Linden Lab – Page 30 – Ciaran Laval

April 18, 2016April 18, 2016

The Day George R.R. Martin Brought Tyrion Lannister To Second Life

Inara Pey recently reported that participation applications for Second Life’s 13th birthday are now open. A thirteenth birthday for Second Life is an extremely impressive milestone, especially when you consider how many people are still surprised that Second Life is still around.

Meanwhile, Fantasy Faire 2016 in Second Life is on the horizon and they will once again be holding a literary festival (Litfest) which will include readings, poetry, discussions and on April 23rd, Shakespeare Day. More details will appear on that page soon.

I’m a fan of storytelling, as I’ve said many times, I’m also a massive fan of Fantasy Faire in Second Life and I always like to delve a little bit into Second Life’s history as Second Life’s birthday approaches. I’ll combine history, storytelling and fantasy to look at an event that took place in Second Life back in 2007, an event that I didn’t know anything about until I read an article by Michael Calia and Mike Ayers : How ‘Game of Thrones’ Became the Most Viral Show on Television. The link to Second Life comes at the start of the article :

In May 2007, a few months after HBO optioned the rights to a book series by George R.R. Martin, executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss joined the author for a surprise appearance in the virtual community Second Life.

“Game of Thrones” wouldn’t hit the screen until four years later, but Second Life was a vital hangout for gamers, fantasy role-players and fans of Mr. Martin’s novels. The two producers appeared on screen as digital avatars in a forum moderated by one Beelzebubba Rasmuson and reassured fans that they would remain respectful of the beloved books.

Second Life was of course a lot more popular in terms of media coverage back in 2007.

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April 6, 2016

Tyche Shepherd’s Awesome Private Estate Survey March 2016

Tyche “Statto” Shepherd has published her first private estate survey for over two years and it makes for very interesting reading. Tyche’s last private estate survey was published in November 2013. This survey covers Second Life only.

The methodology for these surveys is, to quote Tyche :

these results are based on a sample of 5000 randomly selected private estate regions designed to estimate full/ Homestead/ Openspace penetration.

So with that said let’s get straight to comparisons.

November 2013

Full Regions : 2,368
Homestead Regions : 2,005
Openspace : 29
Closed to Public : 598

March 2016

Full Regions : 2,266
Homestead Regions : 1,921
Openspace : 21
Closed to Public : 792

Now remember that this is a survey, not a comparison of the overall number of regions, the above comparisons designed to gauge an idea of how the land lies regarding the type of regions in terms of the percentage of the grid they occupy.

November 2013 Accessible Regions (4,402)

Full Regions : 53.8%
Homestead Regions : 45.5%
Openspace : 0.7%

March 2016 Accessible Regions (4,208)

Full Regions : 53.9%
Homestead Regions : 45.6%
Openspace : 0.5%

Tyche comments further on the methodology for this survey :

The Margins of Error are +/-1.30% , +/- 1.29% and +/-0.21% respectively for the three figures figure at the 95% confidence level.

Remember the above is part of a survey, not an overall comparison of the number of regions on the grid. Tyche does comment on the numbers overall in her commentary, but we’ll come to that later.

As we can see from the comparisons, the shape of the grid in terms of the percentage of Full, Homestead and Openspace regions has changed very little in the period between November 2013 and March 2016.

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April 4, 2016

Grandfathered Tier Rates Now Available For Second Life Regions For A One Off Fee

Linden Lab appear to be unleashing evil plans to make some of the protest gnomes redundant with a new announcement regarding a way of reducing tier payments. The reduction does come at a cost, but let’s look at the blog post : Want Lower Tier? Now You Can Get Grandfathered Land Rates!

In November, we lowered the set-up fees for land purchases by 40%. Today, we’re introducing a limited-time offer that will make land even cheaper by allowing you to lower your monthly tier payments (aka land maintenance fees).

From today until October 4th, 2016, you can “buy-down” your Full Islands and/or Homesteads to the grandfathered maintenance rates. By paying a one-time fee up front, you’ll be entitled to lower tier rates on your land for as long as you hold it (and remember, we now also allow transferring grandfathered land).

The pricing for this offer is as follows:

Full Island:

One-time buy-down fee: $600
Grandfathered maintenance fee: $195/month (regularly $295/month)

Homestead:

One-time buy-down fee: $180
Grandfathered maintenance fee: $95/month (regularly $125/month)

Note: This offer cannot be combined with our Education and Non-Profit discount program, and cannot be applied to Skill Gaming Regions.

If you plan to hold onto your land for longer than 6 months, this is a great deal for you!

To take advantage of this offer, you’ll need to submit a Support Case using the Land & Region -> Region Buy Down case type. In that case you can provide us with the names of the regions you would like to buy down, and we will assess the appropriate buy-down fee per region.

This is certainly a good deal if you have the upfront money and plan to hold your region for the next six months. The overall cost for the next six months would be the same as if you were still paying your current tier rate, but you’ll pay the one off fee and then see $100 knocked of your tier bill (for a full region). After that six months, you will start making savings.

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April 4, 2016

Concerns Raised Over Oculus Rift Terms Of Service

The Terms of Service (TOS) that accompany the Oculus Rift have raised concerns from users and potential users. UploadVR report; Oculus ‘Always On’ Services and Privacy Policy May Be a Cause for Concern. Gizmodo report; There Are Some Super Shady Things in Oculus Rift’s Terms of Service. techdirt report; Oculus Users Freak Out Over VR Headset’s TOS, Though Most Of It Is Boilerplate.

The concerns raised will sound rather familiar in parts for Second Life content creators. This is especially the case for parts of the TOS such as this :

Unless otherwise agreed to, we do not claim any ownership rights in or to your User Content. By submitting User Content through the Services, you grant Oculus a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual (i.e. lasting forever), non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free and fully sublicensable (i.e. we can grant this right to others) right to use, copy, display, store, adapt, publicly perform and distribute such User Content in connection with the Services.

Sections of a TOS such as this can sound worse than they actually are. A lot of those rights are required for companies to carry your content and transmit it to other users. The article over at Gizmodo suggest that the result of the above is :

If you create something using Oculus’ services, the Terms of Service say that you surrender all rights to that work and that Oculus can use it whenever it wants, for whatever purposes

I’m not convinced that’s quite true but it’s not hard to see why people come to that conclusion. techdirt point out :

The problem with getting hysterical over the TOS is that this language is essentially boilerplate, and attached to the terms of service for pretty much every service in existence so they can make a sharing technology work without being sued over copyright. While certainly worded poorly there’s no real nefarious intent; it’s CYA lawyer language.

The UploadVR article takes a closer look at the privacy angle and the privacy policy that is incorporated into the TOS.

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March 31, 2016

Comedian Sami Shah Exemplifies The Advantages Of Virtual World Reach

Pakistani comedian Sami Shah has been featured more than once by Hamlet Au over at New World Notes. Almost a year ago Hamlet posted : Comedian Who Got His Start Performing Live in Second Life from Pakistan Gets His Own Show on the BBC.

More recently Sami has been talking to John Bailey of The Sydney Morning Herald : Sami Shah’s second life as a comedian. The reason Sami is talking to the Australian press is because he has been performing in Australia and will be performing, I MIGRANT & Other Stories by Sami Shah at The Cooper’s Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne April 5th – 17th as part of a comedy festival.

The reason “Second Life” is in the title of The Sydney Morning Herald article is of course because Sami used to perform in Second Life at a comedy club :

It was just people coming on and reading joke books, so I started performing there two or three times per week. The audience was all from America and England, so I’d wake up just to be there when they logged in, and in Pakistan that was six in the morning. I ended up earning a few hundred dollars doing comedy in Second Life in Pakistan for at least a year or two.

What this really exemplifies is how Virtual Worlds such as Second Life can give an artist worldwide reach. There’s no two hour drive to the venue involved and if you bomb in a virtual world, well, you have another advantage, you can reinvent yourself.

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