Category: News-Opinion

Freedom Continent develop Adult Gateway

Posted on by Inara Pey

When it was first announced, the Linden Lab RFP for an Adult Gateway caused something of a stir among the Adult community. Just over a month ago, word circulated in-world that the Freedom Continent had won the bid; something that was not officially confirmed until the Adult Content User Group meeting on Monday November 6th.

Freedom Continent is a consortium of experienced Adult activity SL users and sim owners who have come together to provide a pooled resource of adult activities and who have had their sims relocated in-world to form a “mini-continent”. For the past several weeks, they’ve been at work developing the new Adult Gateway, which is located to the south of the current core of Freedom Continent sims.

In all, five sims have been allocated to that Gateway project – a central hub called Zindra Prime, surrounded on all four side by “focus” regions called North, South, West and East. Currently, three of the sims – North, Prime and South – are nearing completion, and work is underway on the remaining two. As such, I thought I’d pay the new Gateway a visit and see what was happening and what the broader plans might be.

The central Adult Gateway hub

The use of “Zindra” in the region names may seem a trifle confusing given none of them are physically connected to the Adult continent of the same name. This is because Linden Lab have decided that the name should be used exclusively with the new Gateway, rather than in reference to a specific geographic region in-world (not that the continent itself will be changing name). As such, the new Gateway represents all Adult activities in Second Life, regardless of physical location or ownership, and will provide a means of entry to those activities for anyone wishing to explore them.

Zindra Prime is intended as an arrival hub and information centre for those who are perhaps exploring Adult activities for the first time. From here, they can explore any or all of the four “compass” sims – North, South, West and East, each of which is specifically themed in terms of Adult content – the North sim, for example is for all activities related to BDSM and the south sim to Gor / medieval.

This has been a deliberate design choice, as Serjourn Daxter, one of the project’s leaders and a Freedom Continent pioneer, explained to me during my visit. “We’ve seen that ‘Adult’ is a far from homogenous term. BDSMers seem to be less than fond of Goreans and the traditional CARP/RP groups are not big fan of others – although some people play in more than one camp. So we have made four focus sims, surrounding the Adult hub.”

Adult Gateway Gor / Medieval hub

Each of the four focus sims has a unique build which reflects the environment it represents and provides a mix of areas that can be used for informational purposes or as shop fronts for Adult communities, sims and stores. Given this, I asked if the various hubs would offer classes for newcomers?

“The central hub will focus on adult in general,” Serjourn replied. “The speciality hubs will focus on their respective specialities. For example, the GOR hub will teach game meters, and the BDSM hub RLV. We will offer small shop space and adboards to let businesses present themselves.”

She continued, “The idea is really – when you come to the adult world, you need to feel welcome, learn basic skills and find your area of interest. So the idea is, you get here and you may or may not have skills. If you lack basic skills, we supply them in the main hub. We help you get to where your interest may be. If you lack, say, BDSM specific skills, your next stop may be the BDSM hub. But we don’t want to send an unskilled newcomer with a desire for sex action to a Gor sim, and certainly not without knowledge of what Gor is.”

And moving beyond the hubs, and helping people to get to where they might want to go? “We will not differentiate where a business is located,” Serjourn stated firmly, “We will gladly share traffic.”

The BDSM hub

As it is, staff – particularly non-English speakers – are being sought, and plans are to have full 24/7 cover on the sims to provide maximum support and assistance to visitors. The hubs themselves are certainly open to exploration and discovery; I spent a pleasant hour wandering between them and getting a feel for things. The builds are clean and simple, display space is plentiful, and region crossings relatively smooth.

Given the layout of the hub sims, I asked if there were plans for expansion. “We offer sim owners the opportunity to join the appropriate sector of continent, subject to the LL fee for sim moves,” Serjourn confirmed. “We have a lot of BDSM sims joining, and we are open for other sims. There are already [on-going] talks with GOR sims. We will have open areas between the sectors, so some sims will always have a water border.”

With working progressing so well, my last question to Serjourn was whether an opening date had been set for the Gateway. “Well, the target is Sunday,” she replied. “Then a week of ramp up and adjustments,” she added, then laughed, “It may be LATE on Sunday!”

There has been a lot of angst generated by the entire Adult Gateway RFP and how it has been handled over the last few months. However, what is being developed in the new Gateway sims looks to be a worthy addition to the Adult community, and will hopefully prove to be a benefit to all parties across the grid.

Update 14th November

In order to prevent confusion over the use of the name Zindra, Freedom Continent have voted to drop the name from the new Gateway. The new hub regions will now simply be called “Adult Hub”, followed by the focus name (so “Adult Hub BDSM” for example). Serjourn did hint this may well be the case during our interview, and a unanimous vote on the part of the Freedom Continent’s management group determined the name Zindra would be voluntarily dropped in order to assist in promoting unity within the Adult community.

Going Premium 1: the upgrade

Posted on by Inara Pey

Important update Nov 8th:  Viale Linden dropped me a DM to state a confirmatory e-mail is sent out on upgrading. I’ve again check my spam folders & in-box, and can find no sign of receiving one – but as noted below, I did encounter an issue with Firefox when upgrading, and that could very easily have thrown a spanner in the works. 

Ergo, I’m happy to correct this piece vis-a-vis the fact LL do sent out e-mails.

Once upon a time, I had a Premium account. For various reasons, I ended up at Basic and swore I wouldn’t upgrade again. Period. Never. Nada. Niet. Non. No chance in hell. Forget it.

Yesterday, I re-upped.

Yeah, I know. Some of you are no doubt thinking my middle name might well be “mug” – but if so, it sits alongside “optimist”, and as I’ve noted elsewhere, I’m feeling very optimistic about SL  and LL. Something I’ll return to later :).

…There’s also that blasted Project LR game …

No, seriously. Thought it was time to put money where mouth is and give things a go once more. Call it a frivolous spend of a birthday gift.

So – the upgrade process. Simple enough. Click on an upgrade button on the website, then choose your  payment preference:

Note the VAT… I’ll come back to that.

Choose the option that suits your pocket (annual is obviously the most cost-effective), and click SAVE CHANGES.

Now – I have to admit, I have no idea what happens after you do; I was upgraded, but my web browser (Firefox 7.0.1) locked on me loading the next page (an increasing issue I’m having with it, despite clearing cache, history, etc., routinely); clearing it left me with other issues I’m still trying to sort out.

In my original piece, I failed to receive an e-mail notifcation of the upgrade. Viale – as per the update at the top of this piece has indicated that e-mails are sent out, so I’ve removed my comments, as they don’t reflect what should happen.

Of Rewards and Bits

Once upgraded, I took time out to collect my exclusive gift. Some have mistakenly taken these as being offered monthly, and I’ve heard grumbles in fora about the initial set of furniture “still” being on offer. However, in their original blog post about the launch of the gifts and bits, LL actually said, ““Premium members will regularly receive exclusive virtual items that you won’t find anywhere else.” [My emphasis].

Note the word “regularly” – not “monthly”. This could mean bi-monthly, quarterly, half-yearly… As it is, I rather suspect the next round of gifts will be in the run-up to Christmas, and will be suitably themed.

As to the current offering, the furniture is very nicely styled and presented,but – as an established user, I again stand by what I’ve said previously: furniture and lighting isn’t something many established users are likely to need, as they’ll have an inventory packed with them. It’s also a little discomfiting when one considers balancing such gifts against encouraging people to engage in the SL economy and buy things and also the sticky question of how LL go about selecting merchants, commissioning gifts, etc.

Setpember gift: 47 prims and nicely styled. But…

But still, as pretty as it is, I’ll not be using my little gift.

Stipend is often cited as the major benefit for signing-up to Premium: L$300 a week back in your account, together with a bonus of L$1000 your account is Active for the first 45 days after upgrading. Stipend isn’t what it once was, but so the times change.

Those paying annual membership stand to gain the most (obviously) where the weekly stipend is concerned. Someone joining in the US, for example, sees approximately 62% of a $72 fee coming back to them in-world over the course of a year. Those of us in Europe, however, aren’t so lucky. VAT means this is substantially cut to a return of only 38.6%. Again, this isn’t LL’s fault, but it could be an offsetting factor when considering Premium and the benefits as a whole – particularly as not everyone in Europe is in a position to reclaim VAT paid. But – c’est la vie; what is there is welcomed.

Of the rest of the rewards, the Linden Home interests me the most. When I initially reviewed them. I’m not sure all my concerns have been realised, although the regions devoted to Linden Homes have continued to grow (but not all are fully occupied, LL appear ro keep a “float” of regions) – but it does seem from comments passed at SLCC 2011 that the houses aren’t working as expected. When launched, they were seen as a means of kick-starting people not on the SL property ladder into getting involved, with the hope they’d eventually out-grow their initial house and seek a residence elsewhere. From comments passed by Vogt Linden, this hasn’t really worked out (unsurprisingly), and Linden Homes may be in for a shake-up. Ergo, I shall likely be grabbing one in the near future, just to see what happens (no danger of me abandoning my existing home).

I’m not going to comment on anything else rewards-wise; my thoughts remain unchanged, and I didn’t upgrade for them (or any of the above, in fact). I am, however, curious as to where the “more privacy” comes from in the add (see above); I don’t see sandbox use quite cutting it here. My reason for upgrading falls into two parts:

  • A genuine renewal of optimism for Second Life and interest in what LL are doing. I think the last 12 months have – whether people are willing to be fair and honest or not – seen some tremendous progress within the Lab and Rod Humble is to be thoroughly congratulated for what (and who!) he’s brought to the company, and the way he has managed much that has happened in a short 11 months. As such, my upgrading is my little way of renewing my commitment to the platform
  • My joking at the top of this piece aside, Project LR does have me intrigued; not so much for the game (tho doubtless I’ll be trying it), but because of the way it’s being offered to premiums first. This leaves me wondering what else will come down the line with a “Premium preview”, and I’d like to be in a position to see for myself

So, the Pey Adventure is Just Beginning (cue fanfare and starships…). I’ll be exploring more on Premium in the near future.

Further Update 9th November

Click to enlarge

Following-on from my DMs with Viale, LL have helped put things right be re-sending my introductory e-mail (twice! :)). It’s well presented and laid out, with a series of useful links – including a major link through to registering for a Linden Home in the top half (also repeated lower down).

Many thanks to Viale, and happy to put this matter to rights.

Further Direct Delivery Beta testing

Posted on by Inara Pey

On November 3rd, a blog post appeared from Commerce Linden, referring to a further Beta of Direct Delivery. Unlike the first Beta, this appears open to all merchants. The blog post, appearing in the Commerce section – which doesn’t appear on people’s account dashboards, states:

“To improve the quality of upcoming releases, we are launching a Beta program for the Marketplace. Starting today, Aditi will be used as the Marketplace Beta testing  grid.* All merchants will be able to test new features and bug fixes at least five days before each Marketplace release. In addition to the Marketplace Beta release notes that are produced on the wiki, updates will be posted in the “Technical Announcements” section of the Marketplace Merchant Admin to alert merchants of current beta tests.”

The post continues:

“In December, all merchants will have the opportunity to purchase and list items using Direct Delivery on Aditi. We will be allowing a limited number of merchants to Beta test Direct Delivery in production before the official launch, which will not occur until after the New Year. If you would like to learn more about Direct Delivery, please see the updated Direct Delivery FAQ.”

This last paragraph will come as a relief to many, who were fearing LL might roll-out DD ahead of the Christmas season and inadvertently create issues for merchants as a result.

The full blog post can be read here, so if you’re a merchant and wish to find out more on DD, if you’ve not involved yourself to date, take a look at the notes for access the Beta grid (Aditi) if you not done so before, and head on over.

Project LR: there’s a new game in SL

Posted on by Inara Pey

Game play in SL is becoming “official” as LL slip out a new project. Called “Project LR”, it is currently in beta and available only to those of you with Premium accounts – so pooh to me where trying it is concerned!

Project LR is, to quote Rand Linden, “A fun, creative, and engaging virtual experience produced and provided by Linden Lab.  Project LR takes you through basic exploration and game play, where you can earn Linden dollars by gathering gems and completing quests.”

The project apparently comprises 12 regions currently (Prokofy has one or two pictures from a visit) in operation, with a further 24 apparently waiting in the wings.

Project LR: 12 sims right now

Project LR is a game that appears to have grown out of a demonstration given at SLCC-2011 by Durian, Esbee, and Gez Linden. That demonstration introduced the use of basic gaming mechanics into the SL environment and encompassed a few interesting features. While that demonstration was not intended to be seen on the Main grid, it was fairly evident from comments given that the ideas being developed within it would eventually find their way into SL.

An element of the game demonstrated at SLCC-2011

The Project LR game appears to be quest-based, and provides the opportunity to collect gems that can be exchanged for Linden Dollars. Elements of the game require you seek-out certain things, while other can lead you into a lot of trouble – and “death”. Interestingly, the game utilises something that may be new to some in SL, but which is quite familiar to those who use the Restrained Love API: forced teleports. Get “killed” in the game by one of a variety of means, and you are force-teleported to a “resurrection circle”, where you can resume your quest.

One of the items to find in your quest

It’s also interesting to note that, when demonstrating their initial game at SLCC 2011, Gez and Esbee pointed out they were trying to achieve results without the complication of HUDs, etc. – but Project LR does in fact utilise a HUD. I can’t help wonder if this is to perhaps help ease fears some might have about the entire idea of enforced teleports by providing the security that it can only happen when in the LR sims and wearing the game HUD. Or the HUDS could, of course be down to the fact that hey couldn’t simply work the game any other way :).

The HUDs also include other functionality, and are auto-attached to you when you arrive on the game regions. This is to avoid the need to access your inventory, etc., and get you straight into the game itself. The auto-attach is labelled as non-standard SL behaviour, but one cannot help but feel it may have its origins in RLV, with a bit of tweaking from LL. A further tweak is that the HUD actually vanishes when you log-out of SL, to avoid compromising people’s inventory.

Game HUD

To access the game, and possibly to facilitate the auto-attachment of the HUD, people cannot simply teleport to the game regions. They must instead go via one of a number of in-world portals. These are currently located (I’m informed) near the Premium account gift kiosks – whether this remains the case, or more appear elsewhere when the Project is open to all remains to be seen. Access to the regions is also limited – if the limit has been reached, the portals will reject attempts to use them. I assume this is to keep on-sim numbers to a manageable number without overly impacting performance (and is probably why another two islands of 12 sims apiece appear to be waiting in the wings for development).

Those that have been fortunate enough to try-out the game have given feedback that ranges from “Nintendo-esque” through to reports that while they went for a quick try, they ended up staying for over two hours and got thoroughly immersed in things.

Without having seen it for myself, I can’t really comment on the game per se, but it is clear a lot of thought has gone into it, and it potentially serves a useful end as well as being a lot of fun for those that try it. It will be interesting to see if any of the capabilities used within it do find their way into more widespread use – one can immediately see that a “guidebook” HUD that can be attached when arriving on a sim and poofs itself on departure and which, between times, provides a ready means of teleporting around locations of interest, and provides links to supporting web pages or whatever, could be something sim owners would end up drooling over (to name but one possible application outside of all the gaming opportunities).

In fact, while writing this piece, I see Rodvik himself has commented on that aspect of what’s coming, as well as the game itself:

“Yes glad you are enjoying it. As I mentioned back in SLCC we wanted to go through all the pain of reducing friction to make more interactive experiences ourselves and then pass on those tools to our content creators [my emphasis]. It will be on Premium for beta test for a while then we will roll it out to scale later. After we get it working at scale we will roll out the tools and our creators can make some great stuff.”

What else may emerge from this in terms of Viewer UI enhancements, improved camera controls, or whatever, will also be interesting to see – if indeed, any part of this does have impact on the emerging new Viewer 3.2 UI.

One thing is clear – there are some interesting and potentially useful / exciting new wrinkles entering the world of Second Life. I envy those who will get to blog about it ahead of me!

Project LR is currently in Premium Beta – accessible only to those with Premium accounts. Read more in the FAQ. A portal to the game can be found at Nysray.

What’s in a name?

Posted on by Inara Pey

Ever since Display Names came in – and a jolly good idea they are to, in many respects – there has been an on-going reaction to the loss of the last name option in Second Life. To be frank, the removal of the last name option in the hope (in part) of spurring the adoption of Display Names was a bloody stupid idea.

Now it seems, voices may be being heard. A JIRA started earlier this year petitioning for the last name option to be returned has gained a response. Admittedly, it’s a response that is open to interpretation, but it’s a response nonetheless. Commenting on the JIRA, one “ProductTeam Linden” said:

“It’s clear there is a lot of interest in SVC-7125. The intent was for users to specify their last name using the Display Names feature found in users’ profiles, which most Viewers now support. For those that haven’t used Display Names yet, you can also set them on the web: https://my.secondlife.com/settings/profile.

“Know that we hear you and value your passion and that we are currently reviewing some of the decisions that were made with the username / Display Names implementation.”

Does this signify anything may change? Possibly; but equally possibly not. At least it shows someone at the Lab is aware people aren’t entirely happy with the situation. Quite who from the Lab is listening is also open to question; “ProductTeam Linden” is another of those “group” Linden accounts that appear to be on the increase and which seem to be aimed at obfuscating communication as much as anything by generating anonymity behind “official” posts and commentary. Just what is the problem with company representatives using their own names when dealing with customers by way of things like the JIRA?

I’ve never personally understood why LL did away with the last name feature – the ability for the platform to accept new accounts with the traditional first name / last name set-up hasn’t actually been removed, only disabled from the official sign-up page. Those who are prepared to make the effort can find a number of sign-up portals that offer the first name / last name format when creating a Second Life account.

Of course, there are security risks involved in trusting third-party sites – so going and finding one that offers the ability to sign-up to SL is a case of caveat emptor, so to speak. But for those who are interested, I can offer at least one small pointer: there is one portal that should be relatively safe, and that can be found here in the UK, on the Daden servers.

Daden Limited are a Birmingham-based company heavily involved in virtual worlds, most notably OpenSim, where earlier this year they sponsored the initial development of non-player characters well ahead of LL’s announcement to they’d be offering this in the future. As such, it is unlikely the Daden website hides any nasty surprises, although the choice of last names is limited.

There is much to be said against the current sign-up process as implemented by LL, and most of it has been argued in-depth often enough for it to need no repetition here. Suffice it to give just a handful of reasons why it was a bad move:

  • First names effectively become a one-time use option, as anyone trying to use a simple “Dawn” or “Peter” without having to resort to a numeric string (“Dawn12345679”) or and idiotic name born out of sheer frustration (“PeterXrayHowsYourFatherBongBong”), will testify
  • People end up spending what can amount to 30 or more minutes trying to find a suitable name that avoids either of the above – as I can testify; and even then, it’s not easy. When testing the new system, I resorted to Maori, Swahili and Sinhalese names – and still had problems. It’s a wonder there has been any upturn in sign-ups, frankly
  • While probably well-intended (give it’s old connotations), “Resident” actually leaves people without the same sense of belonging that is created when they can pick their name in full and take it as their identity. Let’s face it, would those at the Lab feel particularly happy if real life dictated they all had to adopt “Citizen” as their last name?

Nor does the Linden argument relating to Display Names actually carry any weight in the matter of name choice. Really, it matters not if “Dawn12345679” uses the Display Name option to change her name to “Dawn Glorie” or whatever. To (probably the majority of) those observing her, she will remain “dawn123456789”, because that’s what we see sitting under her Display Name, and that is what most people seeing it will take as her identity in SL, no matter what her Display Name states.

Far better for the last name option to have been retained, as at least “Dawn” would have been able to become a Starr or a Ghost or an Orchid or … well, Pey for that matter, right from the off and not have to worry about looking like a refugee from AOL or CompuServe while wandering SL.

Nor should bringing back the last name option be that hard – as stated above, new accounts with a first / last format can still be accepted by the system, and would it really be that hard to implement a set of last name lists once again that are rotated periodically as part of an automated process? Or how about being really radical, and allowing the use of a space when users define their names. Again, the functionality is there in the Viewer, so shouldn’t be that hard to implement in the sign-up pages.

Finally, it’s a shame that when LL get so much intrinsically right about our right to identity they have, in the matter of names, got it so fundamentally wrong. In the past, the names we chose for our avatars were always personal; we took care in selecting a last name that would reflect our personality or character and which would become as much a part of our in-world identity as the look of our avatar. For those entering virtual business, the name could in fact become a brand around which a reputation is built.

In abolishing the last name option, LL stripped that part of identity-building away from SL, and lumped everyone coming into the platform or who needs to create a new avatar together in some homogeneous pile tagged with the label “resident”. In doing so, the also curtailed some of our ability to embrace new avatars perhaps as closely was we once did. “Inara Pey” is very near and dear to me; I’m not sure I’d cherish “Inara23412 Resident” (were I ever to have cause to create her) to quite the same degree.

So come on, Rodvik & Linden Lab. Stop dithering. Let’s see last names returned. Christmas is coming – it’ll be a nice treat for everyone.

Land sale in fact sees 689 private regions added to SL

Posted on by Inara Pey

Tyche Shepherd has issued a revision to her initial findings following last weekend’s land sale by the Lab.

When first surveyed, some 30 minutes after the sale had finished, it appeared that some 322 private regions were added to the grid, leading to a net gain of some 311 regions.

However, a later survey revealed that in fact a staggering total 689 regions were added to the grid as a result of the sale and sims returned to use, leading to a net gain of some 508 private regions after accounting for losses.

Of the total number of sims added to the grid:

  • 464 were open to public access, and so could be surveyed with:
    • 343 being full regions
    • 117 being homestead regions
    • 4 being OpenSpace regions
  • 225 remain closed to public access and have yet to be surveyed as to type

The 464 accessible regions were purchased by a total of 381 individual estates with 252 purchasers having no other holdings. Only five of those purchasing multiple regions brought more that 3.

The revised totals are liable to be the focus of further debate around the “new” and “used” land markets – and those seeking to offload sims to other users may well feel every harder done-by on seeing these revised figures. Those who have paid the set-up fee, and who that have to recoup that on top of the cost of tier might also be aggrieved by these results as well, particularly if the new sims coming into the grid as a result of this sale are used within the commercial / residential markets.

It will be interesting to see what the overall impact of the sale turns out to be in terms of LL’s thinking. 689 regions does make even more of a powerful case for the set-up fees to be reduced (if possible) to something reasonably sensible, as I ruminated on when reporting the original figures released by Tyche.

Of course, the precedent for lowering set-up fees has already been set. Leave us not forget the fee for a full region was once $1675, so on the surface at least it’s not unheard of for LL to adjust this figure in line with costs. As such, it is something the company may opt to do again, and it is certainly more palatable to them than lowering tier, as some are calling for within the community.

Tier is something that will have to be reviewed; the case for reductions being needed in the future is growing. but for now, given the outcome of last weekend’s sale and that it is a) it is easily reproducible as a promotion and b) will likely achieve the same level of success if repeated in a few months time should a boost in revenue be required, one rather suspects LL may well sit on their laurels for a while longer and not hurry into any moves as regards tier or set-up fees just yet.