virtual-worlds
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Linden Lab lowers prices, estate owners rebel
Linden Lab is giving the air of being somewhat baffled this week. Earlier in the week, it lowered prices for new Second Life simulators -- because well, lower prices are good, aren't they? Unfortunately instead of lavish praise for the price cut, response to the move seems to be more along the lines of "Argh! You sons of bitches!" (loosely paraphrased). There seems to be more depreciation than appreciation involved.
MMO Couples tells you how to find love online
MMO Couples is a new blog about "how people successfully combine online gaming and relationships," and it's a pretty interesting read, whether you're a fan of online gaming or romance in general. It's written by "Gabi," a woman who met her boyfriend in WoW (she tells the story on the site), and while there's not much to read through there yet, it does seem like it might be an interesting look at how couples find themselves in virtual worlds.There are also some tips on how to find love in a virtual world, and I like how down-to-earth they are: communicate as much as possible, be realistic, have a backup plan. Online romances are often full of drama, and it seems pretty tough to get a good relationship out of having met in a place where the whole point is that you're pretending to be someone you're not.But a site like this would help fix some of that -- providing a community and a forum for folks in online relationships would probably help everybody involved.[Via Wonderland]
Linden Lab says no bans, TOS disavows
The inclusion of section 4.4 of the Second Life Terms of Service has caused considerable fear, uncertainty and doubt among the users, even leading some to refuse to log in, so that they do not accept those terms in their current form. On the face of them, the clause essentially makes any breach of the Brand Center guidelines a breach of the Terms of Service. Linden Lab's representatives say that they would not treat external breaches of those guidelines as a Terms of Service breach -- however, legally their statements to that effect fail to hold water.
The future of VastPark looks bright
Sandbox virtual worlds are becoming the newest thing these days following the success of Second Life and the anticipated success of Metaplace, but VastPark has recently announced a partnership with a few companies that will serve to improve their spot among the ranks. First there was the agreement they signed with NICTA, Australia's Information and Communications Technology Research Center, and now they've formed a relationship with TurboSquid to access their catalog of over 195,000 3D models. This combined with the announcement that they'll be running their virtual economy through Twofish's economic Element engine.What's this mean for the players? It means a much more flexible economic system where you are in control of your own currencies, the value of your goods and the management of your markets. This basically means that each player-created world will have it's own economy. VastPark founder and CEO Bruce Joy explained, "This is a new step in bringing economic power to the masses. We also see it as a fundamental way for us to build value in our platform, as it allows for the creation of realistic, responsive and highly customizable virtual worlds."
Linden Lab Q2 land report: lower sim pricing, new continent
Jack Linden has weighed in with the belated quarterly Second Life land supply and pricing report. Longer than the usual report, here's your key takeaways: New simulators: US$675 cheaper sometime this month. Opening auction prices dropping by US$500. New continent on the way to lower mainland prices. Got your attention yet? We thought it might.
Two little words
We're still waiting on answers to our queries to Linden Lab in the wake of their altered trademark policies. We're assured that we might get some sometime soon. In the meantime we thought you might just be interested in seeing the list of extra words that Linden Lab have trademark applications in for, and that you might suddenly start to see Brand Center regulations and usage guidelines on.
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Products of Iceland: Interaction and Evolution
Our time spent plugging away in the virtual world is supposed to fun and inviting. If not, we all tend to feel like rabbits in a cage wishing to experience the world beyond those iron bars. Bearing the light of hope for those of you in a similar situation enters one of the leading brains behind EVE, Reynir Harðarson. "Yes, the key, we still believe, is human interaction. People should really feel it," he continues, "they're not just playing a game...." Remember that innovation in MMOs thing we were talking about? Reynir believes that creating interaction and evolving an MMO are what will drive a game to be successful. The nice thing about that is he fully intends to ensure his new project, World of Darkness, adopts that tantalizing philosophy."It's strange," Reynir offers, "that with so many games that [developers] create it, launch it, perhaps create a couple of expansions and then work on the sequel. These games do not grow. We don't want to think of it that way, we want to keep evolving." To our ears, that's good news! We don't know about you, but we're all feeling the group hug right about now. Ahem. Moving right along.It is wonderful to see a developer that passionate about the worlds he creates. By offering players not only the community they seek, but ensuring that the game evolves and interacts with it, the experience generated should be far more enjoyable. [via CrazyKinux]
IBM hosts Second Life attached intranet
Technically it isn't supposed to be news until Noon (US Eastern) today, when it is to be announced at the big virtual worlds conference in New York City, but Reuters accidentally jumped the gun and seems to have taken the wind out of the sails of Linden Lab's and IBM's big joint announcement. The plan, essentially, is for IBM to hold Second Life grid servers on their private corporate network, back behind the firewall, but (we gather) with enough network access to allow those servers to communicate with the central services on the Second Life grid. This would give IBM a virtual world intranet of sorts; regions that are actively locked away from the rest of the world, but giving their employees the freedom to move between internal simulators and those that are part of the main public grid seamlessly.
Linden Lab hires Resident Communications Manager
In a search lasting nearly 12 months, Linden Lab has finally hired a Communications Manager. Linden Lab originally announced the search for a Second Life Resident Communications Manager in early May 2007, but the blog posting announcing the position was silently removed some months later. You would hardly know the position had been filled, if you weren't reading closely.
Linden Lab clarifies trademarks policy
This-evening, Linden Lab issued a policy clarification to the recent changes to allowed trademark use as a part of the Second Life Brand Center announcement. It doesn't actually directly address any of the questions that we put to Linden Lab, so we are resubmitting those, and it raises a couple of extra ones which we will add to the pile. The new policy appears to seek to clarify nominative fair use as being acceptable -- after all, you can't effectively talk about Second Life or Linden Lab without using those terms (well, you could say Linden Research Inc's unnameable virtual world, if you were desperate).
Linden Lab to make another trademark post
Linden Lab's PR agency have responded to our list of questions about assorted Second Life trademark issues, related changes to the Terms of Service and so forth with a notice that rather than answering the questions directly, Linden Lab is preparing another blog post which is intended to address many of the questions and responses they've received about the original. If this new post follows past patterns of policy follow-up postings, then we will likely have a whole new set of questions to ask in addition to the original set. We'll keep you all informed as things develop, of course. We're sure that you all are as curious as we are as to where this will go from here. The PR agency was unable to give us a better estimate for when the new post would appear other than "soon".
Peering Inside: Massively abusive
At any time that a Second Life user feels that someone in their vicinity (or objects in their vicinity) violates Linden Lab's Terms of Service, or the Second Life Community Standards, that user can file an abuse report, which is then forwarded to Linden Lab's abuse team for processing via a request tracker. Each report, we are told, is examined and action taken where appropriate. Every account has a record which is to be assessed to determine ongoing abuse. An established resource and record of actions apparently exists to determine consistency of judgment. But that can't be the whole story.
Philip Rosedale to appear before congressional subcommittee
On Tuesday, 1 April at 9:30AM (US Eastern time), Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale will be appearing to testify before the Congressional Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. The topic will be "Online Virtual Worlds: Applications and Avatars in a User-Generated Medium" and this will be the first Congressional hearing to explore the ways in which virtual worlds are enhancing the means by which individuals can transcend space to communicate with each other. You can catch the live webcast of the event when it takes place, and the session will be taking place in room 2123 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Washington DC, if you are interested in attending in person. The facility should be wheelchair accessible. Thanks to Linden Lab for sending us the notice on this event.
Linden Lab's laundry list of legalese: Terms of Service versus Fair Use
'I cannot read the fiery letters,' said Frodo in a quavering voice. 'No,' said Gandalf, 'but I can. The letters are English, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Lawyers, which I will not utter here. But this in the Common Tongue is what is said, close enough: 'You agree to review and adhere to the guidelines on using "Second Life," "SL," "Linden," the Eye-in-Hand logo, and Linden Lab's other trademarks, service marks, trade names, logos, domain names, taglines, and trade dress..' He paused, and then said slowly in a deep voice: 'These are the Master Rules, the Terms of Service that rule all accounts.'
Kapor: IPO? WTF?
Mitch Kapor speaking a few minutes ago with Cornell University's Professor Robert Bloomfield at the special Metanomics session today, straight up nixes plans for an IPO. Kapor says that he feels his earlier statements in other media were 'misconstrued', and that there are definitely no plans for an IPO. Kapor sounded rather baffled as to how his comments suggested to people that an IPO was in the wind. "My recollection is not saying that an IPO was under consideration... being able to take a company public is started 12 to 18 months in advance... it's very complex..." The audio was a bit spotty, so we will need to wait for the transcript, but the magic IPO phrase seems to be, "Gosh, I hope not."
Chadrick Baker to advise the Association of Virtual Worlds
You may previously know him as Chadrick Linden, Governance Team Lead at Linden Lab, or from earlier days as Adam Linden, before a lot of staff got a round of renaming. These days, he's Chadrick Baker of metaverse developer, Metaversatility, and now the newest member of the advisory board to the Association of Virtual Worlds.
HiPiHi appoints new CTO
Ex-Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Tokyo-based virtual worlds service firm NGI/3DI, Toshitaka Jiku, has been newly appointed as CTO of Chinese virtual world developer/operator, HiPiHi. Jiku brings quite a bit of experience and education to the table from his time with NGI, and is expected to help HiPiHi position itself and scale to the global market. As you may recall, HiPiHi has already partnered with IBM to collaborate on both massively scalable architecture and long-term interoperability, and seems to have also gained significant buy-in from US chip giant Intel. HiPiHi is on the move, and has their eye on the world stage. It will be interesting to see if this China-based virtual world can pick up broad international appeal.
Special Metanomics session: Linden Lab Upper Management Musical Chairs
In the wake of the announcement that Philip Rosedale would be moving up to chairman of the Linden Lab board of directors, and that present chairman Mitch Kapor would be moving to a key (but as-yet-unnamed) role, Cornell University Professor Robert Bloomfield (Beyers Sellers in Second Life) will be hosting a special Metanomics session this Friday at 10:30AM SLT (US Pacific time). The session will feature a one-on-one discussion with Kapor, himself. The topic? Bloomfield offers, "We will talk about his vision for virtual worlds technology and business strategy and, of course, the future of Linden Lab and Second Life." Live coverage of this special edition of Metanomics on Friday, March 28, 2008 from the CMP sim, owned by United Business Media's Think Services division, will be broadcast exclusively on slcn.tv for those who cannot attend in person, or are unable to attend the sim in person.
Havok preparing for deployment at last?
Sharp-eyed reader Jayden Beresford noticed that Monday's announcement about the reattempted 1.19.2 Second Life software update included a note that 1.19.3 would roll out next week, including the new Havok-4 code. The text was, apparently, very quickly withdrawn, but we think that it is very plausible that the Havok-4 code will roll out either next week or the week after. It's presently into release-candidates, and the reports we have on how it functions are all very positive. Assuming 1.19.2 goes well this week, it seems likely that Havok-4 will hit the grid within the next 14 days.
Linden Lab asserts control of names and images
When Linden Lab chooses to shake things up, it doesn't do it by half-measures. Easter Monday saw an announcement by Linden Lab that they were introducing a new Second Life logo program, and changing the terms under which various words and images are presented. Unfortunately, we technically can't show you the new logo, since by all rights we have to go through the application process first. Actually, after reading all the terms and conditions a bunch of times, we are not sure that we're even allowed to mention its name. It's inSL, anyway. We'll let the company lawyers sort through the paperwork.
