Tags
ebbe altberg, ebbe linden, engadget, future, interview, SL2, virtual reality
Today Ebbe Altberg (AKA Ebbe Linden, CEO of Linden Lab) took part in a chat at the Engadget Expand 2014 event in New York.
It was a short interview, but interesting to see.
Ebbe did a good job of representing Second Life, within moments of being allowed to speak he managed to make sure that the public was brought up to date and possibly had some of their preconceptions challenged.
He mentioned that Second Life has been around for 11 years, is still going strong, is the biggest most successful virtual world ever created and that it is being used for education, entertainment, art, and more.
Universities use it, everything you see has been created by regular users, etc.
This is of course all obvious to us regular users but I think that it is always good to tell people these things, especially people who have not tried Second Life or have not heard anything about it since some dodgy stories with bad screenshots in 2007.
He also mentioned that they are working on a ‘Next generation Virtual world’ that will take off ‘way beyond’ what Second Life can do today when it comes to avatar, communication, graphics and physics capabilities.
He says that all this will take quite a while but “High end users” will be invited to come try testing it in the middle of next year.
Ebbe also talked about the massive economy of Second Life, that a million dollars a week is being cashed out and that a lot of people make a living out of what they do in Second Life.
Again, not news to us, but these are all things that make people pay attention and realise that Second Life is not just still around but actually a pretty interesting party in the VR business at the moment.
In short I think Ebbe did a pretty good job of representing Second Life at this opportunity.
You can see the full video here.
