We're hearing a lot these days about how political campaigns are interacting with the virtual world of Second Life.PHX Corp: http://kotaku.com/ea-sports-developer-calls-wii-u-crap-and-nintendo-wa-508481261 EA Sports Canada Moron calls Wii U 'Crap' and Nintendo 'Walking Dead'05/18/2013 - 11:42am
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E. Zachary Knight: If the videos are of sufficient quality that people subscribe and watch regularly, then those let's players are providing a service that people want. That is the heart of capitalism. That is not something that should be shamed.05/17/2013 - 8:06am
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E. Zachary Knight: I have no idea who either of those people are. However, I still don't see why making a business out of creating let's play videos is somehow evil or wrong.05/17/2013 - 8:04am
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MaskedPixelante: It sure is if you're just doing it for the money. See Tobuscus and/or Pewdiepie for what happens when people get into it just for the money.05/17/2013 - 7:30am
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E. Zachary Knight: Why is it wrong to make money doing LPs? Why should that be something that should be shamed?05/17/2013 - 6:20am
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MaskedPixelante: https://twitter.com/PsychedelicSA/status/335183893214924801 Now here's an interesting, glass half full thought about the Nintendo LP thing. It outs the people who are just doing LPs to make money.05/17/2013 - 5:56am
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E. Zachary Knight: I responded in writing to all this "let's play" stuff Nintendo Started. No need for my permission, I won't give it. It's not mine to give. http://divineknightgaming.com/?p=29205/16/2013 - 2:21pm
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E. Zachary Knight: Lars Doucet of Levelup Labs has a Reddit going on game companies that allow monetization of Let's Play videos. http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1egayn/lets_build_a_list_of_game_studios_that_allow/05/16/2013 - 1:04pm
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Sleaker: @Imautobot - yah I wouldn't use an emulator as a good first run test of how stable the console is, haha.05/16/2013 - 11:47am
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E. Zachary Knight: The 50th person to jump off a bridge is just as dumb if not dumber than the 1st.05/16/2013 - 10:03am
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MaskedPixelante: Yeah, let's all jump on Nintendo for doing this, even though they're hardly the first company to do this...05/16/2013 - 9:47am
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E. Zachary Knight: Wow Nintendo, this is wrong. http://kotaku.com/nintendo-forcing-ads-on-some-youtube-lets-play-video-50709238305/16/2013 - 8:44am
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Imautobot: @Sleaker, further gameplay has revealed that the controller button do stick under the faceplate. Also, The NES emulator (Emuya)keeps crashing on me, though I think a bad ROM is causing it.05/16/2013 - 7:10am
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Papa Midnight: AE: I wonder if any other publishers will follow suit.05/15/2013 - 8:12pm
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Andrew Eisen: EA is ditching Online Pass. http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/15/ea-kills-its-controversial-online-pass-program/05/15/2013 - 7:20pm
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Avalongod: @Zach and quicnkold...I've read the bill and the intent of it is to fear-monger. It's not a balanced message. I don't recall the ESRB being mentioned at all. It's more "keeps your kids away from these movies/games or they'll become violent"05/15/2013 - 4:35pm
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E. Zachary Knight: quiknkold, The big problem with that legislation is the amount of misinformation out there. Who is going to ensure that the information in the pamphlet is accurate?05/15/2013 - 3:25pm
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quiknkold: REBeardogg : I'm on the fence about this. on one side, I want parents to be aware of the ESRB, and even Movie Ratings. On the other hand, I feel this will be used for nothing but Propaganda. The ESRB does a good job.05/15/2013 - 3:07pm
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IanC: Frostbite is coming out on iOS devices. Yet the Wii U cant handle it? *coughbullshitcough*05/15/2013 - 2:31pm
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BearDogg-X: http://www.politickernj.com/65515/lesniak-ruiz-bill-limit-children-s-exposure-media-violence-clears-senate - Bill requiring schools to publish pamphlets with anti-fake media "violence" propaganda clears NJ Senate05/15/2013 - 2:03pm
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Comments
Foundation anyone?
SL has very little to do with FPS and much more to do with people wanting to connect in new and entertaining ways with other people. Sure, its not likely to sway the outcome of the elections in 2008, but a politician would be wise not to ignore these virtual communities.
Probably to prove that they're "with the times," to younger voters in particular. You make a good point, being associated with SL is poison if your opponents have good spin doctors on their side.
I'd rather they make lame attempts at "being down" with video games than putting them down. ;)
Unfortunately, most don't realize how much of Second Life really is rather "seedy" to the point where the term "underbelly" really fails to grasp at the extent to which it is prevalent. Disregarding whether sex really constitutes 5% of SL (Hamlet Linden - http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2007/02/a_census_of_sec.html) or 60% (Prokofy Neva - http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2007/02/i_started_this...), it is difficult to avoid encountering some form of pornographic content just skimming through the various sims in SL. The worst of this is of course the child pornography, and while I have not personally encountered any actual photographs uploaded into SL (according to the German report there was a fair amount found in a relatively short period of investigation), I have encountered the phenomenon of age play on more than one occasion. This is essentially the use of Second Life's avatar modification utilities to model oneself as a child, and then engage in sexual acts with other avatars using this model. There are a number of age play prostitutes for hire within SL, and the Lindens have known about it for some time, going so far as to recommend to reporters that they take a look at it in their SL visits. That they are now making a complete about-face on the issue is comforting but not, it seems, altogether sincere.
No NEED? I think The Internet has a few more users than Second Life does, and is a bit more accessible.
Sure, you can find it if you search for it, just like the net. But it doesn't jump out at you everywhere you go.
Still doesn't make it any less as creepy.
"@AbsumZero: Why on earth are you including a fandom - Furries - in with sexual fetishes and deviations? At its most basic level, “Furry,” in and of itself, has nothing to do with sex."
Thank you, at least someone on this board understands that very basic fact.
@AbsumZer0 So long as the people who make the items are satisfied, what's the problem? And since when did graphics on a game matter all that much? I mean, sure, it pays to see what you're doing and it does help to have a pretty face, but Second Life is partly about making your own fun. Hell, I visited a combat zone yesterday and tested my shooting skills. With the proper items SL easily becomes a first person shooter.
Because the current use of the term 'furries' typically denotes a fandom in as much as 'pedophiles' describes fans of children. Almost everyone likes anthromorphic animals, regardless of culture, and the attributing of human characteristics to animals spans back at least as far as recorded history. I’m sure the term once applied to general fans of anthromorphic creatures, mammals in particular, but thanks to the negative connotation it’s derived from the folks who dress-up in mascot costumes and rub each other off , draw cartoons of their ‘fursonas’ wearing diapers and bashfully crapping themselves, or log-on to Second Life and have cybersex with animal avatars, normal people who just happen to be fans of anthromorphs have distanced themselves from the term.
@Kurisu-
There's nothing inherently wrong with the engine so long as people enjoy it. The problem is with all the hype. It comes nowhere near close to living up to any of it and the fact that actual politicians use it to stump and real businesses and news agencies are spending money on establishing an in-game presence is ridiculous. And for what? Seriously, a huge chunk of transactions the Lindens keep track of and brag about are for in-game gambling and bootleg in-game pornography.
http://valleywag.com/tech/second-life/virtual-worlds-supposed-economy-is...
http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2007/02/phony_second_li.html
As to complaints about the visual graphics, there's a big difference between a videogame and a real-time virtual world which has built-in tools allowing people to create 3D objects... in real time. At the most basic, the models themselves are different; videogames are almost exclusively pre-made polyon meshes whereas SL uses something closer to what CAD applications use (the avatar mesh in SL is actually *one* pre-made mesh with slider controls to offset portions of it; nothing more).
This system is used (according to what I recall hearing from LL) to improve the dynamic loading of the geometry; it's faster. However, by default at this stage of development, that means having graphics which don't match the less bandwidth-constrained videogames out there (SL is a 50Mb download whereas most games now are running ten or twenty times that). Eventually this kind of technology will catch up, but to compare them now is, imo, a mistake.
With regard to "hype", as someone who routinely criticizes Linden Lab's actions and policies, the one thing I can't say is that I believe they've "hyped" it. They have a business and they have a product. They sell that product just like any other business. I rarely see ads for SL. I rarely hear of LL doing anything more than giving interviews and going out to give presentations. Is that "hype". Not in my book.
Now if you're referring to Clay Shirky's drivel, I'd (once again) take issue with what this individual had to say... mostly because a) he admitted to not really being familiar with or even using SL and b) because he clearly made the same mistake he accused the MSM when dealing the "hype" card: he didn't do his research. I won't waste words here, but for details, you can either start with a post I made about it ( http://blog.rebang.com/?p=1179 ) or go directly to another site on which I both commented and left a bunch of links to Terra Nova threads in which Shirky was involved ( http://www.howardowens.com/2007/be-skeptical-of-the-hype-around-virtual-... ).
If there is a videogame that does anything like what SL does, please provide a link. I'd love to check it out.
If there is a videogame/virtual world developer that provides more statistics than Linden Lab, please provide a link. I'm not saying that LL doesn't play word games. On the contrary, long before Shirky some of us were pointing out issues regarding user numbers and dollar figures. Only I hope most of us are sufficiently intelligent (unlike most of MSM) to see through the smokescreen thrown up not just by LL, but by most every Web 2.0 company hoping to promote themselves.
With regard to the recent issues regarding child porn, I think we should separate the RL stuff from the virtual stuff. No one is arguing that the RL stuff needs to be addressed, but that goes for not just SL but for a whole lot of internet sites (especially the new YouTube pron-clones). However, if I'm not mistaken, the "virtual porn" issue is still up for serious debate, and I, for one, am not ready to throw an adult in prison for navigating a set of pixels into personally visually-stimulating compositions with another adult controlling a different set of pixels and doing the same. So long as no one is harmed, the idea that we would prosecute individuals for such victimless crimes makes no sense to me. And while there is the oft-used argument that such behavior is connected to real life pedophilia, I don't buy that anymore than I buy the idea that people who frag others in FPS deathmatches are necessarily encouraged to go on killing sprees in their community.
Lastly, if there is one thing that I hope we can all agree upon, it's that SL is interesting... and sometimes interesting because it highlights the difference in attitudes we have regarding certain issues. Personally, I'd rather these things be learned, studied and resolved in ugly 3D chatrooms than in real life.