Ciaran Laval

July 29, 2014

Second Life Skill Gaming Policy Pushed Back To September 1st

In better late than never news, Linden Lab have announced that the new skill gaming policy will not now go into effect until September 1st. Linden Lab had originally announced on the 9th July that the policy would come into effect on August 1st, which didn’t give sim owners a lot of wiggle room on a monthly billing cycle.

The new blog post states :

Since our original announcement, we’ve received many applications from Second Life users who want to become approved skill game creators and operators. By moving the date back, we’ll be able to process a larger number of applications and also offer creators more time to make necessary changes to their games.

However at this point, just a few days away from the original August 1st deadline, there are no approved operators or games on the public wiki. This deadline provides all parties, operators, game makers and Linden Lab, some breathing space to ensure the skill gaming policy is smoothly launched.

The policy itself aims to bring some responsibility and legislation to skill gaming in Second Life, with the following broad aims :

Skill games that offer Linden Dollar payouts will be allowed in Skill Gaming Regions only.
Only operators approved by Linden Lab will be allowed to run skill games that offer Linden Dollar payouts on Skill Gaming Regions.
Creators of skill games that wish to make them available in Second Life may do so only through Skill Gaming Regions and only after the games have been approved by Linden Lab.
Access to Skill Gaming Regions will be restricted to Second Life users who are of sufficient age and are located in a jurisdiction that Linden Lab permits for this kind of online gaming activity.
In summary, skill games that offer Linden Dollar payouts will be allowed in Second Life, but each game, its creator, its operator, and the region on which it is operated must be approved by Linden Lab.

Skill gaming regions are more expensive to run than regular regions, with a monthly tier bill before VAT or any other applicable taxes of US$345.00 a month as well as a US$100.00 conversion fee. I must admit I did not notice the conversion fee cost before and I don’t quite understand why that is required as there’s already a fee for applying for this as well as a license fee so this conversion fee seems to be a tad over the top.

Continue reading “Second Life Skill Gaming Policy Pushed Back To September 1st”

July 29, 2014

SLBA To Discuss Second Life Terms Of Service Changes

Inara Pey reported last week that there would be an In-world legal presentation on the recent updates to the Lab’s Terms of Service. I’m not breaking any new ground here, this post is about exactly the same thing.

The extremely contentious and ultimately for many of us, disappointing, changes to section 2.3 of the terms of service will be discussed as well as the new skill gaming policy. However as the deadline for that has been put back to September 1st it may not be such a hot topic. Alternatively putting the deadline back to September 1st may make for a healthier and less frenzied discussion.

The SLBA discussion is scheduled for 10:am SLT on August 2nd and will be hosted by Agenda Faromet.

The discussion will take place in the SLBA court room, SLURL : http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Justitia/88/125/951

Continue reading “SLBA To Discuss Second Life Terms Of Service Changes”

July 29, 2014

RezMela Competition In Kitely Extended To August 31st

In a fashionable couple of days for extending deadlines, the RezMela contest, being held on the Kitely grid, has been extended until August 31st. I previosuly blogged about this contest here.

For those wondering, the blurb about RezMela includes :

RezMela™ allows subject matter experts create, tailor and manage avatar based interactive 3D virtual training environments in minutes without any programming or 3D modelling skills. Our approach enables intuitive and deep control of virtual content components from our growing library. These functionalities help blur the boundaries between virtual scenario creation and manipulation. RezMela™ thus provides trainers with the much needed ability to calibrate in real time the flow and complexity of their custom virtual exercises. The need to match rapidly and precisely unanticipated changes in learning requirements is well established by virtual exercise designers and facilitators. RezMela™ is designed from ground up to address this outstanding need.

Continue reading “RezMela Competition In Kitely Extended To August 31st”

July 28, 2014

Second Life Private Regions Drop Below 19,000 Mark

Tyche Shepherd reported yesterday that private regions have dropped below the 19,000 mark for the first time since June 15th 2008. There are currently 18,988 private regions on the grid. However it should be pointed out that the rate of loss has slowed down and that is particularly apparent for this year, although the last couple of weeks have accelerated the fall to below the 19,000 mark.

This comes around 53 weeks after private regions dropped below the 20,000 mark. Then the private region count stood at 19,997. However by the end of 2013 there had been a further net loss of 724 private regions, leaving the score on the door of 19,273. At that point a fall below 19,000 looked likely to come in the first couple of months of 2014, but private regions have fought a brave fight against that until the last fortnight. Two weeks ago there were net losses of 39 private regions and this week a net loss of 26 private regions. That means that 65 of this year’s net loss of 285 regions have came in the last fortnight, or to put it another way, 22.8% of this year’s losses have came in the last fortnight.

There’s no rational explanation as to why private region net losses have risen like this, at around this time last year, give or take a week because Tyche went on holiday, there was a net loss of 29 private regions during a fortnightly period. Back in 2012 at around this time of the year there was a fortnightly net loss of 154 private regions. Actually, a fun with numbers quirk from that fortnightly net loss shows that in the first week private regions dropped by 59 and a week later those numbers flipped around with a weekly loss of 95 regions ….. ok it’s just me who finds that interesting isn’t it?

If we go back to the heady days of 15th June 2008, Tyche reported things a little differently, so I don’t know what the net change was but 593 regions were added to the grid that week. Yes that’s right, 593 new regions came online. This was also at a time when Linden Lab could auction new mainland regions and in another, fun facts incident Tyche reported :

Only one new mainland sim was added this week , or more to the point a mainland region has returned to the Grid “The Corn Field” is back since last Monday.

Play spooky music now!

Continue reading “Second Life Private Regions Drop Below 19,000 Mark”

July 26, 2014

Is Virtual Reality Too Real?

I found myself at The Daden Virtual Campus in Unity Web Player thanks to a mail to a mailing list asking whether virtual reality is too real. This was my first visit to a virtual world in Unity, more on that later. However the reason I was there in the first place was due to the Daden July 2014 newsletter (PDF link), which talks about virtual reality. The news letter talks about the Daden Virtual Reality campus at the top but at the bottom moves on to virtual reality.

Virtual reality seems to be back in vogue, to some of us, it never really went away whereas to others, they are still waiting for the great leap forward when it arrives. However the Oculus Rift development, largely led by Facebook’s purchase of Oculus has made virtual reality a topic of discussion again. Whereas I still have very grave misgivings about Facebook’s purchase of Oculus, you can’t help but admire the way that Facebook’s name has helped to make virtual reality a newsworthy item once again.

So back to the mailing list, Dr Michael Vallance ponders :

One of the frustrations I constantly come up against at university conferences is the use of the term “virtual”. I have been involved developing and researching virtual worlds for the past 6 years so to me “virtual worlds” seem the most appropriate “meme”. It seems that the term virtual “reality” has baggage from previous attempts of similar technology. The older academics associate “Virtual” with “virtual reality” and consequently they deem that anything ‘virtual’ is an attempt to replicate “reality” complete with real-world physics such as gravity and form. To some computer science academics, if a development of a virtual space does not have real world replication then it is not virtual. They call it “artificial” which, to me, is incorrect. I argue that a virtual world can be a simulation and it can also be fantasy. It is not necessarily virtual “reality”.

The first thing I thought of when I read this was Gene Roddenberry Jr’s visit to Second Life back in the summer of 2009. Good grief was it really that long ago? As well as describing Second Life as a “cool cool area” and being impressed that there were furries present, he was also impressed by the physics defying fact that he could fly in Second Life. This is something I’ve seen mentioned before regarding virtual worlds, that the laws of physics do not apply, that they are indeed, very different from reality and how cool that is.

However here I realised that all of my thoughts are indeed about virtual worlds, the discussion is rarely about virtual reality, so I think Dr Vallance is onto something when he says that virtual worlds seems the more appropriate choice of words. This may seem a little pedantic but I definitely do think of these spaces as virtual worlds rather than virtual reality.

In many ways it’s a waste of opportunity to stick to the laws of real life physics in any virtual space, be it virtual worlds or virtual reality. This is part of the beauty of going virtual.

Continue reading “Is Virtual Reality Too Real?”