Sad news for the gaming industry as Linden Lab, the creators of the popular social MMO, Second Life, have announced that they will be laying off about 30 percent of their staff as they restructure and "better align the company with . . . longer-term goals aimed at making Second Life more accessible and relevant." These kinds of layoffs are not incredibly common in the MMORPG world, but Linden Labs is specifically aiming to transform Second Life into a browser-based virtual world, as well as extending it to most popular social networking sites (we assume Facebook). In order to better pursue this new development, the Linden Labs team has decided to merge its product and engineering divisions, as well as consolidating its software development teams in North America.

Linden Lab CEO, Mark Kingdon, notes on Gamasutra that "Today's announcement about our reorganization will help make Second Life even more simpler . . . It will also enable us to invest in bringing 3D to the web and will strengthen our profitability." Perhaps Second Life could be the first truly successful browser-based MMO!

If Worlds.com is successful in its lawsuit against NCsoft, it plans to target World of Warcraft and Second Life, according to The Business Insider. Worlds.com owns a patent for a "System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space" - a patent which it claims NCsoft's MMOs violate.

Worlds.com CEO Thom Kidrin told The Business Insider that should the company be successful in suing NCsoft, it will pursue "anyone who refuses to enter into licensing negotiations", including Activision Blizzard and Linden Lab.

Type Less, Talk More with Vivox. Risk-Free Communication For Gamers.

It isn’t very often that you see a company gain such a successful lead so quickly in such a competitive space as online games.  Vivox has done just that with their voice chat technology. I was lucky enough to have a first hand look in September at Austin Game Developers Conference. They are touting the clearest and feature-rich quality audio conversation experience one can currently obtain for communication in online games.

As any online gamer knows, it is vital to communicate with your guild mates and those around you in-game as efficiently as possible.  There are typically three options immediately available in any online game.  The first is through body language and basic movements.  The second is the most common, through built-in chat windows that allow you to type in commands and directives that you wish your group to follow.

Both of the first two choices are tedious, lengthy, and often result in errors when your chat history is scrolling like crazy with others around you also trying to communicate.  How does the guild leader or those in command rise above the chaos at hand to actually lead the group into battle?  The third and final possibility is with their voice.  The problem in many previous software solutions has been poor voice clarity, difficult to set up and operate, and a high price point that only a few could afford to purchase.