The Metaverse Journal Folds

Earlier this month, the Metaverse Journal, once a noted newsletter covering Second Life, officially closed. Lowell Cremorne (David Holloway in real life), the Journal's founder and main writer, stated he no longer had the time to update, it had been months since his previous article, and rather than leave people uncertain about it's fate decided to make it's shutting down official.

I’m not sure how many people will see this post, but I thought I’d jump in to state the somewhat obvious – that The Metaverse Journal is pretty much no more. It hasn’t been regularly updated in well over a year – not because my interest has flagged but because I plain don’t have enough time to devote to this site AND work on my further studies that involve virtual worlds. I still have 3-4 years of that study to go, so I’d rather draw a line in the sand rather than leave things hanging.

This site has been live since 2006 and was initially launched as Sloz.info (Second Life Oz) and SL was our sole focus. We then widened coverage to virtual worlds more broadly. It’s been a hell of a fun ride ...

Lowell gave thanks to Tateru Nino for her "encouragement over the years," in addition to Feldspar Epstein, Graham Sabre, and Wolfie Rankin who also contributed articles.

Lowel started the Journal in November 2006, saying it was for "bringing an Australian perspective to virtual worlds," but reported on Second Life events, places, and issues in general.

One can still read the Journal's stories at http://www.metaversejournal.com/. Lowell stated he will occasionally post on his Metaverse Health blog: http://www.metaversehealth.com/ .

Hat tip: Daniel Voyager

Bixyl Shuftan

Eye on the Blog: Project Shinning

If there's one thing virtually all Second Life residents dislike, it's the lag. The time needed for land and objects to rezz when you teleport to a place or move from one place to another. Frequently when Linden Lab unveils a new feature, the response from some residents is "stop with the bells and whistles and do something about performance!"

Last Friday, it seemed the Lab was finally listening to them. On the Linden blog, "Project Shinning" was announced.

This year, Linden Lab is making the single largest capital investment in new server hardware upgrades in the history of the company. This new hardware will give residents better performance and more reliability. Additionally, we are converting from three co-locations to two co-locations. This will significantly reduce our inter-co-location latency and further enhance simulator performance.

The Shining project is the name given to a recent Lab effort to identify and measure delays and other problems with streaming avatars and objects and to propose and implement solutions. During the Shining project, several small improvements have been identified and deployed. The next small improvement from Shining to be deployed will be pre-rendering the starter Avatars to improve the new resident experience.

Project Shinning according to the Lab has three parts. The HTTP Library section involves improving speed and reliability with a new code library. The "Open Caching and Interest Lists" involves taking the current system of caching objects between sims and the viewer and redesigning it to take better advantage of information it already has.

The biggest changes are with the third part, labeled "Project Sunshine." Avatar textures have been processed on each one's viewer and the data sent to the sim for other viewers to read. The process can sometimes be slow, and is the reason some avatars can appear gray for a long time, or briefly appear naked while changing clothes. Project Sunshine plans to change this with new servers to process textures apart from the sim's own servers to do the texture rendering instead of the viewers to improve efficiency and speed.

As a resident, I certainly would welcome such improvements. At social events that attract dozens of people, even after ten minutes not everything has always rezzed. Seeing an avatar briefly naked while changing, while perhaps amusing to me if it's a girl, can feel a bit embarrassing to the person behind the avatar. Girls moving to a place in private to change aren't doing it out of realism. Other residents have complained often and loudly about lag. This news from the Lab certainly gives the impression finally they're listening and doing something about it.

Tateru Nino concluded Linden Lab was serious about solving the problem, "These projects are big-deal items that must have taken considerable planning and pre-production before the Lab would even consider announcing them." She expected the project to be introduced over the next six months. Inara Pey wasn't sure, "no definitive time frames for the improvements have been announcements … there's a lot to be done and matters are complex enough that LL will want to proceed with minimal disruption to the grid and to users.

Hamlet Au greeted the news of Project Shinning with skepticism. He noted two announcements from 2010 and 2011 about improvements to help with lag, and commented while they helped with some residents, others have seen no improvements. Hamlet wrote his own viewer performance was getting worse, "I remain hopeful. At the same time, a part of me feels like Linden Lab's war on lag is sort of like my government's ill-begotten 'war on drugs' -- a battle ... which never seems winnable, and never seems to address the underlying problems."

People responding to them had a mixture of answers, some happy to hear the news, "It's about time." Others were cautiously optimistic. And some weren't expecting anything. Tateru Nino answered one reader whom expressed surprise the Lindens were still working on Second Life, "From where I’m sitting ... the Lab’s done more work on SL in the last 12 months than in any year previously. The problem is that it has become much harder to tell what it is working on, because it isn’t communicating."

Hopefully Project Shinning will mean a shinning improvement for our experiences in Second Life.

Sources: Linden Blog, Dwell on It, Modem World, New World Notes

Bixyl Shuftan

Linden Lab Will No Longer Publish Economic Reports

The third-quarter 2011 economic report from Linden Lab will be the final one. In an article by Tateru Nino, she stated Lab spokesman Peter Gray told her they have stopped doing these reports, and have no plans to do any more, quarterly or yearly.

"We don’t plan to publish a Q4 2011 economic summary. We are discontinuing regular reporting of aggregate economy-level data, because landowners and merchants have told us that the information is of limited value to them. Moving forward, we will instead focus on improved reporting tools that help individuals better manage their businesses in SL."

Among Second Life bloggers, Tateru Nino is among those who has regularly kept up with Linden Lab's reports, the charts and statistics in her main links. Guessing as to why the Lab has stopped publishing, she noted they're not as detailed as they once were, "They’ve been cut down on something like five different occasions, and what is left can now only be properly interpreted by maybe a handful of people who know the ins and outs of the Second Life economic underpinnings well enough to translate them for others. ... Essentially, over the years, the figures have been progressively stripped of the supporting data that gave them meaning, and now hardly anyone can understand what’s left. That kind of makes it a waste of time to extract the data and generate the reports in the first place."

Another possible reason is the economy isn't looking good. Tateru felt there was no reason to believe there was a troubling drop in the fourth quarter as the Grid's economy was basically sound. Hamlet Au felt there was another reason: Second Life's long term prospects may not be good. He pointed to Botgirl Questi's article predicting as the Opensim worlds mature, their low land tier rates will start to attract sizeable numbers from Second Life and thus cause it's revenue to go on a long-term slide.

Second Life's demise has been predicted before, and so far none of the Opensim worlds have attracted substantial numbers of residents, the most populated have only a few hundred on at peak times compared to Second Life having 50-over 75,000. But Linden Lab's decision to halt it's economic reports is being seen as a bad sign. Tateru Nino concluded at best, this was a reminder that the days of the company trying to be open and transparent to the Grid's users were gone.

Sources: Tateru Nino, Botgirl Questi

Bixyl Shuftan

Blue Mars Platform Bought by Ball State University

Some news in about Blue Mars. The virtual world was at one time seen as the "Second Life Killer." Then in January 2011 the company behind it, Avatar Reality, changed course to concentrate on a mobile device version. The PC version would be limited from then on to bug fixes. Since then, little news has come from this virtual world. It did get a couple more updates after all, as well as Avatar Reality getting a new CEO (Henk Rogers).

Recently, Ball State University acquired the rights to the virtual world. Ball State's official statement was later taken down, but Tateru Nino described the terms of agreement as "the university will begin to fully operate Blue Mars for non-commercial purposes, expand upon the source code, increase its research and academic initiatives, and enhance the community of Blue Mars. In addition, Ball State will continue to deliver original content on Blue Mars as it has done in the past." The University plans to use Blue Mars for "3D simulation and research projects."

No figures are available yet on what Ball State paid, but the Blue Mars platform is reportedly worth $10 million. Tateru stated Avatar Reality, the company that once challenged Linden Lab, is now down to less than a dozen people. With the platform off their hands, she felt they would be "subsisting on licensing fees, or working on mobile projects."

Ball State and Blue Mars have a history. The University's Ball State's Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts (IDIA) made a number of projects there, such as the Virtual Middletown Project and their simulation of the 1915 World's Fair.

Sources: Tateru Nino, Ball State University, Blue Mars Blog

Bixyl Shuftan

Dutch Supreme Court Rules Runescape Virtual Theft a Real-Life Crime

On Tuesday Jan 31st, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled over a case in which two boys had beaten up a third and threatening him with a knife forced him to log onto the game and drop his possessions where one of his assailants was waiting to pick them up. Most notable were a knife and amulet. The crime took place in 2007, and a lower court found the defendants guilty in 2009. One of them appealed to the Supreme Court of Holland.

The convicted thief based his appeal on the argument that the stolen goods "were neither tangible nor material and, unlike for example electricity, had no economic value." He also brought up the Runescape terms of service, stating the virtual goods were the property of Jagex, the company behind the game.


You agree that all intellectual property or other rights in any game character, account and items are and will remain our property. Jagex owns all rights in the Jagex Products, and you are only granted permission to use such products, subject to and in accordance with these Terms and Conditions.


The court ruled that the items had value because of the “time and energy” spent in getting them, and at the time of the theft they were the “exclusive dominion” of the victim. Therefore, the taking of these virtual goods was just as against the law as real items.

Tateru Nino thought this ruling was an interesting landmark ruling. Although virtual goods are legal property, in just about every legal jurisdiction they are the property of the “service provider.” This ruling she felt gives the Dutch users themselves property rights to the goods. So at least in Holland she felt, MMOs and virtual worlds didn’t have quite the same power over their users that they used to.

Virtualpolicy.net commented, “This case is significant because it changes the relationship between individuals and service providers in respect of digital objects. That is, Runescape’s contract clearly states that the players of the game do not own the game or any of the digital objects within it, whether they control them or not. This has long been a contentious matter as there is a large trade in the sale of objects between players for hard currency, so called Real Money Trading. This ruling means that there is a degree of control that someone can have over an object which is sufficient for that object to be stolen.”

For now, only Dutch gamers and virtual world residents are affected by this ruling. But there have been similar legal cases in South Korea and Asia in which “judges have displayed a general trend to grant more rights to players than are stated in their contract and to see digital objects as being akin to physical property in certain important respects.” This case could very well influence similar ones that are likely to come up elsewhere in Europe and the Americas.

Currently, Second Life’s Terms of Service allow residents intelectual property rights over their creatied content in the game. But the legal jargon is a bit slippery, Tateru Nino stating Linden Lab says they own “the bits and bytes of electronic data stored on its Servers.”

Sources: MSNBC, Jagex, Dwell on It, Virtualpolicy.net

Bixyl Shuftan

Fredrik Linden Leaving Linden Lab

Fredrik Linden, a software engineering director at Linden Lab for about 18 months, announced he will be leaving this Friday, August 5th. "I'm off to new adventures," he was quoted as saying.

Tatureu Nino stated Nya Linden, currently a program manager, "will be taking over from Fredrik at the Social user-group meetings from next week."

Sources: "Dwell on it," Daniel Voyager's Blog," pic from Marianne McCann.

RedZone’s zFire Xue Gets Four Months in Prison

Michael Prime, or zFire Xue as known to the residents of Second Life, the creator and operator of the infamous RedZone, is on his way to a small cell behind bars.

According to Tateru Nino’s blog, zFire plead guilty “for four counts of violating his probation following a prior conviction for fraud,” and “has been remanded to the custody of the US Marshals and is off for four months in prison.“ When he’s released from the penitentiary, the conditions for his parole include not being allowed to work near computers or being allowed to go on auction websites, social network sites such as Facebook, or virtual worlds, at least not without the permission of his probation officer. The section of terms Tateru Nino posted specifically stated accessing Second Life would be a violation of his terms, unless he got permission from the probation officer.


Tateru also noted that a $500 fine that was part of his sentence had been waived due to “financial incapacity.” The investigators couldn’t find the money he made off RedZone. What happened to it is unknown, but this suggests that perhaps the residents of Second Life may hear of him at least one more time in the future.

For now however, he won’t be in a position to bother the Grid for a while.

Tateru provided details of his prior conviction Here. A “Redzone Victim” responding to her blog post pointed out the “United States of America v. Michael Stefan Prime” case Here. The gotvirtual.net forum also has a lengthy thread on ZFire's sentencing.

Sources: “Dwell on it,” “Find a Case”

Bixyl Shuftan

Second Life Wiki Loses About 80 Pages in “Clean-Up”

According to an article by Tateru Nino, a number of pages were removed from the Second Life Wiki.

... nearly 80 currently employed and ex-Linden Lab staff were mass-deleted ... along with related meeting transcripts, modification histories, revisions and the like. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the deletions. Some are still there while some are gone, and whether the staff-member in question is currently employed or not doesn’t seem to be a major determining factor.


Tateru contacted Linden Lab, and got the following statement:

After a careful review of the content, we’ve removed a number of pages from the Second Life wiki as part of an ongoing clean-up effort, designed to make that resource more current, more helpful, and less confusing than it has been in the past. Where appropriate, we’ll move valuable content (relevant tutorials, for example) to other pages.


Checking the comments following Tateru’s article and those in Daniel Voyager’s blog, a few people were in favor of Linden Lab’s actions, “The wiki is huge and very poorly linked. For a wiki it is hard to use. There are a massive number of pages with no incoming link. If I did not have a reader tracking the changes to the wiki there are tons of stuff I would never see. Unless I bookmark it, I can’t return to it.” The majority, however, were unhappy, “What?? They got rid of Blue Linden’s page. I want to smack them.” “Ya’ gotta love bureaucratic jargon. ‘..careful review ..’, ... ‘Where appropriate ..’. All good words and phrases for avoiding actually explaining anything.” A few wondered why the Lab didn’t archive the pages instead, even if it would make them less accessible, one wondering if the newer Lindens had no appreciation for “the investment people have made in SL for years and the value and affection people have for the history and culture that has developed."


A list of what’s been deleted can be found Here.

Sources: Dwell on It, Daniel Voyager’s Blog

Bixyl Shuftan

Questions About Linden Lab’s “Local Payment” System

Checking Tateru Nino’s “Dwell on It” blog, one of the Second Life blogs I peek at on occasion, I found a little bad news. It seems some sims owned by Europeans are at risk of vanishing. The problem, Linden Lab’s new “Local Payment” system. According to her post on the matter, the system is buggy, a number of people with premium accounts not able to make their payments. And when landowners ask that their sims not be taken down, the answer they get is, “I cannot assure you of this at this time.”

Tateru’s post got a number of replies, some saying they too have been having trouble with the “local payment” system. Checking the Linden Blog, there was an official post that the system had problems, but assured they were fixed. That wasn’t the opinion of at least one person in the forums.

As Tateru put it, it’s near the end of the month, and not a good time for silence from the Lab.

This news comes at a time in which some Second Life friends of mine have been “testing the waters” in alternative virtual worlds such as AVN and Inworldz. If anyone ends up losing sims because of bugs in the new system, some may just resettle in one of these worlds.

Bixyl Shuftan

Ready or Not Here Come The Teens

Last year, Philip Linden announced that Second Life’s Teen Grid would be merging with the main, bringing in a number of young residents. The news brought a number of shocked responses, some predicting trouble. As this was about the same time as the Emerald controversy, it might have otherwise gotten more talk than it did had there not been other pressing matters.

A bit more than a week ago, Linden Lab quietly announced it was finally transferring the teen accounts over. The news made a few blogs, such as Tateru Nino’s “Dwell on It.” I also observed a short chat about it between SL players on Facebook, the people wanting to welcome the teens. The Betaverse blog suggested making February “Teen Welcome Month.” I was also told by a friend that someone whom lost land from the Interlibber Estate bankruptcy in 2009 was going to provide a sim to help welcome the teens, after they were now out of a place to stay and in need of a new one.

Betaverse mentioned three ten-friendly places:

• Ozma Malibu over at the Nonprofit Commons reports that they want to help mentor any teens that need help, create a "teen hangout" space on their Eco sim, and provide "informational welcoming posters and a variety of activities coming up, e.g. art with an art professor, various building workshops for the newer teens, more dances & etc. We'll also encourage teens to start their own nonprofits, and can mentor them through that process." Nice!
• Isla Sonoita is offering a "Teen in Residence" program to creative teens with a space for six months to work on creative projects on their sim. You also get L$ 2,000 to start you off.
• The Chilbo Community has published a really nice opinion piece about the Teen Grid merger and informs teens about their various spots, including the Town Hall, coffee shop, bowling alley, museum and land for sale.
• Further down the road, the Virtual Best Practices in Education organizers report that they March 17-19 event will feature a special Teen Fair to involve teens in their conference

Not every resident is expressing such optimism about the teens. The forums are full of comments questioning Linden Labs’ judgment about allowing 16 and 17 year olds on the main Grid, let alone those younger being allowed in if they’re with a sponsor. Chatting with friends, some predicted the arrival of teens would bring a plague of content thieves and griefers, driving paying residents from Second Life. And of course were the old fears of lawsuits on Linden lab and arrests of residents by parents who catch their kids peeping in on private activities. “I asked the Lindens about merging the grid months ago, and they told me there would be no merger!” one frustrated resident told me of Linden Labs’ apparently changing their mind.

Tateru Nino brought up a few details that may help reassure some a little. Of the teens younger than 16 whom could get on the sim of a sponsor, her talk with someone from the lab suggested no sponsor had been approved yet, and the sponsorship system itself might have been postponed. She also reminded that the teens were far less than the adult population. Teen Second Life has always had a small population, adolescents tending to prefer Facebook, MORPGs, and virtual worlds that appeal to them, such as Gaia Online.

And there’s the argument that there always have been some teens in Second Life, the secret adolescents not giving true information about their age. I’ve heard from friends of residents they know confessing they were underage. Linden Lab’s Teen Grid merger simply takes the blinders off people fooling themselves there were no people under 18 in Second Life, more than one person has commented.

So what do the teens themselves think? A meeting a month ago at Global Kids Island suggested most were feeling rather anxious about the merger, feeling their close community was coming to an end. Some felt the 13-15 year olds were getting “shut out completely.” The news of the angry comments from the official forums had reached them, and some felt pessimistic about the welcome they would get if it was know they were teens. Still, a few expressed excitement of the merger, and they chance they would get to show off their talents.

For anyone not wanting teens on his/her land, there's always the option of setting their land to “Mature” or “Adult” to keep accounts of those under 18 off.

So ready or not, the grids have merged, and for better or worse the Main now has these youngsters, at least on the PG grids.

Sources: Dwell on It, SL Blog, Betaverse
Picture from Betaverse

Bixyl Shuftan

A Brief History of Second Life

Tateru Nino wrote an interesting series of articles on Second Life's history, from it's beginnings as "the rig" in the Linden Lab research department around 2001 to 2007.

Having not really known Second Life until the final year (so far) of Tateru's description of it's history, it's early years are certainly an interesting comparison, notably about how small it was compared to now, not really taking off until 2005. She also stated that when it was about to be released online and an official name chosen, "Second Life" was not a popular choice with the Linden staff as a group, apparently preferring the working title of "Linden World." And why didn't Linden Lab adopt a new phrase to substitute "Our Word, Your Rules" a few years ago? They did select one, but as it turned out another company was using it.

Click Here for the article.

Source: Massively