You read the optimistic view of Second Life's future from a top SL brand owner, now here's a necessary counterpoint from longtime reader Luther Weymann, a retired technology industry veteran who last ran a company with 1000 employees, and is an eloquent supporter of SL's creative power. Despite his love for the virtual world, his view as an experienced tech exec is quite bleak:
The software that runs SL cannot be radically changed or updated, too much will break and the time it takes to fix massive changes only results in more problems. This is the inherent problem with very old software that a lot of people have worked on and the code is now very difficult. Happens to many legacy software that never gets a full rewrite every four or so years to stay competitive.
SL is not a growth business and any review of the user base will tell a good business person that diluting their investment so they can raise the capital to rewrite a new SL from scratch for use by the current user base is not good business. It's better to take the current profit and don't rock the boat.
That in mind, here's the scenario for SL that Luther sees coming down the road:
The thing that will probably happen is this.
Eventually, the investment company will tire of their SL investment. SL will be sold again. Only this time to a company that needs a slow loss company they can use for tax advantages.
Once that slow loss can't be written off anymore, SL will be shut down like so many other tech and software companies that have followed this path have.
If this new company is really disenfranchised from us SL users that shutdown could be abrupt because we don't own anything we have uploaded. And abrupt could be without notice and no more logins ever with one press release and no comment ever again.
That type of shutdown. SL will fail eventually and none of us have any insight into the financials so we won't see it coming. Your World, Your Imagination will someday end and that ending is currently in motion.
I actually disagree with those last couple predictions (while they are certainly possible). After all, Active Worlds is still running, and it's been around since 1995.
But his prediction of SL getting sold off again is quite likely: After all, that's what happened to Ultima Online–once owned by Electronic Arts, then sold to Myth Entertainment, and now owned by something called Broadsword. But it's another world that's still alive despite its inception in the 90s!
In all three cases, I think sunsetting virtual worlds only die when too much of their dedicated user base literally dies in the real world. And with 75% of the Second Life userbase being under 45 (according to SimilarWeb), we probably won't see that process obtain for decades to come.
The real tragedy? Second Life can still be revived with a re-branding campaign and an aggressive push to mobile. But both of those efforts would costs millions of dollars. And it's unclear whether SL's new owners want to spend that kind of money in search of new customers — or as is more likely, mainly focus on serving and profiting off its existing userbase for decades to come.
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 
Leave a comment