- Second Life, the virtual world launched in 2003, will finally be entitled to a mobile application 20 years later
- The beta version built under Unity should land in 2023
- Enough to give a “second wind” to Second Life, which still has a loyal community of users
You may remember Second Life a very ambitious game at the time, since it is simply the first functional draft of a metaverse, with its 3D avatars, and its plots, constructions and other services that can be bought and sold with Linden Dollars. L$ are exchangeable for real US dollars, much like a cryptocurrency (but managed by Linden Lab, without a public blockchain).
To give you a point of reference, Bitcoin, the first real crypto on the market, was launched in 2009, 6 years after the launch of Second Life. Although it has taken a bit of a back seat in the news in recent years, the game continues to be popular with many users. They were around a million until 2013. Since 2017, some have left the ship, but without the game finding itself deserted either.
Second Life will finally be entitled to its mobile application
We are talking about a user base today of between 800,000 and 900,000 enthusiasts. However, despite its very innovative side at the time of its launch, and the renewed interest of its community for two decades, Second Life had so far never declined other than a Windows, macOS and Linux application.
Parallel reality par excellence, it is as if the smartphone had never appeared in the history of the virtual world. An omission that Linden Lab, the publisher of Second Life, is about to fill. In a message posted on the community forum, a maintainer shares a video that reveals the very first details on the mobile version of the game.
In the post, we also learn that Second Life Mobile should land in the course of 2023. Developed under Unity, the famous graphics engine and development environment for video games, the application will be launched simultaneously on iPhones, iPads and Android smartphones and tablets. What is interesting in this announcement is that Second Life could literally benefit from a second wind.
Second Life, 20 years later, is far from dead
The game is in itself a cult object, and we notice that its popularity has not really dropped despite the arrival of competing “metavers”, presented as more modern. sign that Second Life undoubtedly still has a bright future, Linden Lab had, for a time, tried to give it a successor, baptized Sansar.
Before finally changing his mind and selling the entire project – whose development seems, at the time of writing these lines, at a standstill. At the very beginning of the game’s history, Linden Lab had the ambition to make Second Life a kind of “second internet”. An ambition that is reminiscent of that of Meta with its metaverse.
Of course, we now know that it didn’t really work as expected. But the game has always continued to attract users and generate revenue. Linden Lab was forced to revise its ambitions downwards, but fundamentally Second Lifeits community, and the culture that has grown in this virtual world, continue to make the game something unique.
The arrival of a mobile application will probably not be enough to really attract the crowds, but it is certain that with it, Second Life reminds that the game still exists. This will inevitably push tens or even hundreds of thousands of users to create or reactivate their account, just to see what this universe has become in 20 years and still has to offer.
We invite you to learn more about Second Life Mobile watching the video below:
