2024 - Will LL finally fully acknowledge the Adult side of SL?

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

On 2/14/2024 at 11:46 AM, xXSuicidalIdolXx Candycane said:

so... its Valentines Day. has anyone heard of anything yet? I had thought the lab was going to do something for 2/14/2024 unless I totally missed the memo on that

There was a valentine's day train ride event of some kind. Not an adult-rated event, but it looked sponsored from the pics I saw of it in the 'funs things to do in Belli' thread. At least somebody with linden land rezzing perms put up a sign for it from the looks of the screenshots.

But this might also be some of your answer. They're doing community events. Even around romantic holidays. But they aren't doing NSFW community events.

 

Edited February 16 by UnilWay SpiritWeaver

[Istelathis]

And the big reveal is,  Second Life is to be renamed s𝕏.  

😜

 

 

My concept art of how the new business building should look.  I want the logo to glow incredibly bright so that people can see it for miles.. make it so LL!

Edited February 16 by Istelathis

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

On 12/28/2023 at 6:32 PM, elleevelyn said:

for sure it would be a very bold move by Linden to start offering A-rated Linden Homes. And tbf to Linden this is all speculation on my part

They kind of botched it with Horizons. It's both a success and a failure. And not mildly so in either way.

It's somewhat the 'halfway model' that led to Bellisseria. You could rez prebuilts on a 1024 but were not required to. It's lack of a strong covenant led to even worse 'build blight' than Zindra (which is actually often less 'blighted' than M rated mainland as most of the people who like ugly full bright and bad textures moved to Horizons where their neighbors couldn't put distance between each other).

Horizons land is always owned by somebody - even if it's a land baron wanting $1million USD for a 1024m plot... they're still willing to pay tier to sit on that lot.

The failure is that it's not accessible to most people. Folks have been priced out. And the 'wild west' nature has made it extremely unappealing to many people.

 

Bellisseria shows LL learned the right lessons from Horizons. Just not entirely the lessons I wish they'd have learned - but I suspect if I was running LL I would have learned the same lessons they did. You don't do what you want; you do what works.

Belli is built to create a user community of actively engaged residents, lindens, and moles who very often gel together happily. The strong covenant so many on this forum dislike works to keep all that together. It also likely helps REDUCE the support overload. Because the rules are clear, "I suspect" disputes are easier to handle, and don't "fester" into massive blowups as often. And the rules are designed to be 'community focused' which helps to drive away people not wanting that kind of environment though even more: it helps attract people who DO want that.

It's entirely M rated and I'm sure this is very much on purpose. That keeps out complex governance issues from either the G or A side of things.

I don't think they'll do an A-rated Belli, as much as I want it, because governing it would be more complicated.

 

[Love Zhaoying]

51 minutes ago, UnilWay SpiritWeaver said:

Belli is built to create a user community of actively engaged residents, lindens, and moles who very often gel together happily.

Yet it's more like the Florida retirement community "The Villages", where supposedly residents put different colored "poufs" on their cars to advertise their kink (according to the internet), but it's really just to help them find their cars in parking lots.

[PheebyKatz]

2 hours ago, Istelathis said:

And the big reveal is,  Second Life is to be renamed s𝕏.  

😜

 

 

My concept art of how the new business building should look.  I want the logo to glow incredibly bright so that people can see it for miles.. make it so LL!

I think SLX would be more like. People's minds could fill in the imaginary E with the L in place there.

My residual inner Business of Design (A.K.A. Evil Marketing Sorcery) professor egrigore says so, anyway.

Edited February 17 by PheebyKatz

[Janet Voxel]

21 hours ago, Istelathis said:

And the big reveal is,  Second Life is to be renamed s𝕏.  

😜

 

 

My concept art of how the new business building should look.  I want the logo to glow incredibly bright so that people can see it for miles.. make it so LL!

Oh so it is Purgatory

[Henri Beauchamp]

Bump !

[JUSTUS Palianta]

Shhh stop bumping the sexy time thread. 😜 Naughty.

Edited March 15 by JUSTUS Palianta
All we do in SL is toast marshmallows around campfires.

[Aethelwine]

20 minutes ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

Bump !

I tried to respond on the feedback portal in support of the suggestion, but pressing the Login button on the page just sends me to knowledgebase article about how to login to the portal. I get sent around in a circle trying to login.

Anyway, I fuilly agree that Zindra is half done. The gap in road between Kerano and Harriott a shocking example of a plan ended before completion. The value of land in Zindra and success of Horizons illustrates demand and is a good business argument to complete development

Edited March 15 by Aethelwine

[Aethelwine]

8 hours ago, Aethelwine said:

I tried to respond on the feedback portal in support of the suggestion, but pressing the Login button on the page just sends me to knowledgebase article about how to login to the portal. I get sent around in a circle trying to login.

It seems I had to verify my email address, kind of odd I would have thought I had already verified it... but well anyway thought I would give an update in case anyone else with the same problem..

[Henri Beauchamp]

8 hours ago, JUSTUS Palianta said:

Shhh stop bumping the sexy time thread. 😜 Naughty.

I totally assume my naughtiness... Do expect more sexy time naughty bumping ! 💋

[Coffee Pancake]

10 hours ago, Aethelwine said:

I fuilly agree that Zindra is half done.

Zindra is half done because LL dramatically underestimated the size of the adulting population and the migration required. The initial grided regions was assumed sufficient.

When it plainly wasn't, they hastily added more regions as the news slowly filtered though, demand and panic spread though the population, things inevitably got worse. The rules were incredibly vague. Some were afraid of getting reported playing dress up, did owning a sex bed count, would a different partner every night make a home a public location, what kinds of avatars could go to A land. There were specific personal use case questions from everyone affected, of which only a tiny minority raised here or via support.

LL started trying to add carve outs and "clarifications" to the adult content policy to limit those who would be affected both as a way to calm fears and limit demand. This was of course ineffective as SL's social tooling wasn't up to the task (and still isn't), most users had no idea, just that sex could get you banned.

The clarifications (often written up on the fly to answer a specific user question and later codified on the wiki) combined with a desire to be done created the situation we have today, where certain highly questionable activities are permitted under a strict interpretation of the rules and strip clubs don't need to be on A land.

The rules acting like a giant dragnet under threat of a ban made the migration a social disaster and cemented the impression that Linden management not only refused to eat their own dog food, they utterly despised dogs in general, even the good boys.

Adult land became 'better safe than sorry' with private regions a close second. Mainland has never recovered. LL seem to tacitly acknowledge its importance to platform health, while at the same time trying present a wholesome virtual world that demonstrably no one wants.

Edited March 15 by Coffee Pancake

[Aethelwine]

5 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Zindra is half done because LL dramatically underestimated the size of the adulting population and the migration required. The initial grided regions was assumed sufficient.

When it plainly wasn't, they hastily added more regions as the news slowly filtered though, demand and panic spread though the population, things inevitably got worse......

<snipped for brevity>

I don't disagree with that, I wasn't around to comment and happily trust what you say is correct... But unless I am reading you wrong it seems odd that they would plan to make continents that looked unfinished. 

My understanding was that there was a surprise decision during the role out of the Zindra and Gaeta continents that suddenly stopped development, I think there were staff lay offs too? Presumably a financial report of some kind that showed the expansion was no longer economic, that the forecasts that got them started had turned out to be wildly optimistic.

Those two continent systems end up looking like a half finished tower block with a few people living in the first stories, while the top half of the building never got windows. The gap in the road between Kerano and Harriott would be fixed by one or two regions, but they never went in.

I am no financial expert really to comment on the decision made then, but the way they simply stopped roll out across the board, in particular for Zindra seems more and more flawed as time has gone on. Even if they didn't feel they could expand it further at the time, it has been a long time since then, they surely could\should have come back to complete it considering the occupancy levels (even if largely in the hands of rental companies).

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

I was around at the time.

There was originally intensely active involvement from the Lindens. They had a weekly group with Blondon (Blondin?) Linden assigned as hosting the meeting. I believe that was in the cafe in Bronlen if memory serves me right.

Every single meeting was a shouting match between two different residents arguing over which of them was the queen of Zindra having the sole right to speak to Blondin. It was... pathetic.

You could sit there in real time and see the Lindens tune out and start giving up and abandon goals they had set.

Other people tried in vain to shut those two idiots up and would just get labeled as 'traitors to the rightful queen' for their efforts. Some of that effort is reflected in the venue south of Bronlen that was set up by some people to try and skirt around the shouting - but it was too late by that point. Blondin just stopped showing up to his own office hours because why bother if he couldn't get anything done due to two screaming brats.

There were Adult Hubs on estate land set up to help people get used to new region rating and this originally also had linden involvement giving the people running those some added powers to keep things smooth. Those people seemed to always do a good job, but while the Hubs are still out there last I checked, they've fallen into obscurity as the lindens and others mentally moved away from Zindra.

The map very much looks incomplete. Not just on the edges, but regions like Mosh (?) and such seem half built. There's a whole Zindra Mall on Linden land that can't be used by anyone.

It's a project that people just walked away from halfway through, due to residents behaving poorly.

 

All of this also took place withing the larger context of M. Linden trying to turn SL into Micro Teams / Zoom a decade too soon. As we see now, M. Linden actually had a good idea - just the wrong platform for it. But that was a lot of why they suddenly wanted to shove all the adult stuff out of view.

 

Edited March 16 by UnilWay SpiritWeaver

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

1 hour ago, UnilWay SpiritWeaver said:

Every single meeting was a shouting match between two different residents arguing over which of them was the queen of Zindra having the sole right to speak to Blondin. It was... pathetic.

You could sit there in real time and see the Lindens tune out and start giving up and abandon goals they had set.

Other people tried in vain to shut those two idiots up and would just get labeled as 'traitors to the rightful queen' for their efforts. Some of that effort is reflected in the venue south of Bronlen that was set up by some people to try and skirt around the shouting - but it was too late by that point. Blondin just stopped showing up to his own office hours because why bother if he couldn't get anything done due to two screaming brats.

A minor version of this started to happen when Belli was in year one.

In addition to the Belli Citizen's group there are/where a couple of 'anti-Belli Citizens' groups claiming that the people running the citizen's group had no right to be the voice of Belli for 'reasons'... Rather than working with those folks to shape the community they wanted to set up splinters and fight over who got to talk to the moles.

Thankfully it went nowhere and I'm not even sure if the Belli Citizen's group's admins ever even knew there were some fools on the side demanding the throne get handed over.

 

 

[Sammy Huntsman]

30 minutes ago, UnilWay SpiritWeaver said:

A minor version of this started to happen when Belli was in year one.

In addition to the Belli Citizen's group there are/where a couple of 'anti-Belli Citizens' groups claiming that the people running the citizen's group had no right to be the voice of Belli for 'reasons'... Rather than working with those folks to shape the community they wanted to set up splinters and fight over who got to talk to the moles.

Thankfully it went nowhere and I'm not even sure if the Belli Citizen's group's admins ever even knew there were some fools on the side demanding the throne get handed over.

 

 

I mean Belli is for everyone, so wouldn't it make sense to have everyone make decisions? So I mean having people who go to the moles that were not even really chosen by the people. Seems counteractive to Belli being for everyone. And no one should have the "throne"

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

7 minutes ago, Sammy Huntsman said:

I mean Belli is for everyone, so wouldn't it make sense to have everyone make decisions? So I mean having people who go to the moles that were not even really chosen by the people. Seems counteractive to Belli being for everyone. And no one should have the "throne"

Yeah. And really the same for Zindra. But it seems like every time LL does some effort to get active in the community people squabble over it, and so often the opportunity gets lost.

We know it can go right though. Bay City has done well for years, and now Belli as well.

But I'm just watching from the sidelines. If there's still hidden drama it is thankfully hidden.

 

[Bagnu]

Really though, to those of us on the adult side of the community this doesn't really matter. We do our own thing. That''s what I've seen so far anyways.

[Chic Aeon]

Haven't been watching this thread although I did note the announcement the OP referred to.  It is almost three months in and the newest "what we're up to" on the Home page mentions nothing about adult stuff. 

Recent developments may have put that on the back burner for awhile.  I would guess (and this is really a guess) that there MIGHT be a new island area in Belli that was adult.  That would certainly be MY next move (maybe not right now because of all the "press" but down the road since Belli has definitely been the best move The Lab has made in a long while.

 

Just musing. 

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

I'd be overjoyed if they used an A-rated Belli addon as an excuse to finish the Zindra coastlines - putting to one or more of the sides of Zindra.

And then maybe making those spot in Zindra that got 'abandoned' when the lindens pulled out a decade ago into spots zindra and A-Belli residents could rent for events like some of the Belli community zones.

That said... it'd be a curious guess as to what housing theme they'd use there. A new one, or a rehash of one of the existings (and it just feels like Victorian is the perfect choice for a kinky Belli  ).

 

Edited March 17 by UnilWay SpiritWeaver

[Aethelwine]

26 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

Haven't been watching this thread although I did note the announcement the OP referred to.  It is almost three months in and the newest "what we're up to" on the Home page mentions nothing about adult stuff. 

Recent developments may have put that on the back burner for awhile.  I would guess (and this is really a guess) that there MIGHT be a new island area in Belli that was adult.  That would certainly be MY next move (maybe not right now because of all the "press" but down the road since Belli has definitely been the best move The Lab has made in a long while.

 

Just musing. 

Adult regions linked to moderate in the collection of regions that includes mainland would seem to break a fundamental principle for them that they apply to CLPP Estates linked to mainland.

It is possible, but I think linking new Adult regions to Zindra is more likely because it would not create a perception of a "double standard".

I would like to think it would involve finishing Zindra.... but if Horizons is anything to go by they are more likely to link to it by a waterway and leave Zindra in the mess it is. But I am not without hope, that Zindra will get some love in this plan.

Edited March 17 by Aethelwine

[Aethelwine]

8 minutes ago, UnilWay SpiritWeaver said:

I'd be overjoyed if they used an A-rated Belli addon as an excuse to finish the Zindra coastlines - putting to one or more of the sides of Zindra.

And then maybe making those spot in Zindra that got 'abandoned' when the lindens pulled out a decade ago into spots zindra and A-Belli residents could rent for events like some of the Belli community zones.

That said... it'd be a curious guess as to what housing theme they'd use there. A new one, or a rehash of one of the existings (and it just feels like Victorian is the perfect choice for a kinky Belli  ).

 

Little fortresses with dungeons ? 😁

- I hope something more normal maybe mix in trads, houseboats etc without creating a new theme..... I think the success of Bellisseria is in part due to it looking like a regular suburban housing estate.

Edited March 17 by Aethelwine

[Sammy Huntsman]

I just see LL recognizing and acknowledging it as kinda pointless. I mean there is so much user-generated content clubs adult friendly communities. Why does this need to be a thing? Like I feel like you are free to express yourself at the lands that are made for it. So again, why does LL have to acknowledge it? 

[Chic Aeon]

49 minutes ago, Aethelwine said:

Adult regions linked to moderate in the collection of regions that includes mainland would seem to break a fundamental principle for them that they apply to CLPP Estates linked to mainland.

It is possible, but I think linking new Adult regions to Zindra is more likely because it would not create a perception of a "double standard".

I would like to think it would involve finishing Zindra.... but if Horizons is anything to go by they are more likely to link to it by a waterway and leave Zindra in the mess it is. But I am not without hope, that Zindra will get some love in this plan.

You seemed to have missed my "a new island area in Belli"  meaning NOT connect to Belli per se but still available as a "Belli parcel".  

Since LL seems to abandon areas after they are released (Belli as an exception as it was overwhelmingly popular I kinda doubt they will be doing anything with Zindra.  I was just a babe when Zindra happened and folks were "forced" to exit mainland for ADULT content areas (which of course in the end didn't really HAPPEN (I reported a lot at the beginning and no one carred).  

So it will be interesting to see.  Not my area of expertise

[Persephone Emerald]

1 hour ago, UnilWay SpiritWeaver said:

I'd be overjoyed if they used an A-rated Belli addon as an excuse to finish the Zindra coastlines - putting to one or more of the sides of Zindra.

And then maybe making those spot in Zindra that got 'abandoned' when the lindens pulled out a decade ago into spots zindra and A-Belli residents could rent for events like some of the Belli community zones.

That said... it'd be a curious guess as to what housing theme they'd use there. A new one, or a rehash of one of the existings (and it just feels like Victorian is the perfect choice for a kinky Belli  ).

Maybe a New Orleans French Quarter theme would be good for Adult regions? 

I'd be very surprised if LL does more than finish off the unfinished parts of Zendra though.