Conflict of Nations, As Kazakhstan

 

Among the free to play strategy games out there is "Conflict of Nations." A sequel to "Call of War," you take the role of one of a number of nations (or states depending on the scenario) fighting for victory. Giving it a try a few years ago, in one game I decided to have some fun and was playing for chuckles as well as to win.

 

Read Bixyl's story in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

 

 

Misadventures in Rust Angels: The Base Defense Contest

 

As a survival MMO, Rust is among those most noted for it's competitive (or downright merciless in some places) PvP action. Wanting to avoid the "PvP kiddies," many players prefer the PvE servers such as the Angels server for Nydia Tungsten and some of her friends. But how do you keep things from getting too predictable and give something extra special for the players to do? For server moderator Umbra, the answer in August was a race. For September, he had another competition: who could design the best base in terms of resisting a raid.

 

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

 

Call of War

 

Some of you may have seen advertisements for a comnat game called "Call of War." It is a World War Two themed stragegy game played on one's browser. Players assume control over one of a number of countries on the map, build units and structures to make the units, and launch attacks and defend against them. Yours truly took a look at it. So is it a good game?

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

Announcement: This Saturday at The Science Circle - "Choking on Red Pills," "Virtual Teaching Tactics"

 

"Choking on Red Pills, A Biological Take on Modern Dating Dynamics"

Saturday November 20,

10 AM to 11 AM SL time

The basic tenet of biology is reproduction to continue the species. Evolution and genetics has programmed every species’ to follow behaviors to ensure the next generation. Sometimes this has resulted in seemingly contradictory behaviors like male spiders sacrificing themselves after mating.

Given this pattern of programming in sexually reproducing species, it is flabbergasting that some people are choosing to exit the mating pool consciously. These movements (Men Going Their Own Way, Involuntary Celibates, parts of The Manosphere, etc) espouse very different interactions in the mating game, primarily to exit it. Collectively using the term “Red Pill” (a reference to The Matrix) this philosophy claims to now be awakened to the truth of how society oppresses men.

This presentation will explore initially the biology of sexual reproduction in vertebrates and humans then look to reconcile or at least understand better the current society/cultural situation.

Presentation by Dr. Stephen Gasior (Xootfly)

Auditorium

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/The%20Science%20Circle/125/132/22 

* * * * *

"Virtual Teaching Tactics to Help a Divided World"

Saturday November 20

9 PM to 10 PM SL time

Educators can be Covid-challenged to keep students and funds flowing, while promoting healthy and enriching academic options. Virtual World learning may provide immersive hands-on experience for engaging students and offering a sense of place and belonging, so important to student success and retention in online education.This presentation covers: evolution of virtual world learning, academic necessities for learning alternatives, socioeconomic drivers and gains, fulfilling student desires for immersive experience, benefits of experiential learning, providing dimensional sense of space, sample in-world learning centers, forming partnerships between academia and emerging technology, effective gamification of learning, bridging the digital divide, and self-guided field trips to Virtual World campuses.

Dr. Steven R. Van Hook

Auditorium

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/The%20Science%20Circle/67/129/32
 

RFL Team Sunbeamers Planning For The Season

 

On Sunday January 31, the Relay for Life's Team Sunbeamers had their pre-season meeting in Sunweaver Bay to discuss strategy, led by team captain Rita Mariner. With "A Cure For A Happy Ending" being the theme, that gave builders Shockwave Yareach and Cynthia Farshore a good idea on what to have the Relay Weekend campsite. The team has also raised plenty of money in the past few months, well into what last year was Gold Level fundraising. 

There were also plans for an air show, with the date expected to be sometime in May, though with a desire to avoid either conflicting with the Fantasy Fair or Relaystock. Besides having a camp at the Relaystock, there will likely be one of the team's DJs there. And of course there are the Bid Me events and the special Relay parties at the clubs. And for a certain Sunnie, "The Platinum Avatar Challenge."

It's going to be a fun and interesting season.

Bixyl Shuftan

Sansar Update: A New Direction, Torley, And Account Issues

For years, Linden Lab had been trying to make it's "next generation virtual world" of Sansar a success. But it only attracted a tiny number of regular users. So earlier this year they sold it to Wookey Productions. So how is the world doing? It's still around, with a few from Linden Lab still there such as Torley. And it's found a new path, with an emphasis on being a place for live events. But as one former Newser writer discovered, there are still some customer service issues.

Read more in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

Announcement: This Saturday at The Science Circle - "Online Strategies for Quarantine: An Evening with Pathfinder Lester"

"Online Strategies for Quarantine: An Evening with Pathfinder Lester"

Saturday April 25

10 AM to 11 AM SL time

John Lester (Pathfinder Lester) has worked in software development, product design and management, knowledge engineering and online community building for over 20 years. He has led projects and teams in a variety of settings from startups to Fortune 100 companies, and his diverse background includes neuroscience, perceptually immersive learning, VR, artificial life, fintech, infosec and big data analytics.


With his background in neurology, John developed the first immersive medical education products and online patient support communities while doing research at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. John co-founded the the first computer security hackerspace “The L0pht,” he’s a long-standing member of the oldest white-hat hacker group “Cult of the Dead Cow,” and he led the development of pioneering immersive learning education initiatives for Second Life while working at Linden Lab.


Matthew will discuss the following topics with John

(1) Platforms Pathfinder is excited about

(2) Tools recommended; Apps, websites, podcasts, etc

(3) Strategies

–  Synergies to using a platform and a tool together

–  The role of social media during quarantine

(4) Caution, things not to do or to avoid?
To read more, Click Here.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/The%20Science%20Circle/67/129/32

Top Stories of the 2010s: Linden Lab's "Shared Creative Spaces"

In recent days, Linden Lab made the decision to turn to "Plan B" for Sansar, meaning either selling it or finding a partner to keep it going. So why did Linden Lab put energy in something else other than Second Life? Actually, it's been doing so since 2011, when the decision was made to develop or buy other products as well. They hoped that they would bring in some extra money and one or more would be a big hit. But for all the Lab's effort, only one of these "shared creative spaces" would remain after a few years.

Read more in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

Sansar on Steam One Month Later

It was a month ago that Sansar was made available on the Steam gaming service. In it's first day, things were looking good at first with mostly positive reviews, and the statistics were showing up to 72 people users at once, which is up from it's high average several months ago of fifty to ten.

But after a few days, Sansar's numbers began to slip again. A look yesterday showed only 25 had been on at it's peak in the past 24 hours (statistics page). While there were still more positive reviews then negative, numbers were more mixed with 33 of the 79 reviews being negative.

When it was first announced by Linden Lab that Sansar would soon be available on Steam, there were some people who felt that this move was being made too early, that Sansar wasn't ready yet, and that the critics in Steams could be quite "brutal." While a longer time period is needed before a true conclusion can be made, right now, it looks like Linden Lab's move isn't having much of a long term impact on Sansar's numbers.

Sansar Now Available On Steam

About a month ago, Linden Lab announced that it's next-generation virtual world, Sansar, would soon be available on Steam. Yesterday, it was announced that Sansar was up and available there.

As of today, December 5th, we are officially live on Steam!

We wanted to give a huge thank you to our current community who have been so supportive, and to extend a warm “Welcome” to all our new community members joining us from Steam!

You can find us on Steam as an Early Access Game, where we’re free to download. Even better, you’ll get to enjoy all the benefits of Steam as a social platform for gamers including full access to our Steam Community Hub!

Sansar is one out of two products by Linden Lab available on Steam, the other being Blocksworld, which has been there since September 2017. Both are listed as "early access" platforms, "We plan on staying in Early Access until Sansar is the very best it can be." So far, there are a handful of reviews, which are mostly positive.

In it's move to Steam, Linden Lab did away with the SandeX, which was where Sansar users could buy and sell the virtual world's currency. There's no threads in the official forums about Sansar now being on Steam, though there is one in Virtualverse. Second Life had been available on Steam in 2012, but wasn't there for very long.

Ryan Schultz stated in his blog that why he hoped Sansar's move to steam was successful, he wasn't sure it would be, noting that High Fidelity doing the same didn't change it's numbers much. He did worry about Steam users being "brutal" with their reviews, though as mentioned earlier they are mostly positive so far. But he did say that two games in Sansar that had been getting attention, Hoverderby and Combat Zone, had been closed by the developers. If so, fewer available activities could make it harder for the next-generation virtual world to retain users.

Hat tip: Daniel Voyager

Bixyl Shuftan

Sansar Going To Steam, SandeX To Close

On Wednesday October 31, Linden Lab's Sansar team made a major announcement. The first part was that Sansar would soon be available on Steam.


Sansar has come a long way since we started the project. In 2018 we have devoted an enormous amount of effort to improving the end-user experience, and will continue to do so.

Given those improvements, we believe we are quickly approaching the point where we want to start bringing a large number of users onto the platform. This is an important milestone for us and especially our creators. One of the foundational principles of Sansar is that creators must be able to profit from their creations. For us to make that a reality, we need to give our creators a large audience of customers.

The cornerstone of our growth effort will be to put Sansar on Steam. Steam is where more than half of the VR market goes to find software. It also is a huge pool of users who are interested in our space and are likely to have the hardware required to run Sansar. We anticipate being able to get onto Steam by the end of this year. This is a huge step for us and we’re excited to be able introduce Sansar to an even wider audience.


Steam is a platform highly popular with gamers where people can buy games, expansions, and apps. According to the Wikipedia entry, Steam has over 150 million registered users. Linden Lab would have Second Life available on it in 2012. 

The second part of the announcement was that Linden Lab would be shutting down the SandeX, which is where users of Sansar currently buy and sell the virtual world's currency.


In order to do this, we are obligated to make significant changes to how Sansar works, especially in how the Sansar Dollar and process credit system work. These changes, will also make the credit process for Creators far more consistent and predictable. The first change is that we will be discontinuing the Sandex as of December 4, 2018.

After that date, we will be moving to a fixed conversion rate model. Creators will continue to be able to sell their work for Sansar Dollars on the Store (and soon in experiences!). Eligible creators may convert some or all of their earned Sansar Dollar balance to US dollars at a rate of S$250 to $1, and then request a USD credit to be processed in 30 days. This matches Steam’s payment timeline.

We understand that this may have an impact on the amount of revenue returned to creators compared to the Sandex. However, we believe that in the long run our creators will significantly benefit from having access to the larger Steam user base. In addition, anyone who has created their Sansar account before December 31, 2018 will receive a legacy conversion rate of S$143 to $1 until December 31, 2019, after which the conversion rate for all accounts will be S$250 to $1.

Our automated Sansar Dollar Conversion page will not be available until January 2019. In the interim, we are committed to working with our Creators to manually process credit requests of Sansar Dollars through an email process, the details of which will soon follow.


Ryan Schultz, who started his blog as focused on Sansar, remarked, "... Linden Lab is betting the farm that putting Sansar on Steam will lead to an influx of new users with cash to spend. They’ve weighed the pros and cons and they’re willing to put up with the fees that Steam will charge, in exchange for a wider audience.I simply cannot overstate what a major change in strategy this is." Schultz would also state that Linden Lab did answer a few questions in Sansar's Discord channel. Of the thirty day delay in processing credit, the answer was, "The problem is that Steam operates on a 30-60 day window. If we keep it at a few days, we will be floating credit for 1-2 months. That’s an uncomfortable financial situation to be in."

Daniel Voyager would remind his readers that, "Second Life didn’t work out very well on Steam back in 2012. It’s going to be interesting to see what impact this will have on Sansar’s user usage and revenue during 2019. The lab are gambling on a huge influx of new users with cash to spend to make Sansar more successful in the years ahead." On the Virtualverse forum (the successor to SL Universe), a couple posters were hopeful. But others were skeptical, one remarking, "the breathtaking potential that SL had in the early days is just not there."



Sources: Sansar, Ryan Scultz, Daniel Voyager, Virtualverse

Bixyl Shuftan

Game Review: Forge of Empires

Most of the games we review can't be played while Second Life is running, or are usually more than a little difficult to do so. One many of our readers will be able to is "Forge of Empires." Playable on one's browser or as an app on a tablet, Forge of Empires is a city and empire historical strategy game in which the player directs the course of his city and territory as it progresses through the ages. So what is the game like?

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

Commentary: Second Thoughts on the ADI

Sometimes things look a little differently from the outside. That's the message Theonlyjohnny seems to have gotten with his latest dealings with the ADI combat group. Although once with them, he is no longer.  And in today's commentary explains why he doesn't have the same feelings about them as before.

Read more in Extra.

Botgirl: "What Went Wrong" With Second Life from 2008-2010

Botgirl Questi did a noteworthy article about Second Life during a turning point in it's history. In 2008, it looked like it was part of the future of mainstream computer use. By 2010, the amount of land owned by people was dropping, and Linden Lab had laid off a third of their staff. Botgirl felt this was the result of a number of decisions by the Lab with the goal to "transform Second Life from an anarchic virtual frontier settlement into a business-friendly company."

This wouldn't the first time a business decided to alter it's focus in an attempt to gain a wider audience. Unfortunately like many such businesses, it ended up alienating it's existing market while failing to gain a new one, "with incomprehensibly poor communication with the Second Life community along the way, Linden Lab managed to throw out the virtual baby with the bathwater." 

Botgirl's "From Thriving Anarchy to Failed Corporate State" can be read here: (link). The following few articles in her blog expands on the subject.

SL Video: "En Garde! Tutorial"

From Rifkin Habsburg, "Learn to play En Garde! The strategic fencing game by Reiner Knizia, brought to Second Life by Procyon Games. ... It's a strategic game, so if you're looking for a game where you bash someone over the head by clicking the mouse as quickly as possible, you probably should try a different game. It's not for everyone!"

SL Video: "Frootcake Tutorial"

Remember DrFran's article on the Frootcake Diner? If you want to learn more about the game, here's a video from Rifkin Habsburg, "At the Frootcake Diner, we serve nothing but fruitcake, all day, every day! Learn to play Frootcake, the game, and you can extort and spite with everyone else."

Game Review: Herzog Zwei and Airmech

Grease Coakes takes a break from Second Life to look at a couple games. One is a classic from the days of the Sega Genesis: Herzog Zwei. Not just simple arcade action, strategy is key here in taking out the opposing base. The more recent Airmech, downloadable from Google, plays much the same way, though is different enough to stand on its own.

Read more in Extra.