

It is unlikely that Rosedale, like Meta, will focus more on virtual reality in Second Life. In addition to his wealth of experience, he brings a small group of developers, several patents, and an unspecified financial stake through his own company, High Fidelity. “Virtual worlds don’t have to be dystopias,”, he says. Second Life, on the other hand, is a “positive, enriching experience for its inhabitants,” has room for millions more users, and has a “thriving subscription business”, according to Rosedale. “Big Tech giving away VR headsets and building a metaverse on their ad-driven, behavior-modification platforms isn’t going to create a magical, single digital utopia for everyone.” “No one has come close to building a virtual world like Second Life,” says Rosedale in a prepared statement. “I think there’s a real existential risk from the way it’s being implemented,” Rosedale tells the Wall Street Journal.

Rosedale cites what he sees as the critical advertising business model of corporations such as Meta, which is expected to prove even more damaging in the Metaverse context, as the motivation for his return. Upcoming upgrades to the digital world should focus on social and economic components.
SECOND LIFE VR FREE
It’s all about videos, photos, short messages – not encounters between avatars in an expansive digital parallel world.īradford Oberwager, chairman of Second Life parent company Linden Research, wants to give Second Life a new lease on life with the help of Rosedale. Official Site Second Life - Virtual Worlds, Virtual Reality, VR, Avatars, and Free 3D Chat. Today we know that things turned out differently: Second Life still exists, but our everyday lives are dominated by easy-to-use social media services on our smartphones. When the Second Life craze reached its peak around 2007, co-inventor Philip Rosedale, among others, was already proclaiming the metaverse age: “The 3D Web will quickly become established and everyone will have an avatar,” Rosedale said at the time. The fact that Second Life is often considered a failure is probably due to overly ambitious expectations. Off to the Metaverse: All good things come in threes? The Second Life marketplace is said to offer more than two billion user-generated goods and eight million unique goods. According to current statistics, tens of thousands of them are still active every month.Īccording to Linden Lab, Second Life, in its 19th year since go-live, has just had “one of its strongest years ever.” The company speaks of “a growing user base and a booming economy that has an annual GDP of $650 million with 345 million transactions of virtual goods, properties, and services.” Wrongly so, if you look at the numbers: According to Brett Linden, head of marketing at the development studio Linden Lab, the Metaverse pioneer has more than 70 million registered users.
