18-year-old’s games get 10M plays in Roblox game world

Roblox is a thriving web-based virtual world where kids can create building-block creations in Leg0-like styles. It is far more successful than other virtual worlds, and 18-year-old Luke “Stickmaster Luke” Weber is one of the reasons for that.

For the past four years, Weber has been making games within the world of Roblox. Those games have been played more than 10 million times on the Roblox site, making Weber (pictured left) into a celebrity within … Continue Reading

Linden Lab gets second new CEO of the year for Second Life

Linden Lab, creator of the Second Life virtual world, has hired Rod Humble as its new chief executive.

Humble is a veteran of Electronic Arts, where he served as executive vice president for the EA Play label and ran The Sims business. He has an impressive background in games, but Second Life has a lot of problems to overcome.

The company is fighting to hang on to users for its deep and engaging virtual world, … Continue Reading

Teen virtual world Gaia Online lays off 15 to 20 staffers

Gaia Online, which has created a virtual world for millions of teens and young adults,  has laid off 15 to 20 of its employees in the past few days, VentureBeat has learned.

It doesn’t bode well for the virtual world category, which has had a number of high-profile failures this year.

While it isn’t a large number of layoffs, it’s a sizable percentage of the company’s employee base, which was at 110 employees in June … Continue Reading

Blue Mars abducts journalist from Second Life; will other virtual citizens follow?

Wagner James Au has specialized in writing about 3D virtual worlds. Under the name Hamlet Au, he has reported from inside Linden Lab‘s virtual world of Second Life for three years and he still maintains a blog about it. But now he is moving on to the greener pastures of the latest cool virtual world, Blue Mars.

Journalists are fickle. But Au’s shift from Second Life to Blue Mars — a terraformed virtual planet where … Continue Reading

MobileBeat: AFK keeps gamers connected to their worlds from anywhere

AFK Interactive is one of 20 promising startups included in the MobileBeat 2010 Startup Competition, and is in the running for one of two coveted Tesla Awards.

AFK Interactive’s M4 platform (Massively Multi-user Mobile Monetization) is the holy grail for gamers: It allows you to stay connected to massively multi-player online games (MMOs) like World of Warcraft, virtual worlds like Second Life, and social games like Farmville from any mobile device.

AFK is well aware … Continue Reading

Week in review: E3's new games, Apple's new phone

Here’s our roundup of the week’s tech business news. First, the most popular stories we published in the last seven days:

The most anticipated games of E3 — Game fans are waiting for the E3 Expo next week to get a glimpse of the biggest games coming out later this year and next year. VentureBeat writer Dean Takahashi lists his 20 most anticipated games of the show.

Investing in Russia? Better hire bodyguards and hunker … Continue Reading

Virtual worlds recede, but Second Life keeps growing

Here’s our roundup of the week’s tech business news. First, the most popular stories we published in the last seven days:

The most anticipated games of E3 — Game fans are waiting for the E3 Expo next week to get a glimpse of the biggest games coming out later this year and next year. VentureBeat writer Dean Takahashi lists his 20 most anticipated games of the show.

Investing in Russia? Better hire bodyguards and hunker … Continue Reading