Virtual Worlds – Page 119

September 25, 2014

Introduction To Second Life For Educators Part 2

When Linden Lab ditched the education discount a few years back a few people felt that education in Second Life was dead. However it wasn’t and has been given a boost in the not too distant past by the return of the education discount and Linden Lab showing a more proactive role in promoting education within Second Life.

This is exemplified by Linden Lab’s blog post : Introduction to Second Life for Educators – a Course in Spanish 2nd Edition.

The course is from the University of San Martin de Porres Perú and is aimed at Spanish speaking educators who want to learn how to use Second Life for education purposes. The blog describes the course as :

The Virtual Worlds Project of The University of San Martin de Porres from Perú starts this September 29th the second edition of the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) entitled “Introduction to Second Life for Educators 2nd. Ed.”. The course is free and is designed to train Spanish speaking educators on the use of the virtual world Second Life, and to provide knowledge that allows educators to benefit from its potential, especially in the education field.

The course starts in a few days time on September 29th.

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September 24, 2014

Blizzard’s Decision To Cancel Titan Should Sound A Warning Bell For Linden Lab

Hamlet Au over at New World Notes has a blog post about Blizzard’s decision to cancel Titan. Titan was a planned new MMO from Blizzard, a long rumoured new MMO, indeed seven years long and it never seemed to see the light of day but it was supposed to be the next big thing.

Hamlet’s article has a link to a Polygon post on the same issue : Blizzard cancels its next-gen MMO Titan after seven years. That article has some great quotes from Blizzard’s co-founder and CEO Mike Morhaime and Blizzard’s senior vice president of story and franchise development, Chris Metzen. Linden Lab should pay careful attention here to what is being said and what has happened. Mike Morhaime is quoted as saying :

We had created World of Warcraft, and we felt really confident that we knew how to make MMOs, So we set out to make the most ambitious thing that you could possibly imagine. And it didn’t come together.

Linden Lab have created Second Life and I’m pretty sure that they feel really confident on how to make virtual worlds. They have now set out to make the most ambitious virtual world that one could possibly imagine, but will it actually come together?

Chris Metzen is quoted as saying :

We were losing perspective and getting lost in the weeds a little. We had to allow ourselves to take that step back and reassess why the hell we were doing that thing in the first place.

Linden Lab need to ensure that they don’t find themselves in this position with their future virtual world, that they don’t find themselves making something that isn’t fun, that isn’t really progressing how they would like it to and that might not be worth their time at the end of the day.

Then there’s the World Of Warcraft factor. World Of Warcraft may be in decline but it’s still quite healthy. The same can be said of Second Life. Chris Metzen confirmed that Blizzard will continue to support World Of Warcraft, indeed he goes further and says :

My hope personally is that we’ll support it forever

Linden Lab have said that they will continue to support Second Life, I’m sure there are people at the lab who hope they will support Second Life forever.

Continue reading “Blizzard’s Decision To Cancel Titan Should Sound A Warning Bell For Linden Lab”

September 23, 2014

Linden Lab Show Their Human Side Still Exists With Ops Team Blog Post

There’s an interesting blog post on the official Second Life blog : An Inside Look at How The Ops Team Collaborates. Many a support person the world over will notice the lack of references to expletives, head desking, people asking silly questions and people not wanting to part with information because it will delay them in their aim of fixing the problem, even though that short delay means the helpdesk can provide information to end users if end users contact them.

The use of IRC is strong at Linden Lab and the blog post makes a very strong point as to why communications such as that are pretty damn important :

Running an incident response in a chat channel is also an incredibly effective way of passively disseminating information to a wide audience. A large number of people can quietly lurk in a chat channel unlike in a physical space. More formal status updates to various parties, like support, are of course sometimes necessary but enabling those parties to follow along in real time gives them context that would not otherwise be conveyed in a terse status report.

As a final bonus, we are able to respond to a problem at peak efficiency regardless of where anyone is at that moment. Issues don’t wait for office hours to crop up. Being a distributed team, this is really our only option, but it rocks that being distributed is an advantage in incident response.

Whereas in smaller operations the chat is more likely to be by telephone or shouted across the office, with people openly denying there’s a problem whilst the helpdesk phones are ringing red hot. Then there’s the pause, the WTF moment, the end of the denial, the pass the parcel finger of blame experience and then eventually the fix. Then you have the post-mortem which involves everyone agreeing to be more organised and in full communication mode if this happens again, and then forgetting that was ever said five minutes later.

Linden Lab seem to be very well organised and the fact that they use chat means the existence of chat logs, the use of which are explained well in the blog post. Linden Lab can look back over the logs to identify what exactly happened, they can even educate new staff by letting them read old logs too.

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September 19, 2014September 19, 2014

Drax Files Radio Hour Episode 37 – Virtual Therapy

Episode 37 Of The Drax Files Radio Hour has a main feature this week regarding virtual therapy with an interview with Dr Tammy Fletcher. There’s also discussion of some hot topics such as Innsmouth,

However the episode opens with an excellent interview with Jeska Dzwigalski (AKA Jeska Linden), regarding the late Joe Miller with whom Jeska was a work colleague. Jeska talks of the introduction of voice in Second Life as well as talking about how passionate Joe was about Second Life. This is an excellent perspective of the contribution Joe made to Second Life and is well worth listening to. Jeska left Linden Lab quite a while ago now but she’s still a well known and liked name. She also runs a pretty cool site : Geeks With Drinks. Jeska earns extra kudos for knowing the difference between Whisky and Whiskey.

The episode also touch upon a subject close to my heart, Facebook’s absurd real names policy. This time they are mainly talking about drag Queens petitioning Facebook to change their real name policy and allow people to use stage names. Facebook’s real name policy is simply absurd, a name people known as is a far better policy. I’m tired of trying to encourage Linden Lab to embrace Google + now that they allow people to use any name they want to. Facebook has reach, Google + currently has far better ethics in this area.

They talk about many more issues including the High Fidelity Alpha users and a revelation that Draxtor Despres may well be entering High Fidelity for a special broadcast, with a special Draxtor Despres avatar. I hope they realise the perils Of Draxtor’s long hair! This may be more challenging than Rock, Paper, Scissors which they have been having fun with over at High Fidelity.

However the main feature is a fascinating interview with Dr Tammy Fletcher. Dr Fletcher talks about therapy within Second Life. This is a fascinating interview because a lot of people will think that any sort of therapy within Second Life will be artificial, ran by charlatans and not worthwhile.

Yet Dr Fletcher explains not only how therapy in Second Life can be useful and valid, she also explains why Second Life can highlight issues that are specific to spending too much time in Second Life, or using alts, or associated drama and how these are real and not virtual issues.

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September 18, 2014

Innsmouth Faces Its Biggest Threat Yet … Closure!

Innsmouth in Second Life is a dark place, abandoned in the 1930’s and with a mysterious sea creature off the coast, it’s a town with a secret. However the dark forces that have plagued the town have not put everyone off, there are still a few hardy souls around. However now Innsmouth faces it’s greatest peril yet, a peril that many have fought within Second Life. Innsmouth may very well disappear from the Second Life grid.

A blog post on the HP Lovecraft Festival site has issued a call for help : SAVE INNSMOUTH SIM in SL. The post explains the very real peril Innsmouth finds itself in :

On September 15th, Darmin Darkes, the owner of the Innsmouth-themed Sim announced the following: “Innsmouth sim is for sale. I’m giving first dibs to you folks in the hopes that someone will want to keep some of the build. Worst case is having to flatten it and sell it. I just can’t afford it any longer. I’m not leaving SL, but I have to cut back my sims. Thank you for your years of support and friendship and the passion you’ve given to Innsmouth. It’s only pixels and I’m sure there are better versions waiting to be built.” — Darmin Darkes

As a result of this notice, a number of Second Lifer have been working together, through a group called, “The Innsmouth Preservation Society,” to help with the upkeep and potentially to purchase this sim, then maintain it.

If you would like to be a part of this important group, please contact Arik Metzer or any member of the group who can invite you. More updates on our progress will be posted here.

**IMPORTANT FIRST MEETING TO DISCUSS THIS ISSUE**: Thursday 18 September 2014 — 2 times: 11 AM SLT and 7:30 PM SLT, both at the Innsmouth SIM .

The first meeting was taking place as I blogged this piece. A second meeting will take place at 7:30 PM SLT today. Whether Innsmouth can be saved only time will tell but it’s a fascinating sim with a theme that is better viewed inworld than in snapshots.

Innsmouth featured on the Eureka Destination Blog back in February 2010 when Limey Linden spoke to the owner Darmin Darkes. Those Eureka posts were good. Anyway, Limey visited back in 2010 and was impressed. At the time, Darmin, who had been a driving force in creating the sim had purchased the sim for herself. At the time Darmin said :

I’ve just purchased Innsmouth, so it will stay as it is until I think of something to tweak and improve. I hope it lasts forever! I like that it’s so low key… no club or shopping to detract from the atmosphere… but that may have to change. I get so many positive comments from visitors and it pleases me to be able to make something they appreciate so deeply. When you see something you love about SL, you should always try and thank someone.

Alas it seems that that will not be the case and I can completely sympathise with Darmin over her decision.

Continue reading “Innsmouth Faces Its Biggest Threat Yet … Closure!”