Linden Lab – Page 109

June 27, 2014

Why Linden Lab Should Not Open The Content Migration Can Of Worms

When buying this package of textures, what you are really buying is a legal limited license to use and modify them according to your specific needs insides Second Life. You do not actually own them, nor the copyright.

The above are pretty standard terms for content creators within Second Life when they purchase textures. Textures really need to be sold as full permissions for people to use them in their creations and therefore the person selling the textures wants to place restrictions on use outside of Second Life. There are other items that will come with similar terms, building kits etc.

However they highlight an issue when it comes to Linden Lab’s new world because I’ve seen a lot of talk of people wanting to know if they can bring their content across into the new virtual world Linden Lab have planned. Some content simply won’t be compatible, some will. However even when it comes to content that is compatible Linden Lab should tread very carefully because of issues such as the Licence terms I opened this post with. Mesh and Textures are likely candidates to be compatible with the new world but just because they are compatible it doesn’t mean Linden Lab should facilitate transfers.

Then there are issues that have arisen since Linden Lab’s controversial terms of service change. Website CG Textures announced :

6th September 2013: Terms of Service update, using our images in Second Life is no longer allowed.

What has changed?

From 6 September 2013 you are no longer permitted to add our images to Second Life or other Linden Lab products. The use of textures downloaded prior to this date is allowed.

CG textures did not like the Linden Lab terms of service change and it remains a problem today, ten or so months on from when they were changed. The word on the street is that Linden Lab are trying to change the terms to reflect their intent but it has been an extremely slow process. However that’s an aside, the simple matter is that migrating content that has been built with CG textures content would be controversial to say the least.

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June 26, 2014

The Drax Files Radio Hour – Immersive Journalism

Last week’s Drax Files Radio Hour has been put on the back burner because of the news of Linden Lab’s proposed new virtual world and SL11B. This is a bit of a shame because not only does Drax have a fantastic interview about immersive journalism with Nonny de la Pena, but the interview also touches upon some of the pros and cons of Second Life. This is actually extremely relevant when you consider the news about Linden Lab’s new virtual world.

Nonny de la Pena is a journalist and documentary maker who moved from traditional media such as Newsweek to creating immersive spaces in virtual and digital environments to tell news stories, amongst other things. The subject matter is often controversial and political, for example in association with Peggy Weil she built Virtual Guantanamo in Second Life. I’ll embed a 2007 youTube video by Draxtor Despres about that at the end of the post.

Nonny speaks about how the idea was to bring an experience such as virtual Guantanamo to a virtual world environment such as Second Life to bring the news and issues to a more immersive environment. The idea being that this was a different means of raising awareness about such issues. Actually it’s probably better if I quote Nonny’s website about section in part :

The fundamental idea of immersive journalism is to allow the participant to actually enter a virtually recreated scenario representing the news story. The participant will be typically represented in the form of a digital avatar – an animated 3D digital representation of the participant, and see the world from the first-person perspective of that avatar.

This is further expanded upon :

Immersive journalism is a novel way to utilize gaming platforms and virtual environments to convey news, documentary and non-fiction stories. Visual and audio primary source material from the physical world reinforce the concept that participants are experiencing a nonfiction story, with the video, sounds or photographs acting on the narrative.

There’s a far more in depth explanation in the link above but the basic idea is to tell a news story in a different environment. Nonny felt that one of the advantages of Second Life was being able to talk and collaborate with people all over the world in a virtual environment as well as being able to bring the news story to people all over the world too. Nonny also feels that in some ways Second Life was ahead of its time.

However there was a downside and that’s in relation to an old bugbear of mine. Virtual Guantanamo is no longer in Second Life and one of the main reasons for that is because …. The Tier Is Too Damn High! I’m not making this up. The expense of land in Second Life stifles development of projects such as this. However Nonny wasn’t put off from using virtual worlds by this and moved on to Unity to build immersive journalism and in doing so highlighted another issue regarding Second Life. Via Unity people can enter the immersive environment without downloading a client, they can enter via the web. This has long been considered a weakness of Second Life, although personally I don’t think it’s a major one, it is an issue that means that people who just want to casually pop in to view something are thwarted somewhat.

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June 25, 2014

Ebbe Altberg – “We Will Continue To Invest In SL And Keep Improving And Have No Plans For Any Shutdown. “

Ebbe Altberg (AKA Ebbe Linden) has been engaging with the Second Life community on the official forums. In a forum post Ebbe reiterated that Second Life isn’t closing down, despite the announcement of plans for a new Linden Lab virtual world.

I’m still somewhat at a loss to understand why people seem to be ignoring the fact that Second Life isn’t closing down, but people seem convinced that the new virtual world is a replacement for Second Life, rather than just another virtual world from Linden Lab.

In the forum post, Ebbe stated :

I pretty much only said these things:

We are embarking on a huge project to build a better virtual world from the ground up.

We are not going to constrain how good it can be by forcing some levels of backwards compatability (Sine then I’ve added some detail that identity and social connections and Lindens$ will come across and quite a bit of content as well, but with content we need more time to figure out exactly what will be backwards compatible, people will have plenty of time to see how this plays out and get a chance to try the new while still also hanging out in SL)

We will continue to invest in SL and keep improving and have no plans for any shutdown.

The rest is all speculation that has since then popped up.

That really is pretty much all Linden Lab have said, yet people seem to be reading between lines that don’t exist. Here’s the thing, even if Linden Lab wanted to force migrate people to their new world, a lot of people wouldn’t go because their virtual world love is Second Life, if Second Life closed down some people would give up on virtual worlds, others would move somewhere away from Linden Lab properties and some of course would go to Linden Lab’s new world, but it would be extremely foolish of Linden Lab to close Second Life in the next few years and to be fair to Linden Lab, there are absolutely no signs whatsoever that they intend to close Second Life.

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June 24, 2014

Second Life Can Still Thrive With The Birth Of Linden Lab’s New World

Back in March 2009 Tateru Nino wrote an article for Massively : Give Us More Worlds Linden Lab. The general point of the article was that Second Life should not be the only virtual world Linden Lab managed. Tateru’s idea was that there could be multiple grids running on Second Life technology and that each world could have different characteristics. However Tateru also wrote :

One-size-fits-all doesn’t just doesn’t work in the mass-market. Otherwise there’d only be one kind of iPod. What the Lab really needs is a number of differentiated ‘world’-products, each offering something a little different.

In October 2011, I wrote a blog on a very similar theme : Multiple Linden Lab Grids For More Virtual Worlds. I also talked of Second Life technology being used for multiple use cases and that Second Life did not need to be the only club in town :

This isn’t to say I feel the main grid should close, the main grid is where it’s currently all at and Linden Lab should nurture and cherish what they have, develop it and make that product an appealing product to current and new users who want that level of freedom and creativity, it remains a wonderful idea. However in terms of wider appeal and getting others interested in their own controlled spaces, Linden Lab could well consider making Second Life the technology the option for those who seek it, rather than Second Life being the only product in town on their servers.

Now Tateru and myself were largely talking about multiple grids using Second Life technology, rather than virtual worlds running on completely unrelated technology. However with news of Linden Lab’s new virtual world plans making the news, I really don’t see why Second Life and the new world can’t exist at the same time. They will simply offer different options and appeal to different people. Obviously both worlds will also appeal to people who want to engage with both worlds but this is no different to how things are now with people who engage with one or more of Second Life, Kitely, Inworldz and Opensim. People are also keeping an eye on High Fidelity.

I’m a bit bemused at the reaction in some quarters to Linden Lab’s announcement on the new virtual world. People are talking of how problematic it will be to migrate. They are talking of how they should be compensated for their Second Life land. They are talking of how higher sales tax fees and lower land tax fees will hinder rather than help content creators. The reason I’m bemused about this is because Linden Lab have not announced that Second Life is closing and that people will have to move to their new world, indeed, as Inara Pey reported, they’ve said :

Does this mean we’re giving up on Second Life? Absolutely not. It is thanks to the Second Life community that our virtual world today is without question the best there is, and after 11 years we certainly have no intention of abandoning our users nor the virtual world they continually fill with their astounding creativity. Second Life has many years ahead of it, and in addition to improvements and new developments specifically for Second Life, we think that much of the work we do for the next generation project will also be beneficial for Second Life.

Now I can understand people being cautious about the future of Second Life, especially those who own a lot of land, but I can’t understand some of the outrage at this point in time. I would have a different point of view if Linden Lab were telling people they must migrate, but that is not the case.

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June 23, 2014

Linden Lab’s New World Gets Early Publicity Thanks To New World Notes

One of the reasons Ebbe Altberg cited for breaking the news about Linden Lab’s planned new world was because he had been talking to the press, implying that he had mentioned it to them. I decided to google the news and didn’t find many news stories featuring Ebbe Altberg. I did find one from San Francisco’s SFGate : Just how real can virtual reality get? This is largely about virtual reality itself and talks of the Oculus Rift. However Linden Lab have been in the news because of Second Life’s adoption of Oculus Rift and in the SFGate story they quote Ebbe Altberg :

This week, new Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg demonstrated for the first time how his company’s virtual online world Second Life looks when redesigned for an Oculus Rift.

Since taking over in February, Altberg has tuned the company’s focus to developing a next-generation Second Life that will include immersion technologies.

“We want to be part of it and help it succeed because it gets us closer to what we have in mind for what a virtual world should be,” he said.

However the press stories regarding discussions with Ebbe aren’t appearing in droves. The story that is appearing is the news of Linden Lab’s planned new world and those stories are largely based on Hamlet Au’s confirmation of the news over at New World Notes.

Digital Spy Uk : Linden Lab building spiritual successor to Second Life. That story doesn’t cite Hamlet, it cites Gamasutra’s story about the new world :

The team behind Second Life has given a statement to New World Notes about its next major project, saying that it is aiming to build the next generation of virtual world.

Polygon go with the spiritual successor headline too and say :

Second Life developer Linden Lab is currently working on the spiritual sequel to the massively multiplayer online social title, according to a statement the developer provided to Polygon.

This new game, first reported by New World Notes, is a “next generation virtual world” that is “in the spirit of Second Life,” an open-world game that will focus on user-created content and interactions. The San Francisco-based studio noted it is actively hiring for this project, which is still in its “very early days.”

The Gamer, gets itself a little confused in a couple of areas in their reporting of the story :

Linden Lab’s highly successful social experiment Second Life is today celebrating it’s 10th birthday, and what better way to celebrate than announcing to the world that a follow-up to the unique online sandbox is in the works?

According to a statement released by the developer’s New World Notes blog, this new ‘spiritual sequel’ will be “an open world where users have incredible power to create anything they can imagine and content creators are king.” Stopping short of admitting that the new game will be identical to it’s predecessor, Linden expand on the statement and say that “The next generation virtual world will go far beyond what is possible with Second Life, and we don’t want to constrain our development by setting backward compatibility with Second Life as an absolute requirement from the start.”

I think we can forgive them for not realising Second Life is celebrating its eleventh birthday but New World Notes hasn’t officially been part of Linden Lab for many a year!

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