Virtual Worlds – Page 180

November 7, 2013

No Sex, No Drugs, No Wine, No Women, No fun, No sin, No you, No wonder it’s dark

“Learning providers can create entire campuses composed of multiple learning environments. Game designers can create custom games Virtual world providers can provide any type of environment (within similar constraints as the Entertainment Software Ratings Board [ESRB] content ranges, we intend to avoid the issues that Second Life is wrestling with due to the adult/erotic/pornographic flavor of so much of their content).” – Richard Garriott (AKA Lord British).

The above quote, which I covered in more detail back in June 2011 was to do with a project that Lord British was contemplating, that now seems to have morphed into Shroud Of The Avatar, an MMO, so the previous post is now well out of date. However the issue of adult content is rearing its head once more, this time in Cloud Party where more attention is bringing more questions.

Questions regarding adult and mature content in Cloud Party are not new, indeed they have been discussed in the Cloud Party forums more than once. Cloud Party’s community standards are pretty clear on the issue of mature and adult content:

“Sexually Explicit Content We do not allow adult content or behavior, or visuals of explicit sex or simulated sex on the platform.”

Yet there’s another side to this coin, it’s the whole icky factor some have of sharing spaces with children as young as thirteen. This happens in World Of Warcraft, you’re short of a player on a guild run, you advertise for one more and along comes a gnome warrior with purple hair who tells you “I’m 13” and the rest of the group are “WTF!” but of course, in a 13+ environment you’re likely to run into thirteen year olds!

A thread over at SLUniverse raises the issue of the other side of the coin:

“It has some very good stuff. But no cash out and the PG13 rule ..”

“There’s PG-13, and then there’s hanging out with 13 year olds.”

“The point remains though that in Cloud Party there’s no partitioning of age groups whatsoever at present. They could use a General (13-17) and Mature (18+) filtering themselves, even if they omit Adult forever.”

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, but can a happy medium be reached?

Continue reading “No Sex, No Drugs, No Wine, No Women, No fun, No sin, No you, No wonder it’s dark”

November 6, 2013November 6, 2013

I Got Two Turntables And A Microphone

I downloaded a Sinclair Spectrum emulator for the android the other week. After the initial buzz of seeing all those old game titles from the eighties my interest waned. The android is a bit clunky for such games, many games don’t work and time has not been kind to many of them. However it was a thrill at first. When I had a Speccy as a kid, so did lots of my school friends. We’d share games (piracy as my teacher scolded us, so don’t try that at home). We’d go to each others houses, we’d have fun not only due to the games but because there was also a social aspect.

I left the Speccy behind many moons ago, as I did the Commodore Amiga after that, and I have been looking to see if there’s a legal Amiga emulator but will most likely go through the same cycle as I did with the Speccy emulator, thrill, then flat and no social side to keep the interest.

As it’s my blog I can draw comparisons between the Speccy and Second Life, a bit of a stretch it may be but I can draw them. The Speccy was not the height of technology on release, there were better products around but the Speccy caught the imagination. Therefore software developers were alerted to it and stretched the Speccy to limits beyond what many thought it was capable of, Lords Of Midnight springs to mind here. The Speccy had the people and of all the ingredients that make a product a success, that is arguably the most important one.

Roll forward many years and Second Life is simply where it’s at in virtual world terms. Cloud Party has some very impressive concepts going for it. I like their royalty system on content sales whereby if you sell an asset with royalties enabled, if someone else then sells another asset whilst using your asset as part of the build, you’ll receive a royalty payment. Cloud Party has also had materials for quite a while now. Another impressive apsect of Cloud Party is that objects are not the only limiting factor in a build. In Cloud Party you can have x amount of objects, or x amount triangles or x amount of bandwidth, whichever you hit first will strike the build limit. This is a well considered concept as objects are far from the only issue when it comes to performance.

Kitely has some impressive offerings, such as putting sims to sleep when not in use due to using a cloud based system. Kitely is also not only cheaper than Second Life, but for those who may only spend a few hours a month there they have a time based billing option and under any plan you get at least one free sim to play around with.

Inworldz is also cheaper than Second Life, Jim Tarber and the team are also moving in directions Second Life isn’t, as can be seen in the Inworldz Techblog where they inform visitors they’re implementing physX and project Thoosa, which is aimed at making everything run faster and more efficiently. Inworldz has also implemented Qarl’s mesh deformer project.

However despite these advances in other virtual worlds, Second Life still has that magical community ingredient and what makes this all the more impressive is that Second Life still has the community despite the fact that Linden Lab have been actively distancing themselves from the Second Life community for a few years now.

Continue reading “I Got Two Turntables And A Microphone”

November 3, 2013November 3, 2013

Jane Austen World In MMO

A couple of post ago I mused over the possibility of a Second Life game engine. In that post I mused that the engine wouldn’t be ideal for an all action first person shooter. Estelle Pienaar of Second Life Play Instinct respectfully disagreed. There are some excellent examples of games within Second Life on that blog.

So, what sort of game do I think could benefit from a Second Life style game engine. Well let’s create a formula, let’s take the regency period where Jane Austen novels thrived which has given birth to Emily Short’s interactive fiction in Versu. Then let’s mix that up with avatars who don’t fight, but gain reputation and status via gossip, or being invited to events. Then throw into the mix this mysterious Second Life game engine and to top it all off, let’s throw in an ex senior engineering manager from Linden Lab who worked on Second Life. Result? Far fetched?

Well some of that formula is actually happening. Thanks to a post on SLUniverse from Aimee Weber I’ve discovered that an MMO set in the Jane Austen world might very well be in the works. There’s a kickstarter for a game called Ever, Jane. Indeed the person behind it, Judy L Tyrer is indeed an ex senior engineering manager for Linden Lab who worked on Second Life. Rumour may suggest that I added that part to my formula based on seeing the kickstarter, rumours are sometimes true!

Here’s part of the description of the project:

“Ever, Jane is a virtual world that allows people to role-play in Regency Period England. Similar to traditional role playing games, we advance our character through experience, but that is where the similarities end. Ever, Jane is about playing the actual character in the game, building stories. Our quests are derived from player’s actions and stories. And we gossip rather than swords and magic to demolish our enemies and aid our friends. ”

I’m not making this up!

Continue reading “Jane Austen World In MMO”

November 2, 2013

Second Life’s Historic Plans For World Domination

“Our plans for world domination are proceeding quite nicely” – Philip Linden September 2004.

“We will not be successful unless we are fully open and the control over the world is in your hands. Were we to choose the alternative (as many of the current and former systems have), I think we would be rapidly competed out of business by something like SL. To get SL to reach across the world and become really big, we will have to give up most of our control over it. That is a sacrifice we are happy to make to see this thing happen.” – Philip Linden September 2004.

http://forums-archive.secondlife.com/3/c0/23939/1.html

I’d like to blame this on DrFran Babcock, I really would, but I’ve always been fascinated by the history of Second Life and the Second Life Forum Archive is a wonderful repository. The archive does not tell the full story, which is why I fully support DrFran Babcock’s SL Oldbie Project, but it does tell a big part of the story. The archive also demonstrates the wonderful concept of Linden Lab engaging with their residents, something the class of 2013 are missing out on. What sort of history will archivers find from the last couple of years in ten years time? Personally, I think it’s going to be bereft of detail and that’s a great shame.

Let’s hear a little more from Mr Rosedale, this time from November 2005:

“Well I’ll not take much time before the questions…But I suppose I can give an overview of what it feels like we are mostly debating this week….the changes to ratings stipends,and event support. I think it is important to point out, that by reducing stipends and supporting less events, We aren’t passing any kind of judgment on what people should or shouldn’t do with their time in SL we are simply making gradual steps toward the state of affairs that Second Life, as a platform, is designed for. The meaning of jobs and games and fun and socialization, and everything else here. Is created by you, not by us.

This means that the subsidies that we pay into the economy, and the things we support with our work,..they are temporary. SL is growing much too fast for us to do them indefinitely. I don’t want this to become this huge world where we all do some similar job for the Linden Lab ’empire’. That isn’t our thing. We want the jobs and purpose to come from you. I think this may get lost a bit in the debate….it isn’t and shouldn’t be our choice…whether clubs or events prosper or wane. the idea is you decide it.”

http://forums-archive.secondlife.com/3/6b/32776/1.html

This is a really important post because it highlights a time when Linden Lab were moving away from supporting the world financially. They were happy with the growth and moving towards a more hands off approach, it’s a landmark moment.

Continue reading “Second Life’s Historic Plans For World Domination”

November 1, 2013

The SL Oldbie Project

DrFran Babcock is seeking insight from oldbies as part of a project entitled “The SL Oldbie Project“. What is the SL Oldbie project? Well I’ll let DrFran’s words explain it a little:

“My aim, in attempting to contact early members of SL, is to explore what the experience was like for them. Things now are so different than they were when I rezzed in 2006. I can’t imagine what it was like to operate in a world that really was being created by the people who lived in it in 2002, 2003, and 2004. I am hoping that a number of interviews with oldbies will shine a light on the birth of this virtual world.”

To date DrFran has only received one reply, which is a shame but also understandable as many oldbies have moved on or are busy. However that one reply provides some fascinating insight into the mindset of an oldbie. The oldbie in question is Malachi Petunia. Someone called Malachi taught me how to play Greedy Greedy at the Forum Cartel hangout some years ago, but for the life of me I can’t remember if the surname of that Malachi was Petunia.

The interview, which is definitely worth a read, can be found at: http://slnewserpeople.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/the-oldbie-project-malachi-petunia.html

Malachi doesn’t log in to Second Life much these days, but he has a lifetime account and was born to the Second Life universe on September 21st 2003. The interview touches upon how small the new frontier was back in 2003, how the world has changed so much in terms of capabilities but more importantly it captures how people just get on with things when the tools aren’t available.

Continue reading “The SL Oldbie Project”