Category: Linden Lab

Education in SL: A Q&A session with Ebbe Altberg and Peter Gray

Posted on by Inara Pey

secondlifeOn Monday July 7th, Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg and the Lab’s Director of Global Communications, Peter Gray, met with members of the education community to answer questions on the future of education in Second Life.

The meeting was organised by Lori Bell of the The San José State University School of Library and Information Science, moderated by Aldo Stern and recorded by Marie Vans.

The video is embedded below, and the transcript is time stamped against it for reference. When reading / listening, please remember:

  • This is not a word-for-word transcript of the entire meeting. While all quotes given are as they are spoken in the recording and the audio files, to assist in readability and maintain the flow of conversation, not all asides, jokes, interruptions, etc., have been included in the text presented here
  • If there are any sizeable gaps in comments from a speaker which resulted from asides, repetition, or where a speaker started to make a comment and then re-phrased what they were saying, etc, these are indicated by the use of “…”
  • The transcript picks-up with the first question asked.

0:04:42 Aldo Stern (AS): Will the educational discount be stable over time, so that education organisations can take [it] into account for their budget cycles? So I think that reflects right off of the top one of the things that people will have a concern about.

0:05:00 Ebbe Altberg (EA). Yes. Well, it’s very unfortunate that back in the day … that the discount was taken away. I thought it was very fortunate that it was re-instituted before I showed-up here, and I can tell you we have absolutely no intent whatsoever to make the pricing worse for you guys. none whatsoever.

And over time, as some of you have heard about, we’re starting work on a next generation platform, I think that ultimately an extremely large and vibrant and successful virtual world, prices have to come down all the time.

Today, we’re constrained by a number of factors: technology, business models, what have you, and user experience, that sort-of limits the size of the market for a product like this. for example, if we were to cut prices in half, we would have to get at least twice the number of users – or more, actually – to end up with the same revenue. Right now, I’m not convinced we have a product that could attract two extra users at half the price.

But I’d be happy to lower prices to get more users and make it up in volume, once we know we have a product that can achieve that. I think it’ll be an interesting conversation at that time, especially with the educational sector. would an even lower price … let’s say we take the current discount that you have, which I think is about a hundred and fifty bucks for a region; if we cut that in half again and say it’s seventy-five bucks, would we have twice as many of you buying simulators? If that’s the case, then it might be worthwhile for us to do; but if it only increases by 5% the number, then it’s just hurting us and our ability to invest in the future.

But I feel very confident in stating that we’re not going to mess with the current pricing you have in a negative way for you.

0:07:55 AS: I think that’s very encouraging to us, and I wanted to ask if anybody had any further comment before the next question?

0:08:08 Comment: Well, it is encouraging to hear that; but I think there are a number of related issues that make the current platform problematical for educators, and a number of questions we’ve identified I think will get at that, if you want to move down the list.

Ebbe Linden (Ebbe altberg) and Pete Linden (Peter Gray) at the meeting with representatives from the education community
Ebbe Linden (Ebbe Altberg) and Pete Linden (Peter Gray) at the meeting with representatives from the education and non-profits community

0:08:26 Comment: I did want to say something about the pricing real quick. If you did lower the price for educators you might not see the number of buyers go up right away, because I’m not sure if you understand how the education funding cycle works, and probably everyone in the room here can explain that much better than I can. But that is the issue: getting into the funding cycle ahead of time to make sure that you have funds available for your projects. So if you implemented that today, cutting it in half again, you have to give the education community time to get that in their budget and make that happen.

0:09:27 EA: Absolutely, and there’s way to solve that. I could say, it’s a hundred and fifty bucks now and it’s 75 bucks starting next quarter, so you can put it in your plans. how much advanced notice do you need to be able to get it into your budget cycle?

0:09:48: About a year.

0:09:49 EA: My lord! (Chuckles).

0:09:53: And that’s why, when the funding was cut, it was so devastating, when the discount was cut, because no-one had enough notice to get their funding back up to what they needed, and so it was very frustrating for a lot of educational folks.

0:10:14 EA: I understand. I can’t even begin to understanding the reasoning behind why that whole thing happened. I’m just very glad it was reversed before I came here, otherwise I would have done that myself. So you can at least be confident that we’re not going to make that mistake again.

Continue reading “Education in SL: A Q&A session with Ebbe Altberg and Peter Gray” →

The Future of SL meeting with Oz and Pete Linden: video, audio and transcript

Posted on by Inara Pey

secondlifeOn Wednesday July 2nd, 2014, the Firestorm team hosted a special question and answers session to discuss the future of Second Life. The event was held to try to disperse some of the concerns and misinformation circulating about SL’s future in the light of the news that Linden Lab is developing an additional virtual worlds platform which is being planned to run alongside Second Life.

Attending the session from Linden Lab were Oz Linden, in his capacity as Technical Director for Second Life and Pete Linden, the Lab’s Director of Global Communications.

The session took the form of an initial discussion between host Jessica Lyon and Oz and Pete Linden, which sought to address some of the core concerns which have been raised and address some of the broader misconceptions which have resulted (such as Second Life no longer being developed and / or no longer having the staff needed to support it). This was then followed by a Q&A session led by Lette Ponnier, who posed questions which had been left on the Firestorm blog post announcing the meeting or directly to her via IM during the session or relayed to her from the live stream audience.

As always, Chakat Northspring recorded the entire event, and her video is embedded here – my thanks as always to North.

In addition, the audio from the meeting has been broken down into a number of individual topic areas, and placed throughout this transcript to allow people to listen to the audio whilst reading, if preferred, and to save on scrolling up and down between text and video.

When reading / listening, please remember:

  • This is not a word-for-word transcript of the entire meeting. While all quotes given are as they are spoken in the recording and the audio files, to assist in readability and maintain the flow of conversation, not all asides, jokes, interruptions, etc., have been included in the text presented here
  • If there are any sizeable gaps in comments from a speaker which resulted from asides, repetition, or where a speaker started to make a comment and then re-phrased what they were saying, etc, these are indicated by the use of “…”
  • The audio files have been slightly edited to remove lengthy pauses in order to assist the flow of the conversations when also reading the text.

The following links can be used to quickly jump to individual sections of the transcript:

Continue reading “The Future of SL meeting with Oz and Pete Linden: video, audio and transcript” →

Versu is reborn!

Posted on by Inara Pey

versuOn Friday June 6th, Emily Short announced through her blog that Versu, the interactive fiction engine she and Richard Evans developed while working at Linden Lab, and which was cancelled as a part of the Lab’s product review in February 2014, will now continue, and that Blood & Laurels, the interactive novel she has been working on for 15 years, will be launched on June 12th.

Following the announcement of Versu’s cancellation by the Lab, many of us speculated whether it  might be allowed to live on separately to the Lab’s involvement, and Emily herself confirmed she was talking to the Lab on matter of IP. However, hopes this might happen seemed to have been completely dashed in March, when the Lab said no to any idea of selling the IP involved. However, they’ve since had a change of heart.

The notification that this is the case came in the form of a blog post which first appeared on the  new Versu wesbite, and then reblogged on Emily’s site, which is where I came across it.

The announcement reads in part:

Nu-versu-1
Versu was lauched to considerable acclaim prior to being cancelled by Linden Lab. Now it is set to continue (image from the Versu website)

Until February of this year, the Versu project had its home at Linden Lab, exploring the possibilities of interactive storytelling with advanced character AI by Richard Evans (Sims 3, Black and White) and dialogue modeling by Emily Short (Galatea, Alabaster), as well as work by authors Jake Forbes (Return to Labyrinth) and Deirdra Kiai (Dominique Pamplemousse).

When the Lab decided to refocus its offerings and cut support for Versu, the project was only three days from launching a Roman political thriller called Blood & Laurels. Blood & Laurels represented a significant step forward in complexity and depth from previous Versu stories: a large cast of characters, a richly branched two-part storyline, and over 240,000 words of interactive content — of which a player is likely to see only about 7% in a given play through. Character behaviour and relationships were modeled with at least as much fidelity as in earlier examples, but in a context with much higher narrative stakes. What other characters think of you affect whether your character lives or dies, thrives or fails — and those relationships are driven by both large and small decisions.

After Versu’s cancellation, it looked for a long time as though neither the underlying technology nor the finished stories had a future. However, we are delighted to be able to announce that Linden Lab has negotiated a new arrangement that will allow us to release these stories and explore a future for the engine.

The Versu blog post reveals that Blood & Laurels has been made possible by a language called Prompter, which is used by Versu and has been designed by Graham Nelson of Inform fame. Graham is also now a part of the new Versu team, joining Emily and Richard Evans.

Emily Short and Richard Evans are joined by Graham Nelson, the man behind the Inform IF language, and the creator of the Promptor language used by Versu
Emily Short and Richard Evans are joined by Graham Nelson, the man behind the Inform IF system, and the creator of the Prompter language used by Versu

Blood & Laurels is set to be followed by Bramble House, an interactive fantasy story written by  Jake T. Forbes, the author of Return to Labyrinth, a four volume graphic novel sequel to the Jim Henson film Labyrinth, and the English-language versions of the best-selling manga series Fullmetal Alchemist, Fruits Basket, One Piece and others.

Bramble House focuses on the character of 15-year-old Penny, who is “bound in service to the witch Stregma, forced to deal with everything from mundane dishwashing to evicting monstrous guests”. In it, the reader takes on the role of Penny, progressing through various situations and events in two stories set within the Bramble House world.

There is no publication date available as yet for the title.

Blood and Laurels (due June 12th) and Bramble House will be the first two titles released under the new Versu banner
Blood and Laurels (due June 12th) and Bramble House will be the first two titles released under the new Versu banner (from the Versu website)

The new titles will be appearing on the iOS platform. At the time of writing, it is not clear as to whether there are still plans to make Versu and its titles available for the Android platform; the website only goes so far as to state, “While we would like to support Android, we do not currently have an Android version available.”

This is excellent news for all with an interest in or passion for interactive fiction. Congratulations are extended to Emily, Richard and Graham with the launch to this new venture, and kudos, as well, goes to Linden Lab for reversing their decision on the Versu IP and allowing the project to continue.

Be sure to listen-in to an upcoming edition of the Drax Files Radio Hour interviews, when Drax will be talking to Emily Short about interactive fiction, Versu and more!

Related Links

Patterns: all change for a new experience

Posted on by Inara Pey

LL logoUpdate, October 9th, 2014: Linden Lab announced that development work on Patterns has been discontinued.

Patterns, Linden Lab’s slowly maturing sandbox game for the PC and Mac saw a new release on Friday May 9th. The update brings with a host of new features, including the promised new user interface, which I previewed in April.

Version 0.7 requires acceptance of the Lab’s Terms of Service, which tends to be the case with each major update of the game. Once this has been done, the changes to the game are evident right from the start, with the new right-hand sidebar now managing both logging-in to the game / creating an account and launching the game options, which now comprise five options:

  • Create: allows you to create new worlds using the basic worlds provided with Patterns, or using your own existing worlds, either saved locally or previously published to the Patterns Cosmos
  • Explore: allows you to explore the worlds in the Cosmos and access them. Worlds are defined in terms of featured, recently uploaded, and popular with users
  • Find Multi-player allows you to quickly find any multi-player games which are in progress
  • Tools: allows you to launch tools associated with Patterns. This is currently the Materials Editor, which I first looked at back at the start of January 2014 and then again in a little more detail and the end of that month
  • Settings: access the game’s settings: controls, keys, graphics and audio.

The Create, Explore and Multi-player options preview available worlds in tabs, each world having its own thumbnail (if available) which, when clicked, displays more information on that world. This makes previewing worlds and selecting interesting ones for game play a lot more informative than earlier Patterns versions.

It's a lot easier to preview Patterns worlds - your own or those in the Cosmos - with the new release of Patterns
It’s a lot easier to preview Patterns worlds – your own or those in the Cosmos – with the new release of Patterns

You can also opt to open any world in both the Create and Explore modes as either single player or multi-player. When starting a world in multi-player mode, you can either leave it set to “open”, allowing it to be displayed in the Multi-player tab such that anyone can select it and join the game (up to the maximum number of four players), or you can set a password against it, which other players have to use in order to access the game (handy for when you want to keep a game among friends).

The streamlined UI makes selecting shapes, materials and models a lot easier, and also offers a cleaner overall UI. At the bottom of the Patterns window is a tool bar area which has a toggle option on the left which switches it between elements and materials, and each of which have ten placeholders apiece, which can be used to store your preferred elements and materials ready for immediate use. an Inventory icon on the right of the toolbar will open your full inventory of shapes, materials and models, allowing you to quickly drag and drop them into the placeholders, replacing anything previously stored in any given placeholder, making selecting and swapping shapes to suit your needs fast and easy.  ESC closes the inventory window and returns you to the game play.

When used in-game, ESC will pause the game and call-up additional options, but in a slightly different format to previous releases, with everything other than the option to save the world to your hard drive now also located in the right-hand sidebar. These options include the familiar game settings, the respawn world option, help, and a new scene settings option.

The scene settings option provides access to a number of tabs which allow you to adjust a number of options associated with a world – how gravity works, what appears in the sky, fog effects, lighting (direct, reflections, etc.), SSAO blurring, and so on.You can also use this option to add your own materials packs to a world as well. A video from SandovalCurse (aka happyhappygaming on YouTube) of the Curse team provides and overview of the scene setting options.

Continue reading “Patterns: all change for a new experience” →

Patterns: of UIs and passwords

Posted on by Inara Pey

LL logoUpdate, October 9th, 2014: Linden Lab announced that development work on Patterns has been discontinued.

In March I reported on plans to overhaul the Patterns user interface at some point in the future. These plans took a step closer to being revealed on April 5th, when Sandoval Curse (aka HappyHappyGaming on YouTube), keeper of the Patterns community on Curse, issued an initial sneak peek at the current updates to the UI. The changes are both extensive and appear to be exceptionally well thought through.

While the video comes with a warning that it shows elements of the UI from a Patterns nightly build, and are thus subject to possible change, what is presented suggests that the team are looking to make using Patterns a look easier and the ability to move between elements of the UI and modes of operation a lot more fluid, while at the same time offering a less cluttered build / play space.

The changes to the UI are evident right from start-up, with the log-in panel moved over to become  sidebar on the right, which also doubles as a game mode launcher once a player is logged-in.

The new log-in panel looks set to become a sidebar for both logging-in to Patterns and for launching game modes
The new log-in panel looks set to become a sidebar for both logging-in to Patterns and for launching game modes (click for full size without so much screen cap blurring)

Once logged-in, the panel allows the player to select from world building, continuing game play, accessing the Patterns tools (I assume these are the shape forge and the substance editor) and change their settings.

Selecting any of these options many display a further slide-out panel. For example, clicking on the world building option displays a list of available worlds in the Cosmos the player can use as a template, together with options to select either single (default) or multi-player modes.

Selecting existing worlds as templates when building worlds is a lot slicker
Selecting existing worlds as templates when building worlds is a lot slicker (click for full size without so much screen cap blurring)

Inventory and shape / substance management has been completely overhauled, with a new inventory bar at the bottom of the screen which allows for much easier toggle between shapes, materials and models, as well as offering a cleaner drag-and-drop panel when applying materials to shapes, etc.

The new inventory bar allows easier toggling between shapes and elements / substances. Where appropriate, it appears to open a panel for easier drag-and-drop of materials and substances onto shapes
The new inventory bar allows easier toggling between shapes and elements / substances. Where appropriate, it opens a panel for easier drag-and-drop of materials and substances onto shapes (click for full size without so much screen cap blurring)

In-world game controls have been revised somewhat, making shape and model manipulation easier as well as trying to make it easier to move, rotate or delete things. I might be wrong in saying this, as it is hard to tell from the video (and any settings Sandoval uses), but it looks as if the default third-person camera angle may also have been revised.

According to the video, not only may things change between now and the UI being released, but there is a lot more still to be demonstrated, and a further sneak peek video is promised. This being the case, and in lieu of being able to fiddle with things directly, I’ll leave you with Sandoval’s video.

Password Recovery

Nalates Urriah has a piece up on Patterns password recovery, drawing on a video posted to YouTube. The short version is: there isn’t a password recovery option. The support team’s advice, should you forget your password is to create a new account. However, this isn’t necessarily as bad as it sounds. Passwords are only required to access the Cosmos. You can still play offline without logging-in. What’s more, even if you do create a new account and password, you should still have access to all the worlds you have built yourself, whether playing offline or when logged-in to the Cosmos.

If you forget your Patterns password (or user name), you should be able to create a new account and still access your existing world builds (tested usin Patterns build 0.06a via Desura and Steam)
If you forget your Patterns password (or user name), you should be able to create a new account and still access your existing world builds (tested using Patterns build 0.06a via Desura and Steam)

The only pain I can see with this – and admittedly, I’m no longer a regular Patterns player – is that if a player is well-known as a Patterns world builder, any worlds you upload to the Cosmos after an account change will obviously be linked to the new account name, and so may not be instantly recognisable to other players. Also, those who regularly play in the multi-player mode will have to advise other players of any change in order to ensure they receive invitations into games.

Related Links

VWBPE 2014: Ebbe Altberg keynote – “The Door is Open” (full transcript)

Posted on by Inara Pey

On Friday April 11th, Ebbe Altberg, Linden Lab’s CEO, addressed a packed amphitheatre at the 2014 Virtual Worlds Best Practice in Education (VWBPE) conference in Second Life. Some 200 people were in attendance in SL, with around 100-150 on the live stream channel for what was almost a 90-minute session, entitled Reconnecting with the Education Market, and which comprised an opening statement from Ebbe, followed by an extended Q&A / discussion session.

The following is a transcript of the session, which includes all questions asked via the moderator, Phelan Corrimal (given in italics). The video is the VWBPE official video, recorded by Mal Burns, and my thanks to him for making it available. Timestamps within the transcript notes indicate the points in the video at which Ebbe’s comments can be heard.

The Summary

Click the timestamp to go the relevant section

  • 0:05:38: Terms of Service – “I am working with my Legal Counsel to try to try to figure out how we can make it more obvious – or very obvious – that the creators of the content own the content … we’re working on some simple tweaks to the language to make that more explicit.”
  • 0:07:26: Brand – “We have an incredible breadth of content creators for all kinds of purposes, and this is kind-of unique with Second Life, and I think it’s incredibly important to support everybody and what they want to do.”
  • 0:08:59: The Metaverse and LL – ” There might be some people who might be interested in my position on the metaverse and OpenSim and interoperability, and that whole category.”
  • 0:11:09: Integrating new capabilities – “Some of you might be interested in what kind of integration we can do to make it easier for you to use Second Life in the context that you want to use it.”
  • 0:12:04: Improving SL – “And then I think we still have a tremendous about of work still to be done – actually, a tremendous amount of work has already been done; Second Life today is so much better than it was two years ago.”
  • 0:16:16 Future technologies  – “A little talk about future tech. Many of you have hopefully seen that we are obviously actively developing for technologies that we believe will have substantial mass appeal; Oculus being one.”
  • Questions and Answers / Discussion:
    • 0:21:12 – Are the community liaisons with Linden Lab about to be re-introduced?
    • 0:23:39 – Tier Breaks for Support and Mentor Groups
    • 0:26:28 – Do you feel that communications between Linden Lab employees and content creators are important?
    • 0:31:09 – On users having a voice in the development process
    • 0:35:36 – On Marketing SL, Overcoming Perceptions and Getting People Engaged in SL
    • 0:41:24 – On Opening-up The L$ Beyond Second Life
    • 0:44:44 – Making the Viewer Easier to Use & the Relationship with TPVs
    • 0:48:19 – On a Distributable Version of Second Life
    • 0:50:08 – Is there any hope that shared media, MOAP [Media On A Prim] can be fixed for Mac users soon?
    • 0:50:42 – On Second Life and High Fidelity
    • 0:53:49 – On Network Issues affecting some APAC Countries, Latency & Geographic Distribution
    • 0:56:16 – On Exporting Content
    • 1:01:15 – On the Teen Grid, Student Security and Younger People Accessing SL
    • 1:04:12 – What are Linden Lab’s plans for mainland?
    • 1:05:42: – On Office Hours, Lindens In-world and Community Engagement
    • 1:13:54 – Is the Barrier to VW Mass Adoption Technical, Or Something More?
    • 1:17:26 – On Acquisitions in the Technology Market
    • 1:20:12 – On Encouraging Lindens to Join Groups and Communities
    • 1:22:03 – A Takeaway Message for Educators (and all of us)

0:01:59 Hello everybody. I can’t hear you, but I can sure see you! It’s an incredible sea of people here [approx. 180-200 across four regions]. I’m very excited to be here, very happy for all the work that people are doing to put this conference together. Not only this session but all the other sessions you’re doing through the week. I did pop-in just the other day and listened to Philip, which many of you here might have done as well, and I just wanted to say that I’m really excited to be here.

I’m not going to spend most of this hour just talking. I will be saying a few things up front … putting some topics on the table to discuss and then very much looking forward to it being an interactive conversation between us. I’m mostly here to learn, not necessarily to tell, although I will be speaking about some things that I think matter to you, and some of the things that are going on first.

0:03:06 First, I feel very strongly that the education sector, the education market, is a very important partner of Second Life, and that it’s important to us to make it a great product for all of you. I know many of you have tried and been successful and many of you have tried and maybe not been successful in doing the things you wish you could do, and I’m here to learn more about what we can do to make you successful in the future.

I think the education sector helps us a lot of ways, in that if we can provide a great service to you, you can become great evangelists for the platform, and also in many times I think you are pushing in research and thinking about how to use environments and technologies like this differently from your main consumers. So you’re a very important group of people for us to stay in touch with and learn from and collaborate with.

Continue reading “VWBPE 2014: Ebbe Altberg keynote – “The Door is Open” (full transcript)” →