As mentioned by others, SL isn't a game, so of course it won't compare well with games.
Linden Lab (the makers of the Second Life platform) is a profitable company with about 250 employees. In fact, their latest quarter was their best yet, according to a recent blog post:
Of course, most of the content in SL wasn't made by Linden Lab, it was made by the SL users (residents). Because there's an internal economy (where content creators retain the IP rights in all content created for SL), there's a competitive market for quality content. Top-quality content has improved greatly over the years. To get a sense of it, check out the latest Best of SL magazine:
The SL vision is audacious: to create a real-time simulation of a malleable world based on our own physical world, but better (e.g. you can fly). Of course, the characters in SL aren't simulations, they are real people (except for a handful of bots), so they're interesting in all the ways people are interesting.
As for user numbers, nobody says "Facebook has 650 million active people, but San Francisco has less than a million, therefore SF is a failure." That would be absurd. (The active user base of SL is about the same as the population of SF.)
Linden Lab (the makers of the Second Life platform) is a profitable company with about 250 employees. In fact, their latest quarter was their best yet, according to a recent blog post:
http://bit.ly/l6ds5a
Of course, most of the content in SL wasn't made by Linden Lab, it was made by the SL users (residents). Because there's an internal economy (where content creators retain the IP rights in all content created for SL), there's a competitive market for quality content. Top-quality content has improved greatly over the years. To get a sense of it, check out the latest Best of SL magazine:
http://www.thebosl.com/en/latest-magazine-issue
The SL vision is audacious: to create a real-time simulation of a malleable world based on our own physical world, but better (e.g. you can fly). Of course, the characters in SL aren't simulations, they are real people (except for a handful of bots), so they're interesting in all the ways people are interesting.
As for user numbers, nobody says "Facebook has 650 million active people, but San Francisco has less than a million, therefore SF is a failure." That would be absurd. (The active user base of SL is about the same as the population of SF.)