Flickr Pickle

 Second Life, Virtual Worlds, World of Warcraft  9 Responses »
Jun 172012
 

Linden Lab have recently found themselves in a user permissions pickle over their use of pictures for their pic of the day blog posts. Wizard Gynoid pointed this out to me in a recent comment, whereby Whiskey Monday surprisingly found that her picture had been used.

The main issue is a lack of communication, nobody from Linden Lab told Whiskey that her picture had been selected. Photos submitted to the Second Life group pool on flickr were being used on sites such as Facebook, Tumblr and Google +, no matter which rights had been selected by the author on flickr. There are two problems here, one is ignoring permissions but probably the larger issue is not informing the author. Most people would be happy to allow Linden Lab to use their photos for promotional purposes, as long as there’s attribution and communication.

However in this case, Linden Lab have decided to make some changes, as Whiskey Monday outlines here and create a new Flickr Group, with new terms and conditions.

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Gaming Companies Should Embrace Second Life

 Second Life, Star Wars Old Republic, World of Warcraft  4 Responses »
Dec 222011
 

I’ve made a couple of posts now about Star Wars: The Old Republic. I’ve also over the years made posts about World Of Warcraft, Eve-Online and City Of Heroes. The thing is, all of these games should have a Second Life presence, especially now that we have the advent of mesh.

Second Life is perfect for gaming companies to setup a sim or two displaying their wares, they can have video promotions on touch, they can show part of their world on a sim, they can’t do combat of course but with a little bit of careful scripting they could provide some very basic quests, but most 0f all they can show people how their worlds look, they can even sell outfits and own the IP and when it comes to intellectual property infringement, all of these companies have the power to slam a copybotters backside from here to kingdom come.

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Geeks and Nerds Make The Digital World Go Around For All

 Second Life, Social Networking, Virtual Worlds  No Responses »
Nov 252011
 

Sometimes you read a blog post somewhere and decide it’s time to unleash the army of darkness on the author, I should add at this point that my army of darkness includes Elves. However sometimes you decide it’s best to refrain from abusing your powers as an evil drow wizard just because someone had the temerity to write an article.

Which brings me to an article over at WhatCulture! The article in question is GAMING VS LIFE: The Noob’s Guide to Escapism… by Brad Fear, which covers World Of Warcraft, Second Life and drunken nights in the pub and the potential aftermath, it also covers Star Wars: The Old Republic, for which I’m not in the beta testing, although I wish I was!

Part of the reason that I have decided not to unleash The Kraken on the author is because I find the article amusing! Lucky for him hey, it does play on some stereotypes, but that’s part of the fun, we can’t always get all disgusted of Tunbridge Wells over articles.

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Wow Introduces limited Free To Play, Eve-Online Moves Into Virtual Goods Market

 Entertainment, Second Life, Social Networking, Virtual Worlds  No Responses »
Jun 292011
 

This post is largely about developments in World Of Warcraft and Eve-Online, more the latter, but both have made recent changes that have something in common with Second Life, so I felt it was worth talking about these issues.

In a rather surprising move, World Of Warcraft has moved from a 14 day trial, to allowing people to play for free, although they will get capped at level 20 if they don’t move to the subscription model. World Of Warcraft has been losing subscribers but was rumoured to still have over eleven million paying customers quite recently, so it’s not as if they are in the desperation stakes. One does have to wonder if World of Warcraft is approaching the Gillette Mach 3 stage, people just keep damn well using Mach III’s even though it’s old and they want people to use a newer product!

This is also interesting when looking at Second Life because the market seems to be moving more towards the free to play model that Second Life has employed since 2006, several MMO’s have moved to free to play with people being enticed to buy subscriptions or buy items and whereas World Of Warcraft isn’t doing that yet, others have been, Lord Of The Rings Online for example.

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Stagnating but by no means dead

 Second Life, Social Networking, Virtual Worlds, World of Warcraft  1 Response »
Feb 012011
 

I was ready to move on from Facebook, with Inara Pey frowning at me on her blog, and Hamlet Au covering different angles over at New World notes, I was all Facebooked out, but, in a turn of events not related to privacy and more in line with some of the points Hamlet made in his New World Notes post, there’s a very interesting post over at Gamasutra about virtual worlds, social media and why the easiest pathway often wins.

What’s interesting about both the Gamastura post, and Hamlet’s post, is the numbers, the number of people using Facebook compared to Second Life is quite staggering, this is largely down to Facebook being both cheaper and easier to use than Second Life, but that only tells part of the story, World of Warcraft has something like thirteen million registered accounts, so people will engage with a client based system when the appeal is there.

Both posts point out that at one stage Second Life was considered best placed to capture the largest share of the market, with 3D worlds set to replace 2D webpages, and that will happen eventually, whether Second Life is that 3D platform is a different matter because they were ahead of their time with their ambitions and now have issues with trying to scale. However this will happen one day, and it will be easy to participate and will be the path of least resistance. There was a time when people poured scorn on Amazon for having a website and felt that angle had no legs. Continue reading »

The Second Life Cataclysm

 Second Life, Virtual Worlds, World of Warcraft  No Responses »
Nov 192010
 

World of Warcraft is largely expected to experience The Shattering next week, a time when Deathwing wreaks havoc and brings chaos to Azeroth by changing the landscape, another step in the direction of their Cataclysm expansion pack. There have already been a number of pre Cataclysm events in World of Warcraft, including this week’s chaos when Elementals tried to invade the major cities.

Linden Lab are also unleashing events to mark their Cataclysm, when the teens are welcomed with open arms to the grid, this has a scheduled release date of the end of this year, but that may change, although it’s highly unlikely to happen on December 7th. We’ve already experienced a number of pre events too, the search game when you had to figure out why your parcel didn’t show in search when multiple maturity ratings were selected was one event quest, another was when those humourous Lindens decided that a parcel that had PG content but sat on mature/moderate land should be filtered out of PG search, because hey it’s mature land you silly people and even though the content may be completely PG, we don’t want the teens knowing it exists. Continue reading »

Micah Whipple – A Name To Remember In The Privacy Stakes

 General, Virtual Worlds, World of Warcraft  No Responses »
Jul 072010
 

Micah Whipple, remember the name because it’s an important one in the privacy stakes. Blizzard it seems, have bought lock, stock and extremely smoking barrel into the whole concept of sharing the love of real life details, many of their users however are not at all impressed about the Zuckerberging of their names, the problem it seems stems from forum changes that will mean anyone posting on the forums at some point in the future (the exact date is vague) will post using Real ID, which will mean posting with their real first and last name, they can helpfully post with their character name alongside it.

The problems for Blizzard started when they posted this information on their forums, the US forums here and the European forums, here. Some forum goers feel this is a wonderful move and will cut down on trolling, which is one of the reasons Blizzard cite: “The official forums have always been a great place to discuss the latest info on our games, offer ideas and suggestions, and share experiences with other players — however, the forums have also earned a reputation as a place where flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness run wild. Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven’t been connected before. With this change, you’ll see blue posters (i.e. Blizzard employees) posting by their real first and last names on our forums as well. “ Continue reading »