Ciaran Laval

January 25, 2013

Second Life Official Quick Tip Video Features Torley Without Friendly Greetings!

Another blog post has appeared over the last 24 hours, almost as if someone found a dusty box in the corner of a room and realised it is still a useful tool. This one is a quick tip video about changing your avatar appearance and promotes shopping, largely on the marketplace but it does make a reference to inworld shopping too, yes it does still exist!

The blog post can be read here, I’ll embed the video at the end of the post. This video sounds like it was produced by Torley, I mean it sounds like Torley but there’s no “Friendly Greetings!” … how can a Torley video not have friendly greetings? Did that end up on the cutting room floor because it’s a quick tip?

The video itself seems to be aimed at new users and is the sort of video that would be useful inworld at welcome areas, I’m not sure how difficult it is these days to keep YouTube videos working inworld, it would be nice to be able to put such videos in newcomer friendly places but I know that in the past, YouTube videos have had a habit of no longer working.

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January 24, 2013

Linden Lab Empire Expands As They Acquire iPad Game Blocksworld

Linden Lab’s empire grows by the day, as they announce they’ve acquired the iPad game Blocksworld, the full press release can be read here. I may follow suit and issue a press release everytime I buy a new game … oh wait they haven’t just purchased the game to play in the Lab, they’ve purchased the whole kit and caboodle along with plans to globally release the game!

Rod Humble is quoted in the press release as saying: “Blocksworld is a great fit with what we do at Linden Lab, It’s a very user-friendly complement to our portfolio of shared creative spaces. We’re happy to have the Blocksworld team join Linden Lab and are looking forward to bringing Blocksworld to the App Store worldwide soon!”

I’m really pleased to see Rod Humble speaking, I wondered where the bloody hell he’d gone! I did wonder if he was in hiding due to the nightmare season Aston Villa are having. Anyway, the next question is, what the bloody hell is Blocksworld? This is a genuine question as I’ve never heard of it!

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January 24, 2013

Those Who Seek Offence Will Find It

I can remember when I was a lad in Second Life that I had a PG parcel. One day, I noticed that next door a Gentleman’s club had opened and I wasn’t happy about this. The outside of the building and even the wording on the parcel was more risque then explicit but hey, this isn’t PG I thought. Stepping onto the parcel I realised the parcel was in a neighbouring sim and on further examination I realised that the neighbouring sim was mature. This was back in the days of only having maturity ratings of PG and Mature.

Now this made the PG rating of my parcel, meaningless, however the neighbouring parcel was not breaking any rules. I decide to pack up shop there and sell the PG parcel. I mentioned the silliness of this situation to a Linden, who agreed that said situation was silly and had been discussed.

Quite a few moons later Linden Lab unleashed the adult category, as with many Linden Lab ideas it had good intentions but was delivered in a very poor fashion. However now we have three maturity ratings, the issue of General sims neighbouring Moderate sims still exists, but adult sims are in their own category and we can filter adult results in our preferences, we can exclude them totally, this is a better situation than we had before because Mature or as it’s known now, Moderate, has quite a wide scope, so excluding adult helps to avoid the more extreme content.

I’m reminded of this because I’ve just read an article, which I’m not going to link to, that complains about extreme adult content in Second Life and in this article, to demonstrate that extreme adult content exists, the author set their preferences to adult and listed events, which included adult content. They also searched for a particular type of extreme adult content and then published the results, with outrage. I’m sorry but if you go out of your way to search for extreme adult content, you’re hardly in a position to complain about finding it. The author could try unticking safe search on Google and searching for similar results, the results will be shocking too.

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January 23, 2013

Extending Affiliate System Could Help Sims Providing Something To Do

One of the problems with creating a something to do sim, is monetising it to offset tier costs. Many people find USD$295 a month a step too far when it comes to creating an entertaining experience. Old models included selling commercial spaces to merchants. The rise of the marketplace has somewhat negated the need for merchants to have such spaces or invest time in affiliate systems for sim owners to have their own stores selling merchandise for others.

However the affiliate model still has potential, and ideally it could benefit from a royalty system such as Cloud Party has, but we haven’t got that in Second Life yet However maybe sold items could come with two versions, the stand alone version and the resale version, whereby the resale version can be sold with commission going to both the merchant and sim owner.

How this would work would be that you’d buy buildings, props, scenery, accessories etc. for your sim and then they’d be set for sale, so there’s no need for a store as such, but the items can be purchased. A sim owner would receive a commission from sales on their sim, along of course with the original merchant getting their fair share too. This also has the advantage of exemplifying use of said creations, so that people can see how well these items perform in a setting where they are used.

Then there are other areas of collaboration that are under explored. 7 Seas fishing is a good example of collaboration, when you setup a 7 seas fishing area you also get a 7 seas affiliate vendor, it’s a small item, doesn’t take up much space but people who see your 7 Seas area may decide they want one of their own and buy said items from you. I’d like to see more of this sort of thing.

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