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
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.

87 Responses to “Teen Grid Closing – Philip Linden Red Eyed”

  1. II Singh

    Aug 15th, 2010

    This is almost a non-news item. Many of us openly predicted this would happen when Zindra opened up despite LL insistent claims it wouldn’t. Big surprise… it happened… LL lied again and the residents are going to pay the price. The whole if you aren’t over 16 we are going to kill your account isn’t much of a surprise either. LL once again shows the “joy” of “cloud computing”. Spend all the money you want what is yours isn’t yours and we can take it from you at any time. One of the reasons I stopped spending ANY money inworld about 3 years ago.
    This is all rather comical, the death dance of SL and LL. I hope to be around to record the final death rattle of dying entity and urinate on the ashes.So how many of you still have enthusiasm for the return of Phillip? More empty promises, prominent developers axed swathes of paying residents axed and one of the few reason this user has hung around this long in SL put into zombie status (Meshes).
    Yeah… fuck you and your company Phil.
    I can’t wait to hear your screams as you burn in hell.

  2. Orion

    Aug 15th, 2010

    Told ya so! And there it begins… Second Life will soon become a hunting ground for pedos, then eventually suffer the same fate as There.com.

  3. Karen Palen

    Aug 15th, 2010

    I doubt if Second Life will die the horrible death they deserve, rather I see a ghostly existence similar to Compuserve, FIDONet, and AOL.

    At one time they all dominated what became the “Internet community” and each of them blew their chance to stay mainstream.

    They are all still around, but who cares?

  4. Glenn Beck

    Aug 15th, 2010

    First they came after the age players, I said nothing because I didn’t age play. Then they came for the gamblers, but i said nothing because I don’t gamble. Then they came for the Woodweenies, I said nothing because I wasn’t a troll. Then they came for the teen grid, I said nothing because I hate Justin Beiber.

    Then they came after us and there was no-one left to speak for me.

    Who you who else wanted to wipe out people?

    …Hitler.

  5. Nelson Jenkins

    Aug 15th, 2010

    @ Glenn Beck

    “I said nothing because I wasn’t a troll.”

    … right.

  6. Obvious Lurker

    Aug 15th, 2010

    In all honesty, this isn’t going to be as bad and some people are crying. First off, I don’t know if many people have had the pleasure of being in a welcome area sim. But there are countless minors under 16, who venture there. No one ever says anything, except trolls, who troll them off the sim, or grid all together. Yes it’s enough experience from a troll to turn a kid away from Second Life.

    And when Linens were present, they were swiftly booted off the grid at the blink of an eye.

    See the kids have been on the Main Grid for a long time. It’s nothing new. Most don’t go any where near the adult sims, unless they feel like popping popguns at poseballers for giggles.

    And with that said, the pedos have been on the main grid as well. So all this talk about the main grid becoming a hunting ground for pedophiles, are obviously blind, since it’s been that way for a long time already.

    What to expect? Childish griefing. 9 yr olds with their mic volume set to 11, screaming obscenities. 4chan recruiting these kids as exposable soldiers. in their silly war for LULZ.. You know, basically shit kids do on line anyways, regardless of what website, game, medium, they are connected to.

    So don’t get your virtual panties, caught up your furry ass. Second Life isn’t going to get any better anyways. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.

  7. corona anatine

    Aug 15th, 2010

    soon become a hunting ground for pedos,

    how?

    the players joining will be over 16 – which is the legal age for sex

    LL would be better off transferring all existing teen accounts to the main grid – after all all the mature and ‘adult sims require age verif now – which effectively has made the main grid teen suitable anyway

  8. Nelson Jenkins

    Aug 15th, 2010

    @ corona anatine

    No shit it’ll be a pedo hunting ground (it already is on the TG).

    I think the legality of it is disputed, though. There isn’t a real statutory rape law on the internet, IIRC, but in California (where the servers are hosted) 18 is the AoC.

  9. At0m0 Beerbaum

    Aug 15th, 2010

    Like I said before.

    Next up, regions will be shutting down on the main grid that have low traffic, mainland and private (I wouldnt put this past Linden labs, to impose a ridiculous requirement to have a certain level of traffic on top of paying monthly, or otherwise your shit will be taken from you. It makes sense because they will eventually want to make their numbers look better, and would probably try to do this to get people to try to recruit more players back into SL)

  10. Little Lost Linden

    Aug 15th, 2010

    I’ve seen some articles stating that for the teens under 16, their accounts would be only suspended until they turn 16.

    Not sure if this is true or not though:

    http://danielvoyagerblog.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/recap-of-philip-linden-keynotes-address-at-slcc-2010/

    Part way down there is mention that Terrence Linden is not going to be deleting any TG accounts.

  11. Nelson Jenkins

    Aug 15th, 2010

    @ Little Lost Linden

    That makes a lot more sense. Put the account holder’s 16th birthday as the suspension end date, and tada, you just evaded countless riots and lawsuits.

  12. Little Lost Linden

    Aug 15th, 2010

    “@ Little Lost Linden

    That makes a lot more sense. Put the account holder’s 16th birthday as the suspension end date, and tada, you just evaded countless riots and lawsuits.”

    Yeah, it’s a sort of cryogenetic limbo sleep for the younger TG people. Hopefully that is what ends up happening in the long run. For some (almost 16 people), the slumber would be rather short.

    Makes more sense than total anihilation.

  13. Alyx Stoklitsky

    Aug 15th, 2010

    The teen grid was a stupid idea anyway. This was inevitable sooner or later.

  14. Father Jones

    Aug 15th, 2010

    Well done Linden Lab, you just made it worse for yourself. Bringing in teens into that main grid where you allow illegal gambling on every sim? You crooks really don’t care do you? Your attempt to prevent bankruptcy will fail. But you will not care either when you declare billions of linden dollars worth nothing anymore to pay yourself out a nice dividend before you close the door and leave every single SL member with nothing to exchange? You already have it written in your TOS that you can do this with every account on your grid. Once a crook, always a crook.

  15. Cinco Pizzicato

    Aug 16th, 2010

    If this means that new main grid logins for 16-and-up people will be allowed, then this is abysmally bad news. But if it means that only TG users 16 or up will be moved to the main grid, as a temporary means for keeping those users active, then I guess it’s a reasonable stopgap.

  16. Pendzez Gearz

    Aug 16th, 2010

    It would be a problem for those newer TG players, and for the MG player. All we can hope for, is that we still must be 18+ to be age verified.

  17. Karen Palen

    Aug 16th, 2010

    You must remember that bankruptcy means “desperation” in ever sense of the word!

    I have had the dubious privilege of being a “party” to bankruptcy as a creditor 8 times for a total of US$2.5Million in the last couple of years. The “bankrupts” are truly desperate and will do all kinds of things to avoid their fate (medieval burning at the stake comes to mind).

    Linden Lab are no different. At best they will become another AOL, Compuserve or FIDOnet.

    More likely they will become another Fairchild Semiconductor (Google the reference) totally impotent but still having some sort of value as a revenge for past injustices.

  18. Jonathan

    Aug 16th, 2010

    I work for a youth cancer charity and we have just started a new project which would be using the Teen Grid.
    The idea of a secure virtual island for 13 – 17 year old cancer patients, to explore and chat other others going through a similar thing to them was something a lot of people where looking forward to, as young people with cancer can often feel isolated.
    Oh well, guess we will have to re think this, thanks Linden Labs.

  19. JustMe

    Aug 16th, 2010

    corona said … the players joining will be over 16 – which is the legal age for sex

    Actually, the legal age varies all around the world. This action might bring back the Australian legal age issue which almost cause Australia to remove all access to SL for Aussies.

  20. Little Lost Linden

    Aug 17th, 2010

    “Linden Lab are no different. At best they will become another AOL, Compuserve or FIDOnet.”

    I miss FIDOnet, reminds me of the good old BBS days.

    If anyone is feeling nostalgic, check out BBS Documentary. It’s a DVD collection of video interviews and other items involving Sysops\BBS’s from back in the day. Cool and funny stuff, and the FIDONet portion is very good. It really brings back the memories of what was an amazing time in technology.

    Anyone here remember the USR Sysop deals from way back? I remember having to fork over $500 for a single modem and that was if you had your BBS logs to prove you ran a BBS (or someone elses BBS logs if you were not on the up and up). :)

    Also, anyone here ever own an Apple Cat II? Best modem ever made. :)

    http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/

    You know who else liked BBS’s?

    …Hitler.

  21. Gustav Saanz

    Aug 17th, 2010

    How shutting down the TG will change the SL dynamics we can’t say yet. We can see the losers will be those who invested in SL for learning, creative and support activities, like Jonathan or all the schools who use SL as an educational space. That is quite a large community.

    But individual players? They are already here. Some communities on the main grid, like the combat community to name one, have quite a high ratio of underage players. Some of them, according to their own stories, started when they were 15 or so. Some of them are routinely reported to LL for being underage, then they fabricate some age verification proof and log on again.
    There is nothing that will stop kids who are under 16 to access the main grid, if they want to.

  22. jonathan

    Aug 17th, 2010

    Luckily we have not purchased the land yet and begun building, but it dsoes look like we will now have to do it on the main grid and missout on the 13-15 year olds.
    Having a focus group at a hospital later today, so it will be good to hear what the young people have to say about this age group.

    Its the projects that are already up and running and thoes which do work with this younger age, 13-15, that I feel sorry for.

    Is there anyone else out there who will be moving what they are doing on the teen grid over to the main grid?

  23. Wolf Baginski

    Aug 17th, 2010

    Jonathan, it might not be the cheapest option, but in your position I’d look at running an OpenSim server, giving your organisation the full control of access which, running in SL, would otherwise be in the ever-so-reliable hands of Linden Lab.

    If you do that, let people in SL know. I wouldn’t be surprised if content creators would let you have stuff for such a purpose, in such a limited environment, for free.

    Yes, there’s a downside to this. There’s no somewhere else, for when you want to go and have fun with people who don’t know about your problems. (My problem wasn’t cancer, but that’s a feeling I know.)

  24. Persephone Bolero

    Aug 17th, 2010

    The biggest question I have concerning this move is whether or not my “ur hot wanna fuk” IM frequency will decrease. And how concerned should I be about the future of America if it actually increases?

  25. II Singh

    Aug 17th, 2010

    This will be the final nail in SLs coffin. Mark my words…. all it will take is a few pedophile scandals and a lawsuit or more likely a class-action lawsuit against the labs by parents of children who were assaulted virtually or by some connection to real life via SL. Phil you finally screwed yourself over huge pal. You are going down and HARD. Say goodbye to your company.

  26. hobo kelly

    Aug 17th, 2010

    Wellsum, Im a havin’ ta move all my stuff in real life from this here house that I been livin in fer almost 22 years to a new place about 6 of them thar blocks away, nice place, and man I sure gots a lot of stuff accumulated and this is way morz works than I dun in a while but In a couple o weeks Ill be back all hooked up again and i recken ill have to set to chasin them thar teeny boppin zit pies offin my fake land. puttin them thar teeny bopper in the fake world sur changes things. bye fer a while

  27. Karen Palen

    Aug 17th, 2010

    “Jonathan, it might not be the cheapest option, but in your position I’d look at running an OpenSim server, giving your organisation the full control of access which, running in SL, would otherwise be in the ever-so-reliable hands of Linden Lab.”

    Take a look at this: http://www.metaverseink.com/blog/?p=37

    Diva has put together a very nice standalone package for the new OpenSim V0.7. I just installed it and it works exactly as she claims!

    In essence there are 5 steps (4 for WIndows) to do the entire installation. It comes complete with the new Hypergrid 1.5 and configured with four regions as a “mega-region” (i.e. no sim crossing hassles).

    Just about right for a small to medium sized set up!

    SecondLife who?

  28. Karen Palen

    Aug 17th, 2010

    Just a correction before I get a flood of emails: there are 5 steps (6 for *ix) to set things up!

  29. SlShapeshifter

    Aug 18th, 2010

    Father Jones: I feel your pain. That’s why I stick exclusively to Freeplay, so I don’t lose anything when the Gates of Hell open up on my Zyngo session.

  30. jonathan

    Aug 18th, 2010

    Wolf and Karen, I have had a look into OpenSim, although not the new version and not with wifi.

    If we had a bigger team working on this project I would seriously think about this option. The problem is there is only one person developing this world, me. See, we are a small charity but with HUGE ideas :)

    The main problem I see is that my expertise is in 3D modeling and animation, nut running a server for the virtual world. Also, one of the reasons SL was picked was for the huge market place. Some objects will be bought, e.g. a park bench is a park bench, they are all prety much the same, so why spend time and money designing one when one can be bought quicker and cheaper.

    I can still see us going with a privare region on the main grid.

  31. Karen Palen

    Aug 18th, 2010

    There are full support options for OpenSim as well which are considerably cheaper than an SL private region!

    For one list of providers take a look at: http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/opensim-hosting-providers/

    Do not underestimate the value of controlling your own destiny.

  32. jonathan

    Aug 18th, 2010

    Did not realise how many options there where for OpenSim.

    There is still a problem about a market place though. The idea of being able to easily buy certain objects in SL is a huge incentive for it.

  33. Karen Palen

    Aug 18th, 2010

    While it is not as centralized as SL my numbers are showing that there is at least as large a population using OpenSim today! They are just spread over several hundred meta-worlds.

    Second Life is struggling to retain people while the OpenSim grids are having problems with growing too fast.

    Personally I have given up all of my stores in Second Life in favor of supporting my stores on various OpenSim grids. I am making far more money and far more sales than I ever did on Second Life.

    I doubt if you will find buying almost anything to be a problem on any of the major grids.

  34. jonathan

    Aug 18th, 2010

    So I suppose the best way would be to buying things in world? Sigin up to various worlds, buying items in then and then exporting them into my own private world? I assume that is possiable?

  35. Anthony Miller

    Aug 18th, 2010

    Well For a Fact, Second Life will just be something Larger then it intended to be and @Orion There.com was Shut down because of Financial Issues, not Because of How things were being Handled.

  36. dodemans biedermann

    Aug 18th, 2010

    I think its a very bad idea to make it 16+ , Like orion said about the pedo’s.. they will be everywere and that makes new problems in secondlife.
    Why doenst lindenlab just make secondlife 18+ And MUST be age verified?
    Its maybe a hard rule but the kids will not come so fast anymore.

    Sorry for my bad english.
    Dodemans Biedermann
    Holland

  37. Karen Palen

    Aug 18th, 2010

    As usual with OpenSim there are about a dozen ways to go!

    My choice is to use Hypergrid from my own sim then HG to the various store and freebie distribution sites. When I buy or copy somehting then it goes directly into the inventory of my avatar on my own sim!

    In the longer term I plan to set up a Hypergrid store hosted on my own computers and sell to customers who arrive by Hypergrid. There are several things which have to happen before that becomes practical, but there are several HG sites which distribute free stuff already.

    There are also packages such as Saved Inventory (formerly Second Inventory) and various viewers with export/import capabilities. These are not simply new versions of the notorious Second Life copybot (a data piracy tool), but legitimately provide a way to export and import any full perm items from one grid to another.

    There are also repositories of OAR/IAR files which can be directly imported into you standalone grid via the system console.

    Also take a look at http://site.3rdrockgrid.com/ which has an article about “Featured Citizen: Vbinnia Radick” who went down much the same path as you are talking about with Second Life and has since moved to 3RD rock grid.

  38. Yep

    Aug 18th, 2010

    Many people have backed up their purchases that they made in SL and exported them to other grids. They uses various viewers or programs to export them.
    You bought the stuff, it is yours. so why not export them? Once they are gone from SL and onto another grid. Not to much LL can do about it can they?

  39. Orion

    Aug 18th, 2010

    @Anthony – “There.com was Shut down because of Financial Issues, not Because of How things were being Handled.”

    From the Herald Article announcing There.com’s closure:

    “According to our source, speculation among There players is that some of There.com’s financial woes may have been due to sponsors pulling out after a recently public incident with a player named Brad Mitchell who was permabanned from There.com, but ended up in the news after a cross country rendezvous with a 16 year old girl he met on the Internet.”

    http://alphavilleherald.com/2010/03/game-over-therecom-virtual-world-ends-march-9-2010.html

  40. Jayd3n

    Aug 19th, 2010

    Honestly I believe those under 16 should have their accounts put on hold just incase they want to get them back again when they are two years older. This way its easy for them to reclaim should they ever want to.

    I support the TG merge for certain reasons, but other reasons I hate.

    There are obviously going to be some problems.

  41. Debi Dastardly

    Aug 20th, 2010

    Oh great Teens in sl like we don’t have enough immature people already who claim to be adults.

  42. Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia

    Aug 20th, 2010

    Looks like the rest of the grid might follow suit soon:

    http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2010/08/16/daily72.html

    My advice: Get some reasonably priced VPS hosting and set up a hypergridded Open Sim on it. Grab a viewer from the kinggoon forums, back all your stuff up to your OpenSim and keep doing your thing. The crowd will follow you when SL is gone.

  43. Nelson Jenkins

    Aug 20th, 2010

    I can’t understand why everyone’s preaching about how great OpenSim is. It’s terrible, especially for business owners. The amount of effort needed to back up everything into an OpenSim grid, recompile all the scripts, ensure everything uploaded correctly, etc. is totally not worth the absolutely minuscule customer base on any of the hundreds if not thousands of OpenSim grids, most crippled beyond belief.

    Face it. Nobody actually gives a shit that SL is down the drain. Business is doing reasonably well in-world. You aren’t going to suddenly convince thousands of people that OpenSim grids are “better”, because, frankly, they aren’t better unless you happen to own them and can do anything you please with them.

    Again: Second Life isn’t suddenly going to get deleted anytime soon. There will always be people stupid or indifferent enough to dump money into it. If you want to go set up your fancy hobbled OpenSim grid for your school or something, that’s fine. Great, even, because it cuts out the costs, the griefers, all sorts of things. But when you start going on about how hardcore roleplayers, sex freaks, business owners, combat aficionados, and world travelers are suddenly going to migrate to OpenSim, you just make yourself sound like one of those idiots that thinks anyone gives a shit about Xenu.

  44. Karen Palen

    Aug 21st, 2010

    @Bubblesort: Actually it is even worse than Hoge says – there has not been a “buy” order on Linden Lab stock since early May and ANY price! The 21% decline is based solely on a “sell” order.

    Buying “restricted” stock in this way is no different than buying an old computer on eBay – if no one bids then the “value” is zero, not the price that the would be seller dreams about.

    I have followed the SharesPost listing for over a year now and the stock has totally collapsed. I have been tempted to put in a buy order at something like $0.00001/share, but I don’t think the stock is worth even that much.

    Apparently no other Accredited Investor is prepared to risk the $10K or so that would buy all of the stock on offer.

  45. Karen Palen

    Aug 21st, 2010

    @Nelson I am not trying to “convince” anyone of anything here, that is happening despite anything either of us is doing. See http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/ for one of many listings of very successful worlds.

    All I am doing is pointing out that there IS an alternative that works for many people, including me.

    I now run two “private” worlds and have businesses on several of the larger grids which are doing just fine thank you. Without all the juvenile drama of Second Life.

    The various “freaks” all have their own worlds now where no one else is bothered (or even welcome).

    I am not predicting the “death of Second Life”, although clearly that could happen.

    My expectation is that Second Life will go the way of Compuserve, AOL and FIDONet – still there but who cares?

  46. Nelson Jenkins

    Aug 21st, 2010

    @ Karen Palen

    “… that is happening despite anything either of us is doing.”

    I don’t see any mass exodus to the likes of OSGrid. Even though you can do such fantastic things as host your own server. And it’s one of the more popular OpenSim grids.

    Look at the numbers. You’ve got 50-80k people in SL concurrently. Right now, there’s 121 people in all of OSGrid. I’d be willing to guess that MAYBE one of those people would at all be interested in what I sell, but I’d doubt it. Hence, I don’t bother with OSGrid. And how is 121 concurrent users “successful”? There’s currently 0 people in VirtualRP, for example, and that’s listed in numerous places on the website you cited. Definitely not the prime target for business owners. Nor do I currently see anyone in Your Alternate Life. WorldSimTerra is entirely offline.

    Just a few months ago, OMC was established, allowing businesses to actually sell anything in-world. Just YESTERDAY, the new voice system was tested that works similar to SL’s. Obviously, OpenSim is way, way below standards right now. I can’t seriously believe that it would surpass the quality of Second Life itself on its own and leave Second Life to rot and die.

  47. Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia

    Aug 21st, 2010

    @Nelson:

    You seem to have some bad information.

    First of all, OS is growing and SL is shrinking. I don’t know what you are looking for before you call this an “exodus” but every grid owner I’ve spoken to has said their growth is spiking lately, and I’ve hung around these grids long enough to tell you that yes, there are new people popping up constantly:

    Here are some numbers:
    http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2010/01/opensim-grows-faster-than-second-life/

    OSG is the most unstable grid I’ve explored so far. It accepts connections from anybody who wants to run an Open Sim region, even if they are hosting it off their home computer. That is great, but the problem is bandwidth. You can’t expect the same performance off a comcast home cable connection that you get in SL or in managed grids where the sims are set up on VPSes with T3s.

    Note, that the problem is not processing power. It takes less power to run a region than it takes to run a client.

    As far as business goes: Setting up an in-world currency is a stupid idea, but it has been happening for years now. The first grid to do it was 3rd rock.

    Why is it a stupid idea? Because in world currencies lack the quality that makes currency useful, and that is portability. I don’t want to buy ten bucks of 3rd rock currency and not be able to spend it on role play worlds, or open sim grid. The answer to this problem is to use paypal, which is being used successfully on many girds now. It’s a simple, easy process. The money goes between the seller and the buyer and the grid operator doesn’t take out 3.5% of each transaction like Linden Labs does.

    If you want to see what I mean go check out Role Play Worlds. Yes, it’s the Gor grid, but it’s not all Gor anymore, and it’s the most stable grid I’ve found yet. It has paypal set up, and it works great.

    As far as content goes, most grids have as much content as SL, and most of it is free. You just have to look for it.

    Scripting is also so much better on OS. Check out the os commands in opensimulator.org, you’ll see what I mean.

    Eventually, I hope OS will be as cheap and easy to install as WordPress. It will be indexed and searched through normal search engines like Google and money will move the same way it does everywhere else on the internet, through paypal and credit card companies.

    If you don’t want to be an early adopter and help develop this new technology, I totally understand that. Personally, I’m seeking the edge, working with the best virtual worlds I can find. I want to be a part of this evolution.

  48. Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia

    Aug 21st, 2010

    Also, voice has been in OS for a while now. This is the first voice test on OS that I know of:

    http://roleplayworlds.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=262:voice-on-rpw-and-the-new-sunset-mall&catid=1:latest-news

    Many other grids have it set up through skype, which makes sense. Why re-invent the wheel?

    IDK, I never use voice anyway. Typos are bad enough, adding funny accents and broken English just makes it worse.

  49. Nelson Jenkins

    Aug 21st, 2010

    @ Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia

    People keep citing this region growth thing, and I hate it. It means absolutely nothing of importance.

    The majority of the spike in OS regions is in OSGrid because, as you claimed (and proved YOURSELF that it was a terrible concept), anyone can host a sim off of their own computer. It’s free. People can try hosting a sim without any out-of-pocket expense. There’s literally no barrier to entry (except for a little know-how on computers, but if you’re using OS, you probably know enough). Second Life, on the other hand, costs $1,000 upfront and something like $295 a month. Obviously, few people are going to buy sims in Second Life just to fuck around, like most people in OSGrid are doing.

    Let’s see how many potential customers there are in Role Play Worlds right now… wow, 8! That’s more than… well, no. That’s pretty bad. I’ll pass, thanks. Interesting how there’s 12x as many sims as there are online users. Welcome to OpenSim!

    I know that there’s so many new commands with OS. So what? If basic LSL commands like llGetSubString and llList2Whatever are buggy, most of my scripts will break. Cool, I can delete an object in-world, and I can translate alphanumeric strings into binary (1 character at a time, mind you), but I can’t use lists.

    OS is already pretty cheap and easy to install. In fact, it’s free, and last time I checked all you had to do was run the installer and start the server, much like most dedicated gaming servers today. Heck, I think it was easier than the Garry’s Mod server I’m trying to set up on a friend’s unused laptop. And Google certainly isn’t going to care about the maybe ~800 people investing serious time and money into OpenSim grids, so I hope you were talking about some kind of third-party search engine. In that case, yeah, good luck spending money on that while I receive money from SL for just fucking around.

    I’ve got a bad habit of being an early adopter (I got a G1 AND a Moto Droid, also got an HD-DVD player, a 3D TV, and… let’s see… oh, I got involved in Second Life back in early 2004). This technology is cool (as back in 2005 I started wondering if it would be possible to host your own Second Life sims) but it’s horribly unrefined right now. It’s a v0.x for a reason: it’s a beta. It’s buggy. It’s not something I would personally look into investing my time and money in because, frankly, I’ve already got a profitable operation in the original grid. If you want to work through the bugs toward a v1 release that everyone can play with, more power to you! But it’s beta software; it’s not meant to be used by the entire public yet.

    Also… “Just YESTERDAY, the new voice system was tested that works similar to SL’s.” “Also, voice has been in OS for a while now.”
    I know voice has been in OS for some time. But it’s similar to the voice chat in Source games (CS:S, TF2, etc.): it’s more of a separate “chat room” that doesn’t link to your avatar. The system I was talking about that was “similar to SL’s” links your voice to your avatar, much like Vivox. (It’s called Whisper, I think, and it’s on that website that Karen linked.)

  50. Karen Palen

    Aug 21st, 2010

    @Nelson “I don’t see any mass exodus to the likes of OSGrid. ”

    I don’t recall mentioning OSGrid at all – where did you get the idea that OSG is representative of anything beyond what they claim to be – an experimental grid to try out new ideas!

    This is not something that is particularly new either, it has been going on for at least a year.

    As for SL “concurrency”, I see more like 30K-50K and about 30% of those are “bots” of one sort or another! “Models”, “greeters” or just plain “traffic bots” are all “bots”!

    A lot of people put the percentage of bots much higher than 30% too.

    Sure the OpenSim metaworlds don’t have many users on each one, but they are REAL people and there are hundreds of metaworlds!

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