What it does is become a "sandbox platform" for creating content (virtual objects) to then recreate various re-enactment scenarios albeit with scope to create mini-game systems too, within these. I don't consider the naming of Second Life as a "Virtual World" to be very accurate. Had it been more user-friendly, less demanding on pcs, and if Linden Labs had had a clearer vision of what they wanted it to be, with the discipline to work towards that vision it might have been more. I've spent thousands of hours in SL over the last 12-13 years, and I will probably continue to use it until it goes dark, but I think its time has gone.
A company structure and ethos similar to Valve's didn't help it develop. At one point they were pushing ideas of SL becoming a sort of 3D internet, or allowing for virtual meeting rooms that could replace teleconferencing, but it never ran well enough, and never built up the userbase to keep companies interested for long. It had huge potential, comparing SL's in-world building tools to MInecraft's is like comparing Photoshop to MSPaint, but the drive for better graphics and optimisation has led to most content creation having to be done in outside programs, which to my mind misses the point of having the building tools in the first place.
#Games like imvu Pc
At its best, with a good pc and a fast connection, in an area made by someone who knows what they are doing, it can be pretty impressive in its graphics and how well it runs, but generally it is more akin to early PS3/X360 graphics running at around 30fps, and busy areas with lots of complex avatars can easily become a single digit fps slideshow unless you have a beast of a pc. There is also a huge amount of legacy content that just looks outdated. The problem with creating a game with "better quality" is that 99% of the world is user created, most people do not know much about optimising their builds, even a lot of "professional" content creators are not particularly efficient in how they design and make textures, models etc, which leads to lag and low frame rates. The numbers have been fairly steady for 2 or 3 years though, although my impression is that most of the users have been around a fair while, there's a steady trickle of new users but most don't seem to stay very long. Having said that, SL used to regularly hit 50-60,000 online and it never gets near that these days.
That suggests it is still reasonably popular, I suspect that, apart from the big AAAs, most developers would settle for their game hitting that level of popularity, especially 15 years after release. The US is mostly asleep (it's between 3 and 6am there) and the numbers will go up as the US wakes, but it usually sits at around that level, roughly somewhere between about 8th and 15th on the Steam list. That would put it at 10th in the Steam list of games with the most players online, between Football manager and ARK:Survival Evolved. As I write this there are 29,123 people logged into SL.
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