You’ve been Left On Your Own, Like A Rainbow In The Dark

Linden Lab have unleashed another new product, this time dio, where you may be able to ride the tiger, you can see his stripes but you know he’s clean. dio has been on the horizon for a while, but now it seems to be cooking on gas and you can see some good commentary on Inara Pey’s blog post and Hamlet Au’s blog post, alternatively you can stick with me for cheesy 80’s rock references, look, someone was going to do it, I’m just taking one for the team and sparing other bloggers the pain of the cheesy references!

There’s also a very hand press release from Linden Lab, which can be read here. I’m still awaiting a reply from Peter Gray from an email from years ago now that I think about it, but one day, you never know. Anyway, what is dio I hear you ask, and no don’t go all 80’s rock again, well not just yet! Where was I? Oh yes, what is dio, well from the press reference Rod Humble is quoted as saying:

dio is a new shared creative space on the web, based around the concept of linked spaces, dio makes it easy and fun to create or visit experiences of all kinds. dio is still in development, and we have deliberately kept the tools as broad as possible, but so far our testers have created a vast range of spaces, from wedding keepsakes, to house tours, to games, to rich media-linked chat rooms about sports and ancient history. I’m really looking forward to seeing what people will create now that dio is more widely available.

I think this is something we’re going to need to see in action to really understand what’s going on, but an interesting part of dio is that there’s talk of being able to earn money, initially via ad revenue and further down the line from creations and what makes this press release more positive, from a Second Life perspective, is that Rod Humble even makes a reference to Second Life in the press release! Hurrah!

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Is It Time For A Linden Lab Login Account?

Back in 2009 Argent Stonecutter created a Jira suggestion that I very much agree with. SVC-6212 Create Master Account Name, Linking to Avatar Names. The idea here is that you’d login to Second Life and then select an avatar name to go inworld with, this would mean linking your alts, which could have benefits for issues such as Mesh uploads, which are currently on an avatar basis, so even though the person behind Ciaran Laval meets the requirements to upload Mesh, my alts don’t, this despite the fact that my alts are known by Linden Lab as they linked them for the cases of being adult verified back in the day when the requirements were more stringent.

I shouldn’t need to have payment info on all my avatars, having payment info on my overall account deals with this. However whereas this has merit for Second Life, it has even more merit now that Linden Lab are releasing new products. Patterns, Creatoverse, Dio and Versu are all Linden Lab products. There are different ways these products are delivered with some aimed at the mobile community and some web based but with Linden Lab producing multiple products doesn’t it make some sense for me to have a Linden Lab account, rather than a product specific account?

Blizzard do this, I have one login for World of Warcraft, the same one works for Diablo III and would also work for Starcraft II. This just makes the process of purchasing products easier, it makes billing easier. I’m already a Linden Lab customer, a bird in the hand and all that.

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Versu Looks Like It Will Contain A Murder Mystery Story

I’m about to embark on a series of posts about accounts, Linden Lab and their forthcoming interactive story of Versu. Inara Pey, with her eye firmly on the ball has noticed that websites have appeared for Dio and Versu. I’m not so much interested in Dio, although I might be once it gets going. However Versu is something I like the look of and I’ve been digging around the website for Versu. At first glance it seems bereft of information, but a closer look reveals that Versu has a cut down version of the Second Life terms and conditions, a  DMCA link and a very handy FAQ.

Now unless that FAQ is some sort of boiler plate FAQ, it reveals some clues to the storyline and content. There are plans for three stories at launch, a ghost story, a romance story and a murder mystery story set in Regency England, so that should be the pre Victorian era of the 1800’s. The murder mystery story appears to be leading the way with information more specific to that story in the FAQ, where we’re informed that you will be able to play a female character, Lucy or Miss Bates.

Now Lucy and Miss Bates are detective characters according to the FAQ, so I would imagine the aim is to solve the crime, however maybe it isn’t and the aim is to fling bread rolls at Mr Quinn. The thing to bear in mind is that the story is interactive with several endings and will develop depending upon the actions you set for your characters, so this is something you can play more than once.

Continue reading “Versu Looks Like It Will Contain A Murder Mystery Story”

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