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Hope, Anxiety & Virtual Worlds

Linden Lab® Founder and Chairman of the Board Philip Rosedale engages in a broad-ranging discussion on the hopes that virtual worlds can fulfill in these anxious times. He shares his views on how Second Life’s economy is faring in the wake of real-world crises and OpenSpace pricing changes, why enterprises are flocking to Second Life®, and why Second Life residents both hope for and fear change.

Early Days References

Metanomics’ Production Assistant Molly Klug (Beryl Greenacre and Enigma Bombay inSL) explains: “I have a great pic of Philip from December 2003. He was standing in the Welcome Area at Ahern, explaining to a group of angry residents the ins-and-outs of the 1.2 client, which included the changes to the economy which allowed residents to put REAL money in and out of the SL economy.”

“Prior to January 2004, all money in SL was just ‘play money.’ There was no fluidity between real life US$s and L$s. Part of the new client and TOS for SL in 2004 was to specifically allow SL residents to buy and sell L$s on a market sort of set up, the first being Gaming Open Market (which is now defunct). This was a huge deal because no other virtual world was allowing this at the time.”

“Oh, Lindens were in-world at that time, trying to calm people down; everyone was panicked and acting like SL would get crazy and become very commercialized. You have to remember that, at that time, the Lindens walked amongst us “little people” much more freely, and it wasn’t that big a deal to run into Philip ‘on the street’ in Second Life.”

Guest Biographies

Philip Rosedale

Philip Rosedale founded San Francisco-based Linden Lab in 1999, and has led the creation of the virtual world of Second Life from initial concept to a market-leading virtual world, with a robust economy and a global population. As a pioneer in the virtual world industry, Rosedale is actively involved in the strategy, development and design of Linden Lab’s products, including the world of Second Life and the Second Life Grid platform. Rosedale is known for his entrepreneurial approach to new technologies, starting a network software company when he was 17. In 1995 he created an innovative internet video conferencing product, which was later acquired by RealNetworks, where he went on to become Vice President and CTO. In 1999, the advent of consumer broadband and better PC 3D graphics inspired Rosedale to leave RealNetworks and found Linden Lab, pursuing his lifelong dream of creating an internet scale virtual world. Rosedale holds a BS degree in Physics from the University of California at San Diego.