HBO – Ciaran Laval

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.

Continue reading “The Day George R.R. Martin Brought Tyrion Lannister To Second Life”

This post is largely not Second Life related, this is about television and some outdated practices that frustrate people who want to legally buy content. There is a Second Life angle but it’s largely unrelated to my main gripe. There’s a channel here in the UK called Sky Atlantic, it carries shows such as Games Of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire, content from HBO. These are highly regarded shows but as I’m a customer of Virgin Media rather than SKY, I can’t view this channel. I can’t even buy the channel or the shows via On Demand.

The platform I’m on is perfectly capable of receiving the content, but it’s simply not available to me. So I have a few options, one is to buy the Box Sets, I do this for shows I like, I have every box set of The Sopranos for example. However when I’m not sure whether I’ll like a show, that seems a bit silly, but it’s an option.

A better option would be for me to be able to buy the content directly from HBO, this is an option for customers in some parts of the world, but not in the UK. I’ve discovered a new option though, one that makes sense, it’s a service called BlinkBox which is owned by Tesco. This service allows me to buy individual episodes of Game Of Thrones, or the whole of season 1 and 2. This service allows me to pick and mix what shows I may be interested in and even rent movies. This is a far better model than the offering of SKY Atlantic because it means I don’t need to change my whole product to view a show.

The product and the content are two different concepts and having one tied to the other, as SKY do with SKY Atlantic is an archaic and outdated model that should be consigned to the dustbin of history. Why HBO decided it was a good idea to have their content restricted in this fashion is a bit of a mystery really, surely they should want as many people as possible to purchase their content.

Continue reading “Archaic Television Subscription Models”