No Dreams For One Third Of Electric Sheep Company Employees This Christmas
Duncan Riley
16 comments »
The Electric Sheep Company, regarded by many to be the leading Second Life development company, has parted company with one third of its workforce (22 people).
The Electric Sheep Company is best known recently for its work in creating the CSI:NY build in Second Life. The company offers its own Second Life browser “OnRez”, and provides services to companies looking to establish a presence in Second Life.
While the CSI:NY Second Life experiment has generally be regarded as a success by most, Electric Sheep Company was caught when some of the ridiculously high number of expected signups through the cross promotion did not materialize, causing much of the CSI:NY build to be closed down shortly after launching. Adding to this, according to Massively was the decision by AOL Pointe and Pontiac to cease operations in Second Life, both of who were Electric Sheep Company clients.
It would be easy to suggest that Electric Sheep Company’s failure here may be indicative of a broader downturn in Second Life; however, the more likely scenario is simply that this is a company that added too many staff in the expectation of ongoing and future work that didn’t happen, and they would be far from the first startup to be caught in this situation. Compound this with a highly competitive market and unfortunately for 22 people at the Electric Sheep Company, Christmas this year wont involve dreams of electric sheep.
Update: via the first commenter, Virtual World News has more, including an interview with the Electric Sheep Company where they state they’ll be moving into other virtual platforms including Metaplace, Multiverse and Icarus.
more detailed info
http://www.virtualworldsnews.c.....elect.html
Cute name.
YDRIVE
origin of the name on Wikipedia, notably Blade Runner was the film adaptation of the book.
this really sucks. i’ve been laid off at christmas time and it bites the big one. My thoughts go out to the employees. Hopefully, they are you and still living off of mom and dad.
sincerely,
angela hayden
art goddess
That’s gotta suck.
DR, haaaa, ic.. hmmm, mightbe it’s time for Electric Sheep to pick up
some modern marketing strategies from, let’s say, Fire Fox and
Thunder Bird…
@6: Look out for the ex-employees forming their own company to compete with Electric Sheep. Probably called Water Vole.
Hell, why restrict ourselves to the classical elements? This is a modern virtual world after all.
Titanium Penguin
Iridium Badger
Uranium Duck-Billed Platypus
The possibilities are endless.
Check it Out!!!
Wannago.com is a website that offers you events that you can go to.
be the special guests on ~new years eve~:
http://www.wannago.com/EventsS.....;location=
@7 — or simply, Sheepbook… hey.. sheepbook.com still available
That wannago site looks good for organizing events.
Just in case some miss it (and apparently some have): Electric Sheep Company is *also* abbreviated ESC. Get it?
Reading the comments for this and other recent postings, I’m beginning to wonder how TC can make an alleged $200,000 per month. Someone inclined to fill me in?
i know you were really trying hard on that headline Duncan, but regardless…. FAIL.
(however, this one is much better :))
I dare say that the Virtual World News story is all the hand fed corporate spin that Valerie was hired to do.
I have news at http://secondlifepodcast.com from real Sheep employees, both still current, and recently former.
Thanks for the link love.
“both of who were Electric Sheep Company clients.”
And you criticize Doris Lessing?