Question for the Vamps

It matters because it scares some people, and ticks other people off. True, these people don't understand what's going on behind the scenes, in the software. That doesn't make their concerns any less real.

This difference in viewpoint is also at the root of why you call SL a "game", and others don't. Yes, our avatars are pixels on a screen. Yes, most of us are here for entertainment. But it's not a "game". To me, a game has rules, scores, winners and losers. SL doesn't. What it has is people, interacting with each other in the same way, and doing many of the same things, that they do in real life. That makes it, in my view, a social universe, that is to say, a large group of people who can interact with each other. This social universe is set within a virtual (i.e., computer-generated) world. The pixels are pretend; the social interactions and their consequences are not.

The stakes in SL are higher than most games, too. We are not playing for a score here...but the rewards, and the costs can be high, whether you measure those in terms of emotions or dollars. And that, too, is like life.

I respect that some people don't consider it a game and that's cool. I personally have no emotional or financial investment in SL and that's cool too. I rent land, have a house, buy clothing and stuff like that, but I consider it entertainment.

It's a shame some people playing the Vamp game are frightening new people or harassing them, that I do not think is cool. My opinion is that most people are decent and it's a pity there's a few that spoil it for everyone.

I agree entirely with Lindal.

I value my soul no matter what life I'm in.

That's harsh. Brittany Spaniels haved sued her because she makes them look stupid.

Oh, that should be 'stupider'.

Well i didn't want to insult trailer trash (as I am sure there are some nice, intelligent people who are just disadvantaged) so I went with Brittany instead.

Hey!, just had sudden inspiration for a new tv show - Amercia's Most Stupider!!!

There is a narrow line between sophistry and sophistication and you are on the wrong side. While parallel arguments can be made, the core of your arguments can be made about a lot of things that are stored as bits and bytes. An accounting system? Unreal - it merely reflects and scores the actual financial activity of a company. Your vacation pictures on the computer screen? Unreal on your basis from the moment the camera clicked - unreal representations of actual images.

The issue is how the images and sounds reflect reality and to what mutual ends. SL can support both a virtual world - someday maybe like the original book - and be the basis of a myriad selection of role playing. The issue is the degree of mutuality, which you can see negotiated every day, from Neva Naughty to the drum circle at Gaia. Lot of fits, a lot of non-fits, but it is an issue when a group tries to impose their perspective on everyone they meet.

A big issue? Hardly. Most of us deal with real issues and this is less than the Scotty getting out of his shots by throwing up on the vet's floor (personal issue - he will get his in time). But it isn't an issue of whether it is real (as some conducting business or creating art are making it), role playing as in your closest friendly Gor sim, or something in-between being explored. It is the violation of mutuality, which is real in RL or SL. Difference between a good bar and a bad one, as one example.

Some spaniels and setters would qualify. I had a Husky once and our lawn was about ten feet longer than the one with the Irish Setter. The Husky liked to run back and forth with the setter the length of the setter's fence and then when the setter was excited, run the extra ten feet. That dog hit the fence for two solid years. His owner would just look, shaking his head...

Irish setters are perhaps the most beautiful dogs in the world...but those narrow heads don't have much room for brainz.

I think I can forgive dogs for being a bit dim as they hurt nobody - I have no time for people like Britanny though, she uses stupid to get attention all the time and I dread to think what her poor children are going to grow up like having a mother like that.

One: I don't use nor 'play' Bloodlines or any other Vampire game within SL.

Two: What part of "You have no say over who gets to use publicly accessible information concerning your Avatar" could be made any clearer?

Have a problem with these databases? File a JIRA entry to totally obscure the avatar key from all sensor scans and all other methods of script detection ... and break just about every vendor, rental box, owner control only attachment/object etc. in Second Life while you are at it.

An accounting system? Text on a screen and frankly apples to oranges.

Vacation photos? Images with no interaction anywhere and again ... Apples to Oranges.

The rest of your response is nothing more than flower worded nonsense of the sort which roughly translates into "Whatever works for you, so long as it does not interfere with the overall societal norm".

I've never cared for such things, nor have I ever cared to play along to those that act deluded.

Second Life is nothing more than an open ended (meaning never-ending and with no goals) game being marketed as a business platform and social network to make money for its creators: If you believe otherwise, I have a bridge in San Francisco to sell to you.

Yahoo and MSN are chat services that lack the one thing nearly all current generation games have in common: A visual aspect that goes beyond mere text on a screen.

They also lack something else: A physics engine.

Online Business and Social Networks do NOT need a Physics Engine, nor do they need a damage tracking system of any kind ... optional or not.

Those are all elements of current computer games.

Did I say that no real business occurs in Second Life? No: I said that those who formed real life companies around a Second Life 'market' need to take a step back and reassess their ability to keep fantasy and reality where they belong.

Oh yes, and just to make something clear here: I don't normally have a problem with people treating SL like anything more than a game, a form of entertainment, or a simple fantasy realm ... I have a problem with the rather extreme knee-jerk reactions some people have to this great big game being marketed as something else to make money.

My advice to 'business owners'? Hedge your bets and expect nothing at all. In fact, plan for failure due to various circumstances and act accordingly should one start to crop up.

Don't want to be a part of ANY SL-wide game system? Bloody well say so somewhere in your profile or something as you really have about as much right to tell the players they cannot play in all of SL as some of the worst of them do by trying repeatedly to drag you into it: None.

Hell, why not do what one of my friends has done?

Pop over to the store for these places, examine the items and then charge the full price for two of whatever restoratives you may need to return to normal in the system: They'll leave you alone REALLY quickly if you expect to be paid for the inconvenience.

Do what you want with your Second Life: Just don't snap at those who have decided that enough is enough and throw the truth of the matter in your faces.

I've laid out what SL really is: No amount of flowery language from anyone can prove otherwise ... especially not now that Phil is no longer at the helm.

I used to put a bit more into SL myself ... Not anymore. Not since the money grubbers came into power.

Game is not the only way you can validly see SL and I would prefer a description something like:

"Those are all elements of a world simulation that can form the basis but may not necessarily be limited to games."

Second Life does not really qualify as a game by itself as there are no goals to accomplish. Anything you accomplish in SL is due to the presence of additional goal-oriented things being created using the tools available unless you count the act of creating things as a goal and in that case it would be more correct in my opinion to consider SL to be 3D modelling package/toolkit in addition to being a world simulation.

Games of the type you are talking about are just world simulations with goal-oriented tasks to accomplish and so the perspective is actually reversed :-

Instead of a world simulation like SL being a type of game, a game (of the type you are talking about) is a type of world simulation.

you should really just look up the definition of a game and stop trying to get blood out of a turnip.
all you have to do is strip everything away to the beginning to see what SL is..
everything you mention came after.there were no roles no games no anything until the people in the world made them...
just a big blank grid with a chat box an editor and a duck walking avatar with a bad paint job..
your games came after they were created by the residents inside the virtual world..
call it what you want now but the basics never change..
it's an interactive 3d program.

on that note i exit this thread

And a floor wax.

Technically I guess you could say SL is not a game, because the definition of "game" denotes competitive activity or challenges and objectives.

But some people will take it seriously to varying degrees, others will not. I guess it depends on how much you have invested into SL and whether or not you actually have a RL. I suspect some people invest far too much emotion into SL, I also suspect it fills a void for some people.

But agree to disagree, it is subjective, not everyone takes SL seriously.

Having said that, SL is competitive, there are objectives and challenges, if you want them.........so again technically it could be a game.

However if you remove all created content, including LL's own in world created content. SL is nothing but a huge world simulation, no objectives, nothing to do.

It is user and Linden created content that provides that so SL inherently is not a game unless you mean world + content when you say SL. My point is, if you emptied Second Life of all content then it would still be Second Life.

Yes, this is true.......oh damn my libra moon, too much balance

Sure. That's what makes SL SL.
If you emptied Second Life of all content then it'd be OpenSim.

Lol I know you are trying to be funny Argent but because some people will believe what you say I am going to call you out on it.

Only the system compiled from OpenSim source code is OpenSim, not only that but OpenSim has some pretty definte differences and as yet does not work anywhere near as well as an empty SL would.

SL would still be an empty SL will all the potential that it originally had and has today. I agree the essense of SL is the world + content but not the definition.

I'm only half joking.
Eventually it will work as well as SL does now, and maybe as well as SL does by that time, but without the content?

And if all the content in SL vanished today... I'd have a hard time caring enough to start over. It would be a hell of a hit.

Maybe but the software would still be Second Life and still capable of being filled with the content of SL. The service would still be Second Life.
It's viability devoid of content is irrelevant for the purposes of defining what it is.

On the OpenSIM comparison, it will never be exactly SL because there are already directional changes that have nothing to do with not being functional enough yet. Also the tech is different underneath, it only looks the same outwardly. Hypothetically if LL dumped the content stores of the inventory servers and the sims to disk, then made them publicly available, OpenSIM would not be able to import that data because inside it is not SL, it is something that does a similar thing to SL but is quite different inside.

Legally and historically, yes, but practically?

It'd be like arguing whether Linux was UNIX.
Well, ah, actually... pretty much everything that wasn't scripted would drop right in, and you can bet that they'd be 100% scrip-compatible within a month.