Teen Grid Closing – Philip Linden Red Eyed
by Pixeleen Mistral on 14/08/10 at 8:50 pm
Babysitting – a great new game for adult players !!!
Philip Linden announced the end of the Teen Grid in his keynote address at the Second Life Community Conference Saturday – a surprise move that left both teen and main grid players deeply concerned at the potential impact on Second Life culture.
Philip Linden reminds SLCC that he took the red eye flight to Boston
According to the Linden Lab CEO, teen grid players 16 and over will be moved to the main grid in short order, and those under 16 will have their accounts terminated – an action that implies they will lose access to whatever assets they had in-world.
Philip was not getting any LoveMachine action from at least one attendee at the SLCC event in Boston.
During the Q&A session (at about 1:03 into the video), a clearly distraught audience member points out that the closure of the Teen Grid will wreak more than just Havok 4 on five years of work developing pedagogy around the Second Life for the younger players – and that once burned, educators will never return.
With the Lab clearly deep into a cost cutting phase, Philip was unable to offer more than vague promises that someday Second Life might be suitable for an under 16 audience – apparently the teen grid was simply not profitable enough to keep running. As the implication of the Teen Grid closing and the layoffs of 30% of the Lab staff continue to sink in, look for the educational community to accelerate moves to OpenSim and other platforms not under the control of Linden Lab.
In-world at the SLCC sims Saturday afternoon, reaction to the expected influx of teens was negative.
Enchtris Byrd said it best, “the thoughts of a friendship growing into a a romantic partnership with any one of them because they portrayed themselves to be adult is frightening .. to find out too late this partner is a 16 year old. I think it is a great mistake to bring teens into a unpredictable adult fantasy world. we deal with enough adult children now and just knowing these teens can be involved in other things with adults here that would probably get us all arrested in real life if we indulged it.. just doesn’t make sense at all”
Falrone Pettirosso has friends on the teen grid, and said Skype chat was busy as TG players tried to make sense of the situation – and scurried to created main grid alt accounts. Confusion and cynicism in the Teen Grid community is clearly seen the chatlogs Mr. Pettirosso relayed to the Herald:
Sariel Thibodeaux: Yeah… and so where do we go?
Sariel Thibodeaux: Those of us who aren’t 16+
Abdul Lenroy: you leave
Gunsmith Fhang: You get cut off, the servers get shut down and converted for the MG
Gunsmith Fhang: Then, if you are still interested when you are old enough, you rejoin
Gillian Karu: they wouldnt delete our accounts…
Gunsmith Fhang: They can, they will and they won’t even blink an eye
But will the teens survive and prosper on the main grid? According to a Pettirosso, The Lexington Army faction on the teen grid has around 800 – 1000 members and has survived despite an uncontrolled round of group notice wars in which players spam the entire group – since everyone had the ability to post group notices. The notice war meta-game apparently went on until Magenta Linden eventually cut off everyone’s ability to send notices. Perhaps the cost in Lab staff time policing the teen grid is the real driver behind the teen grid termination – but won’t the problematic behaviour follow the players to the main grid and create more player conflict?
In related news, Philip Linden also made a number of promises of improvements to the Second Life experience including group chat, and region crossings. Longtime residents have heard these sorts of promises for at least the last 5 years and greeted them with skepticism.
Nelson Jenkins
Aug 21st, 2010
@ Karen Palen “Sure the OpenSim metaworlds don’t have many users on each one, but they are REAL people and there are hundreds of metaworlds!”
Thousands of people in hundreds of metaworlds. Fragmentation is a bitch, ain’t it?
Karen Palen
Aug 21st, 2010
@Nelson The effect of fragmentation all depends on your business model. I have yet to sell ANYTHING to a bot however.
Oh yes, the “region count” does show one thing – there is at least ONE real live person who is willing to spend the time and effort to “screw around”.
Has anyone counted the number of SL regions that have stood empty for months or years? Seems to me that most SL regions are idle almost all the time – except for bots of course.
Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia
Aug 21st, 2010
@Nelson:
I don’t really pay attention to land growth that much, either. The growth I notice more is that there are new users constantly in OS, all the time, and they aren’t noobs either. Most of them are SL graduates.
I don’t know if it’s a terrible concept to let anybody host a region if they want, I just said you can’t expect the same kind of performance from a grid run off of home PCs as you can expect off of a managed grid. They both have their benefits and drawbacks. It’s apples and oranges.
I have absolutely no problems doing very complex things with lists in OS. Right now I’m working on a machinima grade poseball rezzer that rezzes unlimited poseballs that can be set to move as they animate, is fully configurable and never requires the user to type up a notecard. I use a LOT of list functions in this code, and I’m coding it all in OS. I think at one point or another I’ve used just about every list function there is in this project, and they are solid. When I release it open source you’ll see what I mean.
Check out the LSL functions status page. You’ll see that everything useful is implemented. [link removed because of the spam filter]
Concurrancy: Yeah, that’s a problem, sometimes. You need to log in when the grid is busy if you want to meet people. 3 of the 8 avatars on that list are bots. One is a model in the mall and they have a couple of NPC bots in the Gor regions. They don’t game traffic, because search does not run on traffic there, but they do have search. You can even create bots with scripts in OS, using osNpcCreate, but it makes no sense to do that because traffic numbers do not matter. Performance matters. I looked at the list of people online right now, and I know all of them. Only 3 are bots. The rest are actual people.
Try RPW out in the evenings, between around 9 PM and midnight EST. Most of the regulars are American, but there are quite a few brits and one of the grid owners is Turkish.
As far as needing technical expertise goes, I’ll tell you everything you need to run a local opensim right here:
-Download it: http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Download
-Extract it to your root directory (C:\)
-Go to the bin directory and run opensim.exe
-Give it a region name, an estate name, your avatar’s name and password and hit return to accept default values for everything else.
-In your client, use the grid manager to set the loginuri to 127.0.0.1:9000
-If you don’t have a grid manager in your client and you are on windows go to the properties of your client and in the target field, after the last quote type a space and then -loginuri http://127.0.0.1:9000
-Log in with the account you created above.
That’s it! No installer, nothing overly complex or time consuming. It’s faster than creating an alt account in SL.
If you are a business owner I don’t see a reason why you would pass up free vendor space in a high growth sector. Seriously, they are giving it away for free on RPW. Even if you don’t like OS, why would you pass that up? Aside from it being free, you get a chance to strengthen your brand. All it costs you is the opportunity cost of logging into OS instead of SL for a few minutes.
Nelson Jenkins
Aug 21st, 2010
@ Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia
“If you are a business owner I don’t see a reason why you would pass up free vendor space in a high growth sector. Seriously, they are giving it away for free on RPW. Even if you don’t like OS, why would you pass that up? Aside from it being free, you get a chance to strengthen your brand. All it costs you is the opportunity cost of logging into OS instead of SL for a few minutes.”
I did actually try this once. It turned out to be a total waste of time. Not only did I have to re-attach, re-rotate, and re-compile pretty much everything, but most of the products I sell are third-party add-ons so the list of products I could actually sell was so small that I decided not to even bother maintaining operations on that grid. Similarly, the grid didn’t have any in-world currency, so I was totally at a loss when it came to purchases. I certainly wasn’t going to log into OS and negotiate a deal every time someone wanted to buy something, then convert it from its selling L$ value to a US$ value, then screwing about with PayPal.
Now, I do have to admit, I thought over the PayPal concept and I really, really like it. The only problem is obviously SL hasn’t integrated direct-through-PayPal US$ transfers (and they never will, obviously) and the profits from doing operations in a PayPal-enabled grid would be mostly negligible. But think, not having to wait a whole week and undergoing a 20% fee just to get your money…
Orion
Aug 21st, 2010
@Nelson – “but most of the products I sell are third-party add-ons so the list of products I could actually sell was so small that I decided not to even bother maintaining operations on that grid.”
So you’re the lazy biab turnkey kind of business man ey? Too lazy to make your own products from scratch, so you rely on resell kits and full perm parts? You’re a perfect match for Linden’s little pyramid scheme.
Do yourself and the rest of us a favour. Stay in SL with the rest of the amateurs and prim peddlers. Let us pros and game developers work in peace.
Nelson Jenkins
Aug 21st, 2010
@ Orion
No.
“… most of the products I sell are third-party add-ons”, not “… most of the products I sell are shitty freebies and businesses-in-a-box”.
Let me spell it out for you. My latest product, for example, is an HUD system for police cars (I don’t make the cars themselves) that controls the factory-installed lighting, custom third-party lighting attachments (which I do make), and includes a built-from-scratch police siren system complete with an App-Store-like directory that lets you purchase new siren tones without visiting my actual store. It took me about 3 months to script, test, and edit the sounds, along with fashioning an agreement with the grid’s #1 police car manufacturer to use their trademarks and communication protocols. I stayed up way too late almost every night tweaking the sound driver for the best reverb mix I could get. I spent countless hours beta-testing and tweaking the payment system to ensure it was as secure as possible. I even published the protocol I used for third-party lighting attachments so other people can develop for it. I worked like hell on it. It’s entirely my work, built from scratch, save for the communications protocol used for controlling the built-in car equipment. However, if you don’t have the car itself, you have absolutely no use for the HUD, and since they don’t sell the cars anywhere outside the SL main grid, that’s where I sell my HUD.
So fuck off, and go back to elementary school, because you clearly need a refresher on reading.
Orion
Aug 21st, 2010
Yeah… Typical SLFD macho rent-a-cop wannabe. You can’t make it in the real world as a cop or a fire fighter so you play with your little toy cars and fire trucks out in the interwebz.
Fuck you and your self important SL proprietary crap. Just another useless amateur prim paddler. Leave the real work to the game developers, meanwhile have fun lagging out Linden’s shit little grid with all your useless scripts.
Nelson Jenkins
Aug 21st, 2010
@ Orion
I’m a deputy sheriff, so your argument is invalid.
Karen Palen
Aug 21st, 2010
Play nice children
Orion
Aug 21st, 2010
@Nelson – And I’m a fairy wearing a purple tutu. So your argument is just as invalid. So neah neah! *raspberries*
Nelson Jenkins
Aug 21st, 2010
@ Orion
Actually, I’m a snow leopard.
Rawr.
Zach
Aug 21st, 2010
@Nelson
Um, you still leach off another persons success and creations. You create something that works with something else another person made. It really is not any better then being a resell kit vender. You are still making your dime off of another persons work.
Orion
Aug 21st, 2010
<– snorts diet cola out his nose before taking a deep breath, daintily wiping up the mess from his keyboard, and then sticking his head back up his grid's ass.
Now if you'll excuse me kind sir, I have more work to do while rewriting half of the internal workings of OpenSim to suit my own purposes.
Nelson Jenkins
Aug 21st, 2010
@ Zach
No, I’m pretty sure I pay a portion of my sales to them so it all works out in the end. They get extra business, too, due to a scripting limitation that requires you to own the vehicle itself to use the HUD, so thus everyone that wants to use the HUD can no longer use other people’s vehicles. And besides, the manufacturer loves the HUD as well and has praised me personally for it, so I kinda consider it to be beneficial for everyone.
For comparison, all a BIAB user does is rez a vendor and make money selling people shitty freebies.
kaliope
Aug 22nd, 2010
Well this just bites. I feel bad for the kids, but we surely have enough problems with immature kids that sneak in.. and even immature 18 yr olds, let alone allowing 16 yr olds on.
My kid is 16 and on the teen grid, i sure as hell don’t want her invading my retreat, seeing my profile, or knowing what I do in SL.
Stickman
Aug 22nd, 2010
@kaliope
Someone’s got something to hide!
TerrorBite
Aug 26th, 2010
@Nelson
Snow leopards rock. Rawr!
I understand what sort of business you’re running, and that you do all your own work, and that the limitation is that your products rely on the work of others. I do have to point out though that on a smaller grid, there’s a lot of niches standing empty. Unlike SL where you have an awesome idea only to find out someone else is already selling it, you have a smaller grid whose patrons are lacking some of the scripted systems that many SL users take for granted. So the only limitation is time to create and work on such things.
Of course, when it comes to selling said items, that depends entirely on what sort of economy (if any) that grid has set up. So all in all, it may still not be viable for you.
Personally I enjoy working for free, creating things to help others. I believe that the recognition you get from doing such work is worth it.
@Orion
I’m a lion. Get in the car.
Karen Palen
Aug 26th, 2010
As a Linux enthusiast I too like contributing things without payment in cash, but I also recognize that someone has to pay the electric bill …
It is not yet a viable option, but to me the ideal will be to have your store on your own private sim that is linked to the “metauniverse” via a Hypergrid system.
The new OS 0.7/HG 1.5 puts in place most of the essentials of that sort of commerce although there is still a huge amount of testing and debugging to do.
Give if a few months though.
I have a working hypergrid demo of a mars exploration simulation which is working and exchanging (free so far) objects with visitors. It really is that close.
The really nice thing about this model is that it is very scalable. It is on my “experimental” machine now, will get moved to my 5YO “firewall” machine ASAP, and then to a commercial server if I ever start to get more than 2-3 people visiting at once.
There are VPS offerings that scale up as large as you want from there!
BTW In tests the new OS V0.7 has had 1000 avatars on a single sim with quite ordinary hardware (Intel Core 2 duo).
Yep
Aug 26th, 2010
“My kid is 16 and on the teen grid, i sure as hell don’t want her invading my retreat, seeing my profile, or knowing what I do in SL.”
That’s an easy one, don’t do things that you would be ashamed of her seeing.
Slayer
Aug 26th, 2010
@kaliope
LMAO, this makes me think of a parent scolding their child for smoking while smoking a cigarette themselves.
Gundel Gaukelei
Aug 26th, 2010
There I picture some fake BDSM club, shitloads of latex, high heels, straps, gas masks ..
*schhhhhh* “I’m your father”
LOL
kaliope
Aug 27th, 2010
Well, I also go to night clubs and don’t take her there.
I am an adult, and in this virtual world where we can freely do things we wouldn’t do in RL… well, I do what i want.
We also know that SL has cracked down, sorta, on child play. But SL was intended for ADULTS… for 18+ Yes, many sneak in, but now we just gonna open the doors to them?
My daughter will NOT be playing on SL… not until she’s 18.
Nelson Jenkins
Aug 27th, 2010
@ kaliope
That’s what parenting is for.
Nobody Really
Aug 27th, 2010
I’ve never seen Teen Grid, never had a real desire to actually. But from what I have been told, it’s basically without ‘adult supervision’. I also heard that the under 18′s that come over will be restricted to PG (or General) regions. Those regions would be frequented (I would think) by more… ‘parental’ types of people. If all this is accurate, how long are the kids gonna want to hang out there?
Another thing I will be interested to see… How many of the stores that are now PG/General content rated will stay that way after a bunch of kids start hanging out there, begging $L and so on? Kids, in general, do not have the disposable income that adults do. Who would you rather have in your store? Make it Moderate rated and the problem is solved.
I came here from IMVU, so I have seen what an all-ages environment becomes.
I guess they aren’t going to be able to let the under 18 crowd go Premium. After all, doesn’t all the advertising say that becoming Premium gives instant access to Adult content?
I suspect the grid will look a lot smaller than the kids think it is when they get here. Unless they just go off and create alts on the main grid as so many have done.
(By the way, I have nothing against ‘parental’ type people – in fact, I was one for a good many years. But I’ve done my time, the kids are married off now, and I have no desire to raise someone else’s kids.)
Nelson Jenkins
Aug 27th, 2010
@ Nobody Really
That’s a good point. All I had to do was add a form of payment to verify. All those mommies and their credit cards don’t exactly know what they’re getting their kid into.
Nobody Really
Aug 27th, 2010
They’re opening a can of worms, that’s for sure.
It may get even easier for the kids too – If it hasn’t already done so, isn’t the new Marketplace supposed to allow credit card & Paypal payments?
C’mon mom, it’s only $1.35…. And with that, they become verified.
Danziel Lane
Aug 27th, 2010
@Nobody Really
“I’ve never seen Teen Grid, never had a real desire to actually. But from what I have been told, it’s basically without ‘adult supervision’. ”
Maybe that is, cause the adults are forced to stay in the sims they pay for? Educators are not free to move in the TG, but had wo wait for their teen customers on their sim.
“I also heard that the under 18’s that come over will be restricted to PG (or General) regions. Those regions would be frequented (I would think) by more… ‘parental’ types of people.”
Parental types of people: It’s a pity that in RL if you want to coach a youth soccer team or become a teacher you are looked at wit big scary eyes and often declared to be a monster.
I am glad, that some adults still feel a need to support cancer kids, kids of drug consuming parents, kinds interested in sports, and kids that have a desire to learn, even if it’s history or maths.
So, ok, these type of people would be able to offer their counselling, coaching and teaching in PG sims, why not?
Those other type of ‘parental people’ … well, they are all over the interent.
I personally am very glad that I do NOT think of sex, when I see a kid.
“If all this is accurate, how long are the kids gonna want to hang out there?”
Not very long, if they are of the type you think of. But kids sometimes spend a lot of time on their computers, learning to script and build, and maybe they will be able to build a bit better than some adults, who have difficulties to remember to calculate the angle of a roof top exactly.
“Another thing I will be interested to see… How many of the stores that are now PG/General content rated will stay that way after a bunch of kids start hanging out there, begging $L and so on?”
Begging is done very often by adults too. Some ask me for some Lindens and tell me they don’t want to give their CC number to LL. Crazy, isn’t it?
“Kids, in general, do not have the disposable income that adults do. Who would you rather have in your store?”
Hehe, as I also sell scripting tutorials, I would like to see them.
But really, you don’t need disposable income to be in SL, I guess, if kids learn to script and build, they might get an income too.
“Make it Moderate rated and the problem is solved.”
See? It’s so easy to get rid of them, if you don’t want to see them.
“I came here from IMVU, so I have seen what an all-ages environment becomes.”
Are you sure to know the real age of all the others?
Remember: some (or one) of the Emerald developers started underage in SL.
“I suspect the grid will look a lot smaller than the kids think it is when they get here. Unless they just go off and create alts on the main grid as so many have done.”
If we look at the numbers told about the TG, most of the teens of our planet are on the main grid already.
“(By the way, I have nothing against ‘parental’ type people – in fact, I was one for a good many years. But I’ve done my time, the kids are married off now, and I have no desire to raise someone else’s kids.)”
Well, if you don’t call it desire … and if you don’t call it raise … how about teaching them history or maths they need for scripting or building or offer some support for cancer kids or drug kids?
Some kids have no chance to learn from other kids nor from their parents, some of our kids really are in need to have other adults for counselling, coaching, teaching.
And if we don’t see SL as a game, but more as a part of the internet future, the teens will come into the virtual worlds … if not in 2011, maybe one or two years later.
Karen Palen
Aug 27th, 2010
I gave up on the SL drama-fest 2 years ago – Sl may or may not be a “game”, but it is NOT the future of the “metaverse” any more than FIDONET or even ARPANET was the future of what we now cal the “Internet”.
FWIW the “internet” originally was a term used to describe “invisible gateways” between the hundreds of proprietary nets of the 1980′s – does that sound familiar?
Nelson Jenkins
Aug 27th, 2010
@ Karen Palen
If you’re not involved in SL, what are you doing posting on a website based off of it – much less making your opinion known on a Second Life that has drastically changed in the past 2 years?
Karen Palen
Aug 27th, 2010
Ask my shrink LOL
Sl is t e “800lb gorilla” in metaworlds, like it or not you need to keep up with the latest dramas I just choose to minimize my involvement.
Danziel Lane
Aug 27th, 2010
Well…ok … please give my question to your shrink:
How many posts a day on the Herald comments does he call “minimized involvement”?
Orion
Aug 27th, 2010
@Nelson – “If you’re not involved in SL, what are you doing posting on a website based off of it”
The Herald isn’t just for Second Life. A while back they changed names back to The Alphaville Herald and stated they were going to start covering other worlds: http://alphavilleherald.com/2009/02/alphaville-herald-acquires-second-life-herald.html
@Danziel: “Parental types of people: It’s a pity that in RL if you want to coach a youth soccer team or become a teacher you are looked at wit big scary eyes and often declared to be a monster. ”
Well gee, maybe if the kids today weren’t such freaking monsters themselves? The main reason I didn’t follow in my parent’s footsteps and become a high school teacher was simple. If I do one thing wrong and some kid doesn’t get his way? He or she will turn around and claim that I tried to molest them, that I exposed myself in front of them, or some other god awful fabrication designed to ruin my life.
Sorry, but I’m not willing to go walking around in public disgrace with the scarlet letter “P” tattooed on my forehead for the rest of my life just because some amoral brat didn’t like his or her grade. The same goes for SL, OpenSim, or any other game. If its not limited to adults only, hence its likely overrun by amoral brats with a chip on their shoulder, I ain’t goin there!
Imagine this:
Brat Monster: Hey, can I have $200L to buy a gun?
You: Sorry, no. Kids shouldn’t have guns and I don’t give out money.
Brat Monster: But please? Please please please?
You: Sorry, but no.
Brat Monster: Fine.
*10 minutes later*
- You’ve been logged off by an administrator. *BANNED*
*24 hours later*
- FBI comes knocking on your door, “So, what’s this we hear you’re trying to pick up teenagers on a video game?”
No freakin thank you!
Danziel Lane
Aug 27th, 2010
Yep, Orion, I really understand you.
And you are absolutely right with your decision.
However, ….
Yesterday I have been to a real great soccer club who ordered me to do all the team photos of the starting season.
That means: 26 teams will pose for me, aged 6 to 40, most of them youth teams.
Yes, there IS a risk that one kid from will point at me and shout: “Look, a photographer taking pics of kids. Must be a P”
However, I feel deep appreciation for the coaches and parents who give a lot of their time to coach and teach these kids and visit their matches to support them and try to give them the heck of a fun time.
So, yes, I will do those team photos.
And I will do it for very little money, not for my normal prices.
If all adults start to fear those monster kids, and stop teaching, coaching, supporting …. what future will be there for our kids?
lEONARDO
Jan 11th, 2011
OMFG SOMEBODY SHOULD DO SOMETHING HOW ARE TG ARMIES SUPPOSE TO FIGHT AGAINST MG ARMIES?????
TG HAD SOMETHING THAT WAS UNIQUE AND IT WAS ARMIES TEEN GRID WAS NOTHING BUT ARMIES, NOOBS AND PEOPLE INTO BUSSINES. DOLLAMAN LEFT TG DESTROYED BY BUYING OVER 200,000 S.Q.M AND THEN THE ENTIRE LAND SET TO ABANDON, SERIOSULY? THE BIGGEST LAND THAT YOU CAN BUY IN TG IS 4,000 S.Q.M.
Nelson Jenkins
Jan 11th, 2011
@ lEONARDO
I’m not really sure how I should respond to your comment.
Yep
Jan 12th, 2011
Go getem Tiger
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