Joe Linden: Game Over – EA’s Rod Humble: Game On
by Pixeleen Mistral on 24/12/10 at 9:51 pm
ex-Electronic Arts VP levels up to revolving door Linden CEO position in January
Management shakeups continue at Linden Lab as Joe Linden (a.k.a. Joe Miller) – VP for Technology and Platform Development at Linden Lab – disappeared from the Lab’s executive management team web page, and no longer appears in the Second Life avatar search.
Joe Linden’s bio before his departure
The troubled virtual world game company has been shedding staff and players at an alarming rate over the last year, and seems to have timed the latest moves as close to the Christmas holidays as possible. Perhaps the prospect of decorating trees and wrapping presents will draw eyes away from a management team in near constant flux, and median player concurrency rates in free fall.
Tateru Nino charts Second Life’s median player concurrency decline in 2010
Joe Linden’s disappearance confirms rumors of his departure circulating among third party developers for several weeks. The consensus view among developer community seems to be that this is a serious loss for Linden Lab. Miller was generally regarded as providing much needed adult supervision within the Lab, but we may never know exactly why Joe left if his severance package includes the Lab’s traditional non-disclosure/non-disparagement agreement. Linden severance package agreements have been extraordinarily effective at keeping former Lab staffers quiet despite the large number of layoffs and firing in the last year. We can only hope that Miller will land on his feet in short order.
Miller’s official departure came within a day of the announcement of Linden Lab’s third CEO this year – Rod Humble – who will fill the position vacated by acting CEO Philip Linden several months ago. Lab founder Philip Linden began acting as CEO after previous CEO M Linden fired 30% of the staff this spring – and then was suddenly let go after completing the hatchet job.
Meanwhile, Linden Lab general council Mary Linden was recently replaced by Lisa Berry – so perhaps some of the pending lawsuits against the Lab will come to some sort of closure soon.
While Rod Humble familiarizes himself with Second Life, we wish him luck. If declining player interest and ongoing wholesale changes of the management team are good for business, the Lab should be in fine form in 2011.
At0m0 Beerbaum
Dec 25th, 2010
…hahaha The circle is complete.
This should be fairly entertaining.
IntLibber
Dec 25th, 2010
Ah, new general counsel…. I’ve been suspecting we’ll see LL settle mah lawsuit before Jan 1 so they, and their insurance underwriter, can write off the cost on last years taxes so they can blame the loss on departed executives while pimping an inflated share value as they seek to be bought out by Microsoft or some other company.
Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia
Dec 25th, 2010
Wasn’t Humble the executive producer of the sims back when Uri had his problems back in the Herald’s early days?
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rod_Humble&oldid=210194566
The Herald is now wishing one of the head borg units luck… wow… I agree with At0m0, the circle is complete. I wonder if he’ll block the Herald from SL the same way he had it blocked from the sims (with a text filter).
This will be very entertaining.
Urizenus Sklar
Dec 25th, 2010
I haven’t read that he was involved with TSO. Probably more relevant to his job here is his early work on Everquest for SOE. I would like to know more about that.
Darien Caldwell
Dec 26th, 2010
http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,373/
Well his games credited list every TSO game since Sims 2: Nightlife.
Sims or Evercrack; either way SL loses.
Urizenus Sklar
Dec 26th, 2010
By TSO, I mean The Sims Online. He was not involved with that franchise as far as I can tell, and in any case I was out of TSO in 2003, and stopped visiting in 2004, back when he was still working for SOE.
Top Hat
Dec 26th, 2010
Hopefully IntLibber will win his lawsuit so his renters who got scammed can turn around and sue him and get their money back.
The Anti Herald
Dec 27th, 2010
We can but live in hope, Top Hat. The line of people waiting for IntLibber’s blood is pretty long at this point. He still blames everyone but himself for his failures – just like the kids he hangs out with.
Why does a guy pushing 50 hang out with college boys anyway? What’s the appeal?
Oh wait. I think I just threw up in my mouth.
Anon
Dec 27th, 2010
New council won’t speed up resolution of law suits – it’ll slow ‘em down. And I wouldn’t hold my breath, Int, they have way more money than you and they could possibly squash you by accident before they even notice you’re there.
IntLibber
Dec 27th, 2010
Anon, if you could spell “council” right (its counsel), I might consider your legal opinion, but you didn’t so I don’t.
Judge Joker
Dec 27th, 2010
Please follow @RodLinden on Twitter, a humorously fictional parody account following Rod Linden throughout an alternate @SecondLife Metaverse by Second Life™ Residents, until such time he requests to participate within the community and wants his account name back.
Let’s give him a warm welcome!
http://twitter.com/RodLinden
Openhearted questions to Rod can be posted to this account through http://www.formspring.me/RodLinden
Please keep it clean or I won’t publish it as an open question or related subject matter.
I wont reply to your question I’ll just publish it as open, if you spam I’ll just close it to registered only so don’t waste our time and join the community in asking such questions as:
Why if Rod said “I have a long standing interest in the how the boundaries of society and economics change as communications evolve in new ways”, does he not have a twitter account?
Please bare in mind I own both is @RodLinden & @RodHumble accounts, so where is he? @megatron?
Also the Christmas Grinch Linden employee @mcgroarty has all ready blocked this account from following him, so much for his sense of humor, which leads me to think it might be blocked by all Linden employees as word get’s round.
I’ll assume they don’t want to be caught following it or being followed by it encase Rod has a Rod up his ass about it.
Plus the fact it shows them up as incompetent for publishing a press release before picking out his SL account name and social network account url’s.
Employee negligence?
Does this spell the end of community humor?
And the end of community relations?
Are Lindens in Fear over their job so much a twitter account is worth blocking? before I even got to know his account existed.
Will this lead to a perma-ban for my accounts in Second Life? even though it’s not a TOS abuse, we will have to wait and see what Rod and the Christmas Grinches decide to do.
W
Dec 27th, 2010
When I think of Rod Humble I think of that annoying fuck in the sims 2 who won’t stop giving you computers with a sims 3 demo on it
Gundel Gaukelei
Dec 28th, 2010
ZOMG! He doesn’t have one of those uber-important twitter accounts!
sky reported to be falling. stop. end of the world as we know it. stop. western civilization about to be obliterated. stop.
At0m0 Beerbaum
Dec 28th, 2010
@anti herald
way to be behind the times.
He doesnt hang around anyone anymore, but feel free to ask about the stories about his tenure in california.
Ask about the orange ring, or the blacklight. I dare you.
Bubblesort
Dec 28th, 2010
Judge Joker wrote: “Why if Rod said “I have a long standing interest in the how the boundaries of society and economics change as communications evolve in new ways”, does he not have a twitter account?”
*sigh* … because Twitter has absolutely nothing to do with communication evolving in new ways. It isn’t relevant or important. Nobody cares about twitter except posers who want to look net savvy or big media conglomerates who need to appear to appeal to young affluent poser demographics so their advertisers will keep throwing money at their broken business models. It seems stupid that I have to even say this. You ought to be able to see it yourself. This emperor has no clothes.
That said, I approve of this troll. Every new CEO ought to get a good hazing their first week before they do anything. It builds character, kind of like massive beer bongs and livestock at college fraternity ceremonies.