Iris Ophelia has received a reply from Twitch regarding whether streaming of Second Life via their service is allowed : Update: Twitch Responds With Their Stance on Streaming Second Life. The long and short of it is, that Second Life streaming is indeed prohibited :
Second Life is not permitted for streaming and those accounts reported for doing so will be suspended. Content in this game is unrated and often sexually explicity, which is content we do not allow on our services. We also do not permit Adults-Only rated games and games where nudity is the core focus, feature, or goal.
Please read our Rules of Conduct regarding sexually explicit acts or content for more information:
I could write a long rambling post about this, or point out that Grand Theft Auto, an 18 rated game, is happily streamed. However I’d rather just point people in the direction of The Drax Files : World Makers on YouTube, which is certainly not a series that exemplifies nudity being the core focus, feature or goal.
Another virtual world event that doesn’t have nudity as the core focus, feature or goal is Virtual Worlds Best Practices In Education, which starts on Wednesday of this week and it’s a far more important topic. This is the 8th annual event and here’s a brief explanation of what it’s all about :
Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education is a global grass-roots community event focusing on education in immersive virtual environments. This open conference is organized by educators, for educators, to provide an opportunity to showcase the learning that takes place in this community of practice. All educators are encouraged to present, attend and take part in this discussion of collaborative deeper learning and co-presence in virtual worlds and games.
The Opening Keynote speech will be from Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg in Second Life, however this conference does go beyond Second Life, other featured speakers include :
Pam Broviak – Manages the Public Works Group, an online resource offering information related to public works, government, and social media.
Gord Holden – Recipient of the Virtual Education Journal’s Reader’s Choice Award as the Edovator of 2014.
Jeroen Frans – One of the three Founders of the Vesuvius Group, LLC, and functions as Executive Director and Virtual World Technology Specialist.
Sensuous Maximus – Co-founder of the renowned Builders Brewery within Second Life.
Susan Toth-Cohen – Professor and director of the post-professional clinical doctorate in occupational therapy at Thomas Jefferson University.
John Fillwalk – Serves as the senior director of the Hybrid Design Technologies initiative [HDT] and as the director of the Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts [IDIA Lab} at Ball State University.
Jay Jay Jegathesan – Holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Hons) from the University of Western Australia (UWA), majoring in management and marketing.
For more detailed biographies about these speakers go here : http://vwbpe.org/conference/vwbpe-2015-keynotes-and-featured-speakers
The event will also include what is described as networking and panels and some of you may be (hopefully) familiar with some of these names :
Quadrivium Networking Topic: Gamification – Meet us at our quadrivium where we hope to entice you into a discussion on gamification. This is not only an exchange of ideas, but an opportunity to network.
NonProfit Commons – The purpose of this panel is to discuss how NonProfit Commons has contributed to significant dialogue around the uses of virtual worlds like Second Life. The panelists will discuss how they have changed and grown, as well as the different opportunities and moments that have distinguished the group and the manner in which they promote and spotlight best practices.
Seanchai: A Virtual Library Out Loud – The purpose of this panel is to discuss how Seanchai Library has been successful in maintaining a library with events that are interactive and engaging since 2008. The panelists will focus on the unique choice of being a library of spoken literature, how that is relevant to a virtual platform, and what future opportunities exist using this approach.
Virtual Ability: Support, Collaboration, Research, Community – Virtual Ability is a well-known cross-disability peer support community in Second Life. The community also engages with educators, researchers, medical professionals, and others for purposes related to its core mission: to enable people with a wide range of disabilities by providing a supporting environment for them to enter and thrive in online virtual worlds. This panel will include members from the Virtual Ability community and others with whom the community has intersected for various activities.
For a full view of the packed calendar for VWBPE go here : http://vwbpe.org/conference/vwbpe-2015-calendar.
I’m chuffed to bits to see Seanchai have a presence there. I’m a big fan of Storytelling, I may have mentioned this before.
This is a virtual world event and that’s a plural. Whereas a lot of the events take place within Second Life, some of the events will take place in OpenSim worlds too, which is nice to see. Furthermore a Unity 3D campus is also going to be looked at.
The conference runs between March 18th – March 21st. I’ll hopefully have more details during the week, there’s a couple of people I may have to poke but this is the sort of use of Virtual Worlds that does not get the coverage it deserves, I guess it’s just not as exciting to the outside world as games where nudity is the core focus, feature or goal.