Tag Archives: linden labs

Second Life developer Linden Labs has unveiled its next project, a colourful world-building game that sees players creating their own 3D play space. The developer has also revealed a trailer showing off the game’s building elements and universe. Watch it below.

More »

A massive rumor floating around the net today has Microsoft throwing its wallet at Linden Labs.

More »

This was a rather large week in MMOs as far as news went, and not all of it was Halloween related.

Past the break you will hear all about how Ultima Online is still going strong, get familiarized with the new patch for Aion, read up on Cryptic’s Blood Moon event via a dev chat, PvP henchmen and Guild Wars, Alganon’s delay, China’s ban on males playing females in games, and many other bits of stuff that didn’t hit the front page during the week.

Also, we hope everyone who plays MMOs enjoyed the Halloween and Fall festivities that their particular favorites hosted. Loads had celebrations, more than likely every single one of ‘em. If we forgot to mention your particular game, head on over to the list through the link ther and add it in the comments section so that we may give it its proper shout-out.

More »

Linden Labs has announced that Second Life users have logged over one billion hours in the game along with spending over one billion in-world money on game transactions.

Good Lord that’s loads of time and fake money.

Here are some more astounding numbers, courtesy of the press release posted after the break:

• Users around the world have spent more than one billion hours in Second Life which rounds out to around 115,000 years with user hours growing 33 percent year-over-year to an all-time high of 126 million in Q2 2009.
• Users spend an average of about 100 minutes in-world per visit.
• The equivalent of more than $1 billion has been transacted between Residents in Second Life, who purchase virtual goods and services from one another. The in-world economy grew 94 percent year-over-year from Q2 2008 to Q2 2009. Now at nearly $50 million each month in user-to-user transactions, the Second Life economy is on an annual run rate of more than a half billion US dollars, making Second Life the largest virtual economy in the industry.
• Residents create more than 250,000 new virtual goods every day. There are now more than 270 terabytes of content and this is growing by approximately 100 percent every year.
• More than 18 billion minutes of voice chat have been used since voice was introduced in 2007. Voice minutes grew 44 percent year-over-year from Q2 2008 to Q2 2009, and more than 6 billion minutes of voice have been delivered in 2009.
• 1,250 text-based messages are sent every second, and more than 600 million words are typed on an average day. Roughly 60 percent of active Second Life Residents are based outside of the US, representing more than 200 countries, and the Second Life Viewer is available in 10 languages.
• The total land area of Second Life is now equivalent to approximately 2 billion square meters – roughly the size of the state of Rhode Island. Land in Second Life has grown roughly 18 percent since Q1 2009 and approximately 75 percent since Q1 2008.

Holy hell.

More »

Loads of World of Warcraft stuff is coming out of BlizzCon 09, but you knew that already.

We also told you about the new CCP game Dust 514 this week thanks to GamesCom, but there is other stuff that went on in the world of MMOs as well.

The Avaline service is now available in Second Life, Warhammer Online is having it’s Wild Hunt Event, an Aion has revealed the Cleric class.

More is through the break.

More »

EA will host a panel on homophobia in videogame culture sponsored by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) this Saturday.

Joining Electronic Arts will be the Entertainment Software Association, GayGamer.net, Linden Labs, and Microsoft.

Discussions include how to best “provide safe spaces for LGBT people online”, “how to ensure the best policies are in place to prevent virtual attacks against LGBT people” and “how to educate the users of online communities about the effects of homophobia.”

The event is being held at EA’s Redwood Studios from 11am-1pm and is open to the public.

Via Shack.

Loads this week in MMO news, and some is more interesting than what we have been offered in previous weeks.

FussionFall is getting an expansion for its 5 million users, the EQI&II trademark rumors turned out to be new expansions, Star Wars will be on hand at Comic-Con, and Conan got a new update.

Also, Warhammer and LotRO are celebrating the summer with festivities to make things a bit more zany and fun.

Find out all about these and others after the break.

More »

Yes, we know. It’s not Sunday. It is, however, Monday, and that makes looking at all the MMO news from last week even more sensible.

We think so, anyway. Read on.

More »

Yes, we know this should have gone up yesterday. We were so busy with GDC last week that we almost forgot to do it, but how could we live with ourselves if you didn’t get your weekly MMO news update?

We couldn’t. Loads going on with all of your favorites last week, so hit the link.

More »

According to this Variety report, Gore Verbinsky’s signed on to direct a movie based on the exploits of a Second Life player.

The film is to be based on a Wall Street Journal article about the MMO and its detrimental impact on the real lives of players.

The article by Alexandra Alter focuses on a married man who spends as many as 20 hours a day on a computer, existing through an avatar who is a thriving, musclebound entrepreneur. In reality, he is a diabetic, chain-smoking 53-year-old.

Linden Labs will be pleased.

More through there.

According to this, Second Life company Linden Labs is having a staffing day in Brighton, UK on March 15-16. The outfit has 33 classes of job open at the moment, so if you’re in line for a move and you fancy living in Brighton or San Francisco for a bit, take a look.