back to article Sadville founder lays off 30% of staff

It's a particularly sad day in Sadville. Linden Lab, the startup that founded Sadville, has laid off 30 per cent of its staff. According to the company, this is part of its effort to move Sadville into the web browser and out of its downloadable client. "Today's announcement about our reorganization will help us make Second …

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  1. Dave 52
    Unhappy

    Who the hell names something "sadville"

    I get depressed just reading that word silently in my head.

    1. Thecowking

      Well...

      If you know the concept behind second life, you'll agree it is pretty damn sad.

      1. Chris 3
        Unhappy

        Nothing intrinsically sad about it.

        Hmmm, I've never got into Second Life, but to me the idea of attempting to build an open virtual world where any user can create scriptable interactive objects always seemed rather innovative and interesting. Sitting down and scripting, say a firework display or whatever seems to be like a creative coding challenge. Just because a proportion of the users end up using it for cybersex, or whatever doesn't make it intrinsically sad.

        El Reg is splendid in many ways, but sometimes it does just seem to enjoy putting the boot into people with unusual enthusiasms, see Wikipedia ibid.

    2. Winkypop Silver badge
      Happy

      You're new arond here?

      Perhaps

    3. Neoc

      Re: Sadville

      New here, are you?

      For the record, "Sadville" is El Reg's nickname for Linden's "Second Life" virtual reality product.

      1. Apocalypse Later

        You want sad?

        A friend who I introduced to Second Life has just had a heart attack, future prognosis not encouraging. She has no energy and any real life exertion is life threatening. So now she spends most of her day on second life, where she can take part in many activities now denied her in the real world.

      2. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

        Re: Sadville

        Actually, I'm not quite sure that "sad" in "Sadville" stands for "sad" and not for "sado"...

      3. Gav
        Thumb Down

        dumb in-joke nicknames

        Here's a crazy idea; get more readers on your news website by calling organisations/products/people by the name people may actually know them by, rather than some dumb in-joke nickname that leaves them mystified.

        Sorry for this rant, but it's happening more and more on The Register and it's getting annoying. In this particular example I started off by guessing it was talking about "Farmville". It would be nice to have an idea what's being discussed from the start of the article.

        If you want to run a clique club that's only understood by those who can be bothered keeping up with the secret code then you're doing just fine.

        1. Oliver 7

          Fine!

          Fuck off then!

          [/flame]

          1. Thomas 4
            Troll

            @Gav - A shame

            With a little more profanity and a little less English, this could have been a small but perfectly servicable FotW. Next you'll be asking Lewis to stop the development of the laser-equipped shark, Lester to stop doing things with Playmobil that would get other people arrested, or Mr Orlowski to open up the comments section on his articles.

            1. Andrew Orlowski (Written by Reg staff)

              @Thomas 4

              For someone with over 100 comments to his name, you sure don't pay much attention.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Second Life

    "...make Second Life more accessible and relevant to a wider population"

    More relevant? Relevant to what exactly?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    From a Sadette now going to the Pub

    Its true, having a resident/ builder of Secondlife for the last 3 years. All the starting employees are being shown the door as the company under the guide of the New CEO changes its focus to enhance monitory gains from web2.oreah. In the mean time all the content creators that made SL what it is today in forms of scripting, 3D Art and design, clothing and texture work are generally ignored.

    On the plus side , I have met many interesting folks from around the world, travelled to meet them and visit their country.

    Secondlife is not the only virtual world environment available, There are many secondry grids gaining members such as Reaction Grid, Openlife & Blue Mars ( mostly alot more inexpensive than Secondlife). These newish grids are in various forms of Beta, Alpha or "we just dont care" forms of development. Who knows perhaps they may provide future employment for the unemployed Devs.

  4. This post has been deleted by its author

  5. LPF

    Been reading El Reg for years

    and I never new about the Sadville acroymn , had to google it!

    if thats the best they could come up with :S

  6. This post has been deleted by its author

  7. Rob
    Happy

    Please, please, please...

    ... carry on reporting the demise of his utterly useless and 'sad' product, it's mere exsistence annoys me.

    (Plus I can gloat to some friends that my predications were bang on, Linden fck'd their marketing up right from the start)

  8. Elmer Phud

    Virtual toilet pan being flushed?

    "reorganization will help us make Second Life even simpler, more enjoyable, relevant, and engaging for consumers starting with their first experience"

    Yeah, right.

    'We are currently travelling along Shit Creek in a canoe we bought in Sadville - the seller supplied it without paddles. We hope this new Lite version will entice punters in now the sharks have buggered off to make iApps and Sadville has incorporated tumbleweed'

  9. Desktop Mobile
    Happy

    Alternatives

    Being Charitable to Dave52 he may just not like the term even if it a nickname.

    Maybe we could have a new one before they go the way of most business that actually don't do anything...

    How about "No Life" or "wasted life"

  10. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

    I thought it was a virtual reality of Depression U.S. or of Communist East Germany,

    you know the sort of thing. And of course it could be. If you want.

    For a while somebody at the BBC News web site was very enthusiastic about Second Life. There were lots of reports about vconferences and concerts held there (pardon?) Fewer lately.

    I think that things like Animal Crossing, and, yes, social computer-networking in your physical life compete adversely with 2L, if anyone calls it that.

    I assume that the BBC Three station ident animations either were filmed there or else give you an idea of what it looks like, is that right or is it more normal?

    I also am thinking about something called "Masters of the Metropolis", but that may not be relevant.

    1. Jerome 0

      Media

      "For a while somebody at the BBC News web site was very enthusiastic about Second Life."

      For a while the entire media was very enthusiastic about Second Life. Then one day they suddenly realised it didn't live up the hype, and never mentioned it again. It's the same fate that awaits Twitter one day soon.

      It's not that there's anything wrong with SL or Twitter. They're both perfectly useful / fun services to those that like that sort of thing. It's just incredibly irritating when the media over-hypes something to such a ridiculous extent.

      1. M Gale
        Badgers

        "It's just incredibly irritating when the media over-hypes something to such a ridiculous extent."

        Hello, ipad.

        Oh lawd, imma gonna get downvoted for that. Oh well, I have karma to burn.

        Hang on, this isn't /.

  11. Subtilior

    Obviously

    There is no joy in Sadville

    For mighty Linden has struck them off

    1. Dave Bell

      OK, that reference I got.

      You are struggling with the scansion.

  12. Giddy Kipper
    WTF?

    @Gav, LPF

    It's just occurred to me that you two aren't kidding. For your information, may I advise you that the egress (or 'an egress'), often nicknamed 'the exit' or more popularly 'the door', can be found thataway - *points*

    You are the leakest winks. Goodbye.

  13. Gumby1
    Heart

    Grr lag

    Just popped back to remove the double post . (Gumby) back from the Pub

  14. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    Open-ended environment and staff cuts

    @Dave 52, Who the hell names something "sadville"? The Register, because it was at one point used almost exclusively for gambling and pornography (well, just like the wider internet, I suppose.. but it seemed I guess sadder to have an open-ended virtual reality system and find it was STILL used mainly for that). (Note the gambling has been banned for a while) A lot of it was (and I'm sure is) just empty islands, malls, night clubs, etc., since anyone could buy land and build whatever they wanted, and there was a lot more space then people to use it. Linden Labs calls it "Second Life". It's like how they call the Itanium the Itanic.

    To be honest SecondLife is quite innovative, being completely open ended. There's plenty of online MMORPGS and such, but in them there's a canned list of items and that's what you can get -- in SecondLife, any user can create new items and many do, they can create buildings, via scripting they can give items behavior, and the Havok phyisics engine is incorporated. One illustrative example, lets say a gun (note I don't think they are that common in SecondLife but...). It's not "a weapon that does 20 damage" like it would be in most online environments (that have weapons)... no.. it's basically a tube that a projectile shoots out of at high speed. And clubs that ban guns, they have a detector to detect objects capable of flinging high speed projectiles (since it's open-ended it can't just look "gun" up on an item list), and warn the user and teleport them out. (Note, it's up to the land owner to allow injuries or not, but even without injuries it's annoying to get shot since you'll be pushed back a bit by the bullet.)

    Anyway.. what doubletalk and lies from that spokesmen.. canning people may have been a necessity to be able to afford to pay everyone, but making it sound like cutting people will help SecondLife onto the browser and such is ridiculous -- the only thing it helped is the cash flow situation.

  15. Daniel B.
    Unhappy

    Banning stuff = fail.

    The problem with SL was that Linden started banning stuff here and there, turning entire industries illegal and destroying them overnight. The Gambling Ban came in so sudden that it caused the first of many virtual Bank runs; Ginko Financial was particuarly hit because the gambling biz people started withdrawing all their money en masse.

    Then, after a series of scandals involving shady business practices by both "virtual" stock exchanges like the WSE, or the other bank runs that followed Ginko... Linden decided to ban banks as well, instead of regulating them. Bam! There goes another big chunk of money, and by then, a good bunch of SL entrepreneurs and investors decided that they couldn't trust an economy where money can go poof without any warning.

    Linden just let the whole thing stink, so many of the people who were actually turning in a profit, and thus giving Linden Labs a steady flow of income with both land tax and Lindex fees just left. Truly sad.

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