[With Philip Rosendale returning to advise on SL I thought I might return. Should I? If so why?]

3 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

I've never played The Sims.  Do you actually interact with other people as we do in SL or is it just you and the world you create?  

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.

[With Philip Rosendale returning to advise on SL I thought I might return. Should I? If so why?]

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

[Ars Technica Article on the Metaverse - SL Mentioned in the Title :O]

On 11/14/2021 at 12:58 PM, Solar Legion said:

I'll be incredibly blunt here: No corporation/company owned program is a - let alone THE - metaverse. My personal bar for that? Absolutely decentralized, limitless and uses Full Dive VR.

Anything less is not a/The Metaverse - it's people making wishes/pretending such.

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?

[Ars Technica Article on the Metaverse - SL Mentioned in the Title :O]

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.

[Zuckerberg Comes for the Metaverse]

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.

[Zuckerberg Comes for the Metaverse]

4 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

I don't think Carmack did....he was the 2nd speaker @ the Oculus Connect conference and seems quite enthused with the way things are moving along. It was a long segment and I didn't listen to all of it, but I'll probably go back to catch it all.

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."

 

[Zuckerberg Comes for the Metaverse]

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I guess you don't watch the news.

This last week Facebook rolled out something called Horizons (I guess LL isn't the only company that uses a term like that, as LL did for an adult Linden Home area).

All of tech Twitter, all the Tech media, all the TV networks are talking about nothing but this.

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.

[Zuckerberg Comes for the Metaverse]

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.

[Zuckerberg Comes for the Metaverse]

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

[Zuckerberg Comes for the Metaverse]

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

[Zuckerberg Comes for the Metaverse]

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. 

[Zuckerberg Comes for the Metaverse]

24 minutes ago, Quistess Alpha said:

I have to imagine there's a smart way to do it, for example having a Li-heavy CSG operation for building purposes and a 'convert to mesh' option that would cost some L$ and reduce the Li (along with the actual computational complexity) by a significant amount.

ETA: how you would go about texturing something made with CSG, (I.E. how the 'faces' might be auto-generated) is an interesting problem, but I'm sure it'd be surmountable. Perhaps LL could allow >8 faces per object?

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.

[New Gacha Policy Discussion]

money() and llFrand don't belong in the same script.

Linden could very easily forbid this by policy, I think.

[New Gacha Policy Discussion]

Just now, Claireschen Hesten said:

Gachas are a 'game' of chance to go in a skill game region there would have to be an element of skill to obtain an item from the gacha. Maybe if it was allowed it could be possible to have a skill game machine that gives out a gacha prize rather than cash I don't know

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.

[New Gacha Policy Discussion]

Just now, LittleMe Jewell said:

Nobody is forcing anyone to buy anything.  The consumer always has the choice to buy or not.  They might stand there for hours waiting for someone else to buy the displayed item, just so they can then see what the next random item is. Or they may decide to buy the item in order to force it to the next item.  Totally their choice, but nothing random about the "purchase" part of it.

 

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.

[New Gacha Policy Discussion]

@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!

[New Gacha Policy Discussion]

Just now, ArikTheRed said:

I suppose my question is, will the State of California be penalizing/regulating gumball machines and the like with toys in them?  That is essentially what a gacha is.

If California is NOT changing how those "RL" machines are managed/regulated... then I don't understand where gachas would be any different.

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?

[New Gacha Policy Discussion]

2 minutes ago, Faly Breen said:

wait what? for real? they are?

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.

[New Gacha Policy Discussion]

50 minutes ago, Faly Breen said:

legit question: are "Kinder surprise eggs" (you know this little candy eggs for children) are a thing at your place? If not, oh boi.

Legit answer: They are banned in the US.

[New Gacha Policy Discussion]

17 minutes ago, Mistary Sandalwood said:

Would people who want to run GACHA machines be allowed to get a gambling 'license' like the sims that run the gaming sims?

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.

[Zuckerberg Comes for the Metaverse]

Quote

CSG modelling

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)

[New Gacha Policy Discussion]

7 minutes ago, Da5id Weatherwax said:

It either is, or is becoming, the legal lens through which such things are viewed almost everywhere.

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.

[New Gacha Policy Discussion]

2 minutes ago, Crim Mip said:

They are in some states believe it or not.

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

[Zuckerberg Comes for the Metaverse]

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

There's a difference between participating in a variety of virtual worlds -- I've done that myself now and then -- and making your obsession and your main game, in fact, endless criticism of the world of SL for not being Roblox. I'm all for criticism of SL. Criticizing it for not being Roblox seems patently absurd to me, like criticizing it for not being Facebook. 

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.

[New Gacha Policy Discussion]

Just now, Faly Breen said:

But what i dont like is that people which create "bubblegum" gachas were the chances are literally equal are also now putted on the black list.

 

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?