marketplace. I don't know what percentage membership subscriptions come to, but it seems unlikely that it would be central to their business model. Unless perhaps they consider doing away with free basic memberships. Interesting times...
Posted by: FreeWee Ling | Thursday, January 13, 2022 at 06:53 PM
I know this isn't a popular opinion with some folks, but it's going to really suck if a corporate push destroys the sex positive and queer side of SL. It's one of the only places that actually treats you like an adult online still, but corporations won't want a pair of fox girl breasts reflecting poorly on the McRib NFT Experience.
This...bodes poorly to me.
Posted by: Artemys | Thursday, January 13, 2022 at 08:57 PM
Guy has played around with his own projects, no big new thing came out of it, so now he's back to SL! Congrats! :)
Posted by: Zigu | Friday, January 14, 2022 at 01:56 AM
@Adeon thats one guy tho, and I understand @artemys' concerns. There's a new big business getting involved, with their money, and we've seen how big funds and bank systems can be detrimental to sex positive and queer positive spaces (see: OnlyFans, Tumblr). I don't think they were concerned about Rosedale :)
Posted by: Phenom | Friday, January 14, 2022 at 07:49 AM
I guess I might be a bit cynicle but .... or get SL in shape to be sold to a tech co with endless pockets who happens to wanting to launch a VR world of their own,,,
Posted by: Jackson Redstar | Friday, January 14, 2022 at 09:20 AM
My skull broke long ago from dozens of falling skies. I yelled that myself a few times. Bang! OUCH!
Let's see what happens with him back on the team.
Posted by: Iggy 1.0 | Friday, January 14, 2022 at 01:17 PM
Of all the different ideas and possibilities tried in the past years, only VRChat found the right mix to match and even surpass SL.
Rec Room seems doing well and NEOS has a potential. Other projects didn't go so far or flopped entirely. There were nice and innovative ideas but too many bugs and something not so user friendly and not as cute; other projects offered pretty visuals, but with other things lacking and long load times compared to VRChat; then the crypto stuff populated with few people that only cares for crypto currencies and not for that world, and so on.
Therefore, trying to create a new world wasn't a bad idea. The problem is how you make it and how its various parts work together (also, of course, how you present it to your potential users, how you get and retain users, how you relate to your community, ...). High Fidelity did something of this right, something less, but it isn't toss the whole thing away.
Even if High Fidelity (their world) didn't have success, Rosesale has always cool ideas and if their patents can be of any use for SL, that would still be a good thing. Thinking of it, I remember High Fidelity had mobile devices in mind too with their distributed computing and Linden Lab is looking for a mobile app...
Time will tell what comes out of all this.
Posted by: Nadeja | Friday, January 14, 2022 at 02:29 PM
Sorry to say but unless Torley Linden in invited back, you can count me out!
Posted by: High 5 Dave | Sunday, January 16, 2022 at 06:53 PM