As Linden Lab CEO, Rod Humble has made an impression in his first few months. He very much needed to given the challenges faced, but I’m actually encouraged by the wider view he seems to be taking on the impact virtual environments can have on all of us. Speaking at what I’m assuming is a recent event , Humble covered a fairly wide gamut on games, games as art-forms and the concept of eventual computer-generated art via games. A specific point made fell around the huge progress the games industry has made, effectively entering ‘The Promised Land’, but that perhaps this was holding progress and/or serious questioning of games outcomes back.
Have a read through for yourself and then have your say in comments. His perspective on free will is enough to start a gargantuan discussion thread, let alone the other issues addressed.
Overall, Humble’s thoughts are a deeper perspective than one traditionally expects from a CEO and it’s a welcome change. That said, applying that broad mindset to the specific challenges Linden Lab faces is the real test of mettle to come. Initial indications are favourable but there’s a long way to go yet.
Second Life, to me, was never a “Game”, but a social network with added graphics. not everyone agrees with this and it does depend on which islands people visit most often… but for me Second Life was about logging in and meeting people, if all it had been about was point scoring and killing things then I would never have bothered with it at all.
For sure “Second Life being a game” wasn’t the point of this article. Try actually reading that post on Gamasutra. It’s very interesting. It’s not about point scoring and killing things.
Thanks for the link and kind words! Yes it was last week. My hunch, which I lightly touched on after the talk is that creativity tools are a solution to many of these issue. It is part of the reason I joined Linden lab.
Thanks for the clarification Rod (and Corcosman on Twitter) for clarifying recency of the comments. Looking forward to what’s next.