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The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life, the middle years
This week, we cover the second installment of our summarized history of Second Life and Linden Lab (or check out part one, if you missed it). From 2005, there's an impossible amount of material to cover, but there are some interesting stories lurking among it all. Join us as we work our way through some of the interesting highlights from 2005, 2006 and 2007.
The Virtual Whirl: The bottom line
Hot topic of the week would be the Linden Lab layoffs. 30% of the staff (roughly 110 or so individuals) were laid off this week in a round of layoffs that we spotted ahead of the official announcements. Additional staff have been shed since the beginning of the year. Staff have been dropped from market-development, business development, engineering, quality assurance, human resources, community and executive management. Hardest hit this week are community and customer-advocacy roles and quality-assurance/testing. What isn't hard to see is why these cuts were made, and in fact, why they are vital to Linden Lab as a going concern. At least it isn't hard to see when you're looking in the right place.
The Virtual Whirl: Death and taxes
"Nothing is certain but death and taxes"; a rather sardonic and bleak proverb, quoted and paraphrased by a number of famous figures over the years. The earliest on record was Daniel Defoe, in The Political History of the Devil in 1726. Well, this week the death part doesn't concern us so much as the taxes. Many Americans have spent this month scrambling to get their taxes filed, and for many of the rest of us our own turn comes due in just a couple of months. With that in mind, I thought I'd talk about the taxation status of virtual assets.
Linden Lab hands down Second Life metrics for Q1 2010
Today, Linden Lab is releasing the quarterly metrics for Second Life, showing overall performance for Q1 2010, and contrasting that with the performance of previous quarters. Linden Lab claims that Q1 2010 was an all-time high for the Second Life economy. We'll drill down through the metrics and see if that's so.
The Virtual Whirl: Questions from the virtual mailbag
This week, in The Virtual Whirl, we're going to take a selection of reader questions that we've received in comments and in the virtual mailbag and do our best to offer up some useful answers. Join us as we whirl through the mail. Not surprisingly, the two most frequently asked questions involve the demise of virtual environment, There.com.
Rumor: Bonus payment premium incentive not being paid to upgrading Second Life users? [updated]
There's a been talk going around among users that a Linden Dollar bonus made to users that sign up for Second Life premium accounts is not paid to users who are upgrading an account from basic to premium. That is, it was said that only users creating a new premium account got the bonus and users who upgraded did not, despite Linden Lab's advertising material apparently promoting it for both. A number of you wrote in asking us about that yesterday, and we contacted Linden Lab for you to get an answer one way or another. That line of questioning bore some definitive fruit.
Second annual Linden Prize announced
Linden Lab has announced that applications have opened for the 2010 Linden Prize, and submissions will be taken until 15 January 2010. The Linden Prize is awarded for Second Life projects that improve the way people work, learn and communicate in their daily lives outside of the virtual world. This annual award is intended to align with Linden Lab's company mission, which is to connect all people to an online world that advances the human condition. There are a couple of changes this year, one being that the $10,000USD prize will be definitely be paid in US Dollars, not in Linden Dollars, "with the aim of giving the winner some more options in the rough real world economy" according to a spokesperson for Linden Lab.
Linden Lab to raise Xstreet fees, loses vendors, products
This week, Linden Lab announced that it was going to start charging listing fees and minimum commissions on its Second Life Xstreet Web-shopping adjunct in the near future. Within hours, vendors took down thousands of products, many abandoning the service entirely in favor of alternative services. It's unclear just how many vendors have abandoned the Xstreet SL system, but it apparently was enough to temporarily overload the Web-sites of third-party sites such as Slapt.
Five regrettably true things about online economies
While online economies can seem to be (and often are) fundamentally different from AFK economies, there's a key component that makes any online economy function in ways that are all-too-familiar. That's us. You and me. People. Whether bags of treasure fall out of dead rats, or the economy is reliant on texture artists, modelers and scripters, it's people that make online economies with fundamentally alien premises work in some very surprisingly quotidian ways.
Second Life traffic gaming: A chat with a bot-operator, and dire portents for Lucky Chairs
The store is a fairly ordinary store in Second Life terms, except that it appears to sell objects that are mostly available for free elsewhere in the virtual environment. Reselling 'freebies' in Second Life is generally considered to be a reprehensible practice, but it does happen. This particular store is one of the places we routinely check out to evaluate the effectiveness of Linden Lab's harder-line policies on gaming traffic (and thus search-rankings) within Second Life. In front of us are a row of 53 avatars, camping out. The provision of such camping facilities being one of the things that are prohibited under the new policy. We tried for a little while to get the attention of one of the camping avatars to see what they might think, and finally succeeded. As it happens, the avatar who responded was a bot – actually one of 70 bots being controlled by a single user who declined to give us a name. The bot-operator was, however, happy to answer a few questions for us, through the remotely-controlled avatar.
The Daily Grind: What do you think of 'freemium' MMOs?
There's a new flavour in town and it's called 'freemium'. A mish-mash of 'free' and 'premium', it's the latest buzzword to describe MMOs like Free Realms. The game is free and there are no monthly subscriptions but if you want the whole package like extra characters or the ability to buy in-game items, then you will need to upgrade your account or find your credit card.This idea did not begin with Free Realms, of course. Linden Lab has been charging a land tax and offering an exchange rate for Linden Dollars since the beginning of Second Life and has created numerous in-game and real world millionaires as a result. There are also dozens of free-to-play titles which give you the option of buying potions or weapons to enhance your game. But I wonder, is the idea of a 'freemium' just a regular MMO but with an incentive to hook you in? Do you buy virtual items to enhance your game but part with real money? Do you think titles like Free Realms and Second Life are more about getting people to pay for an enhanced version of the game?
Second Life November metrics: Nothing gained
November metrics for Linden Lab's virtual environment, Second Life are available for examination. September and October were relatively poor months, and November's results don't look great at all. In fact every one of Linden Lab's key metrics fell in November. Land size, user-hours, transactions, PMLF. The only gain is an infinitesimal increase in the Linden Dollar exchange rate of 0.3%.
Second Life October metrics: More falls
October metrics for Linden Lab's virtual environment, Second Life are not yet formally available, but Lab CFO John Zdanowski wound up giving out a link to the information in advance, so we have the figures to work with. September was not a good month by these metrics, and we were interested to see how October panned out. Your key takeaways for October are a continuing plunge in premium accounts, and a reduction in overall economic activity. User hours, however were up. A more detailed summary follows after the jump.
Second Life September metrics: Mostly falls
The published, key metrics for Second Life for the month of September are now available as both an Open Document Spreadsheet and in Excel format. Your key takeaways this month are an increasing fall in total premium accounts, a fall in total user hours, zero mainland (Linden owned estate) growth (but a 7% increase in privately owned estates), and a reduction in economic activity. A more detailed summary follows after the jump.
Is the Second Life economy in a boom or a bust?
It seems a simple sort of question doesn't it? Is the Second Life economy in a boom or a bust? Is it stagnating or recessive? What the heck is it doing, exactly? Well, life is never simple, and the Second Life economy certainly isn't. In the main, the Second Life economy follows the same basic rules as any national economy might, because well ... it is full of people doing what people do with and within economies. The differences are in the axioms. The Second Life economy is to regular economies what geometry would be if pi were (for example) equal to exactly three (circles would have a whole lot more sides, for one thing). The familiar set of rules produces vastly different results if the underlying constants are different. All economies have some level of striation. There's always more than one kind of economy operating under the hood. The fundamental circumstances of the Second Life economy, however, lead to a greater disparity in the striated economy than is the norm elsewhere. Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.
You probably didn't need that Second Life account anyway
We feel a little odd about this one. Not because we're giving you a warning about a scam to steal your Second Life account information, but because you'd have to be just a bit retarded and greedy to fall for this ... or maybe just unsophisticated and ignorant would be enough. Certainly a level far below our regular discerning and informed Massively readers. Nonetheless, some people are going to fall for this. Some people always do -- and it is a very convincing copy of one of the Second Life Web-pages. Remember, though, the only Web-sites that legitimately prompt for your Second Life password are at secondlife.com. If you think win-lindens.tk could be an official Second Life website, think again. So, here's the drill. Feel free to sing along: If you give your account details to any third-party, regardless of the proffered incentive, you should probably cancel your account -- because heaven knows, they can lock you out of it and keep it, or do whatever the heck they want with it. If you ever get the urge to do so, because someone is offering you EXP, game-gold, Linden Dollars, free items, or whatever, go find someone responsible to talk you out of it. That would be pretty much anyone else. Short version: No. No, no, no, no, no. Got all that? Odds are, dear readers, that if you're here reading this then you aren't one of the poor unfortunates who really needs this advice. The offending site (which we'll not grace with a link) is http://www.win-lindens.tk/ which is using one free Web-host in Amsterdam, and another in Italy for their nefarious deeds. We wouldn't be surprised if it was the same people that were behind freelindensnow. Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.
Linden trademark for credit cards
Linden Lab has been granted another trademark on their hand-and-eye logo. This time for a credit card. Specifically, trademark registration 3378449 covers "Online financial services, namely, offering a fictional-dollar-denominated credit card to charge online purchases". Of course, 'fictional-dollar-denominated' would mean Second Life Linden Dollars (L$). Exactly what sort of card this might be is uncertain. You may recall that in 2006, MindArk released an ATM card for Project Entropia (now called Entropia Universe) allowing access to Project Entropia Dollars (PED) and supported by the Versatel cash-card network. There's no indication whether Linden Lab is (or was) planning a physical card, or some sort of non-physical card, how it would be backed or where it might be honored. Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.
Thoughts on the Linden Prize
Mitch Kapor's announcement of the Linden Prize at Second Life's fifth anniversary was rather surprising. Out of roughly 27 and a half minutes of presentation, the "very important announcement" got all of two and a half minutes of talk-time before Linden Lab's staff ran to the fire exits. There wasn't actually any fire, of course, but it was certainly astonishing just how fast they wound up and departed the event, especially in contrast to Rosedale and Kingdon's speeches on 23 June. It bordered on the unseemly.
Peering Inside: A cautionary tale
Meet Jay. Jay started in Second Life in April this year and was interested and involved enough to get himself some Linden Dollars via a currency exchange. A lot of Linden Dollars. Unfortunately, Jay is now out-of-pocket by US$110, and is being told conflicting stories.
Free Lindens now
Remember this website? Well, apparently they've given up on trying to scam people through assorted survey fakery. They've stepped up to straightforward theft, and want your account credentials -- in exchange for L$25,000 (which, quite obviously, you would never actually receive). You'd have to be unspeakably naive, or somehow functionally retarded to actually provide them with your account details. Right now, they're spamming across the grid with a domain name that redirects to this site.
