This is my message going out around the world for all whiners, which are enjoying their little game nowadays being called „Linden Lab is going to die so soon that we are not going to be aware about it!“, so read my lips, for god’s sake, once and for all: stop whining and stop acting like a bunch of frightened chickens! Use your brains, goddamnit, that’s what it was made being made for!
Actually, yes statistics look all dull and such, for example when you read this nifty post at New World Notes and much, much more. Actually at least around every third post at NWN is about Second Life, how it is declining, how it should turn around and such. BARF, you see the big picture in there? Even better, giving Linden Lab always nice sounding but ill fated advices like which do not get into more specifics „Make bold changes!“ or „Lower the tiers, pretty pleaseeeeeee!“ and so on and on. Frankly this is getting on my nerves more and more, the more I read about it.
Do you really think that Linden Lab’s management is just a bunch of morons not being aware of the big shift happening in Second Life at the moment? Well, truth to be told it seems like that. Even M Linden way back then when he was in charge recognized that Linden Lab needs new areas to expand to and tried to get a grip into the corporate market. Well he failed, we all know that, but even he recognized back then the necessity of expanding business and conquering new fields of business.
So all you whiners are neglecting some important points when always whining about the decline of Second Life, as are as follows:
- Why the heck should care Linden Lab about you little wussies and tell you – yes YOU – what they are going to do to remedy that situation? I mean, we are talking about a multi-million-dollar company, which is still being backed up by some very well stacked investors and why should they tell stuff like that before they have decided upon that and are ready for showtime, when all they are going to get from you is again bad publicity and more ill fated advices? Also don’t forget that Linden Lab is still making profit, sort of and they do not have to tell you how much since they are a private held corporation.
- Linden Lab under the reign of Rod Humble has been working on a new product or which would be even better on a new line of products. First signs about what this product/those products might be are already emerging. New products are good to nurture Second Life, to gain more profit and such, but why the heck should Linden Lab tell you about what those products might be until it is done and those are ready to hit the market? I for one only know and recognize that Rod Humble is a gaming industry veteran who did more right than wrong overall in his career so far and I have faith in him (until proven otherwise) that his ideas and product(s) are not going to be a big disaster like Second Life Enterprise used to be.
- Statistics is mostly about making prognoses about stuff going to happen in the future if nothing changes at all, and guess what: of course the management of Linden Lab is being aware of those statistics. Heck, they even got better statistics than Tyche Shepherd and other sources, because they run that company and have direct access to all kind of numbers imaginable. But statistics are about prognoses, they must not come true if something radically changes and are describing trends. So what for example if Linden Lab comes up with a new kind of land or shredders prim based economy and replaces it with something else? Then you got to make new prognoses. Also those statistics are only covering up land development, but Linden Lab is also about much more nowadays than just that.
- Stop pretending that Linden Lab only generates income from land tiers. While those are still the biggest source, though, there are other sources too like premium accounts, sales on the LindeX and the Market Place for example.
- And finally you need to realize that even if Second Life would shrink for a while it doesn’t matter too much as long as the company is still being profitable and making profits.
So, please please pleaaaase stop whining about some untold future and use your brains for a while. Second Life is not going to vanish so easily like some fearmongers of the blogosphere are proclaiming nowadays, Linden Lab realized the shift and is working on new products. Just give them time and wait, we got Rod nowadays running mostly in cleaning up the mess his predecessors made and what the future holds we are going to see. But of course even one Rod cannot work wonders, he needs to make small steps, one after the other.