Tag: SL News

Lab delay introduction of new Skill Gaming Policy

Posted on by Inara Pey

secondlifeOn Wednesday July 9th, Linden Lab announced forthcoming changes to their Skill Gaming policy, which were due  to come into force as from Friday August 1st, 2014. They would bring with them stricter control enforced over the operation of games of skill in Second Life, and see the introduction of a new region type  – The Skill Gaming Region – which will only be accessible to those Second Life users who are of sufficient age and are located in a jurisdiction that Linden Lab permits for this kind of online gaming activity.

However, on Tuesday July 29th, 2014, the Lab issued a blog post stating that the new Skill Gaming policy will not now take effect until Monday September 1st, 2014, pointing to the number of applications received as being the reason for the delay.

The update on the introduction of the revisions to Skill Gaming in Second Life reads in full:

As we recently blogged, we have a new policy for Skill Gaming in Second Life. In short, skill games that offer Linden Dollar payouts will be allowed in Second Life, but each game, its creator, its operator, and the region on which it’s operated must be approved by Linden Lab.

Today, we are changing the date that the changes described in our previous blog post go into effect. Instead of starting on August 1, the updated Skill Gaming Policy will go into effect on September 1, 2014. The original blog post and the FAQs will also be updated to reflect this new deadline.

Since our original announcement, we’ve received many applications from Second Life users who want to become approved skill game creators and operators. By moving the date back, we’ll be able to process a larger number of applications and also offer creators more time to make necessary changes to their games.

If you would like to apply to become an approved skill games creator and/or operator, you can do so through Echosign.

Infrastructure support for the new Skill Gaming regions has already been deployed to the main grid as a part of the server deployments of weeks 28 and 29.

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Second Life helps cane growers learn about sustainable farming practices and more

Posted on by Inara Pey

There is no doubting that Second Life is an excellent platform for teaching and learning. That’s been demonstrated time and again, with many and varied educational and distance learning programmes being run through the platform, and with many schools, colleges, universities and other organisations making use of Second Life for a wealth of education and learning activities over the years.

One of the more intriguing means of using the platform educational purposes has been recently highlighted in an Australian Broadcasting Corporation website and video report, Queensland’s Cane Farmers Learn About Climate Change Via Virtual Reality World, which outlines a project initiated in 2012 by the University of Southern Queensland (USQ), Australia, and which is now being extended.

Sweet Success is a programme developed by the Australian Digital Futures Institute (ADFI) and the International Centre of Applied Climate Sciences (ICACS) at USQ. It uses machinima created in Second Life to encourage Queensland’s sugarcane farmers to consider sustainable farming practices (including their own environmental impact on the land), and to stimulate discussion about how to incorporate an understanding of climate risk into their decision-making.

Sweet Success sought to better inform sugar cane farmers on climate and environmental impact using digital techniques, including machinima filmed in Second Life
Sweet Success sought to better inform sugar cane farmers on climate and environmental impact using digital techniques, including machinima filmed in Second Life

The videos are set in an environment typical of that found in Queensland’s cane growing region, and feature a number of individuals typical of the character and disposition of Queensland cane farmers. Lasting some 3-5 minutes, the films serve as both a focal point for discussion and as  a means to introduce the farmers to the climate information, interactive models, etc., which might be used to better inform their farming decisions.

The initial programme involved around 20 sugar cane farmers who were able to watch the films, study the material and discuss the issues and ideas raised. While there was some initial scepticism, the farmers admitted the videos were a positive means of passing on information on things they may not have thought about.

Dr. Helen Farley, one of the researchers involved in Sweet Success, and her SL alter-ego
Dr. Helen Farley, one of the researchers involved in Sweet Success, and her SL alter-ego

Dr. Kate Farley, one of the Digital Futures faculty members involved in the project, and herself a long-term advocate for the use of virtual worlds for learning and teaching in higher education, describes the decision to use Second Life as being primarily a matter of finance and convenience: Second Life allowed the films to be put together at a far lower cost and much quicker than would have been the case with live action location shooting.

Matt Kealley, senior manager of environment and natural resources for the Canegrowers industry group sees the approach as potentially offering the means to deliver a lot of information on farming, climate, weather and so on to his members. He also believes that once the novelty of being presented with a film shot in a virtual environment had worn off, his members found the information presented to be “compelling” in content and value.

In fact, such has been the success of the pilot programme, the project has now been expanded to include some 400 Queensland sugarcane growers.

Dr. Kate Reardon-Smith of the ACSC
Dr. Kate Reardon-Smith of the ACSC

While the cost-effective nature of using Second Life as a film medium might have been the primary consideration in using it for the Sweet Success films, Dr. Farley, together with fellow researcher, Dr. Kate Reardon-Smith, believes that the approach has other benefits as well.

Leading a series of presentations on the work, both Dr. Farley and Dr. Reardon-Smith point to the use of Second Life as being ideal for addressing matters of climate risk assessment, sustainable farming methods and so on for a wide variety of farming locations and systems, simply through the use culturally appropriate clothing, language and design. In addition, the digital nature of the finished product makes it easy to package with the supporting material for dissemination anywhere in the world.

Nor is Sweet Success the only activity undertaken by USQ to use Second Life as a means of educating farmers. In 2010, ICACS, under its old title of the Australian Centre for Sustainable Catchments (ACSC), joined with the Asia-Pacific Network to use Second Life avatars as a means to present real world climate-based scenarios to farmers in the Andhra Pradesh region of India. The aim of the project was to challenge farmers about on-farm decisions that involve seasonal climate risk. As a distance learning project, it was delivered to Internet kiosks within the region where farmers could then discuss and debate the issues raised.

The ACSC-APN project in the Andhra Paresh region of India also used Second Life as a means to
The ACSC-APN project in the Andhra Pradesh region of India also used Second Life as a means to engage farmers on the subject of seasonal climate risk and farming decisions

All told, both of these projects present a unique and fascinating extension of the use of Second Life as an educational medium and for distance learning.

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All images via the University of Southern Queensland

Lab updates on forthcoming improvements to SL

Posted on by Inara Pey

On Thursday July 17th, the Lab issued a blog post outlining further improvements being made to the Second Life platform.

Following a short introduction, the post reiterates the arrival of Experience Keys, and the new demonstration game for this capability – The Cornfield. For those interested, I have a review of the game available, and an overview of both Experience Keys and the Experience Keys project viewer, which can be downloaded from the Lab’s Alternate Viewers wiki page.

The Cornfield, the Experience Keys demonstrator game, gets a further mention in the blog post (note the game play area iuses a much darker and more atmospheric windlight)
The Cornfield, the Experience Keys demonstrator game, gets a further mention in the blog post (note the game play area uses a much darker and more atmospheric windlight)

The post then goes on to highlight three aspects of the platform which are currently being enhanced (note this is not an exhaustive list of all work that is being carried out – it’s just three of the projects thought to be of particular interest to SL users):

Improving Group Chat Performance

Today, group chat messages can sometimes take a long time to be delivered, and in some cases delivery fails entirely. This is an issue that impacts lots of Second Life users, and it’s something we’re actively working to improve. Anyone should be able to reliably hold a conversation using group chat in Second Life without delivery delays or other problems.

We’re carefully monitoring the effects of the changes we make to improve group chat performance, and so far, the results of efforts like upgrading the servers that host chat have been positive. We anticipate that the work to improve group chat performance will continue for some time as we identify the underlying causes of the issues, experiment with different fixes, and analyze results, and as we move forward, we’ll use this blog to share our progress.

Implementing the Chrome Embedded Framework

We’re working to upgrade the component of the Viewer that’s responsible for rendering web content, including the Viewer splash screen (displayed before login), the content of a number of floaters, and inworld media-on-a-prim. This is important because it will fix a number of bugs (especially related to streaming media) that currently affect many Second Life users, and it will also make available many modern web features that aren’t possible with the Viewer today.

We’re making good progress on this initiative already, and expect to have an experimental Project Viewer ready for testing soon.

More Texture and Mesh Loading Improvements

Building upon the performance enhancements we made with Project Shining, we are continuing to make improvements to how the Viewer retrieves texture and mesh data from our servers.

The next round of improvements will reduce the number of connections the Viewer needs to get this data (making it easier on your router and network), while also using each connection to retrieve more data more quickly (for the technically inclined, this means that among other things we will add support for HTTP pipelining).

These improvements will mean that as you explore Second Life, objects will appear more quickly and reliably, especially for users who have longer latency connections (higher “ping times”), such as those who live outside the US.

We have begun doing small-scale testing with a selected group of users, and the early results have been great from a performance point of view. Unfortunately, we’ve also encountered a bug that we need to tackle before we can move on to releasing a project Viewer. We’re eager to move ahead as quickly as we can, and will use this blog to announce that project Viewer as soon as it’s available.

Above: Whirly Fizzle produced a video showing the comparative texture loading between the (then) current SL release viewer (June 27th, 2014) and the HTTP updates experimental viewer

As always, I’ll be doing my best to report on the work outlined above through my weekly SL project updates as and when there is news to impart.

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Lab updates section 2.3 of their Terms of Service – will it calm doubts?

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update, July 20th: My personal opinion on this update.

Update: For a legal view on this update, you might want to chack Vaki’s (also known as Agenda Faromet) blog post on these changes.

On Wednesday July 16th, Linden Lab updated section 2.3 of their Terms of Service and issued a blog post on the matter, indicating the update is an attempt to clarify the Lab’s intent with regards to user content in Second Life.

The changes to Section 2.3 come in the 5th paragraph, commencing “Except as otherwise described”. For ease of reference, I’ve reproduced the paragraph as it read in August 2013 and how it now reads in July 2014, with the updated text highlighted.

August 2013:

Except as otherwise described in any Additional Terms (such as a contest’s official rules) which will govern the submission of your User Content, you hereby grant to Linden Lab, and you agree to grant to Linden Lab, the non-exclusive, unrestricted, unconditional, unlimited, worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, and cost-free right and license to use, copy, record, distribute, reproduce, disclose, sell, re-sell, sublicense (through multiple levels), modify, display, publicly perform, transmit, publish, broadcast, translate, make derivative works of, and otherwise exploit in any manner whatsoever, all or any portion of your User Content (and derivative works thereof), for any purpose whatsoever in all formats, on or through any media, software, formula, or medium now known or hereafter developed, and with any technology or devices now known or hereafter developed, and to advertise, market, and promote the same. You agree that the license includes the right to copy, analyze and use any of your Content as Linden Lab may deem necessary or desirable for purposes of debugging, testing, or providing support or development services in connection with the Service and future improvements to the Service. The license granted in this Section 2.3 is referred to as the “Service Content License.”

July 2014*

Except as otherwise described in any Additional Terms (such as a contest’s official rules) which will govern the submission of your User Content, you hereby grant to Linden Lab, and you agree to grant to Linden Lab, the non-exclusive, unrestricted, unconditional, unlimited, worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, and cost-free right and license to use, copy, record, distribute, reproduce, disclose, modify, display, publicly perform, transmit, publish, broadcast, translate, make derivative works of, and sell, re-sell or sublicense (through multiple levels)(with respect to Second Life, Inworld or otherwise on the Service as permitted by you through your interactions with the Service), and otherwise exploit in any manner whatsoever, all or any portion of your User Content (and derivative works thereof), for any purpose whatsoever in all formats, on or through any media, software, formula, or medium now known or hereafter developed, and with any technology or devices now known or hereafter developed, and to advertise, market, and promote the same. You agree that the license includes the right to copy, analyze and use any of your Content as Linden Lab may deem necessary or desirable for purposes of debugging, testing, or providing support or development services in connection with the Service and future improvements to the Service. The license granted in this Section 2.3 is referred to as the “Service Content License.” 

(* Note that when initially issued the clause “sell, re-sell, sublicense (through multiple levels)” was accidentally repeated in the July 2014 version of the paragraph, a point I alerted the Lab to on reading the updated ToS, and which they subsequently fixed. The paragraph quoted above is the corrected one, with the repetition removed. So if you had to accept the ToS twice, that’s the reason.)

While this may be an attempt to clarify the meaning and intent of the ToS, I cannot help but question it’s overall effectiveness – although I do so with the clear statement that I am not a lawyer, so this is simply unqualified opinion.

Yes, the revised wording does apparently set out limitations, but the context in which this is achieved seems to be confusing.

Agenda Faromet explained during the Legal Panel discussion on the matter in October 2013 as to why terms such as “sell / resell” aren’t perhaps the issue in a legal context (see her comments here), but the lack of limitations on any assigned right are. Yet, within the revised ToS, the way in which the limitations are presented parenthetically might be taken to mean they only apply to the matter of “sell, resell or sublicense (through multiple levels)”.

Moreover, the limits as stated, would appear to stand in contradiction with a further clause in the ToS which was introduced with the August 2013 changes, and remain unaltered with this update. To wit: that LL can “otherwise exploit in any manner whatsoever, all or any portion of your User Content (and derivative works thereof), for any purpose whatsoever”. Hence, to the untutored eye, it is actually hard to discern what the Lab is in fact saying with this update, or what they are actually addressing.

Whether this apparent contradiction, if it is a contradiction, affects how the update might be legally interpreted, I leave for minds wiser and better qualified than mine. But given the wording “for any purpose whatsoever” with regards to how SL content might be used did give rise to considerable angst when it first appeared in the August 2013 ToS, I do wonder if its continued presence will remain a cause for concern among content creators.

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The Cornfield returns – as an Experience Keys demonstration!

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Portal Park offers access to The Cornfield, Linden Realms and other experiences, as well as places of its own to explore
The Portal Park offers access to The Cornfield, Linden Realms and other experiences, as well as places of its own to explore

On Monday July 14th the Lab announced the opening of a new Experience Keys demonstration game, featuring a return to the The Cornfield.

The blog post announcing the new demonstration reads in part:

Experience Keys are a new tool in Second Life that make it so you can opt-in to an entire experience made up of numerous scripted objects, rather than having to grant avatar permissions to every individual element of that experience. In other words, they allow creators to make experiences that are more immersive, because they’re not interrupted by permissions dialogues. Additionally, with Experience Keys, each of the scripts in the experience has access to a common private database that stores information across user sessions and simulator restarts; a powerful new capability for scripters.

Experience Keys are part of the Advanced Creation Tools the Lab has been developing over the last few years, and a special beta programme was recently opened to allow content creators the opportunity of trying-out the capabilities in their own experiences.

An old barn contains the portal leading to ... The Cornfield
An old barn contains the portal leading to … The Cornfield

The Cornfield (reached via a Portal Park), created by the Linden Department of Public Works (aka the Moles), is based on a piece of Second Life history familiar to many long-term residents.

The special trailer video below provides more information on the game.

To try-out The Cornfield, you’ll need to download and install the Experience Keys project viewer. – and I’ll have a more detailed looks at this viewer available soon.

Like Linden Realms, the SLurl initially delivers you to a Portal Park, which has been updated from the originals, and offers a number of places to explore, as well as the portals to both The Cornfield and to Linden Realms or the Premium-only Magellan Grid Hunt (neither of the latter appear to have yet been updated to use Experience Keys).

As the trailer suggests, The Cornfield is something of a shoot-’em-up, but with elements which will be familiar to anyone who has played Linden Realms – and there are wider game choices players can available themselves of as well.

So if you’re in need of letting off some steam, grab the project viewer, install it, and head over to the The Cornfield and give Experience Keys a go!

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KR Engineering: games to be free-to-play only

Posted on by Inara Pey

As news of the changes to the Lab’s policy of games of skill continues to ripple outwards, people have been questioning what it might mean for assorted games held within their inventories and / or on their land which offer payouts and pay-to-lay options. In particular, a question was asked on the forum thread created by the Lab on games like Greedy Greedy, which have a pay-to-play option. The response from the Lab’s Community Manager was that such games would indeed fall under the updated Skill Gaming policy.

Greedy Greedy and other KR Engineering games offering pay-to-play / combined pot payout options are to be updated in light of the Skill Gaming policy changes, with the pay-in and payout options removed (image: KR Engineering)
Greedy Greedy and other KR Engineering games offering pay-to-play / L$ payout options are to be updated in light of the Skill Gaming policy changes, with the pay-in and payout options removed (image: KR Engineering)

As a result of this, and subsequent enquiries on the KR Engineering Facebook page, Karsten Rutledge, KR engineering’s owner, posted an article on changes that will be forthcoming to all KR Engineering games offering a pay-to-pay / L$ payout capability.

Karsten’s article can be found under the heading Skilled Gaming! What is it? How scary is it? Are we all DOOMED?! On the KR Engineering Facebook page. While this doesn’t require people log-in to Facebook in order to read it, the key points are reproduced below for those who have KR Engineering table games but who prefer not to access Facebook at all.

Because games like Greedy Greedy, On-a-Roll, Triumph, etc., are considered subject to the upcoming changes to the Skill Gaming policy, Karsten has decided to make them all free-to-play and remove all payout options, informing customers:

Before the end of the month, I will be issuing updates to all of my games that remove all money and payout functions from them. With no payout option on the game (no buy-ins and no betting), the games will no longer be subject to the Skilled Gaming Regions policy. You will be able to rez and play them wherever and whenever you like as usual. The new policy ONLY applies to games that have an option to pay the winner of the game a L$ prize. To be in compliance with the new policy, all you will need to do is update your games (which is FREE, as always) before the end of the month, or realistically, whenever you next pull them out. You won’t get in trouble for having them in your inventory, whether they’re in compliance or not.

In further addressing this change later in the post, he continues:

So in conclusion: Keep calm and carry on. Don’t worry, keep playing and have fun. I will announce more as I get questions answered from Linden Lab, and of course announcements will be made when updates are available for each game to bring it into compliance. The games you know and love aren’t going anywhere, they will play just the same and the only difference will be you may not pay money into them, which as it turns out, doesn’t happen 99% of the time anyway, so you won’t even notice.

However, Karsten believes the changes to the Skill Gaming Policy will not affect the Greedy Greedy jackpot, commenting:

As far as I currently know, that will not be going away, playing any appropriately configured Greedy game will still qualify you for the jackpot even after August 1st. The Jackpot is not considered gambling because you do not have to pay to be entered into it. If this changes, I will certainly make an announcement about it.

In addressing the potential for future versions of KR Engineering games offering a payout, Karsten indicates this is questionable, given the amount of outlay required. Furthermore, were it to happen at all, it would likely to be only with regards to Greedy Greedy, and would be a special version of the game entirely separate to the current version:

According to Gaming.SL, only 1.6% of games played to completion this year involved money of some kind. At the moment, I’m sorry if you’re in that 1.6%, but I will likely not be pursuing becoming a creator of approved gambling games, as it will cost me at least $2000 USD per year to do so, and that’s not counting the up-front costs of hiring an attorney, and paying the application fees and review fees.

Depending on the answers I get from Linden Lab in the coming weeks, I may eventually pursue approval just for Greedy, I don’t think any other games get gambled on at all anyway. Even if I do get Greedy approved for skill gaming in the future, it will not effect anyone who already owns a Greedy table, because it will be a completely separate version of Greedy. From now on, there will always be a “no money” version of my games for general use, any “money” versions will always be separate.

So if you have any version of a KR Engineering game which includes a pay-to-play option, do keep an eye out from updates from Karsten, and on the KR Engineering Facebook page for further information.

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With thanks to Ciaran Laval.