[MUD-Dev] SW:G

[Amanda Walker]

On Tuesday, September 9, 2003, at 06:50  PM, Matt Mihaly wrote:

> Any idea how well or poorly Second Life and There are doing, btw?

They are both small by "blockbuster game" standards.  Second Life
lost a bunch of people when they started charging, but it still
seems healthy enough.  There isn't charging yet except for in-game
toys, but those toys seem to be in demand.  Both companies clearly
have cash flowing in, though I don't know what their overall balance
sheets look like.

As far as fun, they are both quite fun from my perspective.  There
got a bunch of refugees from the Sims Online, and Second Life got a
bunch from There.  Both are working out how to cope with the grief
potential of player-generated content, though they are taking very
different approaches, which is good--it's a tough balance to find.

There's chat features are almost startingly far above average,
though biased heavily towards flirting (that being the general
theme: "Tiki Hut Beach Party").  Second Life I find very interesting
because they're taking an approach I've advocated for some time:
treating the client like a streaming media player with a really
complex codec.  I get to see how well it works without having to
write a test implementation myself, which is worth $15/mo while I
experiment.

> That'd be interesting though I wouldn't want anyone and his
> brother able to spy on me.

Why not, at least in areas that are not otherwise access-controlled
(housing, quest areas, etc.)?

Amanda Walker
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