SAN FRANCISCO, 30 JANUARY 2009 - Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon says that growing Second Life's presence in certain international markets is a strategic goal for the company. However, he said that expansion in the country with one of the world's largest Internet populations -- China -- is not a priority.
In an interview with the Industry Standard at the company's San Francisco headquarters, Kingdon described the company's recent efforts to localize Second Life for residents who do not use English.
"We've had a big push to localize the Second Life experience for local markets," Kingdon said. "We put a substantial team ... in place and really leveraged the community in some innovative ways to help with translation and localization."
He said Linden Lab was most focused on developing Second Life's growth in France, Germany, Spain, Brazil, and Japan.
When asked about China, its huge Internet-connected population, and its large number of massively multiplayer online games and social virtual worlds such as HiPiHi, Kingdon said the country was not an active focus -- yet.
"There's a point in time, it's a bit further out in the future, where we'll add China to the list of strategic initiatives that we're actively focused on," he said. "We see it as an opportunity, but today, we're not making major investments in the Chinese market because to do it meaningfully, you need people there, you need to probably form a local partnership, and develop the opportunity to localize the experience in a really meaningful way, perhaps even make some fundamental changes to the experience."
Kingdon said that the company has a small office in Japan for the Japanese market, as well as an engineering hub in Singapore.
"They have been very welcoming of Linden Lab," Kingdon said of the Singaporean government. "We've been building our engineering team there, focused on all quality assurance where we also have some developers. It's a talent pool as opposed to a team that's focused on the external market."
According to figures published on the Linden Lab website, nearly 10 per cent of the total hours spent in-world in November were from residents in Germany, compared to nearly 40 per cent for the United States. Japan and France each accounted for more than 5 per cent, while the Netherlands, Italy, Brazil and Canada were almost 4 per cent apiece. China was not listed among the top 20 territories.
