November 2015 – Ciaran Laval

November 25, 2015

Fantasy Creators Yuletide Showcase Now Open

I’m having a few technical difficulties this week, which means I’m not able to get inworld as much as I’d like and seek out truth and justice! However, that doesn’t mean I can’t keep track of some things that are going and one thing that has caught my eye is The Fantasy Creators Yuletide Showcase. The event, which opened on November 21st and runs until January 9th, features 20 of Second Life’s fantasy creators, in a snowy setting complete with decorations, lights and more.

The event also features live music and then there’s a Yuletide Hunt.

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November 20, 2015

The Reality Of Virtual World Shopping Is The Second Life Marketplace

Diana Budds has published an article over at Fastco Design; The Future Of Shopping Is . . . Second Life On Acid? The article features the work of British designer and filmmaker Allison Crank, who is based in Eindhoven, which is in The Netherlands, not Britain!

The basis of the article is that e-commerce is trumping the mall and therefore, the social experience of the physical mall is being lost. Allison Crank suggests that one way of bringing back the social side of the mall is to introduce virtual reality.

Allison’s concept is the basis of her thesis from June 2015; The Reality Theatre: Shopping In The Ludic Century and in the FastCo Design article we get to hear more of the concept:

Crank calls it “a new third place for the public to meet, perform, indulge, and play in immersive environments.” I call it Second Life on acid. The designer envisions her concept working with augmented reality devices like Microsoft’s Hololens or Magic Leap to superimpose this virtual world over our own. For example, if someone were commuting, he or she could strap on an augmented reality headset and participate in the Reality Theater.

The major problem I have with Allison’s idea is that we’ve seen malls in Second Life, lots and lots of malls. We’ve seen malls with impossible physics, we can teleport in Second Life. However, malls in Second Life have been undone not by a future more immersive product, but by the ease of point and click shopping that the Second Life Marketplace offers. This isn’t unique to Second Life by the way, I’ve seen people in OpenSim asking for web based marketplaces, indeed Kitely has a web based marketplace.

People love the ease of shopping that web based marketplaces provide. This isn’t to say that Allison’s idea is dead in the water, far from it, but it is a warning to people who think virtual reality shopping is going to be a popular tool of choice compared to a web based shopping experience.

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November 19, 2015

Lab Chat Launches In Second Life With A Smooth First Show

Lab Chat, a new Q&A show in Second Life, launched today in Second Life with Saffia Widdershins and Jo Yardley discussing many things Second Life and Project Sansar related with Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg.

The show itself went quite smoothly, which was quite impressive with a four region setup that attracted over 150 people. The show launched on time, without any technical issues, although one problem that was apparent was that people who had submitted questions were unable to make the live show. The questions had been selected from a pool of 46 questions submitted via the official Second Life forum.

Ebbe talked about land, commerce, marketplace, experiences and much more. Experiences was a very interesting subject as Ebbe pointed out that in Second Life, people struggle to make experiences pay their way. This is something that people who have created roleplaying ventures or interactive game experiences will be quite familiar with. Project Sansar definitely has experiences on its radar.

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November 18, 2015November 18, 2015

Reminder – Lab Chat With Ebbe Altberg Takes Place On November 19th

The first edition of Lab Chat, a new Q&A show in Second Life, will take place on Thursday November 19th at 10:30am SLT :

Lab Chat is an opportunity for you to ask Lindens your questions during a live taping that will be recorded and archived for everyone to view.

The first Lab Chat will be Thursday, November 19th, at 10:30am SLT at the Linden Endowment for the Arts Theatre – with guest Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab.

Now since that initial blog post, a complimentary website has appeared : https://labchatsl.wordpress.com . This website contains a lot more information about the production. For example in a post; Thank you for your Questions for the first Episode of Lab Chat! The Lab Chat team explain why the questions were selected :

We had a great many great questions from you all for the first episode of Lab Chat – so thank you all for contributing!

Sadly, there won’t be time to ask all your questions on the show, so we have selected a number of questions that the Team thought were important, relating to Second Life, the Marketplace and Sansar.

If your question wasn’t asked this time, you can:

Come to the show and, if there’s time at the end of the set questions, submit your question in text chat – we hope to get to a few of them!

Ask your question again, next time we call for questions

How will you know if your question has been selected for inclusion in this show? Well, there’s going to be a big clue there.

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November 18, 2015

Linden Lab Lower Land Setup Fees For Private Regions

Several have asked if this is in some sort of panic move in response to poor sales. This is absolutely not the case, in fact sales of islands have been very consistent through Q1; we sell between 100-110 islands per week plus a fair number of Openspace regions.

Technology and service costs vary over time and we as a business have to respond to that in sensible ways. In addition, we have to continually assess our business model and make changes where we need to. By and large we have worked hard to keep prices static for long periods, and when we have had cause to increase prices in the past, we allowed grandfathered monthly fees to continue because we value the time and energy those people had put in. Nearly 18 months on and that grandfathered pricing is still in place for many island owners.

This was the right time to reduce the setup price of an island. As any business would, we will review the effects of these changes over the next period and make adjustments or leave them unchanged according to how it goes. If we are able to make savings, then we feel that passing those on to our customers is a good thing.

The above is a quote from Jack Linden in a blog post published on 10th April 2008; Details on the Q2 2008 Island Price Change. The headline news was that the setup fee for a private region had been reduced from US$1,675 to US$1,000. This was a controversial move and generated a lot of positive and negative feedback.

Yesterday, more than seven and a half years later, Linden Lab decided the time was right to reduce setup fees further; Decreased Land Set-Up Fees and Changes to Transferring Regions. The new pricing structure is :

Full Private Island – previously $1000, now $600.
Developed Full Private Island – previously $1029, now $629.
Homestead Private Island – previously $375, now $225.
Developed Homestead Private Island – previously $395, now $250.
Openspace Private Island – previously $250, now $150.

Along with these new reduced setup fees we’re also seeing the return of Grandfathered status for regions when they are sold on. However this comes with a twist in terms of vastly increased transfer fees if Grandfathered status is required on transfer.

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