Before the concept of the “metaverse” took hold in our lives, a virtual world served as an “escape” in the early 2000s for many Internet users. In an Internet that was still in its infancy and without any kind of virtual or augmented reality, Second Life was a virtual environment where you could create the character of your choice and socialize with other people directly through your avatars.
But this virtual world gradually lost steam. Although we got to have “stellar appearances” as Gaspar Llamazares, the former leader of the political party Izquierda Unida, most of its loyal users ended up leaving over time to new social networks like Facebook or Twitter, and Second Life was relegated to oblivion. However, it never died, and it seems that its creators now want to give it a second chance.
According to a publication by Linden Lab, developers of Second Life, the predecessor of metaverses will make the leap to the mobile world thanks to a new app. In a video shared by the studio, the creators of this primordial virtual world commented on some of the details about this new version of Second Life and announced the launch of the beta for “sometime this year”.
The new mobile version of Second Life will be developed in Unity, in order to make it easier to launch and maintain on all types of mobile devices, such as tablets, iPads, Android phones and iPhones. The video also shows the new character models, which are more detailed than the original PC version, and the developers discuss the challenges of bringing the Second Life experience that people knew to mobile.
This announcement comes at a difficult time for metaverse development. Although companies like Firefox are creating their own virtual worlds, Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse‘s million-dollar losses are not very encouraging. Will we get to see a virtual world that everyone uses like in Ready Player One?
