Month: March 2012

Oz discusses TPV Policy changes

Posted on by Inara Pey

On Wednesday March 7th, Jessica Lyon of the Firestorm team sat down with Oz Linden to discuss the recent TPV Policy (TPVP) changes. Originally Oz had asked to appear with Jessica on the last Phoenix Hour, which is normally co-presented by Jessica and Phaylen Fairchild, but it was decided to hold-off on any appearance for a more focused presentation.

That Oz made the offer again speaks highly of his desire to engage openly with the community on what has become something of a sensitive (and in some cases incorrectly viewed, given the way it has been wrongly portrayed as stopping “any” innovation within TPVs) issue, and his willingness to try to provide further clarification on the changes and the reasoning behind them.

I’ve included a summary of the discussion on the following pages. As it is somewhat lengthy and potentially subject to “tl;dr” (shame on you!), I felt it better to provide my own thoughts on the discussion up-front.

Oz in conversation

While listening to the discussion I was also seeing Twitter comments appear on my screen relating to the posting of the interview video and was – to be honest – surprised at the negative tone of some of the comments being made. Overall, I felt the Oz was open and direct in dealing with the questions and statements directed at him, and he did much to fill-in the blanks. And before anyone starts on the, “But he’s only an employee” tack, I very much doubt that he was in any way speaking in isolation or sans the support for his management. As such, this is precisely the kind of engagement we should be applauding, even if the message may not be entirely what we want to hear,  and which LL should be seeking to undertake more regularly.

Some have complained that we “don’t know” any more following the discussion than we knew at the start. To them I’d actually ask, “What more do you want to know?” The boundaries of the TPVP changes have been given better definition – indeed, Oz has provided clearer definitions here, and prior to this meeting. Unless LL produces a set of stone tablets detailing every case, it’s hard to see what more can be said – and it should be remembered that tablets of stone can be as dangerous as having a broad definition. Things do cut both ways.

Sure, what has been said previously, and is said in this discussion, doesn’t provide any safeguards against any fear of how LL might at some point in the future choose to interpret the TPVP – but really, this is an unreasonable expectation. No-one can predict what tomorrow may bring much less a time eighteen months or two years hence, and it is unreasonable to expect any company to give guarantees where the security and growth of their business is concerned. At the end of the day, SL is LL’s business first and foremost – and I applaud Oz for being so frank on the matter of the business / platform relationship – and as such they can change the rules howsoever they like; as such the hammer could be dropped on TPV activities with or without the use of such a policy.

However, I think it fair to say Oz is being sincere both on a personal level and as a representative of the company when he says that LL is not looking to end TPVs, but wants to enhance and grow their working relationship with TPV developers. While it is clear from the phrasing of some of his answers that LL would like to see their effective market-share of users increase in terms of Viewer use, it would be a mistake to attribute the TPVP changes to purely that motivation. It’s fair to say that if that was the goal, LL could conceivably achieve it simply by removing the majority of their Viewer development back behind the curtain, leaving TPVs forever in a catch-up situation.

Nevertheless, the risk of stifling innovation is still there, howsoever small a part the “shared experience” has played in TPV development, simply because of the concerns TPV developers have around the whole aspect of having ideas and proposals accepted by LL as Jessica expresses in the video. This is something that LL need to remain attuned to and seek to demonstrate they will help and support TPV developers when and where they do see an opportunity for developing a shared experience capability that isn’t on LL’s radar or to-do list.

Some will most likely remain dissatisfied with the results of the discussion, which is a shame. While the proof of LL’s commitment to developing and evolving the TPV / LL relationship can only be judged on whatever occurs going forward, there is currently no reason to take what has been said at anything less than face value.

For my part, I would say that Oz’s openness and his candour in dealing with the questions and concerns relating to the TPVP changes is to be welcomed. I hope he does take Jessica up on her suggestion of future discussions of this kind, and that we may yet see LL encouraged to participate in other such opportunities to address user concerns on various matters as openly and directly in the future.

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BattleBeasts launch this weekend

Posted on by Inara Pey

BattleBeast Breedables, which I took a look at last month officially launch in-world over a two-day event commencing today.

The programme of events includes (all times SLT):

Friday March 9th

Saturday March 10th

There will also be a range of activities occurring at the BattleBeasts main store throughout the two days, including: a raffle for a dragon 3-pack, battle demonstrations, game booths, random prize givers and the BBB Hunt, which starts at the main store and travels to each of the BBB premier locations.

New experience tools: details starting to emerge

Posted on by Inara Pey

LL have started releasing more information on the Advanced Experience Tools developed during the creation of Linden Realms and its predecessor game demonstrated at SLCC-2011.

The blog post (yay! BLOG post!) provides an overview of the new tools and permissions, with the video providing further information. Bear in mind when reading and watching that this is only an initial announcement and that as such, further information will be forthcoming…

The video delves a little deeper into the creation of the tools themselves and which includes some interesting factoids and tidbits of information.

One of the tidbits demonstrates the popularity of the Linden Realms game, which has 5,000 unique visits per day, for a total of 249,000 unique visits since the game opened in (I presume) Beta. Had the game relied upon a “traditional” means of HUD attachment via people’s inventories, the game would be generating 4 million new inventory items per month!

The tools discussed by both blog post and video are:

Teleport agent: this is a new LSL function that enables an agent (avatar) to be teleported automatically to a given location / destination. Within Linden Realms, this is used when people are “killed” by the various threats to their safety; within the video, the LL spokesperson suggests a further interesting use for the capability: the teleport “gun”…

The function supports both local and remote teleports and also respects teleport and access permissions.

Temporary Attachment: this functions is a similar manner to llAtach, but avoids the creation of an item within a user’s inventory. This has two benefits, the most obvious being that people’s inventories don’t get cluttered with items each time they visit a region where the function is in active use and the second, as an extension of this, the asset database itself isn’t overloaded with millions of requests (again, Linden Realms would be generating an estimated 4 million items a month if using llAttach). Attachments for both avatar and screen (HUD) are supported.

The blog and video indicate that temporary attachment is not  forced attachment, but a part of the overall Experience Permissions system.

LR Portal: a means of enabling the enhanced permissions system

Experience Permissions: this is a simplified version of the existing permissions system currently in use across the grid. Under the current system, permissions to control your avatar would need to be handled on a case-by-case basis. In something like the Linden Realms game, this means that rather than “dying” and being teleported on contact with a rock monster, the player would get a pop-up asking them if they wish to “die”.

Allowing these permissions to be granted requires action on the user’s part – such as walking through the Portals in the Linden Realms game, but they only need to be granted once, and can be applied across multiple regions (again, as with Linden Realms), allowing for large, continuous experiences to be built.

Permissions that can be granted (according to experience requirements) include:

  • Teleporting
  • Attaching objects to an avatar / screen
  • Control / track camera
  • Trigger animations

The permissions system is specifically geared to prevent more dangerous permissions such as inventory access, debit a user’s account and change links.

Potential Uses

The potential uses for these tools in terms of games and adventures are clear. However, there are wider applications for the tools, including:

  • Providing a means for guided tours within sims – providing avatars with HUDs that suggest directions around the sim, allow items of interest to be identified, information relating to those items to be displayed, and so on
  • Providing a means for store owners to enhance the in-world shopping experience  – including how demo items can be provisioned to users using the temporary attach option
  • The enhancement of more interactive experiences ranging across multiple regions.

Professional Creators Programme

In line with the new tools, LL will be launching a Professional Creators Program. Details on this are currently scant – the blog post simply states, “This program will provide members with helpful resources, such as tutorials and exclusive closed betas. More information will become available in the next few months”. However, Rodvik gave some pre-hints on this via Twitter a couple of months ago, and it seems likely the programme will, like mesh, require filing of some personal information with LL and perhaps taking some form or tutorial like the mesh status upload tutorial. From Rodvik’s comments, the requirements shouldn’t be that intrusive, but given the potential uses of the tools, are seen as precautionary against misuse.

For those wishing to be updated on news and information on the new tools, there is also an in-world Group  – the Advanced Creator Tools Notification Group  – which can be joined free-of-charge.

Appetites are bound to be whetted at this news (and there are already a fair few in the Advanced Creator Tools Notification Group already!) – and at the little teaser included in the blog post that LL have, “Produced a number of other tools and prototypes to support more rich content creation that we look forward to releasing”.

Why LL fail to help themselves

Posted on by Inara Pey

The leaping-off point for this blog post is Rod Humble’s announcement about his promised round table, due to commence this week, as posted on his profile feed. To whit:

Hey folks, as I mentioned to some of you over the weekend I am going to do the next roundtable stuff in private one on one’s rather than as a free for all. That makes it more low key and doesnt turn it into something which is contentious. Thanks for all the feedback.

On the one hand, the reaction might seem understandable; the response to the news that last names won’t be making a return was massively negative which was itself pretty negatively voiced. That it wouldn’t go down well is hardly  surprising given the number of people supporting the move either via blogs, blog comments, on his own profile field, the SL forums and other forums (some of which Rod Humble himself frequents) or directly on the associated JIRA.

However, the backlash shouldn’t have been unexpected. Indeed, from the preamble in Rodvik’s post on the matter, it would seem he was aware that it was going to hurt, hence delaying the actual bad news until a good way into the post itself.

But this is no reason to suddenly shut-up shop when it comes to further discussions on SL and what might or might not happen. Yet that is precisely what has happened. When I read the profile post, I was struck by two things:

  • No details as to how people might engage are present in the profile post
  • Rod indicates that he has already spoken to some people on the matter over the weekend.

While the latter could simply be as a result of Rod responding to questions people fired at him on the subject of the forthcoming discussions rather than being anything deeper or more significant – taken together, and again, given the way LL has tended to operate in the past – does raise questions as to whether a “star chamber” for the discussion has already been formed, which itself could feed feelings of exclusion – and such feelings are never a good thing to present to a former audience.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

The decision to remove the discussion from more open participation is also a little sad, as it stands testimony to the old adage that the more things change; the more things remain the same. A lot has changed for the better within and around the Lab over the last 15 months. Looking back at a some suggestions I made last March, it’s interesting to see how some have indirectly been implemented, although not as I’d imagined a year ago, admittedly. We’ve seen improvements in many areas and attempts to get major technical issues under control and / or improved.

Unfortunately for the Lab, we’re a contrary lot. As such, we find it easy to overlook the positive (or even view it with a degree of fear and loathing) and continue to focus on the negative. As such, the removal of this discussion to some unspecified medium involving a select few is going to reinforce the negative attitude many feel towards LL.

When it comes to the matter of Last Names in particular, LL actually have no-one but themselves to blame, because the bottom line is, they bungled the issue from the moment Rod posted on the matter at the end of last year – a move that placed them in an impossible situation. In doing so, they once again fell victim to their own massively misplaced management of on-going communications with the user community as a whole.

Again this isn’t new nor surprising. God knows I’ve been hammering away (rather pointlessly it sometimes feels) on the subject of broader Lab / user communications that I sometimes think this blog reads like a scratched record.

And while it is true that repetition doesn’t necessarily make a point any more valid than the first time it was mentioned, the fact of the matter is that LL’s track record when it comes to what I call “corporate-level” communications pretty much speaks for itself. I’m also far from alone in this; others have also long been trumpeting the need for better, more focused communications from Linden Lab. In this, I’d take time out to point you to Ciaran Laval’s excellent piece on why, when it comes to the “shared experience” of Second Life (itself a source of recent controversy), it behoves LL well to actually lead the sharing itself.

So, rather than repeat myself yet again, I’ll attempt to put it in a forthright nutshell: Rod, Lab, get a bloody grip and for heaven’s sake start engaging with us through constructive, on-going communications through your own open channels. Like the blog. 

Carry the message; don’t hand the baton elsewhere or hide it up your collective jumpers through “closed door” discussions. At that does is put us in the FIC of things.

At the same time, please understand the scattergun approach doesn’t work – the last names situation should amply demonstrate that most effectively. In pumping out blog posts (with comments disabled), then shoving people off to the forums before making profile feed posts, all that again happened is that corporately, LL shot off yet another toe in falsely setting expectations.

Obviously, the flip side of this is that if LL attempt to listen to everyone, no matter how carefully they tread or in what format, they are going to end-up pissing-off someone. After all, as has been said often enough, ask 10 users for their views on X or Y and you’ll get ten different answers. Multiple that by just a few hundred impassioned users, and the chances are you’re going to take a right royal kicking from some quarter or other…

But again, this doesn’t necessitate slipping informal discussions behind closed doors. The risk of setting false expectations is one that can be handled by simply and clearly caveating such discussions with the fact that they are explorations of ideas, and that they don’t automatically equate to any promise on LL’s part to implement anything coming out of the discussions. This may not result in everyone being happy – but conversely, it could end up with more than a few happy faces and a renewed feeling of involvement if the outcome of such a discussion lead to LL realising that X or Y could actually be implemented and then doing so.

As it is, by making closing-off this discussion – whether as a result of a realisation that they “got it wrong” in the first place when it comes to last names or not – comes across as “evidence” that the Lab is no longer willing to engage with the user community, but rather hand down edicts from upon high.

Muddying

Certainly, it adds to the overall muddying of the waters that has been so much a problem where attempts at communication have been made. Again, with due respect to Rod Humble – who has, in many respects been more of a communicator than his predecessors – that he himself chooses so many different channels for engagement leads to confusion.

In this, there is a very thin line, admittedly; there is absolutely nothing wrong with using profile feeds, Twitter and other forums with which to broadly engage with users – as long as the content of the communication is balanced and accurately reflected back where it should be: through LL’s own blog channels. But time and again, this isn’t the case – just about anything else but the blog is used.

Again, LL don’t help themselves when they do blog – and promptly close-off comments. While no-one likes negative feedback – and sadly (dons her own tin hat and hides under the desk to continue typing) we SL users can be a pretty negative lot when it does come to giving feedback, even when it comes to what might otherwise be regarded as good news) – the truth is that shutting down channels of response simply enhances the feeling that you “don’t want to know”.

There’s a further knock-on effect to all this, because it means that where LL employees do make the effort – almost pleadingly so – for people to give the Lab a chance, their requests are met with a degree of derision that isn’t really called for.

Of course, this doesn’t mean one-to-one conversations don’t have their use. But it does come down to a matter of balance – and right now, things are decidedly lop-sided. Again, this creates issues wherein even when an individual from the Lab is speaking with the best of intentions on their part and the full weight of the Lab’s management behind them – their words are dismissed simply because (in many cases) the Lab’s performance as a corporate entity where communications is concerned has been so lax, people naturally distrust what is being said.

Which brings me to a final point in this rambling. In announcing the round table, one of the things Rod stated was that:

Conversations with many old Lindens and Residents have led me to conclude that we have lost something of the old frontier feel.  Like we were exploring the world together …

Yes, “we” and “together” – these were key to the old frontier spirit within SL. It’s somewhat ironic then, that in actually taking up the discussion Rod has, for many that might have wanted to participate, opted to remove the “we” from the equation.

Circles

When it comes to the matter of broader communications and engagement with the community as a whole LL do face something of a vicious circle of achieving engagement while facing negativity and suspicion. However, it is a circle that can only be broken by LL itself. The company needs to bring focus to its efforts to communicate and start being consistent in its approach. It needs to take the lead and – while things may initially hurt in terms of potential feedback – be front-and-centre about things and stop:

  • Stuffing items away in forum threads because they aren’t deemed to be “of interest”  – it smacks of evasion. If the company has something to say that has the potential to impact the community, it should say so openly, and allow individuals to determine how it may / may not affect them
  • Going out and vociferously using other channels at the expense of their direct channels (blogs)  – it dilutes the message and leads to confusion. Use other channels by all means, but use them to support your central channel, not instead of
  • Determining that things need to be closed-off simply because what is being said isn’t what you want to hear  – it blurs issues and raises suspicions. Stand by what you’ve said and accept the fact that you’re not going to please all the people all the time and that criticism isn’t something to be afraid of

Obviously, any change in approach on the part of the Lab – were it to happen – isn’t immediately going to be met with cheers and flag-waving. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be tried; given enough time and a more focused, structured and pro-active approach to communications and engagement will yield more benefits than problems.

Beta Grid inventory issues

Posted on by Inara Pey

This comes by way of Nalates Urriah, who keeps a finger on the pulse of things technical on the servers-side of SL (as well as covering much else). Due to the nature of the problem, it’s worth repeating here.

There is a problem with inventory on the Beta (Aditi) grid. Essentially, the inventory you have on the Beta grid is a copy of your Main grid inventory. However, it only gets refreshed / updated when you carry out a change to your log-in password. Recently, people who have been changing their passwords to refresh their Beta grid inventories have subsequently had at least two problems:

  • Anything “new” in a refreshed inventory (i.e. was not there prior to the password reset) will not rez in-world the inventory
  • Things created following the password reset and saved to inventory may vanish at the next log-in to the Beta grid.

Additionally, people are reporting that after initially logging-out of Aditi, they are unable to re-log to the same region, as they get a “region unavailable” error, whereas the region in question appears perfectly OK post log-in.

Given people are being asked to try-out various elements of new SL capabilities on Aditi, this is causing some concern and tending to put a major hole in any ability to test such capabilities. For those logging-in to Aditi for the first time (or the first time in a very long time), this may mean that very little will rez from MY INVENTORY, depending upon how long a person has been involved in SL and how their inventory has matured over the years.

A JIRA has been raised on the issue – SVC-7727 – if you’ve experienced the issue for yourself, please make sure you Watch it – and if you have specific details of cases where you experienced the problem that aren’t already listed, please add details.

March Mesh Madness

Posted on by Inara Pey

March Mesh Madness kicked off on March 1st, and has caused some upset / confusion. The event “brings together unique mesh designs from 20 established Second Life”, and is open until March 15th, and has been organised by Damien Fate, himself a mesh designer, and is hosted on Fate Island.

Part of the confusion seems to be that people mistakenly took this to be an LL-sponsored event as it is currently appearing on the splash screens for those Viewers using the official splash / MotD notifications. As has been pointed out in the thread linked-to above, such MotD links aren’t that uncommon – they are pulled from the Destination Guide (wherein Mesh Madness is listed), and so seeing it linked their isn’t necessarily a sign of any LL collusion.

Anyway, I decided to jump over and take a look. The sim itself is nicely designed in a modern, minimalistic look, comprising a central arrival plaza with a display kiosk in each corner, surrounded by 16 more kiosks, four to a side to form a square, all linked by walkways over water. The majority of the build appears to be mesh (or at least partial mesh) and as such, one would expect it to be relatively low-lag.

March Mesh Madness at Fate Island

Sadly, this is far from the case. With just 12 avatars in the region, Fate Island exhibited more-or-less the same amount of lag experienced elsewhere with a similar number of avatars combined with the likes of multiple textures, vendors, etc. Rubber-banding was the order of the day.

In terms of the content on display, I’d have to say that things are – disappointing in some respects. Around twelve of the kiosks are devoted to clothing / footwear / accessories, with another three devoted to mesh hair and the remaining five offering up such items as furnishings, trees, and so on. There is little imagination shown with the various kiosks; most of which resemble mall-like slots, rather than attempts to showcase mesh. The one real exception to this is the Rustica kiosk, where Max Graf has (as ever) demonstrated his talent by producing a first-rate display of his mesh creations.

The Rustica display at Mesh Madness

Of course, one might argue that it’s easier perhaps for Max to produce such a display than others – his items are very much touch / feel, whereas clothing is more look / try. Even so, his kiosk and that of Organica, situated almost exactly opposite in the region, are the eye-catching units that tend to draw one to them.

As mentioned, the majority of the creations being displayed here are of the looks / try variety – clothing, accessories, hair, etc., and most of the vendor boards offer demo versions of items so you can try before you buy – and this is strongly recommended.

It would have been nice to see a more varied selection of mesh on offer here – whether the final selection was down to a matter of whosoever applied for a slot, or whether the event was specifically more geared towards the fashion / accessory side of things, I’ve no idea. Until Pamela Galli made mention of the event, I wasn’t even aware it existed, and only saw the MotD as I happened to fire-up Dolphin this morning while running my weekly Viewer version checks (I use Firestorm as a rule, so don’t get the MotD otherwise).

Obviously, a single-region exhibition doesn’t allow for large-scale displays such as buildings, but it would have been nice to see more in the way of furniture and perhaps vehicles, etc.

That said, if you’ve not tried mesh clothing / footwear / hair, this is a place to visit if you want to grab a handful of demos and give things a try before you plunge deeper into the world of mesh.

March Mesh Madness