Skill Gaming Policy Arrives With Sensible Late Twist

The new Skill Gaming Policy officially arrived in Second Life yesterday. However it arrived with an apparent late twist to who is authorised to participate. The last blog post on the subject stated :

If you live in a jurisdiction where skill gaming is permitted and you plan on playing these games in Skill Gaming Regions in Second Life, you should not need to do anything differently. However, adding payment information on file now is a good way to help ensure you’re able to play as soon as Skill Gaming Regions are live.

However it seems that there had either been an omission or Linden Lab decided they needed to be a bit more careful regarding who can participate. On August 29th, after some venues had been approved, a change appears to have been made to the FAQ. The change to the FAQ is a sensible one and one that really should have been mentioned before. The change to the FAQ points out that to participate you must have current payment info on file and you must be 19 years of age or older. On top of this you can’t be connecting from a prohibited state or be a resident of a prohibited state.

The change to requiring current payment info on file is likely to throw those who wanted to go play on their alts, although those who are determined to do so know what needs to be done to allow them to access Skill Gaming Regions.

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August 30, 2014August 30, 2014

Linden Lab’s Excellent Promotion Of The Destination Guide

The movie Mary Poppins turned 50 this week, which is an impressive milestone. A less impressive milestone is Linden Lab’s refusal to allow people to mention Dick Van Dyke in all his glory on the Second Life forum. I’ve mentioned him in his full name here in this blog post, I haven’t been struck by lightning, I haven’t been stampeded by a rampaging mob! Well not yet anyway. Come on guys, apply some common sense with those word filters and ditch the Dick Van **Bleep** silliness.

However one area where Linden Lab are doing a superb job is with their excellent promotion of The Destination Guide. The Lab have been regularly promoting the destination guide and this month is no exception as they blog : Highlights from the Second Life Destination Guide 8/27/2014. I’ll ignore the arse about face date format, I still don’t get the reason for that in a numerical sense.

One of the really nifty features of the Destination Guide is the ad widgets :

Hot Bay City Nights

Now in its third year, Hot Bay City Nights has hot roads and cool cars. Come see established vintage automobile designers in the Bay City Fairgrounds from August 23-30 as they present the best in vintage and retro vehicles for all avatars. Additional events provide plenty for all to do, including the crowning of 2014’s Miss Bay City and a number of charity car washes. The event will raise funds for Child’s Play, a charity that provides toys and games for children in hospitals around the world.

Visit in Second Life

It’s a shame these widgets can’t be used for promoting events. However the destination guide, now that Linden Lab pay it plenty of care and attention, is an excellent resource and Linden Lab are to be commended for promoting, updating and utilising it.

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August 27, 2014

LL Issue Reminder And Warning On Skill Gaming Policy

Linden Lab have issued a reminder : New Skill Gaming Policy in Effect September 1, 2014. The blog post also contains a warning that the new policy will be enforced. Skill Gaming in Second Life is basically defined as :

A game where the outcome is determined by skill, rather than by chance.
Has the option for payment to participate in Linden Dollars.
Pays out in Linden Dollars.
Is legal according to United States and international law.

That’s pretty much the gist of it, so if the game allows you to pay in with the option of paying out if your skill allows you to win, then it’s a skill game. Now if those criteria aren’t met, say for example you can pay in but there’s a random chance of the game paying out, such as a traditional fruit machine style game, then that’s gambling and is strictly forbidden.

Now if you haven’t been paying attention then you may be wondering how on earth Linden Lab know if the game you play or create meets this criteria. Well that’s what the Skill Gaming Policy is for. Games of skill will only be allowed to be played on approved sims. Only approved games, created by approved creators are permitted and they can only be operated by approved operators. This means that if your game meets the skill gaming definition, you will still be breaching the rules of the new policy if the game, the land or the person operating the game have not been approved.

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August 22, 2014

Hurricane Iris Whips Up A Picture Storm

It started innocently enough, Janine Hawkins (AKA Iris Ophelia) penned a piece for Paste Magazine : 10 Best MMOs. At number six in the list sits Second Life. However this wasn’t the villain of the piece in this article.

No the villain of the piece was the initial image the editors of Paste Magazine used to represent Second Life. This was not Iris’ call, so don’t hound Iris about this. However this also raised a wider issue, one of whether Linden Lab provide news outlets with decent pictures in the first place.

This is a very good question, and one that to be fair to Linden Lab, they did address. This also raised the issue of using Flickr to use images and when images are or aren’t fair game for usage. As you can see, this is far more complicated than it should be.

Draxtor Despres pointed to the Second Life Flickr pool as a repository for images the press could use. However this is the unofficial pool and those images have different rights. Draxtor realised this and then pointed people to the excellent SL Is Looking Good Flickr Pool. However that has the same issue with regards to rights. This is why Linden Lab decided to setup their own Flickr pool. This pool has a terms of service that spell out that LL can use these images for marketing :

As a participant of the Program, you hereby grant to the Company a perpetual, worldwide, irrevocable, and cost-free right and license to use, distribute, or sublicense (through multiple levels), and otherwise exploit in any manner whatsoever, all or any portion of your Submissions, for the purposes of marketing, promotion, and/or outreach for and about the Second Life virtual world.

That was an issue of some controversy when the group was created by the way. When you think about it, it’s strange that Linden Lab later went on to make their own terms of service for Second Life even more controversial because they had feedback on those terms that people weren’t happy, but that’s an aside.

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