New World Notes

BREAKING: Philip Rosedale Re-Joins Second Life as Strategic Advisor to Grow It Into Inclusive Metaverse Competing With Big Tech's "Ad-Driven Behavior Modification" Metaverse

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:

Source: Second Life's Official Mobile Viewer Pauses Development

A veteran Second Life insider just sent me this message they received as a member of the test group for Second Life's long-awaited, official mobile app:

After reviewing the current state of the SL Mobile Viewer and the helpful feedback from residents, we have decided to pause development on this branch. The team is actively working on a new direction to take from here. We should have some news on that soon.

We’d like to thank you all for your time and feedback. It was very valuable to us! We will be closing TestFlight and the mobile regions on October 29th, 2021. Again, thank you for participation! Linden Lab

I'm reaching out to Linden Lab now for an official comment, but this message is surprising and likely to disappoint the community. We received word only last July that this app had been approved for publication by Apple.

That said, my source (who also shared the app images here), tells me the app itself had pretty limited functionality:

"It had been stagnant for months. Didn't have push notifications, and until a recent update would only work when you had the app open on your screen," they tell me.

Apparently there wasn't even a 3D graphics display -- but as expected, there was a special chat zone for app users:

Linden Lab Hiring Senior Product Manager to Shaping Future of "Original Metaverse" of Second Life -- But Mobile Experience Only a "Plus"

This is quite possibly a dream job if you have experience in game/Internet product development:

As a Senior Product Manager, you’ll utilize in-depth product knowledge to successfully drive key projects on Second Life. You’ll work alongside a supportive team of people across engineering, design, QA and other cross-functional teams to build products and new experiences and play a pivotal role in shaping the future of the original metaverse. 

But apparently, if you scroll all the way toward the end of the job description, that future is not mobile-centric:

In a Virtual World Economy, User-Generated Content Prices Are Controlled by the Company, Not the Market (Comment of the Week)

Really interesting conversation on the problem of virtual currency in virtual economies last week kicked off by "Kyz", who explained how difficult it was for them to reliably run a successful business in a virtual world. Replying to the idea that the value of their content is decided by the market, Kyz goes deeper into the analysis:

That's true to an extent and there are parallels between virtual and real life markets. But there's more to it than just market demand and pricing.

For instance, my SL experience put an extra layer of cost into the mix. Linden Dollars are a product or were, to Linden Lab. The currency wasn't just added to the company as a convenience for users, it was acquired by Linden Lab from someone that discovered that virtual money was itself a product that could be profitable directly or indirectly.

The last part isn't quite accurate but the full story enhances Kyz's argument: Linden Lab reportedly made an offer to the user-made Gaming Open Market, which circa 2004/2005 was a popular platform for the community, then in late 2005, officially productized the Linden Dollar through the launch of the LindeX.

"I mean, I get it," Kyz goes on. "And if I ran a virtual world, creating an extra revenue stream from currency is something I wouldn't lightly ignore." But for content creators like Kyz trying to monetize on the platform, this led to additional hurdles and regulations:

Second Life Hit By 3 Hour+ Unplanned Downtime; UPDATE: All Services Reportedly Restored After Nearly 5 Hours Offline

Update, 4:04pm: All services reportedly back online as of 3:57pm PT, i.e. nearly 5 hours of downtime. I'm currently logged into SL.

A major unplanned Second Life downtime was officially reported at 11:14 AM PT today and as of this writing at 2:30PT PT, access still seems to be interrupted across major services. (I just tried to load the Marketplace website, for example, but it hung forever.)

Go here for more updates from the official status page. If I'm reading the @SLGridStatus feed on Twitter correctly, this is the longest unscheduled downtime of Second Life of the entire year.

More updates here when I have them!

Linden Lab's 2001 downtime image by Bub Linden. They really ought to reboot it for times like this!

Upland Now Attracting Over 100K High Active Unique Players for Its Blockchain/Tilia-Backed Virtual Real Estate MMO

Last month I estimated that Upland, the blockchain-backed mirror world real estate trading MMO, probably had about low-to-mid six figures of active users; now here's a pretty good data point of users who actually play Upland long enough to buy virtual real estate in it. A very active Upland user sent me the data above,  drawn from up2land.com, a player-driven analytics site.

"[T]hese numbers reflect only the UNIQUE players making transactions each month," my source tells me, "Either Sales, Accepted Offers, or Minting properties. It does not reflect the total number of players -- there are many [who] might go months without making a transaction - and some players may be counted each month. But it does give an indication of the trend of the game."

 

So unique players defined on those terms have ranged from 54,000 to 102,000 in recent months. My source suspects the dip in May is attributable to less advertising during that month. But these numbers likely do not include a lot of new users just playing around with the free-to-play game's starting money:

Is Linden Lab Making an IMVU-Like "Second Life Lite" for Mobile?

Over in last week's post on how Second Life might find a new audience on mobile, New World Notes' super savvy readers are picking up clues and speculating that Linden Lab is going to -- or at least should -- create what I'd describe as a lightweight, IMVU-like experience for mobile.

Take it away, Pulsar:

They are making dedicated mobile-regions now (just instant messages, but they plan to add a 3D view later). Here is the opportunity to start a sort of new SL from ground up: mobile-avatars on mobile-regions; meanwhile you keep your account, friend list, chat, L$ etc, that keeps you on the SL grid. And you would still be able to use the old style stuff in the old regions as before.

Mobile regions may have a clear grand total upper limit in texture and polygon count, instead of an obscure and exploitable "land impact". And they could be on demand, cutting the costs.

A mobile avatar could be a single item or it could be customizable by replacing the body parts with dressed parts, as other games do. Not that pile of attachments on top of each other that you see in SL. You could still colorize the parts, change head textures etc.

This approach would also make sense from a technical perspective, as "0xc0ffea" explains:

Upland, Blockchain-Backed Mirror World, Attracts Hundreds of Thousands of Players, Earning Cryptocurrency Worth Many Millions USD Every Month

San Francisco HQ of Tilia owner Linden Lab already owned by an Upland high roller 

Let's briefly check in on Upland, the virtual real estate acquisition game that's sort of Monopoly meets a mirror world, where virtual real estate is registered on the EOS blockchain, and is the first paying customer for Linden Lab's Tilia payment service. Since I wrote about it in June 2020 (shortly after launch), it's become an online world with a pretty large virtual community -- and some nosebleed-serious real cash flowing between its users.

According to Sensor Tower, the game's app garnered 100,000+ downloads and earned $200,000 last month on Google Play alone, but that's only part of the story. Upland's website (where the game can also be played) racked up over 5 million views last month, according to SimilarWeb; I'd estimate that as monthly active players in the mid-six figures. 

But the level of transactions already happening in Upland are even wilder:

This user-run site tracks Upland transactions and leaderboards, and they're fairly amazing. Last month, for example, the top 100 Upland players earned proceeds worth several million USD.

"You need to understand that they marketed to the Crypto and NFT guys," as Upland player Octavius explains, "many of which are a new fairly wealthy group of crypto money."

Watch: 18 Years Later, "Second Life Still Can't Communicate to New Players What They 'Do'"

This recent video from gaming YouTuber Micky D is hilariously cringey but necessary viewing, shared by reader Lyndka Cochrane as a response to Second Life's new glitzy marketing video.

As Lynkda comments, "There's still an 'image' problem around what Second Life is and how to play it or live it", going on to observe:

Watch: Second Life's First Big Budget Online Commercial - It Won an Award!

Linden Lab - Second Life "Children of Creation" from Levitate

Last year Linden Lab started production on the very first big budget online commercial for Second Life, but far as I know, it hasn't yet officially debuted -- though you can see glimpses of it in Second Life's new-ish homepage (to the confusion of many).

However, it is already online, hosted by the video's creator, Levitate Media -- watch above! In fact, the ad won a Telly "People's" Award in that competition's Online Commercial category. 

Overall, it's quite a bit better than I originally feared from the homepage imagery: