Second Life – Page 61

May 30, 2015

Twitch Bans Second Life as Adult-Only Because Twitch Do Not Understand How Second Life Actually Works

Over at New World Notes, Hamlet Au has posted : Twitch Bans Second Life as Adult-Only Because Twitch Understands How Second Life Actually Works. I disagree, strongly. Now before we get into this, I want to ask people to not abuse Hamlet (or me) for having differing opinions. I was most disappointed when I returned from my holiday to read a blog post from Canary Beck entitled “Please Stop The Social Shaming Of Hamlet Au“. I fully support Hamlet’s right to an opinion, no matter how much it differs from mine.

The Second Life community can at times get heated, but generally, they are far more tame than other communities I’ve been part of. Hamlet and myself should be free to disagree without name calling, insults, or twitter abuse.

Now on with the show. I disagree with Hamlet on the Twitch issue, rather strongly and one of the main reasons I disagree with him is that the idea that something can unexpectedly happen in Second Life whilst streaming is something that can also happen when humans are involved, and yet Twitch aren’t silly enough to decree that no humans should be on screen in case something unexpectedly adult appears on the screen.

One of the most surprising points Hamlet makes in his post is :

Twitch, which actually has former Linden Lab staff working for it, knows how Second Life actually works.

How on earth can a company with a former Linden working for them be so wide of the mark when it comes to how Second Life works? Yes, there’s adult content in Second Life, but there’s a hell of a lot of non-adult content and when this furore blew up initially, it was over a stream where someone was scripting, not stripping.

Look, it’s possible to roam Second Life without seeing anything overtly adult for hours on end. Can adult content appear unexpectedly? Absolutely, but Twitch’s rules of conduct make allowances for the unexpected :

Sexually explicit acts or content: Nudity can’t be a core focus or feature of the game in question and modded nudity is disallowed in its entirety. Occurrences in game are okay, so long as you do not make them a primary focus of your stream and only spend as much time as needed in the area to progress the game’s story.

I’ve stated many times on this blog that I’ve been to an adult region whereby I’ve witnessed no overtly adult content. Having an adult rating on your region does not mean your region is full of porn and it gets tiresome seeing this myth about Second Life being about nothing other than adult activity repeated time and again.

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May 29, 2015May 29, 2015

1920’s Berlin Project Starts Sixth Anniversary Celebrations

Frau Yardley’s 1920’s Berlin Project has started to celebrate its sixth birthday in Second Life. There will be six days of festivities, which started today with an open door day. That is a day when homes within the project that have a sign stating “Open House” can be explored inside without the owners chasing you out on to the streets.

Further activities are planned for the forthcoming days too, including (but not limited to) :

6th Anniversary Dance at the Pariser Platz (At the foot of the Brandenburger Tor) with a show by Fraulein Sonatta Morales and with DJ Myron Byron.
Unveiling of the Community Quilt at the Library.
Miss Berlin pageant!
Relaxed Rules Day: All day.

For a full list of planned activities, times and dates go here.

The 1920’s Berlin Project is without any shadow of a doubt, a Second Life success story and one that warms the cockles of many a heart, and also makes others scratch their heads at how Frau Yardley has managed to get this all to work, thrive and grow. I really should ask Frau Yardley about this at some point.

Frau Yardley has had some assistance with the project of course, most notably from Mila Edelman. However the way this community has thrived is certainly something to admire.

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May 28, 2015

Second Life Premium Members Can Now Join 60 Groups

Linden Lab have blogged about a new perk for Premium Members : Premium Membership in Second Life Just Got Better! The perk? Premium Members will be able to join 60 groups, instead of the meaning of life 42.

There’s an interesting part of the blog too, which shows that Linden Lab have thought the consequences of people downgrading through :

Premium members can immediately take advantage of the new limit. Downgrading from Premium membership will not remove you from any of your groups, but it will mean that you cannot join any new groups until you remove yourself from enough groups to get below the Basic account limit, which remains at 42.

Therefore if you’re a premium member today and you join more groups, if at some point in the future you downgrade, you won’t be forced to leave any of your groups. However it will mean that you can’t join any new groups unless you shuffle the group pack until you are below 42 groups again, which may involve some advanced and painful juggling. I also assume that this means if you’re a member of say, 53 groups, and then you downgrade, you won’t be able to join more groups, you’ll have to shuffle the pack until you are below 42 again.

When it comes to groups, there will never be enough. This is one of the reasons why I’ve been a fan in the past of web based groups, whereby you would read the information on a group page, rather than the current system where all the messages, notecards, landmarks and messages are sent to you. Another idea I’ve been a fan of in the past is the idea of different types of groups. Social groups don’t always need land, so why include them in the land system which creates overheads when checking things such as group access.

However both of my proposals would require a major overhaul of how things currently work, so I can understand why Linden Lab aren’t keen to tinker too much with the current system. Whereas the system has flaws, it does to a large degree work as intended. However concerns will remains regarding group chat.

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May 28, 2015

Twitch Explicitly Prohibits Second Life With Rules Of Conduct Update

Back in February and March there was a bit of a hoo-ha over streaming service Twitch apparently prohibiting the streaming of Second Life. A Second Life user who had not been streaming anything remotely adult via Twitch had received a suspension. The user had actually been streaming script creation in Second Life.

This caused a bit of confusion as nothing on the Twitch site seemed to suggest Second Life was not allowed. However adult content was forbidden. Eventually, Iris Ophelia over at New World Notes received a reply from Twitch :

Second Life is not permitted for streaming and those accounts reported for doing so will be suspended. Content in this game is unrated and often sexually explicity, which is content we do not allow on our services. We also do not permit Adults-Only rated games and games where nudity is the core focus, feature, or goal.

Discussion then ensued as to whether nudity was a core feature or goal of Second Life. I still maintain it isn’t! The ambiguity from Twitch was also a frustration but their rules of conduct have recently became far less ambiguous. In a blog post entitled Rules of Conduct Update: Adult Oriented Games, Twitch explain :

Previously, we made game-specific decisions about which games would and would not be available for broadcast – sometimes due to overtly sexual content, sometimes due to gratuitous violence. This is unsustainable and unclear, generating only further confusion among Twitch broadcasters. We would like to make this policy as transparent as possible.

Today, we’re updating the RoC with regard to Adult Only (AO) games. Simply put, AO games are not welcome on Twitch.

Furthermore, there’s a list of titles that are explicitly listed as prohibited by Twitch and Second Life is amongst those titles.

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May 27, 2015May 27, 2015

World Goth Fair In Second Life Runs Until June 1st

Sometimes, when in Second Life, you may well be looking for all the fun of the fair but with a darker theme and that’s exactly what you’ll find if you visit The World Goth Fair, which opened on May 15th and runs until June 1st.

There are a few things to note about World Goth Fair in Second Life, one of them is that this is not a charity event and the organisers point this out clearly :

World Goth Fair is an annual Second Life event, officially sanctioned by the folks at World Goth Day. Although it used to be a charity event, it isn’t anymore. If you want to know why that change was made, please read this post.

The linked post isn’t by me, but it explains why this event is not a charity event. I should also point out that World Goth Day was on Friday 22nd May 2015, but as I was on holiday at the time, I didn’t blog about it.

World Goth Fair is held on The Cursed Sim and it’s adult rated. The usual caveats that I often apply to adult sims apply here. I have visited the region and I’ve also visited other events that the people behind World Goth Fair organised in their lands. I have never, ever witnessed anything remotely adult on any of my visits. This isn’t to say that you won’t bump into something adult, but the adult rating here does not reflect that this is a sim that encourages overly adult activities.

The organisers of World Goth Fair are Axi Kurmin, Lokii Violet, Sonya Marmurek, Nephilaine Protaganist, Synjari Myriam, Sohma Dix and CruelBritannia, collectively they are The Cursed Events Team and they organise quite a lot of events during the year. There’s a lot more about the event on the about page of the World Goth Fair blog.

As with a lot of events in Second Life there is a large contingent of merchants and sponsors, whom you can read about here. There are some names that are familiar to me in that list, such as Gothika, Fallen Gods Inc., House Of Rain and many more of whom I’m not so familiar. This is largely because I don’t encounter as many merchants in Second Life these days as I once did.

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