Lots of crap flying through the metaverse as of late. Accusations, conspiracy theories, paranoia, and flat out lies being throw about like stale jelly beans being spit out of a kid's mouth. Those hurt btw, I strongly advise never hang out around kids when they are checking their Halloween candy for whatever might still be good!
Something emerged from my brain though through all this mudslinging the last week or two: Competition. That's a double-edged sword, for anyone who tries to make a buck. No matter what business you're in, it revolves around that almighty dollar (or equivalent for whichever country you reside in). Even charities have to have money to continue functioning on a day to day basis. And even charities compete for it. So what am I rambling about competition for?
Well, there are two thoughts on competition. You can either fear it, or embrace it. There's no real middle ground there. You can't embrace and fear something at the same time when it comes to competition. Which direction you choose to go, will make all the difference in how you behave in the marketplace. Now, while I don't stand for anyone outright lying about InWorldz, for the most part, we happen to embrace competition. Look at our largest competitor... we don't fear it. We embrace it.
Competition is not just a one way street where corporations get to make all sorts of moolah. Although, in today's world, you see most corporations trying to clear the field of any competition, which usually signals something bad to me. For example: I recently left my ISP. They had a stranglehold here in the Chicago area on internet. For years we had been with them. And every year, they hiked our prices up. It got to a point where I had to call every 6 months to get them to discount it, til one day they told me "I'm sorry, but you'll need to move to our "Blah" package" which was buying all three of their services. I didn't go through dismantling them over 5 years from all their services cause I wanted all their services. I did so, because other companies did the same job, or better, for less. So finally, another provider offered the SAME service, much cheaper, without a "discount deal for new customer". Let me state, this company has already been through the mill and at one time was so huge that the government forced them to break up to start competition. This is what Americans can do when they get really irritated... but that's another blog, for another day.
It is by far, one of the most solid principals that we are founded on: Competition is good. It's good for consumers, it's good for companies, it's good for innovation. It's all around a win for everyone... with one caveat: You gotta embrace it! The minute you start to fear it, you're doing something wrong.
We are starting to see some of this in the Metaverse itself now. Changes being made by grids to offer up something new to their residents. Which is excellent. Why do I say this? Well, we stated long ago who our target market is, that has not changed. We're not looking to be the end all be all of grids, we have seen where that leads to. This technology has amazing potential, and it needs to be fostered and developed. This is starting to happen. There are entire groups, we'd much rather send to other grids, because we simply can not try to handle all the varying issues they will bring with them and detract us from our main big picture. And we have done this, without a qualm inside us whatsoever based on those companies track records. Are they competing with us? I suppose, it really depends on your viewpoint really.
What we're seeing is rather interesting developments though. I wouldn't say this is because of InWorldz by any means btw, but because of the entire Metaverse itself. Each grid doing their utmost to offer unique solutions to their residents. We're seeing changes in the Legacy grid, to changes through out the other grids in how they compete. This is a good thing. It offers Metaverse hoppers the opportunity to really explore out there and find what's right for them. And it promotes grids to get on the ball and really do things their residents want. Which should be unique to them. Not every grid can offer everything. It's simply not feasible. And it drives the grids to rise to those challenges and develop that technology they need to better fit their marketbase.
Even in software, competition drives the technology. You can look back to MicroSoft for a primer in that, with Linux. That brings us to another point though in competition. And it's one that utopians hate hearing ;) Commercialism drives competition. Anyone remember the government looking at MicroSoft for too large a marketshare? Well there was little Linux, plodding along, opensource, and free. Now, it's a $1billion dollar company... RedHat that is. They were competing with a commercial product, a giant in the industry, because they felt they could do it differently and more in tune to their needs. And they did. They laid down solid groundwork, set up policies for commits and worked it right up.
I'm not saying VW techology is on the same par as the above paragraph, but it IS vital to have a commercial product or two in there to compete against. Or else, there's no end goal... no "drive" to finish it. Unless you're just independently wealthy and have this burning obsession to create competition. Which has been done as well.
So, this is like one of those moments where you sort of have to say "gimme some love" or well.. "give em some love", cause in the end, the competition is good. I suspect we'll see quite a bit of it emerge in the Metaverse over the next year.
Til we see ya InWorldz!
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Monday, January 3, 2011
Ya Know You're Doing Something Right When...
Happy New Year everyone! I didn't blog last week as didn't really think anyone would care! And now that we're in a New Year, of course all the new stuff starts. Fresh year, gotta have fresh rumors after all! And I'm feeling pretty spunky today so I figured I'd address these cause they really are funny!
Over the recent months we've heard all sorts of fun stuff. So let me start knocking them out for your consumption and hopefully humor!
#1. We're closing our doors in February. Now, I heard this a while ago, I found it immensely funny. Really? Predicting our doom as early as February? Tranq's gonna be bummed out, I better tell him that dev we're working on hiring isn't gonna happen...
#2. Our concurrency numbers are fudged: This is really funny too, and Tranq posted once about it. Why on earth would we NEED to fudge our numbers? To make ourselves look good?!? I could be way off base here, but I'm fairly certain if we had a number issue, such as they were way off, we'd be hearing about it from our residents. To date, the only thing we've heard complaints about is the fact their friends don't show online when they are or vice versa in the friends list.
#3. We use what others fix to make our grid look superior: This is one of the nastier ones, I've heard about, and I won't lie, it bothers me. To those who seem to think we're merely taking OS diffs and running them into our code, you might want to step back, take a look at where we've said our code can not be merged to OS at this point. You might also want to read some of the posts in our forums which outline exactly we've done, without giving out too much information.
#4. We have strong marketing people: Yeah ok, we do no marketing, so every one of our residents has to stop talking about InWorldz NOW! That's right, you heard me guys and gals, you're too good at marketing, so stop that! Oh and we'll have to stop paying you I guess too... what does zero from zero equal again?
#5. We use our currency funds to fund our grid: Wow, this one really is humorous. We use our currency funds to fund our grid?!?! Is that the LAMEST idea you could come up with? This shows how little these people know about a grid (and to think they actually "run" one) or the actual costs involved. Newsflash: while currency is profitable for us, it's not enough to fund 760 regions on almost 40 servers. Get a clue... please?
#6. We are a "technical nightmare": Another one of my favorites has been this one. Really... compared to what? Compared to an empty grid that has no useage going on with it, where there's no uploading, no building, no storing of assets, no events going on? If comparing to the other world, then I guess it's 6 in one hand, half a dozen in another as to what users consider a technical nightmare, but as they have not called us that... I'm gonna dump this one in the recycle bin where it belongs.
#7. We were the original creators of Legend City Online (LCO): False, false and again false. We had nothing to do with the grid, not when it started, was running, nor when it was shutdown. There is some interesting facts to be found out there however for people to dig up in regards to it. Even more interesting is knowing which of our "competitors" started that rumor.
#8. InWorldz will be part of a "multi-grid empire": I hate to burst these people's bubble... wait no I don't... but no, we're not. We're not for sale, and I highly doubt the perpetrator of this bit could pay our price if we were.
Now, while most of this is tongue in cheek, it does prove something: We're doing something right. So to our detractors, those who are upset with us, those who have started these rumors: Thanks! Let me also point out, we know exactly where each and every one of those rumors originated from... which grid operators said what, and when. So with that said, let me offer my bit of New Year's advice to you...
Stop trying to figure out how to put us down, or make us look bad. Don't you have code to write, or a grid to run? Or is it more fun to fight like a pack of dogs over every bit of resident you can? Well, newsflash, it's a free Virtual World (well, for most of the grids out there it is anyways), and people will go where they want. They'll live in whatever grid they want, they'll visit their friends where they want, and they'll spend their money where they want. It's called competition. Deal with it. If you're too busy bemoaning that we won't give up our code, do you think whining is going to endear us to release it? Instead of whining, how about you figure out what we're doing, and fix the stuff (cause contrary to the above, we really do actually CARE about stability before shinies, which I know is anathema to everyone else), and maybe work on how best to get your grid to do what you want it to do and stop worrying about InWorldz.
To our residents... you guys rock. If it weren't for you all, they wouldn't be doing all this. Til we see you InWorldz! :)
Over the recent months we've heard all sorts of fun stuff. So let me start knocking them out for your consumption and hopefully humor!
#1. We're closing our doors in February. Now, I heard this a while ago, I found it immensely funny. Really? Predicting our doom as early as February? Tranq's gonna be bummed out, I better tell him that dev we're working on hiring isn't gonna happen...
#2. Our concurrency numbers are fudged: This is really funny too, and Tranq posted once about it. Why on earth would we NEED to fudge our numbers? To make ourselves look good?!? I could be way off base here, but I'm fairly certain if we had a number issue, such as they were way off, we'd be hearing about it from our residents. To date, the only thing we've heard complaints about is the fact their friends don't show online when they are or vice versa in the friends list.
#3. We use what others fix to make our grid look superior: This is one of the nastier ones, I've heard about, and I won't lie, it bothers me. To those who seem to think we're merely taking OS diffs and running them into our code, you might want to step back, take a look at where we've said our code can not be merged to OS at this point. You might also want to read some of the posts in our forums which outline exactly we've done, without giving out too much information.
#4. We have strong marketing people: Yeah ok, we do no marketing, so every one of our residents has to stop talking about InWorldz NOW! That's right, you heard me guys and gals, you're too good at marketing, so stop that! Oh and we'll have to stop paying you I guess too... what does zero from zero equal again?
#5. We use our currency funds to fund our grid: Wow, this one really is humorous. We use our currency funds to fund our grid?!?! Is that the LAMEST idea you could come up with? This shows how little these people know about a grid (and to think they actually "run" one) or the actual costs involved. Newsflash: while currency is profitable for us, it's not enough to fund 760 regions on almost 40 servers. Get a clue... please?
#6. We are a "technical nightmare": Another one of my favorites has been this one. Really... compared to what? Compared to an empty grid that has no useage going on with it, where there's no uploading, no building, no storing of assets, no events going on? If comparing to the other world, then I guess it's 6 in one hand, half a dozen in another as to what users consider a technical nightmare, but as they have not called us that... I'm gonna dump this one in the recycle bin where it belongs.
#7. We were the original creators of Legend City Online (LCO): False, false and again false. We had nothing to do with the grid, not when it started, was running, nor when it was shutdown. There is some interesting facts to be found out there however for people to dig up in regards to it. Even more interesting is knowing which of our "competitors" started that rumor.
#8. InWorldz will be part of a "multi-grid empire": I hate to burst these people's bubble... wait no I don't... but no, we're not. We're not for sale, and I highly doubt the perpetrator of this bit could pay our price if we were.
Now, while most of this is tongue in cheek, it does prove something: We're doing something right. So to our detractors, those who are upset with us, those who have started these rumors: Thanks! Let me also point out, we know exactly where each and every one of those rumors originated from... which grid operators said what, and when. So with that said, let me offer my bit of New Year's advice to you...
Stop trying to figure out how to put us down, or make us look bad. Don't you have code to write, or a grid to run? Or is it more fun to fight like a pack of dogs over every bit of resident you can? Well, newsflash, it's a free Virtual World (well, for most of the grids out there it is anyways), and people will go where they want. They'll live in whatever grid they want, they'll visit their friends where they want, and they'll spend their money where they want. It's called competition. Deal with it. If you're too busy bemoaning that we won't give up our code, do you think whining is going to endear us to release it? Instead of whining, how about you figure out what we're doing, and fix the stuff (cause contrary to the above, we really do actually CARE about stability before shinies, which I know is anathema to everyone else), and maybe work on how best to get your grid to do what you want it to do and stop worrying about InWorldz.
To our residents... you guys rock. If it weren't for you all, they wouldn't be doing all this. Til we see you InWorldz! :)
Monday, December 20, 2010
Season for Giving
The Holidays always seem to somehow show our best side as humans. We give more to charities, we try to be a little nicer (unless we are aiming for the last SOMETHING in the store that we simply MUST have) to both our elders and our fellow humans. We are more friendly in general, to anyone than we normally are. I was giving directions to some poor soul in Toys R Us today, trying to find Barbie stuff.
The above goes the same for VW's, at least in InWorldz the last couple of weeks. Raglan Shire has their Tiny's Holidays Tree (which I hear tell they are referring to it as WootMas now), and are preparing to go caroling all over the grid. If you get a chance, please do not miss the caroling! I've had a preview and it will absolutely put you in the season mood.... or make you laugh like crazy, either of which is a good thing ;)
We have the Yule Tree over on Isle of Anu started by Marie Ravencrow, and I hear presents are piling up and people are sharing their best for it.
We had a great event all weekend: InWorldz Winterland Event. I didn't get to spend much time at it, but that's ok, I heard a good time was had by all who attended it. I do know, it was well attended all weekend with an avg count of about 25 people at all times, and held up beyond well all weekend.
What was very cool, is we hope a new tradition has been born in InWorldz. Over the last week, our residents pulled together more than $500 to donate to Toys for Tots, which InWorldz will match to make it over $1000 to be donated to Toys for Tots this season. It's wonderful to see our community growing and wanting to give to those less fortunate. And hopefully, we'll see this number grow immensely next year.
But, the best part of the season, is the day itself. Yes, it's a big day of cooking, presents, family and laughter. For me, that means my girls waking me up at the ungodly hour of 6 am (and it took years to get them to that point! It used to be 5am!), rambling downstairs and telling them to be patient, let mom get some coffee first, and finally settling down in one of the chairs and to watch them open their presents. What took me hours if not a couple of days to get all wrapped, is destroyed in mere minutes between howls of happiness, thank you's galore, ooooohhhh's and aaaaahhhhh's.
At the end of this huge day, we're exhausted, probably stuffed from eating way too much food, happily sated in our beverage of choice, and we've added another wonderful memory to the book.
To our residents, this our 2nd Christmas, although many of you are new. But thank you for sharing your lives with us, on the forums, your blogs, in the world... for sharing your kindness, your thoughts and your hopes. For being patient, having humor, and most of all, for just being you. May the Holiday Season bring you many blessings, laughter and joy.
Now... let me see if I can work on getting up at 7am this year... Til we meet InWorldz!
Monday, December 13, 2010
The InWorldz History
I'm in a bit of storytelling mode tonight and my sincere apologies for not blogging last week, but I had a bit of the winter doldrums. Reading through the forums, and Whiskey's blog challenge last week brought up some old memories (and when I say old, ok, they are only almost 2 years old but still!). Grab some hot cocoa, or vodka, or whatever liquid you prefer and read on!
Once upon a time, there were a few people who saw the promise of Virtual Worlds beyond what was being presented out there. The playbooks almost identical with a twist here or there: one jacked people's inventories after breaking a deal they made; one ran by a scam artist who had a trail of unpaid bills behind them; and yet others who felt that a grid was a great way to get rich quick. Far and few between were the grids that actually were doing anything on their own, or providing awesome support, but finding them after the other fiasco's is slightly akin to having severe PTSD. Once bitten, twice shy kinda deal. These few daring souls, figured they could do a grid.
It all started back in February, 2009, when we got a very bare bones server, from GoDaddy of all places. I mean seriously, it was a 512Mb RAM system, 1 core. And on Feb. 12, we were able to actually log in, all of us, into the one little region that was our "grid". I don't even remember the name of it back then. It was a test to see if we could even get it going. We were ecstatic! There we stood, on our very own little blob of a region, saying well HEY lookie at this! Obviously, this server was not going to do what we'd want for long, but the test was completed, we knew it could be done.
Within 2 weeks, we had researched providers and compared prices and even found our first "dev". That box itself, was nothing massively special either, but it was dedicated and we started with it. At that time, the discussions started on what we wanted IDI to look like. Which btw, is where the name comes from! InWorldz Desert Island was slated originally to be a.... you guessed it! Desert! We were a tad sick of tropical. And we were gonna do something kinda romanish. So here's one of the oldest pics from InWorldz:
That is myself, Lecktor, April and Loki. Playing with columns and sculpties. As you can see, there wasn't even any formation to IDI at that point. Date there, is March 10, 2009. Now possibly Legion or Lek may have some older pics, but that is the oldest one in my inventory. I also have a picture in my inventory, nicely framed of our first InWorldz Party:
That's Legion (baldie), Lecktor, myself, and I'm fairly sure one of the other females is Circle Widdershins and the red head is Copper Rau, but please don't quote me on that, I could be terribly wrong there. And yes, the first dance ball in InWorldz is there. That's from April 12, 2009.
Then I have this picture of Bob Bunderfeld, on his rez day March 19, 2009 in a crazy shirt trying to figure out why his arms were still black hehehe:
There are the stories as well, of when one of the Founders decided to drop 3k textures into a single prim. Now mind you, you couldn't OPEN that prim, but let's throw 3k textures into one. That took us almost 2 days to clean up.
What is most interesting is that by our first little party above, we had paying customers! Not alot mind you, but a few. Some of them have since moved on, or were only around for a quick month, but others stayed: Jim and Jo Smart, Rosa and Gaius (sorry Gaius, love you two dearly but I'm NOT typing it all out!), Bladax who came with Erasmus and stayed, Scotsgraymouser. These were the first real beta residents who have stuck with us through thick and thin, when there was NO ONE on the grid, to where it is now. They've expanded their regions, contracted their regions, but no matter what, they've always been there.
By August, 2009, we had already shed 3 Founders, for various reasons. April left, as did Lek, one we got rid of and then we got rid of our "dev" in August. That left Legion and I and one other. Scots managed in her ever so tenacious spirit to keep asking me what we needed. My response was always the same: a real dev. So scouring SL, did she go in her little mouser way. And she got to talking to PatriciaAnne Daviau and telling her that we were needing a dev. Patti then talked to Tranq, who in turn emailed me about doing dev work. This was early September, 2009.
By this time, I had gotten the groups code rolled in, gotten the currency turned on and running, and had made some huge changes so profiles worked sorta. I didn't actually finish them until Nov. 2009 IIRC. But we seriously needed a dev who could delve far deeper into the code than I was able to, and start sorting things out. Little did Tranq know what he had signed on for ;)
We also, had upgraded to what was then referred to as The Beast. It was seriously a pretty heavy duty system, that allowed us to expand and grow. In November, we shed our final Founder. I remember Tranq working on rolling the groups code so it was all C# native rather than what it originally was with outgoing calls to PHP to run DB queries.
In January of 2010, we were only running that one server. We now run 36 servers. In the space of 11 months, that's how much we've grown. We went from excitement over 5 avatars in world at one time, to Tranq's mission to have 20 avatars online by March, 50 by June, 100 by September. I'm not sure what his next target is, but so far we've made them all.
In March, 2010, we brought Tranq on board as a full Founder with all the rights and privileges assigned to us Founders: long hours, lots of stress, massive breakdowns of systems whenever least wanted, and lots and lots of support for our customers. We signed our LLC in April, 2010 into actual formalization, which is also when we kinda sorta met. Well ok, I met Tranq, and Tranq met Legion. This is also when we had a sudden wave of new residents.
As with most things, we had a lot come by, if for no other reason than to keep their name intact, some to check out our progress, some to snipe our residents to other grids, some to try and be drama queens, and some to really find another avenue. Lots left, but quite a few stayed. And they expanded our growing core of residents. Some of them are incredibly outspoken, some of them not so much, some I rarely hear from, others I hear from often. Some I consider friends, and others are not "friends" but they are customers and they have that same open door as any one else.
But there's a bit of our history, and I've left some names out, because to be quite honest they aren't worth mentioning. We've had our share of drama, tension, stress, fights, sleepless nights (seriously, nights where I had very little sleep worrying about the grid), and a lot of fun times too. I hope you enjoyed story hour, and there's much more information in our forums in regards to when things happened as far as patches rolled out and such, just feel free to dig around until we see you InWorldz ;)
Once upon a time, there were a few people who saw the promise of Virtual Worlds beyond what was being presented out there. The playbooks almost identical with a twist here or there: one jacked people's inventories after breaking a deal they made; one ran by a scam artist who had a trail of unpaid bills behind them; and yet others who felt that a grid was a great way to get rich quick. Far and few between were the grids that actually were doing anything on their own, or providing awesome support, but finding them after the other fiasco's is slightly akin to having severe PTSD. Once bitten, twice shy kinda deal. These few daring souls, figured they could do a grid.
It all started back in February, 2009, when we got a very bare bones server, from GoDaddy of all places. I mean seriously, it was a 512Mb RAM system, 1 core. And on Feb. 12, we were able to actually log in, all of us, into the one little region that was our "grid". I don't even remember the name of it back then. It was a test to see if we could even get it going. We were ecstatic! There we stood, on our very own little blob of a region, saying well HEY lookie at this! Obviously, this server was not going to do what we'd want for long, but the test was completed, we knew it could be done.
Within 2 weeks, we had researched providers and compared prices and even found our first "dev". That box itself, was nothing massively special either, but it was dedicated and we started with it. At that time, the discussions started on what we wanted IDI to look like. Which btw, is where the name comes from! InWorldz Desert Island was slated originally to be a.... you guessed it! Desert! We were a tad sick of tropical. And we were gonna do something kinda romanish. So here's one of the oldest pics from InWorldz:
That is myself, Lecktor, April and Loki. Playing with columns and sculpties. As you can see, there wasn't even any formation to IDI at that point. Date there, is March 10, 2009. Now possibly Legion or Lek may have some older pics, but that is the oldest one in my inventory. I also have a picture in my inventory, nicely framed of our first InWorldz Party:
That's Legion (baldie), Lecktor, myself, and I'm fairly sure one of the other females is Circle Widdershins and the red head is Copper Rau, but please don't quote me on that, I could be terribly wrong there. And yes, the first dance ball in InWorldz is there. That's from April 12, 2009.
Then I have this picture of Bob Bunderfeld, on his rez day March 19, 2009 in a crazy shirt trying to figure out why his arms were still black hehehe:
There are the stories as well, of when one of the Founders decided to drop 3k textures into a single prim. Now mind you, you couldn't OPEN that prim, but let's throw 3k textures into one. That took us almost 2 days to clean up.
What is most interesting is that by our first little party above, we had paying customers! Not alot mind you, but a few. Some of them have since moved on, or were only around for a quick month, but others stayed: Jim and Jo Smart, Rosa and Gaius (sorry Gaius, love you two dearly but I'm NOT typing it all out!), Bladax who came with Erasmus and stayed, Scotsgraymouser. These were the first real beta residents who have stuck with us through thick and thin, when there was NO ONE on the grid, to where it is now. They've expanded their regions, contracted their regions, but no matter what, they've always been there.
By August, 2009, we had already shed 3 Founders, for various reasons. April left, as did Lek, one we got rid of and then we got rid of our "dev" in August. That left Legion and I and one other. Scots managed in her ever so tenacious spirit to keep asking me what we needed. My response was always the same: a real dev. So scouring SL, did she go in her little mouser way. And she got to talking to PatriciaAnne Daviau and telling her that we were needing a dev. Patti then talked to Tranq, who in turn emailed me about doing dev work. This was early September, 2009.
By this time, I had gotten the groups code rolled in, gotten the currency turned on and running, and had made some huge changes so profiles worked sorta. I didn't actually finish them until Nov. 2009 IIRC. But we seriously needed a dev who could delve far deeper into the code than I was able to, and start sorting things out. Little did Tranq know what he had signed on for ;)
We also, had upgraded to what was then referred to as The Beast. It was seriously a pretty heavy duty system, that allowed us to expand and grow. In November, we shed our final Founder. I remember Tranq working on rolling the groups code so it was all C# native rather than what it originally was with outgoing calls to PHP to run DB queries.
In January of 2010, we were only running that one server. We now run 36 servers. In the space of 11 months, that's how much we've grown. We went from excitement over 5 avatars in world at one time, to Tranq's mission to have 20 avatars online by March, 50 by June, 100 by September. I'm not sure what his next target is, but so far we've made them all.
In March, 2010, we brought Tranq on board as a full Founder with all the rights and privileges assigned to us Founders: long hours, lots of stress, massive breakdowns of systems whenever least wanted, and lots and lots of support for our customers. We signed our LLC in April, 2010 into actual formalization, which is also when we kinda sorta met. Well ok, I met Tranq, and Tranq met Legion. This is also when we had a sudden wave of new residents.
As with most things, we had a lot come by, if for no other reason than to keep their name intact, some to check out our progress, some to snipe our residents to other grids, some to try and be drama queens, and some to really find another avenue. Lots left, but quite a few stayed. And they expanded our growing core of residents. Some of them are incredibly outspoken, some of them not so much, some I rarely hear from, others I hear from often. Some I consider friends, and others are not "friends" but they are customers and they have that same open door as any one else.
But there's a bit of our history, and I've left some names out, because to be quite honest they aren't worth mentioning. We've had our share of drama, tension, stress, fights, sleepless nights (seriously, nights where I had very little sleep worrying about the grid), and a lot of fun times too. I hope you enjoyed story hour, and there's much more information in our forums in regards to when things happened as far as patches rolled out and such, just feel free to dig around until we see you InWorldz ;)
Monday, November 29, 2010
Trouble With a Capital T
And it doesn't rhyme with P! Anyone who can name that reference btw, will truly be showing their age or at the very least, their time spent watching far too many musicals as a child ;) I've been doing a bit of reading today, and wow was there a TON to read and go over. It all started from this forum posting, and I actually went over and read the blog post and comments today. Exhausting work let me tell ya!
So I'm feeling the need to address this issue from a parental point of view. As a resident still of SL, the concept of bringing teens into the grid is.... monumentally scary. I remember the first few times I ventured in, my daughters wanted to see what mommy was up to. Those were some very trepidating moments and I quickly shoo'ed my kids off to do something else, because apparently I had landed at a sim that was erm, yeah. I'm not a prude by any means, but my first thoughts about SL were not flattering. And all because I wanted a decent pair of jeans.
Fortunately (or not, depending on your point of view), I happened to run into an old ex-bf there, who helped me get around SL and away (sorta) from the sex stuff. Well, that is until I visited his sim. Anyways, moving right along... And I actually settled down and started learning how to build. That's when my kids were allowed to see what mom was up to. Otherwise, SL was verboten to them.
Now, warp to one lonely day on InWorldz, on my region in fact, back when there were only 5 people online (and we got excited over that fact). My oldest daughter had asked to check out what mom was up to. So I let her make an account and I told her where to log into, on to my region. So there she was, happily checking out her inventory after I gave her a bunch of stuff. And I had to run over to the old IDI at that time. So I told her to stay put. While I was gone, someone showed up on my region and was testing building stuff. So she headed over by the male avatar, said "Hi, what are you building?". Nothing else. Nothing mean. The guy was nice at first, and they chatted for a few minutes when he asked her where she lived. Now, some of us would not think too much of that question (although personally, anyone who would ask me that within the first 5 mins wouldn't usually like my answer but I digress), however, my daughter decided it best to be very vague and said, "The United States". Well, kudos to her, she's not nearly as much of a smart ass as I am :) The guy got his shirt in a ruffle and asked what kind of answer was that. And she got distressed at that and asked me what she should say to him. That's when I tp'ed back and was nice and explained she's my daughter and he went off on me. I won't repeat what he said here, but it was not nice. And it was in full view of my daughter. Sadly, there are people in the world like that.
Now, I don't believe anyone should raise my kids but me. I'm kinda firm on that one. And it's not an easy job, it's a lot easier than most single mom's have it, as I'm home all day. And I completely understand that need for a parent to have their "adult" time. Whether that means being a fairy, a furry, a whatever you want, you want to do it without your kids being around pestering you for this or that. Whether it's just an hour away from the rat race, or after they've gone to bed, you need that time. That time to remember you're not someone's dad or mom, that you're not the wife/husband to someone else, that you DO have yourself. You can't lose touch with that, or everything sort of falls apart from there.
When we, as adults, agree to play in games such as WoW or GW or Lord of the Rings Online, or any other MMORPG, we sort of take it for granted there will be kids there. And we comport ourselves appropriately due to that fact. Ok, a good majority of us adults do anyways. Or at the very least we keep our adult side to private im's with other "known" adults. If you have a guild, you can set the terms, if you want kids in it or not, and kick them if you find out a member is a kid. Or join an adults only guild. So there is a way to keep away from them in a very limited way. Was not uncommon for me to keep my local chats off in public so I wouldn't have to deal with the endless crap spewed out when I was in any of those aforementioned games.
Where am I headed with all this? It's a danger as a parent, just monitoring your kids in RL. Knowing what or who is around your area (anyone done a recent registered sex offender search in their area lately??) where your kids play every day, go back and forth to school, and are out and about daily is a challenge in and of itself. How are you supposed to monitor them in a virtual world that in some ways, is MORE expansive than their real world you allow them access to? How do you rely on knowing that the people they are interacting with are not exactly the SAME people you are trying to protect them from in the real world?!
My girls have accounts with Disney's Club Penguin. I pay for this every month for them to fully enjoy it. Why? After having read through Disney's safety structure and guidelines, I felt my kids would be safe there. That Disney had gone above and beyond making sure kids would be safe there. They monitor the chats, various chat types are removed, and they are heavy on the ban hammer for anything inappropriate. So I happily pay $6 a month for each account for them. They do not have Facebook (although my oldest keeps begging for it), they do not have MySpace, they do not have personal blogs. The internet is not a toy. It's full of all the same dangers as the real world are and in some cases, far more so depending on the venue.
Now, back to the purpose of this blog. If I, as a parent, were informed by the powers that (are now seemingly lacking to) be that my teen was to be moved to the adult oriented main grid, and their security was a spotty "age verification" process, you can bet as a parent I would be livid. And their accounts terminated. I'm sorry, but no one has the right to just decide for me as a parent that my child is old enough to be migrated from one place to another without my say so. My kids already KNOW how to avoid the age problem when it comes to registrations and so on. But my job, as a parent, is to make sure I know where they are. And that includes the internet.
I would have to say, I'm actually angry at the lack of foresight in this disaster in the makings. And I don't even have a teen being migrated. I'm angry on behalf of the parents who have no idea, or who have been blinded by their kid's dazzling gloss over of what SL is. I'm angry for the adults who now are being forced to change their ways and limit themselves after years of having their own adult time. I'm angry at once again, corporate making the decision without listening to their user base. AGAIN. I'm angry that this is being done to "conserve" costs, rather than modifying the business model that obviously failed, now it will be foisted on the adults to deal with what they do not want to. I'm angry that kids who don't want to, will now be forced to be around a bunch of cranky adults. I'm angry that the first time some perv goes after one of those kids, some kid is going to get hurt. I'm angry that the first time some adult makes a kid angry, they will level charges at that adult and their life will be ruined, and not just in a virtual environment. Overall, I'm just plain angry over this idea.
I know there's lots of tinfoil ideas out there on why this move. But at this point, I don't care. It's a bad one. It ranks right up there with some doozies I've seen other corporates do, but I seriously think this one takes the cake in my book. It's reckless, stupid, haphazard and full of half-baked spin.
I have this life sized image of a very jaded board of directors facing the front of a sterile conference room, and there is little R2D2 with his flickering image of Princess Leia with this message playing: "The more you tighten your grip LL, the more regions will slip through your fingers." This causes hysterical laughter to erupt in the room and they all pat themselves on the back and mumblings can be heard regarding "the lemmings" and "the sheep have been herded". Fade to black.
Til I see you all InWorldz... give a big squishy hug to your kids. And your pets. And your stuffed animals. And wow I need to stop now!
So I'm feeling the need to address this issue from a parental point of view. As a resident still of SL, the concept of bringing teens into the grid is.... monumentally scary. I remember the first few times I ventured in, my daughters wanted to see what mommy was up to. Those were some very trepidating moments and I quickly shoo'ed my kids off to do something else, because apparently I had landed at a sim that was erm, yeah. I'm not a prude by any means, but my first thoughts about SL were not flattering. And all because I wanted a decent pair of jeans.
Fortunately (or not, depending on your point of view), I happened to run into an old ex-bf there, who helped me get around SL and away (sorta) from the sex stuff. Well, that is until I visited his sim. Anyways, moving right along... And I actually settled down and started learning how to build. That's when my kids were allowed to see what mom was up to. Otherwise, SL was verboten to them.
Now, warp to one lonely day on InWorldz, on my region in fact, back when there were only 5 people online (and we got excited over that fact). My oldest daughter had asked to check out what mom was up to. So I let her make an account and I told her where to log into, on to my region. So there she was, happily checking out her inventory after I gave her a bunch of stuff. And I had to run over to the old IDI at that time. So I told her to stay put. While I was gone, someone showed up on my region and was testing building stuff. So she headed over by the male avatar, said "Hi, what are you building?". Nothing else. Nothing mean. The guy was nice at first, and they chatted for a few minutes when he asked her where she lived. Now, some of us would not think too much of that question (although personally, anyone who would ask me that within the first 5 mins wouldn't usually like my answer but I digress), however, my daughter decided it best to be very vague and said, "The United States". Well, kudos to her, she's not nearly as much of a smart ass as I am :) The guy got his shirt in a ruffle and asked what kind of answer was that. And she got distressed at that and asked me what she should say to him. That's when I tp'ed back and was nice and explained she's my daughter and he went off on me. I won't repeat what he said here, but it was not nice. And it was in full view of my daughter. Sadly, there are people in the world like that.
Now, I don't believe anyone should raise my kids but me. I'm kinda firm on that one. And it's not an easy job, it's a lot easier than most single mom's have it, as I'm home all day. And I completely understand that need for a parent to have their "adult" time. Whether that means being a fairy, a furry, a whatever you want, you want to do it without your kids being around pestering you for this or that. Whether it's just an hour away from the rat race, or after they've gone to bed, you need that time. That time to remember you're not someone's dad or mom, that you're not the wife/husband to someone else, that you DO have yourself. You can't lose touch with that, or everything sort of falls apart from there.
When we, as adults, agree to play in games such as WoW or GW or Lord of the Rings Online, or any other MMORPG, we sort of take it for granted there will be kids there. And we comport ourselves appropriately due to that fact. Ok, a good majority of us adults do anyways. Or at the very least we keep our adult side to private im's with other "known" adults. If you have a guild, you can set the terms, if you want kids in it or not, and kick them if you find out a member is a kid. Or join an adults only guild. So there is a way to keep away from them in a very limited way. Was not uncommon for me to keep my local chats off in public so I wouldn't have to deal with the endless crap spewed out when I was in any of those aforementioned games.
Where am I headed with all this? It's a danger as a parent, just monitoring your kids in RL. Knowing what or who is around your area (anyone done a recent registered sex offender search in their area lately??) where your kids play every day, go back and forth to school, and are out and about daily is a challenge in and of itself. How are you supposed to monitor them in a virtual world that in some ways, is MORE expansive than their real world you allow them access to? How do you rely on knowing that the people they are interacting with are not exactly the SAME people you are trying to protect them from in the real world?!
My girls have accounts with Disney's Club Penguin. I pay for this every month for them to fully enjoy it. Why? After having read through Disney's safety structure and guidelines, I felt my kids would be safe there. That Disney had gone above and beyond making sure kids would be safe there. They monitor the chats, various chat types are removed, and they are heavy on the ban hammer for anything inappropriate. So I happily pay $6 a month for each account for them. They do not have Facebook (although my oldest keeps begging for it), they do not have MySpace, they do not have personal blogs. The internet is not a toy. It's full of all the same dangers as the real world are and in some cases, far more so depending on the venue.
Now, back to the purpose of this blog. If I, as a parent, were informed by the powers that (are now seemingly lacking to) be that my teen was to be moved to the adult oriented main grid, and their security was a spotty "age verification" process, you can bet as a parent I would be livid. And their accounts terminated. I'm sorry, but no one has the right to just decide for me as a parent that my child is old enough to be migrated from one place to another without my say so. My kids already KNOW how to avoid the age problem when it comes to registrations and so on. But my job, as a parent, is to make sure I know where they are. And that includes the internet.
I would have to say, I'm actually angry at the lack of foresight in this disaster in the makings. And I don't even have a teen being migrated. I'm angry on behalf of the parents who have no idea, or who have been blinded by their kid's dazzling gloss over of what SL is. I'm angry for the adults who now are being forced to change their ways and limit themselves after years of having their own adult time. I'm angry at once again, corporate making the decision without listening to their user base. AGAIN. I'm angry that this is being done to "conserve" costs, rather than modifying the business model that obviously failed, now it will be foisted on the adults to deal with what they do not want to. I'm angry that kids who don't want to, will now be forced to be around a bunch of cranky adults. I'm angry that the first time some perv goes after one of those kids, some kid is going to get hurt. I'm angry that the first time some adult makes a kid angry, they will level charges at that adult and their life will be ruined, and not just in a virtual environment. Overall, I'm just plain angry over this idea.
I know there's lots of tinfoil ideas out there on why this move. But at this point, I don't care. It's a bad one. It ranks right up there with some doozies I've seen other corporates do, but I seriously think this one takes the cake in my book. It's reckless, stupid, haphazard and full of half-baked spin.
I have this life sized image of a very jaded board of directors facing the front of a sterile conference room, and there is little R2D2 with his flickering image of Princess Leia with this message playing: "The more you tighten your grip LL, the more regions will slip through your fingers." This causes hysterical laughter to erupt in the room and they all pat themselves on the back and mumblings can be heard regarding "the lemmings" and "the sheep have been herded". Fade to black.
Til I see you all InWorldz... give a big squishy hug to your kids. And your pets. And your stuffed animals. And wow I need to stop now!
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Food Coma = Thankful... or Something
1. I'm thankful for my family. Sure they drive me absolutely rant raving luatic, which they will tell you is not a long drive for me, but I can always count on them to throw some humor at me when most needed. My 12 year old has this really wonderfully warped sense of humor (I disclaim any and all knowledge of where she got it from btw) and her and my mom start arguing in fun and next thing you know the whole house is insane. Not only that, but they sacrifice alot while I work on the grid so many hours a day. They may hate it some days, ok most days, but they also realize they are luckier than most kids.
3. I'm thankful for my friends. Admittedly, I don't have a ton of them, and when I do make one, they quickly get upset over the fact that my finding time between grid and family doesn't leave me with much other time. But I have a couple really close friends, where we don't require a ton of each other's time and personal touch. Sure we get together a couple times a year, and we have a blast when we do, and we keep in touch via emails, phone, im's, which really keeps us going. They say, if you find 5 good friends in your lifetime, REALLY good friends, ones you trust with your very life, you should count yourself lucky. I count myself thankful.
4. I'm thankful for our residents. More like my extended family in alot of ways, because they too can drive me absolutely rant raving lunatic, but they also bicker and fight with themselves, make up and hug after, and at the end of the day, always bring a smile to my face. They are crazy, fun, humorous, creative, and overall, we could never have asked for a better core group of residents.
5. I'm thankful for finding SL. Yup, I am. At a time in my life when I had basically closed off the outside world to focus on my kids, I found SL and got my social outlet again. But better than that, it gave me the drive to move beyond just being a resident. To do something I love doing and have the desire to do every day. Not everyone can say they love their Just Over Broke.
6. I'm thankful for all my virtual friends. There was a time, not so long ago, and in some circles it's still not considered "mainstream" (psychiatrists warn against internet addiction after all) when mentioning you had friends you had never "met" face to face, was frowned upon. But I find the people I associate myself with in the virtual reality, to be just as real as my friends above that I don't see that often. Where is the difference I often ask myself, and I know there really is none other than you may miss vital social cues from body language. Well, we live and learn that way too.
7. Last but not least, there is one person, who I'm not going to name here, that I'm very thankful for. And sometimes he doesn't get to hear that enough cause I'm just so not the mushy type. He makes me laugh when I desperately need it, he listens to me vent when I need to vent (mind you, he tunes it out, but what man doesn't?!?!), he lets me ramble about crazy ideas, and with his schedule, he's as busy as I am some days. So he let's me have my space as I need it, without either of us worrying about insulting the other.
I'm sure there's lots of other little things I'm grateful for, but seriously, this would turn into the worlds longest blog then. Whether you're American or not, sometimes it's good to review the things you're grateful for and just go over them and smile at the reasons why you're thankful to have those in your life.
Until I see you InWorldz... what are some of the things you're thankful for?
Monday, November 22, 2010
Beta Test Crash Helmets Available Here!
Yup, that's right, tomorrow starts our big beta test! At noon and 6pm InWorldz time, we have put a call out for anyone and everyone that can make themselves available for testing. We of course, will be handing out crash helmets for all our test dumm.. er victims. Yeah, victims, that's what I meant ;)
This is a really huge test as it pertains to the network and Tranq has worked his fingers to the bone on this... which leaves him a tad funkeh looking with boney fingers and all! But he had excellent results testing on his standalone and I was in the beta grid last night and it was very cool. We'll release the beta viewer as well for this, as the two go hand in hand with things that were put in place. The beta viewer WILL work on the main grid as well, so by all means feel free to replace your InWorldz viewer with this one.
The beta viewer has some of the stuff our residents have requested as well, such as the built-in AO, radar and other fun stuff. No bouncing boobies... and no RLV either, sorry folks! The neat thing is who is working on our viewer, so you guys may or may not be surprised by that, but the good part is we'll be able to work on some new features there. Obviously we'll be keeping those quiet until they are implemented and the viewer released, but we have some really cool stuff in the plans!
On a completely different track, I went over our numbers this last month, except currency, which I'll run after the 1st of December. Things are very much where I expected them to be, considering our huge expenses we had this month. Hey, going to San Diego is NOT cheap! But was it fun! :) First time land purchases fell, as I predicted, to half, but was slightly recouped with the new region resells. Region resells are spotty at best right now while I bring the system into full swing over the next 30 days. Renewals increased, which was a great thing to see, and I noticed an interesting trend from Oct. to Nov. numbers: Alot of our residents did 3 month renewals to get them through the holidays. That was great to see! We also had some other major expenses come out which will be announced with the next viewer (not the new one coming, but next one, I think... I may be wrong here). And we had our licenses covered for various things, and we also started our Trademark process. So all in all, while we did exactly what I expected for numbers, we spent alot of money too :)
So on that note, I leave you with this beautiful picture we took, Wednesday night, at Cardiff by the Sea, the Beach House restaurant. We got there right at 4:30pm for dinner, and I could not resist taking this picture. I felt right at home with this view ;)
This is a really huge test as it pertains to the network and Tranq has worked his fingers to the bone on this... which leaves him a tad funkeh looking with boney fingers and all! But he had excellent results testing on his standalone and I was in the beta grid last night and it was very cool. We'll release the beta viewer as well for this, as the two go hand in hand with things that were put in place. The beta viewer WILL work on the main grid as well, so by all means feel free to replace your InWorldz viewer with this one.
The beta viewer has some of the stuff our residents have requested as well, such as the built-in AO, radar and other fun stuff. No bouncing boobies... and no RLV either, sorry folks! The neat thing is who is working on our viewer, so you guys may or may not be surprised by that, but the good part is we'll be able to work on some new features there. Obviously we'll be keeping those quiet until they are implemented and the viewer released, but we have some really cool stuff in the plans!
On a completely different track, I went over our numbers this last month, except currency, which I'll run after the 1st of December. Things are very much where I expected them to be, considering our huge expenses we had this month. Hey, going to San Diego is NOT cheap! But was it fun! :) First time land purchases fell, as I predicted, to half, but was slightly recouped with the new region resells. Region resells are spotty at best right now while I bring the system into full swing over the next 30 days. Renewals increased, which was a great thing to see, and I noticed an interesting trend from Oct. to Nov. numbers: Alot of our residents did 3 month renewals to get them through the holidays. That was great to see! We also had some other major expenses come out which will be announced with the next viewer (not the new one coming, but next one, I think... I may be wrong here). And we had our licenses covered for various things, and we also started our Trademark process. So all in all, while we did exactly what I expected for numbers, we spent alot of money too :)
So on that note, I leave you with this beautiful picture we took, Wednesday night, at Cardiff by the Sea, the Beach House restaurant. We got there right at 4:30pm for dinner, and I could not resist taking this picture. I felt right at home with this view ;)
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| Yes, our table was RIGHT there! |
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