IMVU development and growth process

"First of all, thank you for your clear and detailed response.

An inventory system that utilizes optimized clothing and avatars allows thousands of online players to be hosted on a single server, completely eliminating lag and stuttering issues. Games like Knight Online, Silkroad, and Metin2 are prime examples of this; despite being older, they feature much deeper and richer mechanics compared to many newer titles today.

The main point I was trying to emphasize with the phrase 'thousands of games' is this: text and voice chat are already standard features in almost every game released nowadays. Therefore, a platform like IMVU needs to evolve beyond just being a place for people to chat and interact, and start offering its users a whole lot more.

It needs to be seen as a place where people can achieve more than just creating an avatar and chatting, because today, the mindset of most new users relies heavily on whether they are coming here solely to make an avatar and talk."

They're all good ideas, but they have limits.  Here's my opinions:

...rooms that can accommodate 1000 people, with everyone available for a walk.

I don't know how they can do that. You get too many avatars, especially when they are overloaded with stuff, and things lag. I still would want them to put things in the "Inventory" setup where users can see how big their "KBs" are, and even use colors to show when they are putting too much on.

In addition to chat rooms, there can be game modes or other rooms featuring different games.

There's some hope for this, as there's the experimentation of creators using Lua (coding language) to build more interactive experiences in IMVU. Just comes down to permissions, and creators skilled and willing to build new things.

Options to add and watch short videos can be introduced.

I remember they did the YouTube player, but it was so limited, and things always come down to licensing and copyright. So if we could stream a video, and someone is playing a movie on their end and streaming it into IMVU, someone could file complaints claiming it's unauthorized presentation. Media companies are so stingy, which is why many are buying DVDs again.

However, IMVU currently faces thousands of competitors; thousands of similar applications have been developed and released in the last 10 years;

I don't know of all the competitors, just some like Second Life, 3dxChat, VR Chat, and Avakin Life. Would love to know who else.

I often wonder if we will see many make metaverses out of open sandbox video games, like I hear of this on platforms like World of Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto.

therefore, its lack of features compared to its competitors will inevitably lead it towards bankruptcy day by day.Actually, there's no point in me saying all this because they are very intelligent and logical people; they are aware of everything and think deeply about every issue.

I'm sure they think about the long run, but I'm not sure how much they favor long-term invested players versus many who show up, spend a little money, then move on.

If I had to ask for anything to improve with IMVU, it's for players to grow up and behave better. Get rid of the toxicity we see.

I also often wonder if we could one day see a metaverse as a homebase for gaming. Like we're wandering around, chatting, living these "second lives" but then people launch into playing a game like Fortnite or Uno or Call of Duty...like we take the idea of chats and messaging from Steam and expand it into an avatar metaverse.