2011 November

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The Second Life diaries

Nov 30 2011

Sometimes I feel that if there was a diary about the life-cycle of Second Life, fragments of it would look like this:

April, 2002: Launched Linden World yesterday! Got our first user, and she made a giant beanstalk! This is going to be great. The birds and snakes roaming the servers are awesome. We’re going to need a lot of content, so we’re instituting an Early Creators program.

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2ndMe Launches Final Version and Offers Free SL Export 1 comment(s)
Fangs or GTFO 17 comment(s)
The golden rule of arts and sciences 22 comment(s)
Convalescence 11 comment(s)
Linden Lab rejects Qarl’s prim-alignment tool 64 comment(s)
How to: Get and install the Mektek Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries release, and get it to actually work 15 comment(s)
Qarl turns back on Lab rejection, “the code is open” 6 comment(s)
Project Skylight, the Web-based viewer for Second Life now on the Web 27 comment(s)
Second Life viewer 1.23 disappears due to upcoming incompatible inventory protocol change 9 comment(s)
Another alt-detector on the Second Life Marketplace 23 comment(s)

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Linden Realms set to launch to the public tomorrow

Nov 30 2011

Linden Realms, Second Life’s only substantive first-party game, is set to open up to all Second Life users tomorrow, the first of December, according to Linden Lab PR manager, Peter Gray. Linden Realms is a fun little game about collecting crystals, completing quests and dodging hazards. The game is not just moving from a premium-only beta to an unrestricted beta – this is the public launch of Linden Realms, says the Lab.

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Ubisoft is right, but for the wrong reasons

Nov 27 2011

Citing 95% PC piracy rates, Ubisoft seems to be quitting the PC games market. The problem with games piracy statistics are manifold: Nobody actually knows what the piracy rates really are (though they seem to be likely to be on a par with console piracy rates – probably – since there’s certainly no shortage of console games piracy), and there are other factors involved like release-timing, product quality and pricing that all play their part.

Ubisoft’s PC versions of their games have become increasingly so slapdash and cack-handed that it isn’t really surprising that PC gamers simply don’t want to buy them. I don’t have to tell you that this does not make for a good business model for the PC games market, but someone should probably tell Ubisoft.

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The unwisdom of crowds

Nov 26 2011

Much has been made, in recent years, of the so-called “Wisdom of Crowds.” That is, that a diverse group of people with differing opinions and ideologies can produce some surprisingly accurate results in certain situations – with even crowds of non-experts being able to produce a combined result that exceeds the accuracy of individual experts.

Heck, that should not come as much of a surprise, really. Ballots and polling are based around that very principle, even before we were able to concisely articulate it, or demonstrate it with research.

There’s one important condition, though that breaks the whole idea down.

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