![]() ![]() I felt like I had walked in on someone in real life during an intimate moment. With an also-naked zebra woman straddling him. Suddenly, I’ve landed next to a couch upon which he's spread eagle, naked. Then I realized I should've asked before doing so. First, I located him on the map, and teleported directly to him. So, the next day, I hop into Second Life to wrap up the details. His response was pretty laid back and I told him I’d be in touch to get more details on where to send the T-shirt and take his picture to put up on the website. He looked kind of like Tony the Tiger: He had a tiger face, and tiger stripes. ![]() In one of the first interactions I had with Second Life as an employee, I had to go into Second Life and let this resident know that he had a won a contest - a T-shirt and some other prizes. Which in turn allowed us an insight into what the Residents wanted and what the product needed. There were rules to keep peace and to keep people in check in Second Life, but Resident/Linden interaction was highly encouraged. This truly set the foundation that turned SL into arguably the most powerful creative/social medium in the world. SL offered plug-and-play social interaction, which opened the possibilities for people who previously would have avoid socializing.ĭuring the "golden age" we had the freedom as a company to rapidly innovate on the platform, and on our marketing approach. Sometimes, it was because of physical limitations or crippling social anxiety, and sometimes it was just simple introversion. One of the things that I thought was great about Second Life is it appealed to many people who normally would not feel comfortable in a social situation. Although I behaved the same on either account, people seemed drawn to the "Linden" name. I was careful not to share with those friends when I started at Linden - I was interested to see how the two identities played out. Having been in SL before becoming a Linden, I had friends I'd hang out with, build stuff with, chat with. At first it was very strange, always being on display. In the early days, residents would stop whatever they were doing to gravitate towards you, like you were a celebrity, or in some cases even a god. For an average guy to be thrown into an experience like this, it was pretty wild. And when employees were in Second Life, it meant instant rock star status. In Second Life, all Linden employees have the last name "Linden." No one else has that last name it's solely intended to identify employees of Linden Lab. There were rough edges, of course, but it was an inspiring and attractive opportunity. I was still an unapologetic fanboy and saw enormous potential in the product as a creative and communication medium. The stuff we got away with still makes me smile.ĭuring the first few months of my employment I would spend a lot of personal time in SL. I was the only marketing creative and my job consisted of everything from redesigning the Second Life homepage to capturing all the marketing images and plotting scrappy-startup-style guerilla marketing efforts with my boss. Within a month or so, I was working for Linden Lab.Īt first, there were only about 20 to 30 people at the company. I went home and immediately started messing around with it. My friend and I decided to bail on the rest of the conference and check this "game" out. My friend and I barraged him with questions: "Can you build stuff? Can you make stuff? Can you blow stuff up?” He said yes to just about every question we had. His initial description sounded like the Metaverse from Snow Crash. ![]() While taking a break in the lobby, a guy was handing out discs for this "game" called Second Life. He was graduating college and wanted to get into computer games, animation and graphics. I first heard about Second Life when I took a friend to a job fair in early 2004. We talked to this worker about what it was like during the “golden age” of Linden Lab, when going to work meant logging on to a virtual world and flying around an alternate universe. For a little while, it seemed that there was no limit to possibilities of the animated, avatar-filled world: Reuters opened a news bureau there ( shuttered in 2008) over a million people signed up a huge economy of virtual goods was established. From 2004 to 2010, this design lead worked on the marketing team for Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, the virtual world that became popular in the mid-2000s. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |