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The Virtual Whirl: The emperor's new terms
This week The Virtual Whirl virtual mailbag is stuffed to overflowing with queries about the new Second Life Terms Of Service (TOS) that launched slightly behind the new Second Life 2.0 viewer. The new version has grown from 7,500 words to more than 30,000 words across no less than 18 separate documents, all of which you must agree to in order to use the service – and golly, it has raised some questions.
Second Life 2.0 goes live today
As we previously predicted, the Second Life 2.0 viewer is going live today, meeting the originally slated release target of Q1 2010, if only by a few hours. The 2.0 viewer has been in public beta since 23 February. In addition to the new viewer, its rearranged user-interface, slate color scheme and slick Shared Media implementation, today sees the launch of two new Orientation experiences and a selection of new starter avatars to select from (we wonder if any of them are blue).
The Virtual Whirl: Cornered!
This week, in The Virtual Whirl, we're looking at a major business pitfall, and one which afflicts many virtual environment and MMOG developers/operators at one time or another.
Linden Lab axes Vivox SLim Second Life client beta
Back in 2008, quite a big thing was made of Vivox's lightweight voice/IM client for Second Life, called SLim. That buzz continued through 2009, with the announcement of voice fonts, SLim-to-SMS, and client-side recording (all scheduled for the second half of 2009) and conference calls, group text/voice chat (via SLim) and browser-based voice applets on the Second Life Web-site (scheduled for this year). Yesterday, the news came down in a mailout from Linden Lab about the status of the SLim beta. "The program has been a great success," said the Lab and, "we have decided to end the SLim beta program, effective immediately."
Second Life third-party viewer policies get an update but still fail to do the job
Last week, the promised update of Linden Lab's Third-Party Viewer (TPV) policies crept out onto the Second Life Web-site with little fanfare. After the fuss caused by the tangle of legal incompatibilities, muddled terminology and ambiguous phrasing in the first version, the Lab said it would go back and address the problems, and get the policy document fixed. So, you'd think they'd have gotten it right this time around, right? We certainly did. We were wrong.
The Virtual Whirl: News of the Whirl
This week, in The Virtual Whirl, we're having our monthly roundup of news items. Things that got missed, things that didn't make the cut, things that got buried, and things that really should have gotten your attention anyway.
Second Life script limitations to prejudice against Mono?
In a sense, script memory limitations aren't coming to Second Life; they already exist. What's going on is the process of Linden Lab making those limits predictable, and setting things up in such a way that script memory usage doesn't cause simulator processes to thrash madly (from paging memory to and from disk). There's some interesting side-effects emerging from the overall prototype implementation, however. Mono (and, eventually C# when or if it becomes implemented as a scripting language) look like the losers.
G-Tec Intendix brain-computer interface ready for consumers (video)
If you've seen G-Tec's thought control cap being used to control a Second Life avatar, play a game of Pong, or make music in an orchestral setting, you probably wondered when the thing would become available for less frivolous pursuits (to help the disabled communicate, for starters). Well, it looks like that day is close at hand: With the brand name Intendix, the €9000 (about $12,250) brain-computer interface gives you everything you need to send text messages with brain activity alone via EEG cap. According to the company, most people achieve five to ten characters per minute the first time they use the thing, with some folks eventually typing as fast as 1 character per second. In addition to text messages, the system can also be used to trigger an alarm, send email, or send commands to external devices. There's no word on a shipping date yet, but we did thoughtfully provide that Second Life demo for you after the break.
The Virtual Whirl: Questions from the virtual mailbag
This week, in The Virtual Whirl, we're going to take a selection of reader questions that we've received in comments and in the virtual mailbag and do our best to offer up some useful answers. Join us as we whirl through the mail. Not surprisingly, the two most frequently asked questions involve the demise of virtual environment, There.com.
Planet Calypso's David "Deathifier" Storey talks about his purchases
MMOs are a big business these days, and even though they're not real items, a lot of the goods within a given game are worth quite a bit of money. This is transparently true of Second Life, but hardly limited to it -- witness, for example, the real-world price of EVE Online's ships. Or, take David Storey, alias Deathifier, alias "that guy who spent a whole lot of money on Planet Calypso items in auctions." And he's spent quite a lot of money -- in the game world, he owns both an island and a staggeringly expensive egg with a yet-undisclosed purchase. So why did he buy it? As he puts it in a recent interview available on Forbes.com, the same reason people make any expensive purchase -- because it makes you feel good. According to the interview, it's not as if the investment has been a poor business decision. The virtual island he bought in Planet Calypso for $26,500 brings in roughly $100,000 a year, as he uses it for a rare game preserve and taxes local hunters. The full piece has more information on his outlook and business practices, as well as a brief overview of the markets of virtual worlds and MMOs in general.
There.com is closing
Virtual worlds have had a rocky time in the marketplace. Focusing on user-generated content, it takes a while for enough users to become active and enough market traction to be established for them to start becoming financially viable. Earlier this year marked the shutdown of Metaplace, Raph Koster's entry into the field of virtual worlds. Now another long-running part of the field is closing down, as There.com has just announced the service will be closing on March 9th. A retrospective on the game's history is available on CNET, discussing the world's status as being a competitor for Second Life without ever quite gaining the traction that its bigger cousin managed. While the environment was seen as slightly more kid-and-media friendly due to restrictions on adult-only content, the project had a difficult time turning a profit. After seven years, it's finally overwhelmed the company. The official announcement includes a number of resources for those who have invested money in There.com to regain it prior to the shutdown, with extensive buyback programs and refunds available for all participants. Our condolences to the team on this sad turn of events.
The Daily Grind: Leveling, the playing field
They might be called security levels, they might be split between ranks and levels, they might disguise themslves as skill grinds. But in pretty much any MMO you care to name, there will be levels of some kind. (The only exception that springs to mind is Second Life, and even that can be argued.) Generally, it's accepted that the most meat to the game will come after you've made it to the apex of the leveling curve, whether it's a low cap or a high one. But that's not when you started liking the game -- no, even though most players see it as an impediment to getting to the good part, the leveling game is what first hooks you on the game as a whole. So today, we ask a simple question -- what game have you played where you most enjoyed the leveling process? Forget all of the endgame nonsense, whether you had a broad endgame or a fairly narrow one. When did you just enjoy the path toward the endgame, perhaps even enough to be a bit saddened when it was over? Or have you always wanted to just get to the end without bothering with the whole "journey" element?
Imprudence 1.3.0(beta 1) released
The Imprudence project has released version 1.3(beta 1) of their Second Life viewer. Imprudence is one of our favorite after-market Second Life viewers, and the only third-party viewer that we're certain complies with all of the source and asset licensing. This edition merges all things Imprudence with the codebase for 1.23, providing one of the fastest and smoothest viewers currently available that we're aware of, along with the usual featureful experience.
The Virtual Whirl: Virtual worlds must accommodate, adapt and evolve, or die
This week, in The Virtual Whirl, we're looking at virtual environments (and their subset of virtual worlds) as products and platforms. As their developers and operators seek to grow and mature their markets, they carry the risk of rendering themselves irrelevant to the very customers that they court.
Second Life third-party viewer policies not well received
The hallmark of a good license is that it is clear, easy to understand and unambiguous. The gold-standard for a good contract is that it is all of the above and provides all parties with equal amounts of protection. There are bonus points for not conflicting with rights guaranteed by law, or with other prerequisite licenses or agreements. Linden Lab's Third Party Viewer (TPV) policies, as published on Tuesday, regrettably reflect none of these ideals. We'd go so far as to say that it's the worst day's work that we've seen come out of the Lab to-date. So much so that almost immediately after publishing them the Lab has sent them back to legal for both clarification and rewriting.
A red-letter day for Second Life, Second Life 2.0 viewer and more
Over about the last 60-90 minutes, Tom Hale's been delivering a keynote at the SL Pro! conference held in Second Life. There are multiple hefty announcements from Linden Lab involved, and some of that should be reaching the official Second Life blogs as you read this. Golly, what do we have among all of this? We've got the Second Life 2.0 viewer public beta, which should be available right now. We've got the new third-party viewer registry and third-party policies being announced today; We've got changes in the names of content-ratings. We've got the official release of open source viewer Snowglobe and the announcement of Snowglobe 2; and all capped off with a slew of supporting FAQs, guides, video tutorials, wiki pages and what-have-you!
Linden Lab relocates Brighton UK office
Sharp-eyed Massively readers spotted Linden Lab Brighton office staffers hard at work shifting premises over the weekend, with everything being moved upstairs. Was this some sort of fiery, demonstrative protest where office furniture would be flung from the roof? Could it have been some penthouse variant on the yard-sale, and we could get a deal on that slightly balky laser-printer that we've had our eye on for a while? Alas, neither was actually the case. The Lab was moving to larger premises within Brighton's prominent Tower Point building.
Linden Lab investigates new/updated technologies for Second Life
Over the last few weeks, Linden Lab staff have been talking about a few upcoming Second Life projects during their in-world office-hours sessions. Now the Lab has always been quick to stress that the accuracy and reliability of information obtained through those venues is questionable, and that we shouldn't assume that anything said at them is actually accurate. With that in mind, we went back to the Lab about several identifiable (or at least apparent) projects to get the skinny on them and find out what's actually happening with them, and where they're at.
The Virtual Whirl: Of villains and crusaders
This week, in The Virtual Whirl, we're taking a look at the vigilante side of intellectual property rights. For many, it seems like a good idea to mass-report or name-and-shame intellectual property rights violators whenever and wherever you see them ... but is it really?
Xstreet wishlists beta for Second Life users
Linden Lab's pushing Valentine's day in Second Life pretty hard this year, particularly the commercial aspects of it. In fact, it feels like it's being pushed hard enough that it has taken on a slightly creepy and embarrassing air, rather like that guy at the Christmas party who won't shut up about the mistletoe. Nevertheless, the Lab's implemented an open beta of product wishlists on their Web-based shopping portal, Xstreet. There doesn't seem to be much that is overtly difficult, weird or special about the implementation, though we'd question the wisdom of launching a public beta of the feature right on the verge of the heavily-promoted Valentine's day. Far better, we'd think, to let it settle a while first and get the inevitable kinks out of it before a major commercial date rolls around.
