On Monday 31st January there was a special pre-recorded edition of Lab Gab with Brad Oberwager and Philip Rosedale hosted by Strawberry Linden which aired from 9am SLT to 10am SLT. Already there has been over 1, 700 views on the Second Life YouTube video (shown above) and there has been some positive comment feedback. Over 300 questions were submitted for this special Lab Gab interview. It’s a really awesome interview with useful information about the future of High Fidelity and Second Life.
Here is a brief summary of the main talking points…
- Brad views Philip as the “moral compass” of the metaverse right now and that he thinks that Philip has established himself over the years to making things better.
- Philip says there is a small team at High Fidelity and that they are doing a great job selling spatial audio technology (like clubhouse). Philip new role as “strategic adviser” at Second Life means he is not responsible for day to day decision making but he has meetings with the team with different groups inside the company when they would like help or ideas. Philip is an engineer and a product strategist. Philip will be continuing in a more direct way to be a compass for decisions the lab makes.
- Philip and Brad met while boat sailing around the bay and they started talking about Linden Lab/Second Life (chatting about selling Second Life).
- Philip had a lot of concerns when he left as CEO of Linden Lab he wondered if he managed the company correctly. Since the return Philip says it’s nice to come back and not feel any stress. Philip says Second Life is constantly transforming itself and it’s changing all the time.
- Philip briefly talks about Meta on some of the risks that are out there.
- Philip said that there was 500 media articles written about Second Life every day back in 2005/2006. Most of them were on paper in those days and now it’s a like an “incredibly powerful moment for all of us in the world”.
- Brad has now been a co-owner for a year now since he stepped in at the lab. Brad says “Second Life operates so much more closely to the physical world than people think in reality”.
- Philip says that “we are the original crypto and we were the original nfts”. Brad says there are no plans for crypto, web 3 and nfts.
- Will Second Life ever have VR capabilities ? Brad: can’t do it basically / Philip: There are Second Life viewers that have VR capabilities and he says that “we shouldn’t do anything with VR in a mainstream way” for at least five years. He thinks that desktop and mobile experiences will continue to dominate what social virtual worlds mean for at least the next five years.
- What’s next for Second Life in 2022 and beyond ? Brad wants to continue to see “consistent improvement in the experience, the engagement and the number of residents as a metric for how well things are going”.
- Philip wants “more and more expressive avatars are necessary to get a larger number of people to participate in virtual worlds”. The other thing is “how many people can be in one place at one time?” and he says Second Life is the leader. Virtual worlds on smartphones: Philip says “if virtual worlds are to serve you know billions of people it’ll have to involve smartphones in some fashion”.
- And there is more!
What are your views on what Philip and Brad said from this interview ? Please share in comments.
Daniel Voyager 