New World Notes

US Bill to Ban In-Game Loot Boxes, If Passed, Would Likely Ban SL Gachas

Pictured: Gacha items accessible to minors in Second Life's online Marketplace

If you're a developer or consumer of Second Life's incredibly popular gachas, keep your eye on this new bill introduced by US Senator Josh Hawley:

Senator Hawley’s legislation would apply new consumer protections to games played by minors including... Games with wider audiences whose developers knowingly allow minor players to engage in microtransactions. In such games, this bill would prohibit several forms of manipulative design:

Loot Boxes: Microtransactions offering randomized or partially randomized rewards to players.

The last point applying to SL gachas, especially if they're available to teens aged 16-17 playing Second Life. (And I doubt the Federal Trade Commission would entertain hairsplitting about Mature/Adult regions not accessible to teens.) This comes fairly close on the heels of the European Union also considering similar regulations.

Obviously Second Life with its relatively small user base would not be this bill's prime target:

Hello Kitty Content May Be Licensed in Second Life Simply Because Sanrio is a Licensing Behemoth (Comment of the Week)

Pictured: Hello Kitty patch promoted as "Officially Licensed" by an Etsy vendor

Clearly my Hello Kitty knowledge needs to be beefed up, because while it appears to be true that licensed Hello Kitty content is now on sale in Second Life, reader "Galatea" points out the ubiquity of licensed Hello Kitty products:

[Responding to another reader saying, "I am not seeing such a big company like that coming into Second Life for a couple of cents on each item"]:

Yes, but that's putting the relationship backwards. It probably would never occur to Sanrio to "come into SL", but Sanrio itself doesn't make much stuff -- it is, on the other hand, the world's 12th largest licensor. [And among the top ten a few years ago. - WJA]

So rather an Sanrio coming into SL, what's more likely is an SL creator reaching out to Sanrio to obtain a non-exclusive license, something Sanrio loves to give out, even to "micro" markets (they're happy to license to small Etsy creators, too, for example).  

That last point is definitely true, as there is lots of Hello Kitty content on sale from Etsy vendors that's also promoted as "officially licensed", as here, and here, and here. So barring more clarity from Sanrio or the SL brand using Hello Kitty, Astralia, what Galatea says seems the most likely relationship we're dealing with here.

However, even if that's the case, it's still news that Sanrio approved the license for Hello Kitty-branded Second Life content:

Second Life Now Has About 60,000 Premium Subscribers -- Up ~3000 from 2017 Low Point, But Still Below 2012's Peak of 70,000

Data via Grid Survey

During my interview with Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg last month, I asked him how many Premium monthly subscribers Second Life now had. (Watch below, when I respond to him saying, "The subscriber base is growing... it's been going up for awhile.") He declined to discuss specific numbers, even after I asked him if there were about 50,000 subscribers. That is a figure I thought had been recently reported by Second Life economy expert Tyche Shepherd. Turns out I misremembered that number, because as of January 2019, there are just over 60,000 Premium subscribers. 

We know that thanks to Tyche's annual SL grid survey, which counts the number of people and groups who own land on the Second Life mainland. (See her chart above, of unique mainland owners.) And as Tyche explains, mainland real estate owners are, by definition, Premium subscribers:

Second Life Adds "Linden Homes Security System" to Eject Virtual Intruders

You could even call it a "Ralph Pootawn Begone" device:

Your new Linden Homes Security System can be wall-mounted upon placement. When activated, it will scan your parcel as much as 400m above and below the control unit for unauthorized visitors...  We’ve chosen a minimum of 15 seconds and a maximum height of 400m to allow for those just passing through (either on the ground or in the air close to your home) to not be immediately booted off-course (while those who linger will get removed). Ejecting rather than send-to-home also allows first-time offenders to get the hint and continue on their travels.

More about it on the official SL community site. Pootwan, of course, is the griefer who helped saddle Second Life with the unfair "where people go if they can't get sex in real life" reputation years ago:

Linden Lab's Social Media Team Should Promote User-Made Marketplace Content (Comment of the Week)

Popular Flickr post from Strawbery Singh's pre-Linden Lab days

News that Second Life social media queen Strawberry Singh just joined Linden Lab as a social media employee has provoked some interesting reactions in the SL social media ecosystem, chief among this comment from reader "irihapeti", which at first seems seriously controversial:

A thing that Linden Lab should reconsider is to allow the LL marketing team to provide marketplace and/or in-world shop links to the stuff that appear in the pics and vids blog posts.

A big reason why [SL] content-influence blogs are popular is because of the links to where the readers can get the stuff shown. Not just in SL but in the real world as well. Some well-known person wears something and the next day the shops are full of people wanting that garment.

I'm fascinated to find out how often real world fashion in pop culture immediately influences virtual world fashion shopping. But irihapeti's core argument is this: Linden Lab should actively promote user-owned SL brands and commercial content on its massive social media channels.

This despite the fact that when Strawberry announced her move to Linden Lab, she also announced "I will no longer be sharing style credits or reviews on items in-world" to avoid favoritism. irihapeti argues this is the exact wrong direction to take:

Linden Lab Should Bring the Latest Technology to Second Life -- Even If It Means Breaking Old SL Content (Comment of the Week)

Pictured: SL animesh, circa 2017

During my GDC week interview with Linden Lab's Ebbe Altberg -- I'm running it in a few days, promise! --  we talked a fair amount about trying to improve Second Life graphics and performance without obsoleting old SL content. Reader "Seph", however, argues otherwise:

[A]t what point are the possibilities of new, better looking, better functioning, and more attractive to modern audience content worth more than stuff in our inventory from 2012 or before? The Internet is used to having old features deprecated and then taken away to usher in the new. Why is Linden Lab so religious about content from 2006 still working today when often it means falling even more behind your peers in tech? Because of this devotion to not breaking olds things, Second Life will never again be apart of GDC or other trade shows that're about evolving with and pioneering new tech in rendering and simulated experiences. Linden Lab would probably be ashamed showing off Animesh and how it works to a room full of creatives at whatever gathering you met with Ebbe at, and the reason for that shame is Linden Lab religiously embracing technical debt and backwards compatibility to stuff creators are desperately hacking around and trying to get rid of.

But won't obsoleting content cause the community to revolt? Seph's reply to that concern:

I Came to Second Life Looking for Cybersex; I Stayed for Creating & Community (Comment of the Week)

Amid all the talk about Adult content in Second Life (helpfully illustrated by Nylon Pinkney), Cindy Bolero makes an important point:

This is the reality: Many, if not most new users heard about the sex, log in, and are looking for it. It's up to greeters at venues or attractions to understand that. You can be mean and ban them, or you can tell them to open the search window and/or suggest an ideal Adult place to go.

Why be helpful to these rude characters asking for sex? Because some will eventually get over that curiosity and become customers and contributors. The SL economy needs all the help it can get.

She speaks from, ahem, personal experience:

Watch One of Second Life's Biggest Fans Explaining Second Life's Own Bad Design & Branding Decisions

"I have a full-ass real life but let me tell you when I want my down time to myself, just log in, talk to my friends, do some dumb shit, play some games, blah blah blah, make my videos, that's what I want to do in my spare time."

Lexy Nexen, who's one of Second Life's best and brashest YouTubers (so subscribe already), recently posted this fun if frustrating video, explaining -- via her casually cool real life self -- a key frustration with vlogging about SL: YouTube comments full of snark which more or less boil down to "LOL you're playing Second Life to have weird sex and you have no first life". She effectively addresses the second part by mentioning many cool and worthwhile places in people in Second Life (including the late Fran Serenade), but flounders a bit with the first part.

And that frustrates me: This is yet one more time one of Second Life's biggest fans feels she has to put herself out there explaining the world's bad reputation, in a way few other online game world users have to contend with. (VRChat, by contrast has a bad -- and at least somewhat unfair -- reputation for nasty trolls and an excess of anime girls, but that's different.) And the thing is, this was and is an addressable problem:

Linden Lab Calls Report on Second Life's Adult-Rated Sims "Misleading" -- But the Real Problem is Misleading Use of the Adult Rating

Brett Linden, a member of Linden Lab's marketing team, recently sent me a message about a much-discussed post:

[I wanted] to clarify a detail about your other recent post with the headline that suggests "25% of Second Life Mass Land Now Adult-Rated for Extreme Sex & Violence." As you mention in the article, there are indeed many Adult-rated Regions in Second Life that are not overtly sexual or violent in nature despite that rating. Respectfully, we are a bit concerned that the headline wording might mislead some casual readers to believe that all Adult-rated content actually has "extreme sex & violence" when that is not the case. 

This is true. However, I would argue that the Adult rating as it is often (or even usually) used in Second Life is the thing that's misleading: It confuses many Second Life users, especially new ones, as to what they should expect in an Adult-rated sim. As longtime SLer and blogger Ciaran Laval pointed out in another post, many SLers designate their sim as Adult as a general catch-all which conveys nothing about the sim's content:

[S]ome regions flag themselves as Adult to avoid arguments about content or give themselves more flexibility, rather than being completely Adult-oriented. 

And this is precisely the problem with the Adult rating as it's generally used in Second Life. Look at this way:

Linden Lab Should Have Created a PG-Rated Showcase Continent for Second Life, Instead of an Adult-Only One (Comment of the Week)

ZEXPO 2011 photo by Ginette Pinazzo

Responding to a recent report that 1 in 4 Second Life sims are now Adult-rated, longtime SLer and blogger Emilly Orr blames this on Linden Lab's move to create an Adult-focused continent called Zindra in 2009, writing in Comments:

This entirely fails to surprise me, for what it's worth. This was EXACTLY why so many of us were begging the Lindens to make Ursula-now-Zindra a showpiece of how good PG content could be, instead of the new 'adult' continent. We knew trying to funnel everyone who wanted adult content in SL to one place wouldn't work.

But they didn't listen.

And if you think Ms. Orr is saying this because she's personally opposed to graphic content, the opposite is the case: