Second Life development shops pull in big business
By Adam Reuters
SECOND LIFE, Nov 22 (Reuters) - Second Life developers are pulling in more than US$10 million in revenues a year, according to a Linden Lab survey, as real-life companies flock to the virtual realm’s booming population and fast-growing economy.
These firms, which include Rivers Run Red, Electric Sheep Company and Millions of Us, have more than 150 new projects in the pipeline.
The results of the survey, first reported by Prokofy Neva, were sent by Linden Lab development manager Glenn Fisher to Second Life developers and a copy of the email was obtained by Reuters.
Employees of 31 of the 46 external developers on the mailing list responded to the questionnaire, and Fisher said he believed that the respondents constituted a representative sample.
The developers surveyed were expecting an average of US$80,000 in revenues for the fourth quarter, with a median of US $18,000 and a total of US$2.2 million.
“The external developer community has a significant economy, exceeding $10M/year. This works out to about $700K a month from the respondents, and potentially as much as $1.2M/month for all developers,” Fisher said in the email.
According to BusinessWeek, the biggest Second Life design shops charge corporate clients between US$10,000 and US$200,000 to establish a virtual world presence.
“I think what you’ve seen recently is a good representation, ranigng from small constuction on land that already exists to multiple islands,” Fisher told Reuters in a phone interview. “There’s a big range of what companies coming into Second Life want.”
“There is no question that interest and demand in this space is enormous right now,” added Giff Constable, vice president of business development for Electric Sheep, which counts recent Second Life arrivals Reuters and Sony BMG among its clients.
The survey respondents had an average of eight employees and a maximum of thirty-two, for a total of 224, nearly three times as many staff members as Linden Lab itself. An informal survey by Linden Lab found that the biggest design shops had only six to eight employees.
