(2022-01-14) SecondLife Founder Returns To Revamp His Original Metaverse

Second Life founder returns to revamp his original metaverse. Some of us were literally living in virtual spaces with virtual currency and virtual storefronts nearly 20 years ago. The virtual place many people went back then was Second Life. Philip Rosedale, Second Life's founder, has decided to task a core team to work on evolving Second Life now that the metaverse has become a buzzword yet again

In 2019, Rosedale published a goodbye of sorts to VR ((2019-12-09) Rosedale Requiem For The HMD), stating that VR hadn't reached a form that was good enough for most people to want to use. Talking with him over Google Meet in 2022, he still feels that way, calling VR headsets a blindfold to the real world that only some people feel comfortable enough to use

Rosedale thinks VR headsets could hit an iPhone moment, but maybe not for another few years. In the meantime, he's shifting focus to a metaverse platform that doesn't require headsets: namely, Second Life. He isn't the only person to feel this way: Even VR/AR software companies like Spatial have recently pivoted away from VR headsets as a way to reach more people.

Rosedale is going to be a "strategic adviser" for Second Life, while his company High Fidelity looks to infuse Second Life with some new ideas, simultaneously working on other ideas for future tech, including – at some point – VR again. "We're announcing that we've shifted a group of seven people, some patents, some money. We're investing in Second Life, to keep working on Second Life,"

The reason for the shift is that Second Life still makes money and still has a considerably larger community than most VR platforms: It's had over 73 million accounts created since it launched, and estimates of active users hover around 900,000. Rosedale sees the shift as solving problems while VR hardware still gets thought out.

Rosedale wants Second Life to be even more decentralized, but says it's a delicate balance to get right.

more advanced avatar animations using facial tracking with cameras: "Using the webcam to animate an avatar, that's a really interesting in-between," he says.

Rosedale is also considering how Second Life could eventually work on mobile phones, perhaps.

As far as Second Life embracing new-metaverse ideas like NFTs and some sort of interoperable content, Rosedale remains skeptical.

We have to answer the question, why would I be there? Why am I using that space? We've got to get to that."