What do you think of Humble's idea to market 2D games on a mobile app?

[Persephone Emerald]

I was just reading this article on future prospects for Linden Lab. I haven't seen any discussion of these ideas on the forums, so what do you think? 

 http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/09/23/second-life-inventors-expanding-gaming-universe/

 

[Madelaine McMasters]

It's a reactionary move. Lightweight mobile games have sucked all the oxygen from the room. I doubt LL would be an acquisition target. SL's learning curve is steep and gaming companies are discovering that people are not spending as much time in game as they once did (resulting in much of their development effort going unseen). There's a small and static market for SL. If I have a concern here, it's that even modest success in this new direction will draw attention away from SL.

[Persephone Emerald]

"If I have a concern here, it's that even modest success in this new direction will draw attention away from SL."

 

That's what concerns me too. I'm all for Linden Lab finding new sources of income, but I doubt user-created 2D games will be popular enough to create much income. My suggestion would be to work out the bugs in SL to make it more user-friendly, then market it much more strongly than they've been doing.  Second Life is not just a game though, so they shouldn't market it as such. Neither is it ideal for social networking a la Facebook. It is an immersive virtual reality with some game aspects & some social networking aspects.

[PeterCanessa Oh]

It's not suprising.  The movement to mobile devices is inexorable and they need simple things designed from scratch since they're too low-powered for anything else.  LL, like any other business has to go where they expect to get most money.

SL has proved too difficult (in general):

1. For people to understand (not a big enough, paying, customer-base)
2. For businesses to use (corporate mentality can't cope with an environment where people don't drink cola)
3. For LL to implement (all the half-working, not-scalable functionality. *cough* marketplace *cough*)
4. For anyone to support (anecdotally, I have had little cause to contact them over the years and have had pretty good results when I have, despite being a basic account)

So it just isn't growing the way any company wants its revenue to.

Yes, we'd all like LL to work on 3 so 4 wasn't such an issue, which might address 1 and maybe even 2.  Unfortunately everything reduces to "Is this fashionable, does it use the latest techno-babble and it will it get me a better job?".  SL has passed its media-hype days so doesn't tick that box the way fancy telephones do at the moment.

(Now, when portable devices grow up enough to support 3D environments it'll be interesting ...)

[Amethyst Jetaime]

I for one am not interested in playing this type of game.  I have to agree about their attention (and resources) would be drawn away from Second Life. 

They should fix the problems that have been plaguing SL for years.  How many people do you know that have left Second Life, closed their stores, given up their sims or downgraded their land size or gave land up out of frustration?  I know a lot.  My own company used to own a number of sims where we rented land out, but we got rid of them all because they had problems that LL wouldn't fix after months and months of reporting and complaining about them.  All they did was tell us outright lies or blame it on anything they could think of OTHER than themselves. Why pay all that money for headaches?

They could make entry into SL easier - not by changing the viewer into some half-baked design that no experienced resident that I know likes. I'm sure residents could give them some valuable ideas of how to do this if they would listen.

They should also take a hard look at tier pricing.  If they lowered it significantly people would be much more willing to own it and they could make higher profits on volume.

In the end though, LL is a private company and not a democracy.  They will do what they want and time and again they have shown that they don't care what we think.

[Randall Ahren]

If Howard Roark in the Fountainhead had been a programmer rather than an architect, how do you think he would approach software development? If you're not familiar with the Fountainhead, Roark rises from an unknown architect who was kicked out of school for drawing outside of the lines. 

Do you think Roak would see the rise in mobile platforms and say let's get in on some 2D games? Do you think he would say Facebook is popular, let's copy some of their stuff? It's ludicrous.

Roark the programmer would code because it's in accordance with his vision. Economic success for Roark would an indicator of the rightness of his efforts, not the goal. The goal is insanely great software. Software that expands your consciousness. A UI so beautiful that it's breathtaking, that whispers to you, "use me". 

Philip Rosedale knew how to color outside the lines.

 

 

 

[Ishtara Rothschild]

While it's good to see that LL have realized that they are in the gaming business, I wish they would apply this insight here in SL. Or maybe start over with a Second Life 2.0 that uses a contemporary 3D engine and avoids all past mistakes before a competitor fills this niche.

Make it easier to create gaming environments within SL, emphasize the fun fun aspect of SL instead of trying to turn it into some sort of 3D Facebook, advertise aggressively, stop neglecting adult content (even IMVU advertises on porn sites these days), and find a way to make a portion of SL accessible for the smartphone and tablet market.

This new product gives the impression that LL is looking for alternative sources of revenue as the SL concurrency declines and the revenue slowly dries up. It's also not very reassuring that LL haven't hired any major talent after M's massive layoffs as far as I know (aside from Kim and Rodvik Linden, that is).

[Jenni Darkwatch]

I have to agree with Ishtara. LL seems to have little to no clue what SL _could_ be like. Floundering about kinda hits the nail on the head.

Too bad LL has no interest in listening to anything their customers say.

[Randall Ahren]

---

Ishtara Rothschild wrote:

While it's good to see that LL have realized that they are in the gaming business, I wish they would apply this insight here in SL. 

---

Are they really in the gaming business? When automobiles hit the market, most buggy whip manufacturers went bankrupt. A few didn't. They realized they weren't in the buggy whip manufacturing business, they were actually in the transportation business.

@Jenni, floundering about is also known as lack of vision.

[Anaiya Arnold]

"text adventure games"?!

Oh good grief!  Is Humble on smack?

[Deej Kasshiki]

It appears that the Lab has no clue...again.

I'd dearly love to be proven wrong but, I don't think I will be.

[Ishtara Rothschild]

---

Randall Ahren wrote:

---

Ishtara Rothschild wrote:

While it's good to see that LL have realized that they are in the gaming business, I wish they would apply this insight here in SL. 

---

Are they really in the gaming business? When automobiles hit the market, most buggy whip manufacturers went bankrupt. A few didn't. They realized they weren't in the buggy whip manufacturing business, they were actually in the

transportation business.

@Jenni, floundering about is also known as lack of vision.

---

How about entertainment business? I think LL's problem is that they always used to think of SL as serious business, not as entertainment without a deeper meaning or a world-changing purpose.

[Randall Ahren]

---

Ishtara Rothschild wrote:

How about entertainment business? I think LL's problem is that they always used to think of SL as serious business, not as entertainment without a deeper meaning or a world-changing purpose.

---

What about this statement attributed to Philip Rosedale: I'm not building a game. I'm building a new country.

That sounds like a world-changing purpose. Perhaps the thinking now is that it was too visionary, sort of like when Apple Computer brought in John Sculley to commoditize its computers like soft drinks and fired Steve Jobs.

[Ishtara Rothschild]

---

Randall Ahren wrote:

---

Ishtara Rothschild wrote:

How about entertainment business? I think LL's problem is that they always used to think of SL as serious business, not as entertainment without a deeper meaning or a world-changing purpose.

---

What about this statement attributed to Philip Rosedale:

I'm not building a game. I'm building a new country.

That sounds like a world-changing purpose. Perhaps the thinking now is that it was too visionary, sort of like when Apple Computer brought in John Sculley to commoditize its computers like soft drinks and fired Steve Jobs.

---

Philip is a salesman Just like Steve Jobs, who called the iPhone "a magical product". It's still just a piece of technology.

PS: If anybody builds a country, it is us, the residents. Look around SL and ask yourself how much of what you see was built by Philip Rosedale. Anyway, no matter how much we build, virtual worlds are still just entertaining computer simulations at this point. 

[Randall Ahren]

---

Ishtara Rothschild wrote:

Philip is a salesman

Just like Steve Jobs, who called the iPhone "a magical product". It's still just a piece of technology.

PS: If anybody builds a country, it is us, the residents. Look around SL and ask yourself how much of what you see was built by Philip Rosedale. Anyway, no matter how much we build, virtual worlds are still just entertaining computer simulations at this point. 

---

The iPhone is both a magical product and a piece of technology. See the third law of Arthur C. Clarkes three laws: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Concerning sales, some people sell what others have developed, and others develop the product that they sell. The first are quite common and the latter quite rare. Philip Rosedale and Steve Jobs are much than salesman, they are more in the nature of prophets.

I did not see in Philip Rosedale's statement that he personally was building a new country. He's the man that counts. It was his vision and energy that brought SL to life. It's not his job to do it personally. His job is to get other other people to do it. To enroll them in his vision and lead them to the promised land. Him without us; he would have got it done some other way. Us without him, no way.

 

[Knowl Paine]

My thoughts about the article,

His company?
Who are the familiar sources?
If the idea is Rod's; who gave the green light?
One source said? Name the source.
IDC couldn't be a better acronym for the International Data Corporation. I Don't Care what this private referencing company says about SL for profit.
The same EA that didn't want to pay programmers for their overtime?

The Author of the Article, seems to gleefully point out that LL rents server space and takes a portion of transactions from creators and hopefully LL can use that same model to generate revenue from game creators.

The Markets do not care how money is made. Making good games to attract new customers doesn't appear to be part of the profit model. Farming the farmers appears to be the model.

I planted a seed of corn and 3 investors arrived to sell the future speculation of my prospects.

I don't like it :matte-motes-frown:

 

 

 

 

[Ishtara Rothschild]

---

Randall Ahren wrote:

Concerning sales, some people sell what others have developed, and others develop the product that they sell. 

 

---

Content creators in SL do the latter. And like the article says, Linden Lab is in the business of doing the former:

"But Second Life does have the advantage of having experience in charging virtual world creators for renting server space and taking a cut of virtual transactions and may find a way to apply it to game creators."

LL is not a religious cult. They are quite sane and make their revenue by profiting of our ideas and our work. While the original vision behind SL was certainly grander, this is what it comes down to nowadays. It's all about money (at least in that regard SL has something in common with religion). Rod Humble has realized that this is LL's are of expertise and decided to create yet another development platform for the same purpose. 

[WADE1 Jya]

Why 2D text-based is apparently the focus? That sounds so 80s.... Mobile platforms are perfectly capable of running 3D games & even perfectly capable of running multi-player worlds like Second Life. There is also a big hole in this idea... would not any serious game developer prefer to launch their game directly to App Store? A pro game maker will see no need for this platform, so I can only imagine attracting amateurs. There is kind of an immediate skill drain situation on this.

Surely some people will pay to make simple games, so maybe this is a nice secondary revenue flow for the lab. The games (if they are all only 2d text) will not really be very marketable themselves. However, they could possibly build a small community of hardcore amateur game makers who all pay into the lab... a neat idea perhaps.

I sure hope Rodvik is still also working to get SL onto mobile devices too & this 2D thing is very much a minor side project.

[ralph Alderton]

If it's a multi-user 2d game platform with a marketplace where content creators can sell art assets, scripts etc and full 2D mobile games,, that might be interesting.

If it's a text based thing, pfft, I have no words to describe how I feel about that !

16k people a day are interested in Secondlife. Secondlife is a killer product. Linden Lab ALREADY have an astounding product. Shame LL are killing and preventing Secondlife's growth with painfully high tier costs

In the last year we've lost more islands and the concurrency is low and has been flat or falling all year, even with 16k attempeted sign ups a day  - something is seriously wrong

We have more interest in SL (16k a day ) yet less users, less sims, less concurrency. I wonder what the problem could be ???

Perhaps, and I am plucking a wild crazy idea out the air here, maybe, tier costs are too high.

[WADE1 Jya]

Ralph, I think current tier packages work great for the "hardcore" SL userbase, so why change it? What I like is this new premium private sandbox idea... this partly addresses the casual users need of more room to play. I hope this opens up more, perhaps with a huge non-premium public sandbox continent as well?

Casual users -- which is most new people -- need more room to play! Without a place to play... where do they put all the great houses, cars, pets, castles, spaceships, etc merchants provide? It's simple. They have no place here, so they don't purchase anything much.

This lack of room to play hurts merchant's potential bottom line, stopping casual users from purchasing SL content.

You don't need to abolish or cheapen the tier products, the expected flawless continual permanency (with associated customer service requirements) does carry higher operating costs for the lab. Complimenting existing tier products with some land offerings that appeal directly to the non-committal casual users is probably the way to go.

[Suella Ember]

Not wanting to pee on anyone's bonfire (LL could well still be working on something like this) but Rod himself has said that this is just press speculation and he's foud in quite amusing to watch!

https://twitter.com/#!/rodvik/status/117388201966047232

https://twitter.com/#!/rodvik/status/117389228563890176

[WADE1 Jya]

hehe thanks Suella LOL it did cross my mind this article could be based on quite speculative sources.

I mean, come on now...

2D....

textbased...

???

I should have known this article was BS.

[PeterCanessa Oh]

(not specifically @ Wade) Farmville is 2D.  Don't forget the great market of twit-face, fashion-accessory-electronics obsessed* consumers are almost completely uneducated in technology, even when it comes to 3D games, let alone virtual worlds.

That is, I'm assuming any techno-geek early-adopters for smartphones quickly moved to a more open platform than Apple (eg; Android) and that everyone who's serious has stopped pretending the tablet format is right for anything.  That leaves a mass-market of people willing to spend lots of money on their pretty toys with no idea what is 'good' and no real interest beyond what makes them look cool.

Altogether now: "It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue." and laugh all the way to the bank

[*eg; my daughter *sigh*]

[Madelaine McMasters]

---

Suella Ember wrote:

Not wanting to pee on anyone's bonfire (LL could well still be working on something like this) but Rod himself has said that this is just press speculation and he's foud in quite amusing to watch!

https://twitter.com/#!/rodvik/status/117388201966047232



https://twitter.com/#!/rodvik/status/117389228563890176



---

Suella, I'm glad you've found evidence LL may not be doing the wrong thing. Now I can return to waiting for evidence they're doing the right thing. Not that I have any idea what that is, mind you.

[Anaiya Arnold]

---

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

---

Suella Ember wrote:

Not wanting to pee on anyone's bonfire (LL could well still be working on something like this) but Rod himself has said that this is just press speculation and he's foud in quite amusing to watch!

https://twitter.com/#!/rodvik/status/117388201966047232



https://twitter.com/#!/rodvik/status/117389228563890176



---

Suella, I'm glad you've found evidence LL may not be doing the wrong thing. Now I can return to waiting for evidence they're doing the right thing. Not that I have any idea what that is, mind you.

---

Yes, it's always a good day when you can confirm that you cannot confirm that LL will definately be doing the wrong thing.