Tag: SL News

Lab announces skill gaming policy coming soon to Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey

secondlifeLinden Lab has issued a blog post announcing that while gambling in Second Life will remain strictly prohibited within the platform, and that games of chance will remain a violation of the Second Life Terms of Service, games of skill are to be managed more closely within Second Life, and that the SL skill gaming policy has been updated to reflect this.

The changes are to come into effect from from August 1st, 2014, and applications are now open to those wishing to apply to become  approved creators and approved operators of games of skill within SL.

However, such games will be subject to strict control, as the blog post outlines:

  • Skill games that offer Linden Dollar payouts will be allowed in Skill Gaming Regions only. This is a new region designation that will apply beginning August 1, 2014. Those Second Life residents who wish to convert their regions to Skill Gaming Regions can do so by contacting Linden Lab in accordance with Linden Lab’s Land policy. Due to the additional administrative and compliance-related costs associated with these regions, the monthly maintenance fees will be greater than those for regular regions in Second Life. We will include Skill Gaming Regions as a new category in our Destination Guide (unless the owner requests its removal). As a resident, you will be able to check the setting of each region to verify that it has been recognized by Linden Lab for the placement, operation, and use of approved Skill Games.

  • Only operators approved by Linden Lab will be allowed to run skill games that offer Linden Dollar payouts on Skill Gaming Regions. Those wishing to become approved operators can apply now. Due to processing and compliance-related costs associated with maintaining this program, there is a one-time nonrefundable application fee as well as a quarterly license fee (waived through December 31, 2014, upon approval of an application) for those designated as approved operators. We will maintain a public wiki page of operators.

  • Creators of skill games that wish to make them available in Second Life may do so only through Skill Gaming Regions and only after the games have been approved by Linden Lab. Creators of skill games that offer Linden Dollar payouts can apply to become an approved creator and to have their games approved now. Due to processing and compliance-related costs associated with maintaining this program, there is a one-time nonrefundable application fee as well as a quarterly license fee (waived through December 31, 2014, upon approval of an application) for those designated as approved creators. We will maintain a public wiki page of approved creators and their approved games of skill.

  • Access to Skill Gaming Regions will be restricted to 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. If you are in a permitted jurisdiction and you meet the relevant age requirements, you will be able to access these regions just like any in Second Life. If you are not eligible, you will receive an error message.  However, you are responsible for knowing which jurisdictions are prohibited and the requisite ages of participation and not attempting to access a Skill Gaming Region if you do not qualify.  Attempts to circumvent our controls will constitute a violation of our Skill Gaming Policy and Terms of Service.

In summary, 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 is operated must be approved by Linden Lab.

Those wishing to apply to become approved creators and approved operators of games of skill / Skill Game Regions can apply to the Lab now via Echosign.

For those wishing to play such games of skill, the Lab additionally notes:

If you live in a jurisdiction where gaming is permitted and you plan on playing these games in Skill Gaming Regions in Second Life, you should not need to do anything differently. However, adding payment information on file now is a good way to ensure you’re able to play as soon as Skill Gaming Regions are live.

Also, The Lab as created a FAQ page to address the most common questions arising from this move, and have established a Skill Gaming thread on the forums where additional questions can be asked and hopefully addressed.

For further information, please refer to the blog post, the forum thread and the official FAQ.

Related Links

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” →

Linden Lab seeks creators for Experience Keys (Tools) beta

Posted on by Inara Pey

secondlifeOn Wednesday July 2nd, the Lab issued a call for creators to apply for a beta test of the Experience Keys (also referred to as Experience Tools) project.

As I explained in my overview of Experience Keys / Tools, this is a new permissioning system which allows people to create an activity (initially restricted to region / estate level for private islands / estates and parcel level for mainland) such that anyone wishing to participate in it need only give a single confirmation of their wish to do so, rather than having repeated requests for permission pop-up on their screen whenever something wants / needs to interact with their avatar – such as teleporting their avatar to the next location in a hunt or quest, or when wanting to attach a gun or piece of equipment to the avatar as a part of a game.

Experience Keys are the latest addition to the Lab’s Advanced Creator Tools deployed in August 2012, and which in turn grew out of work first put to use in the Linden Realms game.

A video helps explain the concept from a user’s perspective.

While the video focuses on using Experience Keys in games, they could conceivably be used in other activities as well: hunts, puzzles, tours – any immersive experience which may otherwise require users to repeatedly give assent for some action to be taken with their avatar.

The Lab is now seeking SL creators willing to join a beta programme and use the new Experience Keys to build a range of “experiences” within Second Life, as the blog post explains:

We used this technology when creating the Linden Realms game, and we’re now ready to start putting this tool in the talented hands of creators in the Second Life community. Experience Keys is a powerful tool, and we need to be sure we test and roll out the feature carefully, so the first step will be a limited beta, then the viewer and server releases shortly after.

Creators wishing to participate in the programme should send an email to slexp_beta@lindenlab.com with “Experience Key Beta” as the subject along with the following information:

  • The experience name.
  • What genre does it fit in?
  • A brief description of the experience
  • How would your customers benefit from Experience Keys?

As noted in the announcement, a more public beta in which users can try out experiences using an Experience Keys project viewer will follow-on from this initial call.

Firestorm to host “the future of Second Life” Q&A with Lab staff

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update: The promised transcript is now available.

Jessica Lyon has announced that the Firestorm team will be hosting a Q&A session entitled The Future of Second Life.

The session will take place on Wednesday July 2nd at 07:00 SLT (that’s 7:00 AM PDT – I’ve always used 24-hour clock notation in this blog)  at the Firestorm Auditorium, with seating on a first come, first serve basis.

Oz Linden: SL's Technical Director
Oz Linden: Linden Lab’s Technical Director of Second Life

In attendance will be Oz Linden, Technical Director of Second Life at the Lab. Peter Gray, the Lab’s Director of Global Communications may also be present as well.

Note that the focus of the session will Second Life – the session will not be a forum for discussion of the Lab’s  next generation platform. Opportunities to discuss the latter will doubtless come through various mediums once the Lab more solidly release details about it.

So if you want to learn more about what is planned for SL, this may be a meeting you want to attend. However, if you can’t attend, the blog post points to the following:

  • The event will be recorded and made available after the fact
  • The event will be live streamed though I do not have all the details yet. Stay tuned to this bullet for edits.
  • If you have questions to ask concerning SL’s future, please leave them in a comment on the Firestorm blog. Jessica will attempt to ask as many as she can. Please do not leave questions here, as they unlikely to be collected and asked at the session.

I’ll also most likely provide a transcript of the meeting as time allows after the event.

Lab: “We’re not giving up on Second Life”

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update: Just as a further reminder, all that Ebbe Altberg had to say about the new platform can be heard here, with bullet points on his statements.

As per my article Ebbe confirms: “we’re working on a ‘next generation’ platform” (with audio), Linden Lab are working on a “next generation” virtual world – news of which should be appearing in the media soon, quite likely as a part of the Lab’s PR work around Second Life’s 11th anniversary.

The confirmation that the Lab are working on the platform – and may well have been for around the last two years (see: Rod Humble hints at more virtual worlds in LL’s future, October 2012) – have fuelled rumours and speculation about the future of Second Life (remembering that any new platform is still some way into the future).  As a result Peter Gray, the Lab’s Director of Global communications contacted me with a copy of an official reply the Lab is circulating in response to enquiries on the matter, and has given me permission to reprint it here:

Hi Inara,

Just saw your post – thanks for taking care to get what Ebbe actually said. Below is the comment I’ve just sent along to a couple of folks who asked for clarification, which mostly reiterates what it sounds like you already know. Still, I just wanted to send it along in case it were useful.

Best,

Peter

more/…

Linden Lab is working on a next generation virtual world that will be in the spirit of Second Life, an open world where users have incredible power to create anything they can imagine and content creators are king. This is a significant focus for Linden Lab, and we are actively hiring to help with this ambitious effort. We believe that there is a massive opportunity ahead to carry on the spirit of Second Life while leveraging the significant technological advancements that have occurred since its creation, as well as our unparalleled experience as the provider of the most successful user-created virtual world ever.

The next generation virtual world will go far beyond what is possible with Second Life, and we don’t want to constrain our development by setting backward compatibility with Second Life as an absolute requirement from the start. That doesn’t mean you necessarily won’t be able to bring parts of your Second Life over, just that our priority in building the next generation platform is to create an incredible experience and enable stunningly high-quality creativity, rather than ensuring that everything could work seamlessly with everything created over Second Life’s 11 year history.

Does this mean we’re giving up on Second Life? Absolutely not. It is thanks to the Second Life community that our virtual world today is without question the best there is, and after 11 years we certainly have no intention of abandoning our users nor the virtual world they continually fill with their astounding creativity. Second Life has many years ahead of it, and in addition to improvements and new developments specifically for Second Life, we think that much of the work we do for the next generation project will also be beneficial for Second Life.

It’s still very early days for this new project, and as we forge ahead in creating the next generation virtual world, we’ll share as much as we can.

If we had one message to share with Second Life users about this new project at this point, it would be: don’t panic, get excited! Again, Second Life isn’t going away, nor are we ceasing our work to improve it. But, we’re also working on something that we think will truly fulfill the promise of virtual worlds that few people understand as well as Second Life users.

Group bans: an overview

Posted on by Inara Pey

On Tuesday June 17th, Linden Lab released the Group Ban project viewer (version 3.7.8.290887) which, as the name suggests, allows group owners (and those they nominate by role) to ban individuals from their group.

Group bans, which are enforced server-side, like parcel and estate bans, are intended to remove troublemakers from a group / prevent them from joining the group. This article will hopefully provide an overview of the group ban tools within the project viewer (and which will eventually progress to the release viewer).

The following general points with group bans should be noted:

  • By default, only a group’s Owners role has the Manage Ban List ability for banning other avatars from a group /removing avatars from the ban list
  • The ability can be granted to other roles, if required
  • Roles which are granted this ability are also granted the Eject Members from this Group and Remove Members from Roles abilities
  • The ban list for a group can store a maximum of 500 entries. When this limit is reached, some avatars must be removed before others can be added
  • Group Owners cannot be banned from a group (just as they cannot be ejected)
  • When a group member is banned from the group, they are automatically ejected and will receive the usual ejection notification, but will not receive any notice that they have also been banned
  • A user who is banned from a group cannot join it either directly or through an invitation
  • If a group member is banned while using group chat, they may be able to continue using it until they close the group chat window (this problem also exists when ejecting someone from a group when they have the group chat window open)
  • Any attempt to invite one or more banned avatars into a group, whether individually or as a part of a list, will generate the message:  Some residents have not been sent an invite due to being banned from the group.

The viewer itself includes the necessary options to allow a group owner (and those they nominate by role) to:

  • Add or remove avatars from the group ban list
  • View the group ban list
  • Add the ability to ban avatars from a group to any other roles within the group, if required.

Applying Group Bans

Avatars can be banned from a group in one of two ways:

  • By selecting them in the group members list if they are already a member of the group
  • By using the Group Ban Picker to ban one or more avatars from a group, whether or not they are already members.

Banning via the Members List

  • Display your groups list (CTRL-SHIFT-G), select the required group and open its profile
  • Click on Roles & Members to open it, and then click on the Members tab
  • Locate the first avatar you wish to ban and left-click on their name
  • If there is more than one avatar you wish to ban, press CTRL and left-click on each of the remaining names
  • Click on the Ban Member(s) button
  • The highlighted avatars will be ejected and banned from the group, and you should see the normal confirmatory notification(s) that they have been ejected.
Banning someone from a public droup via the Members tab (l), and confirming they are listed as banned on the Banned Residents tab (r)
Banning someone from a public group via the Members tab (l), and confirming they are listed as banned on the Banned Residents tab (r)

To confirm the selected individuals have been ejected and banned, click the right scroll buttons at the top of the panel to scroll / jump to the Banned Residents tab. This should display the name of all avatars banned from the group. If the name(s) of the avatar(s) just banned do not appear to be listed, wait a minute or two and click the refresh button in the lower left corner of the panel. Continue reading “Group bans: an overview” →