SL Video: "Correcting Misconceptions About Second Life"

 

 

 (click here if the video does not play)

From Prisca Newall on April 28, in response to a youtuber making exaggerated claims about Second Life's Adult side, "This episode sets the record straight on the 'Horrifying Truth about the Metaverse,' by Virtual Venture, debunking the common misconceptions about Second Life."

 

News and Commentary: More on Blizzard's China Controversy

This month, the players of the game "World of Warcraft" are celebrating it's fifteenth anniversary, with in-game presents, events, and bonus experience. But there's been a dark cloud over the celebrations. It was last month that the company that owns Warcraft, Blizzard/Activision, banned a player from Hong Kong in another game, Hearthstone, after when given a chance to speak on a televised stream, he called for the freedom of the people of his city. Since the Newser's first article on the subject, the situation has continued to develop. And finally at Blizzard's annual convention, the company President addressed the issue.

Read more in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

News and Commentary: Blizzard's Removing Hong Kong Gamer From Tournament Sparks Calls for Boycott, Debate on Free Speech

For years, American companies have been trying to get into the Chinese market. With over a billion people, the potential number of customers for a large business is huge. However, the country is under the control of a dictatorship that does not react well to criticism or remarks in opposition to it's goals. It frequently makes demands to such companies, and penalizes those already in for perceived comments or actions against it. The debate flared up again this week thanks to three stories in the news. One of them was a tournament of players of the Hearthstone game, which is owned by the same company that owns the still noted MMO game World of Warcraft. When one winner was interviewed, he proclaimed his support for the protestors in the city of Hong Kong. Blizzard soon reacted with actions many of its customers have found troubling, including yours truly whom had recently just signed up for Warcraft again after an extended break.

Read the story in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

A Reader Responds on Linden Lab's Price and Fee Hikes, Group Limit Cuts

On June 4, yours truly made a commentary about Linden Lab's decision on May 29 to raise Premium account prices by 37% (or a little over 25% for those paying monthly), the doubling of the fee to cash out Linden dollars (2.5% to 5%), and their decision to cut the group limits on basic accounts from 42 to 35. While the Lindens canceled the last part of their plans due to feedback, I questioned why the Lab made that move to begin with while also raising prices and fees while their successful Linden homes were already bringing in more money.

Some people felt the commentary was overreacting to Linden Lab's move. Most of those comments on Facebook were simple ones to the tune of "If you don't want to pay, you don't have to play." But one reader, an Elizabeth Jarvinen, took the time to explain why she felt the comments were a little harsh.

I've been one of very few residents who routinely helps out both the Lindens and the third party viewer devs with bug reports and problem solving on SL. There's been talk for years about how group size and group numbers have been problematic. Whether people believe it or not, the facts remain the same. Group membership, particularly very large groups really weigh down the SL system. That's also why they limited viewing group members / roles to groups with (under) 5000 members. 

Balancing Public Relations with Technical Solutions is not easy. It's one of the hardest things with doing anything 'on the internet' in this era~ people can always construct a narrative that has conspiracy and ill intentions, marked with corporate greed and personal gain for~ well~ pretty much any situation really. That being said, I also condemned the notion of cutting basic groups, and I'm glad they listened.

I also feel a bit compelled to point out that with regard to "small land owners" a year ago they literally doubled their parcel sizes for FREE. How was that forgotten so quickly? I get that people remember bad things more readily and that Loss Aversion is a human propensity ~ but, I really wish it wasn't.

Also also~ random addendum, the reason there was teleport failures was literally related to the linux version that the servers were running on. Not, as your article suggests, things being moved to the Cloud. Sounds silly, but that's what it was. So the issue was basically an unforeseen consequence of some other software developer that changed a thing that SL uses to exist~ and that caused teleports in SL to change behavior.

The parting words of your post seems to indicate that you believe that the Lindens of old were less greedy somehow~ and that the new ones are putting the screws to the residents just 'cause they can. The fact of the matter is SL is a dinosaur, an aging behemoth. It's made it this far, due to some very good design choices by those early Lindens you revere, but it also is struggling due to some very poor ones that did not age well. Solving these issues may not always have the most socially expedient solutions, and I may not always agree with them. But I'd rather they try than we all get a "June surprise" of Linden Lab closing it's doors and the Second Life we all know and love becoming a footnote of the history of the Internet.

Do you the readers agree? Disagree? Further comments are welcome below, as well as any reader submissions.

Political Satirist Responds Nine Years Later

In January 2008 I was part of a tour group that dropped by the Caricavatars sim, a place of biting political satire of American, French, and global politics owned and run by Christophe Hugo. At the time, I wasn't sure what to think of him as while he gave our group the codes to his mock-up of the White House, he booted a friend of mine for asking a question about an exhibit that had stirred up a little controversy. When his response to my article was to tell me he had banned the whole tour group. I came to the conclusion this was someone whom couldn't take criticism but had no trouble dishing it out.

Checking my articles, I found a comment made by him, calling himself Chris Zeil, in response to my reprint of my story, "It is interesting to read your article and reflect on my tenure in Second Life as a caricaturist, almost ten years after I ceased my activities..." He told me that he hadn't been thrown out by Linden Lab as I was told, but he had left on his own as "I eventually grew tired with untrained moderators taking down with no notice some of my 3D exhibits, every time there was a risk they may offend a community (most frequently the muslims', or the christians')." Of his booting people out for asking questions, he stated that he had been dealing with large numbers of visitors, many of whom came just to troll and grief, and basically stated it wasn't always easy telling apart the trollers and critics.

Zeil stated he had no regrets about his time in Second Life as "it allowed to develop my approach to 3D caricatures, which was useful in eventually developing a drawing style I am now using to publish comic books" in real life. However, he was expecting some trouble from the begining as he considered Linden Lab's "main priority is first and foremost to attract an increasing number of customers. Hence they want to be mainstream, and will avoid controversy at all costs and aim for political correctness, even if it means curtailing freedom of speech."

"In retrospect, I believe that satire is not a fit for for-profit companies like Linden Labs. ... the space of Second Life always remained what it was from the start, i.e., a for-profit corporate space, not a public place. This very much limited freedom of speech, hence artistic freedom. Let's hope that future virtual worlds will not follow the same path."

One wonders what Zeil/Christophe would think of JP Laszlo of the "Trump Organization" whom in 2016 was the center of even more political-related controversy. But Zeil would probably be the first to point out that JP had a very public throwing out and then coming out as a member of Woodbury.

Bixyl Shuftan

Oskar Linden's Response to Questions about the Maintenance

On a thread in the official Second Life forum asking about why there was a grid failure on May 7 (fortunately less extensive than the one on April 26th), Oskar Linden had the following to say:

These issues were the result of a hardware failure in one of our data centers. The issue was noticed immediately and acted upon within minutes. A key first step is intentionally disabling logins and billing. The second step is recovering the hardware or working around it. The third step is bringing services back online slowly to make sure all is well. This entire process took 30 minutes. Say what you will, but that is a very impressive response time. After core functionality was returned we focused on regions that had been affected and worked to get them stable again.

I know it is frustrating when events like this happen, and we understand the difficulties it is from your perspective. We react as quick as possible to stabilize the grid once events like this arise.

__Oskar

Apparently this was the cause of the scheduled maintenance this week for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, in which residents were cautioned about certain activities.

Hat tip: Daniel Voyager