Adeon Writer

The Sims is a single player doll house series. Think Sim City, except it's just one house, that you can see inside of. It's a Neighborhood Simulator, and later on in the series, Small Town Simulator. You aren't any one character, you're just a god looking down and controlling anyone you want at any time you want to do anything to make whatever story you want to happen. You can just jump from controlling person to person. They will do what you say, but also have a will of their own when you aren't controlling them.

Year 15, Week 2, Day 2: They're still arguing over if Second Life is a game or not.

That’s an interesting take since the original Metaverse as described in Snowcrash was owned by a single company. Also second life was touted as a metaverse for years. Many saying it was the original one. I suppose you disagree?

I don't know what annoys me more, the fact that Second Life chose not to pursue VR despite being the one kind of application that VR is desperately lacking, or the fact that Facebook thinks the VR metaverse hasn't been around for years already.

Sorry if this is already known but Linden doesn't own Sansar anymore. They sold it off. The chances of them buying it back are very, very slim.

I wouldn't call Carmack enthusiast. In his keynote two day ago he all but said "We are making a mistake, I'll do my best to damage control."

Oh trust me, I'm well aware of it. I couldn't possibly not know about it, because it's the latest laughing stock of the internet. Horizons is what was on my mind when I made that statement: Facebook has no idea what people want a virtual world for, and their reveal proved that to all of social media. Have you looked into Facebook's Horizons? As in, images of what it actually looks like? Do it: And tell me you think anyone will have any interest in it. I trust your judgement.

Anyone who is afraid of Facebook being remotely successful in the metaverse department doesn’t know how clueless Facebook is in what people want out of the Metaverse.

Forgive me for not knowing or understanding the difference because I don’t 🙂

Didn’t a big investment company recently buy SL? I would not expect them to sell it. They clearly have plans.

Tabletop games works well in SL because it is not destroyed by Second Life’s “shared experience” restrictions. Everyone always sees the same thing on the table, so those kind of games work just fine. for actual games though, linden really needs to let us render things differently for different people.

Yeah. It would bake to a mesh, but the primitives would still be saved. CSG would only need to be calculated while in build mode. That's things like Little Big Planet do it, anyway.

money() and llFrand don't belong in the same script. Linden could very easily forbid this by policy, I think.

Actual claw machines. C'mon. Fill The Arcade with actual boardwalk carnival games, and put it in a skill gaming region. It already has the theme and ambience down! Was always disappointed it wasn't more authentic to the what it was trying to look like.

Just like nobody forces you to buy gachas. That's not why gachas are banned, of course. Ultimately, they are banned for the predatory behavoir. This new type of script skirts around the ban, while still being the thing the spirit of the law is trying to prevent. That's why I'd like a response.

@Patch Linden I know you're probably hounded with questions and can't answer them all, but I feel this is an important "What's Next" question: Now that gachas are banned, the next thing that's going to come along are "timed purchases" where a vendor just shows a random item that won't change unless someone buys it, and afterwhich it will roll to be another random item. The percentages will be shown and rarities will exist. So the question becomes, should you buy the thing, so that it re-rolls and becomes something else you'd actually want? Since every purchase 100% gets you what was shown, it obeys the restriction in your blog post. Essentially it's a gatcha script, but it always shows you want you're about to get, so there's no "randomness" or mystery involved in the transaction. Are these allowed in Second Life? An official response would be appreciated, I know quite a few people who plan to do this in light of this news, so if it's not allowed, it would be very helpful to know. Thank you!

I haven't seen them for quite some time. They seemed to vanish some time in the 00's. Are they still in stores around you?

Yeah, they're pretty infamous for being banned in the US. You can't get them here, they're also illegal to import them from other countries. However, there has been talk back in 2017 that they were going to sell a version that doesn't have a toy inside here, I'm not sure if that ever actually happened.

Legit answer: They are banned in the US.

These regions exist because some US states make it illegal - for example, as an Arizona citizen, I cannot teleport to any skill gaming region in Second Life - my state's law makes internet gambling illegal, so Linden looks at my IP address and declines the teleport request. US gambling laws are very well defined and allow for programs to simply identify and exclude people by IP to prevent these services - and in doing so, it means they comply with the state law. However, it is likely that the current Gacha ban laws likely don't care if that part of the game isn't accessible - it's likely they forbid the program have it *at all*. If this is the case, Linden lab has no option to do the same thing, as the law didn't leave it as a permittable way out. Or, even if they do, Linden may feels that it is likely that US law would follow suit (very likely to be the case) so trying to identify and exclude German users would be only a temporary solution and a waste of resources. And, in the face of current opinions and attitudes surrounding lootboxes, just make them look bad regardless.

It's been #2 on my list of "SL features SLers actually want" since forever. (#1 being an overall avatar size slider that includes attachments)

Specifically, a new German law defines "gachas" and "lootboxes" in it's own terms, understands the subtle distinction between the two, and nevertheless forbids both. It knows exactly what it's banning. That's why Linden Lab has no choice here; there is no room for interpretation: They aren't allowed, specifically.

And in some, like Arizona, which outlaws gambling entirely, still has claw machines, because no money payout = not gambling.

It comes from frustration with and a deep love for Second Life. If Roblox of all things is starting to do things better than Second Life, that is a problem. Because Roblox was a joke and a footnote for elementary school aged kids. To see it it start cleaning up it's image and start outpacing Second Life on the content creation tools front, that hurts. That hurts a lot. Do I want to go over there and play Roblox? Oh heck no. It's like being at a daycare. Am I jealous that the content creators for that kids game has in-game modeling tools that put Second Life to shame? Yes, yes I am.

Because it's too easy to make a loophole. If you say it's ok to have random colors as long as they are all equal chance, what stops you from making 30 different colors: 1 pink, and 29 different unique shades of brown? No rares, right?