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Second Life Scores $11 Million
News.com reports that Second Life, the virtual world run by Linden Labs, has netted $11 Million in venture capital funding from the Globespan Capital Partners group. From the article: "The company makes its money by charging players use fees for land they buy and build on. For now, the company isn't profitable, and it's not clear when it will be, said Catherine Smith, Linden Lab's director of marketing. However, she told CNET News.com that Linden Lab plans to use its new funding for aggressive international expansion, as well as for hiring intended to boost its infrastructure. "
Is the game any fun?
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Espically because, even if it ends up being less expensive to play, it feels more expensive up front. I don't know that I could ever bring myself to drop $100 for something in a game, even though I pay more than that per year to play World of Warcraft.
Now THAT is a successful business model. Charge people $15 per month, which doesn't feel like a lot so they pay it happily. Thus far, it's successful to the tune of about $1 billion per year in revenues.
Did I miss something? Is it 1995 again? Is money falling from the sky for any unprofitable business which is somehow related to the Internet? Will Ion Storm be opening its doors again?
Great... pay tax for virtual land where you can do things that you're too pussy to do in real life.
Sounds like Nevada!
for a second life when i have a hard enough time paying for the first one?
I strongly believe that Linden will become profitable soon by reaping money from what amounts to a foreign money exchange tax. What I'm not sure about is whether they'll be able to balance what makes Second Life compelling against the requirements of external shareholders.
SL is very much an idealist playground. Even without external forces calling for profitability, there will be many challenges to maintaining a thriving community.
However, whether SL ultimately becomes profitable without losing appeal - or whether it sinks, the lessons learned will be worth it.
Sounds like they just got a second life!
Has second life ever made any profit, ever? Granted that the people who invested think that there is money to be made in 2nd life, but I see 12-year olds running virtual brothels ( http://www.alphavilleherald.com/archives/000049.ht ml ) as the game's only economic vehicle for making any sort of US currency. I suggest that if they want to blow money, I have a bridge in a MUD that I can sell them.
Lagito ergo expectabo
Second Life is a great concept, and playing it one cannot help but think of the amount of potential it has. Large amounts of that potential are only being held back by logistics issues-- one wonders if they had just slightly more resources to work on the clumsiness and poor documentation of their scripting interface, or the application performance issues, how much better (and potentially more mainstream-friendly) Second Life could be.
Hopefully this new cash inflow will be used to bring Second Life toward its full potential (and won't just disappear into Mr. Linden's shirt pocket).
Another thought, this investment comes strikingly close on the heels of GDC. Anyone else wonder if the investors maybe just saw Linden's speech at GDC and were impressed?
Is slashdot any fun?
People generally expect different things out of a glorified chat room than they expect out of, say, Halo 3. But that doesn't mean the people using the glorified chat room spend any less time there, or that they enjoy it any les.
SL is only fun if you enjoy creating stuff, or enjoy watching people create stuff. After that it's easy to get the same sort of interaction from a text chat program.
The sandboxes are the place to be.
What really hurts SL right now is that people can't reasonably model objects, and can only rudamentally script them. The scripting language is clunky, and limited in strange opaque ways.
If some kind of scripting could be added in, such as scheme hooks or something, which made the underlying structure more transparent (without feeling like a 1:1 map to C functions) I think it could take off a lot better.
The idea that SL is a great place to make machinema is sorta crazy unless you're relying on lots of real-world actors colaborating. You'd be better off using the tools that make the animations/avatars/textures directly to make your scenes.
People will most certainly pay for items if the game is free, and Puzzle Pirates is proof of that. The only chance of it being a losing business model is if people are not compelled to purchase any items because they can get through the game without having to buy anything. But when there's a Vorpal Blade of +12 Snicker-Snack in the local item shop for a couple of bucks, there are some people who just can't resist the purchase to pimp their avatar. Especially when they have $15 a month extra laying around because they don't pay a subscription fee.
The link is about TSO, by Maxis. TFA is about Second Life, by LindenLab.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Paying real money for Linden dollars in Second Life is a stupid. It is quite easy to make money in the game. Especially if you have any programming or graphics skill. I have started a little self sustaining business for myself selling virtual items I have created. I am currently averaging around $50 real money a month and have never paid in a single dollar. Not huge, but better than paying money to someone to play a game. Here is a Wired Article about some of the biggest money makers in the game.
Nevermore.
I struggled with Second Life for a few days before becoming tired with the hideously bad performance. In addition to the player models looking ugly and out of date the game was slow as molasses even with alot of the settings turned down to nubs.
Oblivion runs fine on my machine with medium settings so there's no excuse for a game as ugly as Second Life to run so poorly.
I've been playing SL for aboug 2 1/2 yrs now. I dont play every day but I am active. I used to buy land lots, build homes on them and then sell the lots for $. Recently I converted most of my linden dollars (game $) into USD. Ive made enought to pretty much cover my last 2 yrs of costs. It has a huge social network, much of what goes on there centers on social events.
The entire SL universe is the result of player creativity. Everything there (except the land itself) consists of creations by players. You name it, its probably available in SL. There is even a turned RPG called Dark Life. (or was not sure if there anymore)
I will admit its not a game for everyone. And I suggest to anyone trying to try it for a few weeks before making a decision. The "game" is unlike anything else that I can find.
But I really do enjoy it.
Been there a week myself. Not sure how long I'll be there before I get bored, but one of my favorite things is seeing what folks have come up with.
Some of the neatest avatars can be found in Luskwood, for instance. I saw a very finely detailed, beautifully animated dragon there just a couple days ago. Sure, the environment has limitations, but it's pretty astounding what folks have come up with despite those limits!
-Z (Zorin Frobozz in SL)
I hope this means they will get back to work on the Linux client they've been promising for the past 3 years. Well...maybe I hope it doesn't. I've got enough addictions as it is.
sig? uhh, umm, ok
It -is- a game, but it's much more... I come from an education background and I can already (after only a week) see the potential for SL in education. Virtual classrooms hosted by virtual professors. SL supports text chat, uploading of multimedia files, and interaction. For rural environments, or disabled persons, or anyone who's grown up in the video game generation, SL has great potential. Making it profitable enough for Linden to bother sustaining... yeah, that is an interesting hurdle. But personally, I really hope to see it grow.
Oblivion can use prerendering. Second life cannot.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
You've said this a couple of times, can I ask you to explain this? What exactly is 'pre-rendering' in this context, that Oblivion can utilise, but SL cannot? The only prerendering I've heard about is in FMVs and cutscenes, but Oblivion is a full 3D game.
(Not a flame, just curious).
"Right now we're losing money on every user, since we don't charge most users for access and and our operation is EXTREMELY bandwidth and server-side intensive. But, not to worry. We're going to fix this by attracting more users."
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
So, odds are, it's not your system that's the problem--it's either your bandwidth or Linden Lab's servers themselves (which do get overloaded and which do slow down and crash a lot).
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I do believe the word you were looking for was pre-cacheing.
It's not many games that have to pre-cache every single sound, texture, and object in the game (and there are literally millions of these, since players can create their own designs in SL, unlike in most MMORPG's). It pretty much ensures that SL will NEVER perform anywhere near as good as a conventional game, no matter what system you're playing it on.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.