Category: Linden Lab

Linden Lab announces Creatorverse and Patterns

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update, October 9th, 2014: Linden Lab announced that development work on Patterns has been discontinued.

Updated February 19th, 2014: Linden Lab has discontinued Creatorverse, therefore link to its website have been removed.

Linden Lab has today announced the first two of its new products, Creatorverse and Patterns. coming after a year of speculation which started at SLCC-2011 in August last year when Rod Humble announced that the company would be diversifying its product stream,

Both of the new products  go some way towards revealing the directions in which the company is heading aside from the continued development of Second Life.

Creatorverse

Creatorverse is described as a “Simple, shared 2D creative space” which will be available on the iPad. The basic idea is that users create whatever they wish – pictures, puzzles, games, etc, and then place them in the creatorverse universe, where others can download them, add to them and re-share.

A Creatorverse screen shot (copyright Linden Lab)

As with in-world building in Second Life, Creatorverse appears to use simple and complex shapes which can be dragged and dropped into the application and combined to create more complex elements, forms and shapes which can in turn be animated. There is a website associated with the new product, and the Lab’s press release includes a video overview of the product, narrated by Rod Humble. It has been submitted to the Apple Appstore and should be available in the next few weeks.

Patterns

Patterns first came to prominence in July of this year,  when it appeared that the official Linden Research website was being prepared for a re-vamp (which has subsequently happened – see below). At the time, it wasn’t clear if “Patterns” was indeed a new product or simply a placeholder in a proposed new web design (interestingly, and in something of a repeat of events surrounding Linden lab’s “other” leaked product, dio, the images relating to the proposed site redesign vanished shortly after the news broke). The press release describes Patterns thus:

Patterns is a new 3D creative environment to explore and shape, where you can build large-scale structures that reach the sky, bridges that traverse chasms, and more, all while the pull of gravity challenges your construction techniques. Soon, we’ll share more details with a video trailer, and adventurous early adopters will be able to get the ‘genesis release’ (our first public build), help shape the development of Patterns by providing feedback and suggestions, and get their names added to the credits as founders.

While the Linden Research website adds:

Imagine a 3D universe of creativity… Explore caverns and valleys, while you harvest substances with real world densities. Build large scale structures that reach the sky or bridges that traverse chasms. Challenge real-world physics to see which creations will tumble — or withstand — the power of gravity.  It’s your universe to shape. Interestingly, and in difference to Creatorverse, there is no mention of any specific platform for Patterns. Whether this is indicative of it being available for platforms other than the iPad (the only platform mentioned in reference to Creatorverse) remains to be seen.

Revamped Corporate Website

Alongside the announcement, Linden Research have launched a new, much slicker, corporate website, which places equal emphasis on both Second Life and the two upcoming new releases – with plenty of room for further products to be added over time.

Part of the revamped Linden Research website

The website still includes an opportunity to sign-up for the company’s beta programme for new products, which I reported on at the start of the year thanks to a nudge from Daniel Voyager, although the sign-up page itself has also been given the once-over.

Initial Thoughts

While it is hard to judge either product from what is seen in this release and on the websites, it would appear that perhaps they are aimed at different age groups. Creatorverse in particular would seem at first glance to be the kind of activity that might find appeal amount younger people and could even be used as something as a learning tool to encourage children to interact with tablet devices (or at least (initially?)  the iPad). Certainly, it would seem to be something one could see parents and children playing with together. Obviously, a large part of this observation is based purely on the graphics shown within the screen captures and the video; the reality of the product might will be something else entirely.

Patterns appears – again on the basis of the screen shot and web text – to be somewhat more involved, and thus potentially aimed at an older audience. Both products certainly appear to build on concepts found within Second Life, such as building complex, potentially interactive creations using relatively primitive building blocks. As I’m not an iPad owner, I doubt I’ll get an opportunity to play with Creatorverse.

If for no other reason than this, I hope that Patterns will be more widely available for those of us who have not taken a bite from the Apple. And if it is intended for mobile use, I hope LL takes account of the fact that Android is increasingly enjoying the lion’s share of the mobile market. Nevertheless, the news is now out – and with at least one, if not two more products also in the offing, times are certainly about to get interesting when Linden Lab is concerned.

Bob Komin departs LL

Posted on by Inara Pey

As reported by Tateru Nino, Bob Komin, Chief Operating Officer / Chief Financial Officer and interim CEO of Linden Research has departed the company.

Komin joined the company in January 2010, and is widely seen as one of the most influential members of the company’s senior management team.

Bob Komin

His describes his initial remit within Linden Lab  as being to: “Lead development of [a] plan to re-focus strategy from three target markets to one and to greatly simplify operations and organization in Q2 2010 with [the] goal of returning [the company] to profitability and positive free cash flow in Q1 2011.”

This resulted in LL becoming profitable and cash flow positive each month from October 2010, “With >20% adjusted operating margin and >30% EBITDA”, and 2011 becoming the most profitable year with the highest cash generation in LL’s history at that time.

Komin was actually appointed COO/CFO in July 2010, at the same time being made interim CEO (following Mark Kingdon’s departure and around Philip Rosedale’s brief “return” to the company). He remained interim CEO until Rod Humble officially took over the role at the start of 2011, and Komin is regarded as instrumental in both the formation of a smaller, tighter management team within the company and for Humble’s own recruitment.

Rumours about his possible departure started circulating in June, “So I asked the Lab about it.” Tateru reports on her blog, “Got confirmation a few hours ago.” Tateru indicates that LL confirmed yesterday that Komin had departed the company, stating: “After more than two and a half years at Linden Lab, Bob Komin has moved on to pursue a new opportunity. Linden Lab is thankful for his contributions to the company, and we wish him all the best in his next endeavour.”

With thanks to Tateru Nino.

Related Links

Is “Patterns” the title of one of LL’s new products?

Posted on by Inara Pey

Not too long ago, Linden Lab committed a bit of a faux pas when they registered a new trademark – Dio – which was quickly linked to what appeared to be a beta site for a new product that had been inadvertently exposed on the web.

Something similar appeared to happen again earlier today. It started when Rocky Constantine dropped a link in a Tweet:

The link lead to a couple of images which appeared to show that the official Linden Research website is about to undergo a facelift. One of the images showed the revised page on which people can sign-up to participate in LL’s new product beta testing (which I covered here), and the other a snapshot of an updated home page.

The images themselves were credited to one Amber Xu, whose Behance and LinkedIn profiles reference her as working for Linden Lab.

Amber Xu’s Behance and LinkedIn profiles – note Linden Lab references

However, it was Botgirl Questi who noticed the really interesting thing about the home page image – a reference to something called “Patterns”, under the section entitled “Products”.

Linden Lab products: “Patterns” prominent to the left of Second Life

Now, the whole thing could be a hoax – but it seems unlikely; the images would appear to be a genuine re-working of LL’s rather bland corporate website. What’s more, almost as soon as people started Tweeting on the images, they were removed from Behance, in much the same way the Dio website was closed-off as soon as LL realised what had happened. Although the thumbnail of the main page remained on Amber Xu’s Behance pages for a while after the main images had been removed, it also now appears to have been pulled.

If the home page image is genuine, then it is interesting to speculate as to whether “Patterns” is a genuine name or a placeholder – although one suspects the former. It is also interesting to speculate as to where it might sit in relation to Dio and its associated website.

While “Patterns” and “Dio” may well be one in the same, it is worth pointing out a couple of things.

  • At the time the Dio Trademark and the leaked website hit the news, they were seen as being related to interactive fiction and thus linked to LL’s acquisition of Little Text People (LTP), owned by Emily Short and Richard Evans.
  • However, in response to speculation elsewhere related to the LTP acquisition and LL’s product development, Rod Humble did pass comment that LTP’s work was separate in nature to the work already under way on a product specifically aimed at content creation and what we come to refer to as “share creative spaces”.

The tagline for “Patterns”, Build something amazing in Patterns (I’m ignoring the rest as I confess to cringing when I read it) does suggest it is perhaps more aimed towards shared creative spaces than it is interactive fiction – which would suggest it is separate from anything Short and Evans are developing, although not necessarily divorced from the overall Dio brand.

It’ll be interesting to see if anything more comes of this. In the meantime, have fun speculating!

A closer view of the relevant section of the image

With thanks to Botgirl Questi for the use of the redesigned Linden Lab web page screen capture.

Dio: Linden Research register a trademark and put-up a beta site

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update 31st May: Tateru has provided the following update with feedback from Linden Lab on the new website: “The Dio staging/test server has now been closed off, and Linden Lab expresses thanks for the notice of the security issue. Linden Lab also adds that yes, it is not ready to talk about it in any detail other than that it will be something new and completely separate from and unrelated to Second Life and that it is not yet ready for public consumption.” As such, the links to the site given in this article no longer work. (With thanks to Tateru for permission to quote her update.)

Tateru has reported on a new trademark having been registered by Linden Research Inc. You can find the full details on her site, but the key point is that it is for an entirely new product – called Dio (which, among other things, Wikipedia points-out is the Italian name for “God”).

The name would appear to be connected to a new website, which has a rather interesting home-page:

New website

Any attempts to go further than this page leads to a log-in page with confidentiality statement (as identified initially by Miro Collas):

Log-in page

The metadata for the pages supplies a clue to their purpose: “Dio allows you to create and play user-created stories.” As such, it’s a reasonable to assume the website is connected to Linden Lab’s range of “new products”, first alluded to by Rod Humble at SLCC-2011. Details were vague then, but have become clearer thanks to various clues dropped by Humble himself and as a result of other goings-on, including:

Given the site links to a secure log-in, complete with confidentially statement also points towards it being connected to Linden Research’s call for product Beta Testers, initially made in March this year and which still appears to be open.

Call for Beta volunteers – opened March 2012

Speculation on the site is open to all – doubly so given, as Tateru points out, security is somewhat billoxed – allowing people to discern rather a lot, including URLs for image assets, one of which is rather novel to say the least, and another to what appears to be an Apple-related wallpaper. Others appear to be more “game / story” related.

One of the images gleaned via examination of the Dio site’s source-code

Commenting on Tateru’s article, Psyke Phaeton points out that site’s URL’s might be an oblique reference to Baron Bwimb of Ooze, the self-proclaimed baron of the Paraelemental Plane of Ooze, in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, and provides a link to  another webpage from the site, entitled “Baron’s Test Story”.

Speculation is bound to continue now the cat is out of the bag. Tateru is seeking further feedback from Linden Lab, and will update her article if / when any feedback is forthcoming. I’ll follow suit here, depending on the amount of information that is forthcoming. In the meantime, for more speculative analysis, keep an eye on her comments page.

With thanks to Tateru Nino, Miro Collas and Pyske Phaeton. Note that some of the image links given in this article may become unresolvable, depending on how the apparent security breaks in the Dio website are fixed.

Linden Research seek Beta testers

Posted on by Inara Pey

Daniel Voyager is once again on the ball, noting on Plurk that Linden Lab has put out a call for potential beta testers.

The opportunity is presented on the Lab’s official website home page:

Call for Beta volunteers

Clicking on the link will open a form requesting various information from you.

The form (click to enlarge)

Some have taken this to be about Second Life, and have questioned the need for LL to ask for information “they already have”. However, it should be clear from the form itself that the call is not specifically about Second Life, but rather about Linden Lab’s upcoming new products.

There is no guarantee that those submitting details will be accepted for any Beta trials of products, and there will clearly be more involved in the process than simply filling-out a form (NDAs almost certainly will be involved).

Even so, it’s an interesting step for the Lab to take, and suggests that at least one of their new products is reaching a point where it is ready to be seen by something of a larger audience. If this is the case, then it would suggest that Rod Humble will be a step closer to his goal of talking more openly about the products – something he was finding hard not to do in a recent interview with Games Industry, which I reported on earlier this month.

With thanks to Daniel Voyager

Seeking new horizons: Humble and Short talk new products and more

Posted on by Inara Pey

Games Industry today carries an interview with Rod Humble and Emily Short. Along the way, Humble discloses what drew him to Linden Lab in the first place.

Humble’s reasons for joining the company are enlightening – he’d actually forgotten about the platform and had been thinking of developing something along the same lines when the opportunity to join Linden Research popped-up. A nice example of serendipity in action.

Since joining Linden Research, Humble’s focus has been on the platform’s usability, which the article describes as being “far from perfect” – something many users would doubtless regard as an understatement. While there is still a good way to go in making things “better”, only the churlish would refuse to accept there haven’t been improvements in a number of areas, and that Linden Lab is working to get some deep-rooted issues – stability, performance, region crossings, even (dare I say it) the official Viewer – properly addressed.

There are also some comments that are liable to have users cringing in some quarters. Humble’s comments on gaming mechanics in particular may well offer little comfort to some as to the future of the platform. While SL may not itself be a game, it is a perfectly valid platform upon which users can develop games of their own if they so wish. Indeed, one might argue many have been doing precisely that almost since the platform entered open beta 10 years ago. That LL are now making the capabilities to do so easier to use is demonstration that the company is working meet user demands and provide more effective means by which the platform can be leveraged by users themselves.

As well as wanting to get issues around SL’s usability sorted out, Humble reveals that one of his overall goals would be to expand LL’s portfolio of products – to put the “Lab” back into “Linden Lab”. Reading this, one is tempted to wonder if this desire formed a part of his  pitch for the CEO position, and was thus one of the reasons he was hired. Thirteen years with just a single product is a remarkable achievement for any company – but it is also a precarious position to hold.

In terms of the acquisition of LittleTextPeople, it appears to be something of a natural symbiosis more than a straight buy-out: Humble / LL were working in a particular direction and at the end of last year it became apparent that Short and Evans were working towards the same destination. Thus, the acquisition was to their mutual advantage. It’s also interesting to note that the Humble / Short / Evans relationship is a lot deeper than the EA Games link between Humble and Evans many of pointed to when news of the acquisition broke.

As to the product itself, little is said in detail, but what is mentioned helps frame the product more clearly. It will be primarily text-based with 2D graphics. It will be a story form, but deal with social interactions – how people treat each other and what say to one another. Most intriguingly of all however, is that it appears the product will be capable of supporting user-generated content. “Although it will launch with some very, very well crafted content, the overall plan – just like all Linden lab products – is to democratise the actual creation process. Other people will be able to make things on that platform. That’s really the business we’re in: building platforms that allow people to express themselves in different ways.” Humble informs Games Industry when mentioning the product.

Of the other two products currently being developed at the Lab, even less is said other than the intimation they will also support user-generated content – although Humble did hint this would be the case when the development of new products was first announced at SLCC-2011. However, this is the first time we’ve had it directly confirmed that three products are currently in the pipeline. Again, Humble has only previously hinted at this in a comment on New World Notes, wherein he made reference to the LTP project being “Product 3”, and there being a “Product 2” under way at the Lab as well – although at the time, some did speculate as to whether “Product 1” was perhaps Second Life.

The interview isn’t going to satisfy everyone within the SL community, but for my part, I found it a worth-while read, not so much the for the titbits of information that emerge about the upcoming new products, but because it again shines a light on Rod Humble’s thought processes and some of his strategic thinking where both the company and SL are concerned. Given the company has been pretty quiet when it comes to talking to the community as a whole on such things, it’s refreshing to gain this kind of near-candid insight, and actually does help restore one’s faith that, overall, SL is in a safe pair of hands right now – a perception that has been slipping a little of late.

Obviously, the new tools being rolled-out / developed for SL and the new products themselves aren’t going to lift LL out of the perceived mire, and it fair to stay the company is facing further clouds on the horizon –  particularly around the stormy issue of tier. But taken as a whole, this is a positive piece and carries with it the promise that we may well be hearing a lot more from LL as whole in the coming months – and that in itself will be refreshing.

Don’t just take my word for it – go read the article, and don’t miss the side-bar piece as well.

With thanks to Daniel Voyager for the pointer.