Virtual Worlds – Page 283

June 9, 2011June 9, 2011

Another Fine Mesh They’re Getting Us Into

I’m afraid I’m going to have to depart from the general love in on the mesh upload requirements, as revealed here by Tateru Nino. I’m not a fan of how this is being presented, nor am I a fan of the implications of it. The proposed requirements are listed on the official Second Life Wiki, under Mesh Upload Enablement.

This isn’t all bad, there will be a tutorial for starters which is long overdue. However the PIOF requirement I’m not fan of because we still have this absurd situation in Second Life where I can’t just have one account and multiple alts. This is an absurd requirement to receive a flag, my NPIOF alts can go to adult land because I submitted a support ticket, I didn’t have to get them PIOF status and I didn’t have to get them age verified. This whole individual account business is a nonsense.

Beyond that, there are people who can’t, for whatever reason, buy Linden dollars from Linden Lab, they use third party exchanges such as Virwox. The folk who buy from third party exchanges do put money into Second Life and do contribute to the overall economy, why should they be discriminated against?

Another issue of course is that it goes against the ethos of user creation to limit it in a fashion such as this, although it should be noted that at one time Second Life required people provide credit card details to engage, this was also a time when there were a lot less users.

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June 6, 2011June 6, 2011

Amanda And Lexie Do Zindra

Well that was a meeting full of surprises as well a meeting full of no surprises. There was news of a promotion, news that Linden Lab are looking to replace Blondin but the most shocking development was the sight of Censor and Censoribility, Amanda Linden and Lexie Linden, chairing the Zindra User Group Meeting.

“Pics or it didn’t happen” I hear you say, well here you go:

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June 3, 2011June 3, 2011

We Wanna Be Free To Do What We Wanna Do And We Wanna Get Loaded

One of the beauties of Second Life is the freedom to create, it’s why the old tagline of “Your World, Your Imagination” was so wonderfully apt, and why it was disconcerting when it was removed. Some people of course don’t like creative freedom because creative freedoms lead to situations where people don’t like what others create. However one should always remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I still get excited when my scripts come to fruition and actually do what I want them to do, to me that makes it a beautiful day.

However with creative freedom also comes responsibility, which is why people aren’t free to create anything they like, there are certain items that will earn you a one way ticket to palookaville, there’s a distinctly “Don’t be Evil” subplot to these creative freedoms, hence why you get asked for permissions to do things.

Rules are of course seen in some quarters as a bad thing and being careful what you wish for is another concern, which has been exemplified by the official forums which are being rejigged again.

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June 1, 2011June 1, 2011

No Sex Please, We’re Lord British

With a hat tip to Cristiano at SLUniverse for his post on the subject, it seems that Richard “Lord British” Garriott is planning a virtual world social hub called Centerport, which you can read about here. The blurb starts well:

“When it makes its debut in 2012, CenterPort will be the virtual world social hub for the OpenLife ecosystem, a broad yet fully integrated meta-community. And, it’s also a robust game unto itself.”

There’s talk of reward systems, games, friends lists and when it’s initially launched it will be as a social network app for the likes of Facebook, MySpace and hi5 …. will Myspace still be around in 2012? Facebook will be and that’s going to be one of the problems for this venture, but that’s a different issue for a different post.

However before folk get too excited, let’s look a bit deeper:

“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).”

Hmmmm……..

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June 1, 2011June 1, 2011

Cheers Blondin!

I was extremely disappointed to learn that Blondin had left the lab, and all the more disappointed to see it via a post at SL Universe. That post was inspired by a notice from Marianne McCann in the Bay City Alliance Group where Marianne thanked Blondin for his care and attention and wished him all the best for the future.

Why Blondin has left, I have no idea, but I certainly hope that it is for the right reasons, because Blondin worked hard with communities of all ranges and whereas I largely spoke to him at Zindra user group meetings, or office hours, he’d also been at the community tools user group meetings, the events users group meetings, he was here, there and every bloody where.

I must admit that I did wonder aloud whether he was bored at a recent Zindra group meeting, they really can be like Groundhog Day but he IM’d me to say he wasn’t bored:

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