Update, October 31: Read part 2 of this interview here.
“I'm back,” Philip Rosedale tells me, swiveling his Zoom camera around to reveal Linden Lab’s San Francisco HQ office looming in the background. “And I'm here every day; I'm in the office right now. Brad’s upstairs in the corner.” He nods at the open office’s upper level, where Linden Lab head Bradford Oberwager is situated.
Yes: As of this month, Philip Rosedale has returned full-time to a leadership role at Linden Lab, developing Second Life -- now, as its Chief Technology Officer.
“I'm not splitting my time,” he adds. “This is not the Elon [approach], ‘I run Tesla and SpaceX and Neuralink, and whatever else.’ I’m only CTO of one company and that company is Linden Lab.”
Rosedale’s return to developing Second Life full-time comes at a crucial inflection point, both for the virtual world and -- as the imminent US Presidential election suggests -- the offline world at large:
“We're at a point right now where I think with AI and mobile, there's a chance of getting to broader reach with virtual worlds,” as he puts it.
“And I think the other thing is, just as you know, with FairShare and all the stuff I've been doing, I'm super concerned about the state of the world. And I think that there is also a chance that our sort of dystopian future will drive more and more people into virtual worlds.
“If it happens -- or for the amount of time that we have to spend doing it -- I'd like [virtual worlds] to be a positive experience, without evil advertising or surveillance or whatever. Without needing to read a Cory Doctorow book, we know that could get pretty bad with virtual worlds. So that's another reason why I'm pretty motivated.” (As for the offline world, Philip endorsed Kamala Harris / Tim Walz during the recent Gamers for Harris livestream.)
This news comes on the heels of a recent re-organization of Linden Lab that’s spurred concerns among the SL community that the company is facing tough times. The exact opposite is the case, says Rosedale:
Philip's avatar during a special 20th anniversary in-world appearance in 2023
“Another thing that’s important to note is that the business is just doing great. They, Linden Lab, we -- we have money to invest in new projects, marketing, people, all that stuff. Brad after the acquisition over the last four years, has made this company very efficient… As Brad said, that re-org is to restructure the way we do service so that it's better. But the company's been continuously growing and investing in stuff.”
Since returning in early October, Philip’s been meeting new team members and checking in on major projects, “trying to lean us down, make us do less better.”
Which is actually a change from the last time he held the CEO role at Linden Lab, over a decade ago:
“I’d say that’s kind of an overarching thing, which I think is a little different than the old me. It's not like, you know, ‘Philip, come up with some crazy new idea to work on.’ It's much more like, ‘Let's make things we have working work really well.’”
Chief among those projects is iterating on the mobile app:
“I don't think every experience you'd want to have in a virtual world you're going to ever have on your phone, but there's going to be some things that you're going to do on your phone. So that's the kind of stuff where I think that my background with Second Life as well as my technical skills [will be important].”
The other focus, as mentioned, is adding more AI-related features to Second Life:
“[W]e've got many experimental projects underway, some of them coming out of the Lab, work that we've done that are related to AI in different ways… I think that AI greeters or companions -- there's got to be a there there, right?”
We’ll get into the specifics of Philip Rosedale’s approach to mobile and AI in a follow-up interview. For today, it’s enough to mark his return to full-time leadership of Second Life, a role he’s not had in quite some time. (Even though he’s been a part-time advisor since Second Life’s acquisition in 2021 and the most prominent public face of the virtual world since its inception.)
“It’s fun to re-examine all this stuff after 20 years, look back on it, hang around in-world and talk to people,” he tells me. He returns to a virtual world that’s much changed since Second Life’s stint as metaverse media darling, roughly between 2005-2010.
Above: Philip Rosedale's 2008 TED Talk
Then again, Philip himself has changed since then -- as has his own view of the virtual world:
“This is a difference from the me you knew in 2006,” as he puts it. “I don't think that Second Life needs to be something that every man, woman and child on earth makes daily use of, because it's a sci-fi future and we're all avatars. I actually don't think that's true.
“I feel like it's not for everybody, but the people that it serves when it does are aided by it, or at least can be, when you do it right. Maybe even like teenagers, to pick a contentious group, I'm not really sure that teenagers should be in virtual worlds, I don't know. But I think people that are using Second Life and getting benefit from it are almost in every case, not teenagers, as we both know. They're disabled veterans, there are people that are stay-at-home moms that don't have access to a social life because they've got kids on their knees.
“There's always wonderful reasons why people use Second Life, and part of the fun for me has been growing up and realizing, I don't have to make it something that I get super famous, and everybody in the world uses it, and feels more like an Elon Musk project or something.
"No, I'm perfectly happy making it a really positive experience for a much smaller number of people. Like, that's totally fine.”
But in this new era of Roblox and Fortnite, which each country active user bases larger than most countries, “small” is relative:
“I'm struck by the opportunity. If we're a happy place for people like moms and vets, are there really only as many of those worldwide as we have using Second Life today? I'll leave it to you to do the same math as I have.”
Over the years, roughly 50 to 60 million people have tried to install Second Life, but gave up for various reasons, usually due to addressable technical or design hurdles. A virtual world with 50 million monthly active users would be on par with the population of South Korea.
That’s a great goal. And now that Second Life only has 500,000 monthly active users, a highly challenging one as well.
More on reaching something like that target from Philip Rosedale soon.
Update, October 31: Read part 2 of this interview here.
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'And now that Second Life only has 500,000 monthly active users' as opposed to 'still has 500k' eh? Fascinating.
I look forward to the - new role as CTO. Well he has done everything else after all:) Cynical old me aside yep - welcome home Rosedale. Nice piece.
Posted by: sirhc desantis | Tuesday, October 29, 2024 at 04:26 PM
Yay 😁 I am glad he is back, and looking forward to how he navigates AI as well as mobile on the platform.
Posted by: Somebody | Tuesday, October 29, 2024 at 04:36 PM
Welcome back, dreamer. We could use some new dreams tonight...hey. Someone else said that.
Posted by: Iggy 1.0 | Tuesday, October 29, 2024 at 04:58 PM
"Philip endorsed Kamala Harris / Tim Walz during the recent Gamers for Harris livestream.)"
In the same article where he talks about our "dystopian" future, you drop politics into an article about a game.
Rule #1 about all video games. Keep. Politics. Out. Of. Games.
Posted by: Lifeless Ethereal | Tuesday, October 29, 2024 at 06:44 PM
Like Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner with family, politics really should not be discussed, and it really has no place in SL
As far as SL on mobile devices, good luck just not sure how that will ever work well
But I certainly hope SL continues for years to come - and remain political free
Posted by: jackson redstar | Tuesday, October 29, 2024 at 06:57 PM
So glad you're back! We need you and that enthusiasm to help keep SL going forward. I have been in world since 2006--way back when I had kids and not much to do but be at home for them. As you said! That is what started my venture off into the wonderful world. I have met people from all over the world and it has been awesome and I have lost people I never met in person but knew them enough to feel the pain & heartbreak of loosing them. I have held all kinds of jobs in here and they were all great experiences. I used to teach the noobs as a white tiger mentor and before that for SL Academy. Also worked with Firestorm to help new people. I think helping people that are new or teaching skills is wonderful thing for all. I hope we can get the numbers coming back up. That would be a good goal. Scarlet Vavoom
Posted by: Robin Jordan | Tuesday, October 29, 2024 at 10:19 PM
I can say that for myself and my compadres in SL, there was definitely a loss of trust in the future of SL when the founders left and the company was sold off to an unknown, though it's the typical San Fran tech industry buddy group - so same people, same results.
SL lost some shops, some premiums and inevitably some lost accounts (fully cancelled) as some just shrugged and told me "It's just not fun anymore. Politics, Real Life rules, banned for trespass just for flying around, empty worlds, or avatars and bots just standing around not talking, hard to break into clique, hard to make new friends" All things that can be disputed sure - but usually by old time SL'ers who have their friend groups set - but for new or visiting people not so fun anymore and that is why SL is stagnant. In the business industry - stagnant = dying
I'm not sure Phil returning is going to do much. Phil was here before and SL was in the same boat: forever stagnant. He and Ebbe were both happy just to talk about the future of SL (they did the same with HiFi and then Sansar) and BOTH of them killed both platforms with just talk.
Admittedly, Ebbe seemed handcuffed by political extortion, as he could not remove 80% of his incompetent woke employees - who were doing their best to get their paychecks with as little work as possible... so they bled money out bigtime paying stupid people to not do their job = failure.
Is Phil going to come back and make the technical changes necessary to hire real talent and become a AAA worthy platform - that even with its challenges, Phil will innovate the platform with good ideas, design improvements and some sort of checkboxes for uploaded content?
I hope so, but I am no longer holding my breath. Phil and Ebbe had 20 years to 'make SL great' but kind of happy to just chug along and making just enough profits...
Phil is an experimenter as much as a pioneer, but is he a finisher? No one at LL right now is a finisher.. like to start stuff but then not finish.
No one has an excuse for HiFi or Sansar failing. None but their lack of discernment between utter crap staff and competent staff that could technically bring their dreams to life.
“It’s fun to re-examine all this stuff after 20 years, look back on it, hang around in-world and talk to people,” he tells me.
Yeah, we know Phil... lots of talk but no walk...
Stupid Sansar still having database problems because they tell an intern or some free random player to tinker around for 2 years and make it more broken then ever.
HIRE A PRO, GET PRO RESULTS
Posted by: HalfTheOfficeNeedsToGo | Wednesday, October 30, 2024 at 10:00 AM
as a bystander, like the biggest content coming out of Second Life are heavily photoshoped screenshots of uncanny human avatars with real eyes and such pasted in. so they are focusing on that makes sense
Posted by: Come on you know | Wednesday, October 30, 2024 at 12:43 PM
Perverts. They are all pedophiles and dog phuckers.
Posted by: Eric | Thursday, October 31, 2024 at 05:43 AM
Exciting News!!! Looking forward to seeing how far Linden Labs goes from here! I can see my avi jumping for joy!
Posted by: Shaylin Meadowbrook | Thursday, October 31, 2024 at 08:23 AM