When we get to Zindra, are we going to have any customers?

I been talking to a few peeps and a lot of them don't want to age verify (for reasons upon which I won't speculate)... and quite a few more seemed to have no idea that it was necessary to age verify in order to visit Zindra... a few more didn't even know what Zindra was... (Granted, I have only a small sample gathered in a couple days).

My point is.... Anybody got some speculation about what percentage of our customers will actually follow us there? They could, ya know, just shop on Xstreet, and then keep the naughty stuff in their private Mature sim homes (if I'm interpreting things correctly).

Will Zindra become a wasteland of adult content with no audience? (Gloom and doom! Etc., etc.)

Hey, Smith. I doubt it will be a waste land. I have been bopping around it for the past few days and there are quite a few other people visiting for an "empty" sim.

I was worried how LL's has been shoving this down the communities throat.. but they really backed off of the the original aggressiveness they had.

I moved my entire store contents onto SLX though, just because I'm sure there will be a large percentage of traffic lost due to people not wanting or not knowing how to adult verify.

No, anyone who has payment info used can access Zindra, there will be plenty of people able to access Zindra.

Wait, where did you hear this at?

This has always been the case. If you're payment info used you can access Zindra.

Cool, I didn't know that. Last time I was reading the debates it was at, CC companies do not allow LL to use the fact that they issued someone a card to be used as adult verification.

Oh boy. That's kind of what I was afraid of: people not knowing what little is required to get adult access.

Yes, payment info on file is good enough--and just depositing US$ into XstreetSL is good enough, too.

I was worried enough about that to make an exhibit for SL6B that steps the visitor through the alternatives for getting their account adult-verified, and what has to be done afterwards to enable Adult content in the viewer, and how to test that it all works.

That exhibit, "Rite of Passage: Becoming 'Adult' in Second Life" will open with SL6B tomorrow at 10am SLT. It's located at http://slurl.com/secondlife/SL6B%20Quantum/142/170/23 -- or just look for the big green "a" near the top center of the Map of SL6B sims.

I've also scheduled some open discussion Events there, "Having a Future with Adult Content" to "share strategies and brainstorm about surviving the transition and thriving in our Adult Content-controlled future." They're scheduled for:

Tuesday, 23 June 11am
Wednesday, 24 June, 5am
Thursday, 25 June, 10am
Friday, 26 June, noon, and
Monday, 29 June, 10am.

Actually it came about when COPA died. Services are no longer held responsible for age verification any more. Now, all that's legally necessary is ID verification. A CC passes muster for that. (^_^)y

What about all the people who aren't age verified or have payment on their profile? Will you not lose business from them?

Well not if they use XStreet

It's been my prediction all along that there are a lot of people like us - who have about 20% stuff that is definitely adult content. About 40-50% stuff that is questionable (but since we have that 20% - why bother trying to figure it out?) and the remainder is not adult whatsoever. When we talked about what to do - splitting things up into two massive shops/plots of land would be a drag. Can't share prim overhead because they are on different sims. Have to bounce back and forth with teleports that like to fail or whatever else. It just sounded like a nightmare.

So we decided to keep our little 1024 meter "outlet" store on the mainland as our "PG" stuff - our horse jumps and that sort of thing - and then just get a real sim of our own, flag it adult and not need to worry about anything. The "grey area" stuff will be okay because it's in an adult sim and I don't have to worry about what we call it (or people getting upset and ARing me and making me deal with a review). And everything else will be fine and dandy.

So, our sim has some adult stuff, but it is going to be an adult sim that has horseback riding and jumping, fishing (both kinds), swimming, 9 holes of golf, fencing, mud wresting (maybe nude, maybe not) a movie theater, bumper cars, mini carnival, a holodeck with about 60-70 different roleplay environments set up, a full sized firefly ship and other great "Mature" but "Not Really Adult" stuff.

I can't imagine that we're going to be the only ones in this situation - where it's just easier to slap up the "Adult" flag and call it a day. Once the dust settles and everything makes sense to everyone, "Adult" regions will end up being what today's "Mature" regions are. There are plenty of things out there now that could easily pass as PG but it's just easier to call it "Mature" because you never know what might happen or what you want to do. In essence, if you are on a Mature or PG sim now - you have a whole bunch of extra rules to follow. If you are on an "Adult Sim" you just follow the general rules of common decency and you're good to go. Easy. Fun. And everyone will be there, so you might as well go too. lol

That's my prediction anyway. Zindra and Adult Estates will not be the underbelly of SL - it will be the place to be - if only because it is the only place that you are truly allowed to be. And the "Mature" areas will be where all the kids who aren't hip enough to play with the cool kids hang out.

Hey Patasha. The thing that worries me is all the people I've met at Zindra seem to be scoping out land... I don't think these are my potential customers, unfortunately.




I think that's probably a good idea... I have been meaning to get my act together and work on my SLX stuff. Now might be a good time.

I had a group discussion about Zindra on Fri and the consensus was that most people in SL either are unaware of it or feel it does not affect them and is a non issue.

Hi Rygel, you make a good argument and I certainly hope this what happens!

It will take a month or two for the real signs of if that's all going to happen, but I'm sure it's how it'll all pan out in the long run. Think about it.

Tell someone that they shouldn't go into a bar, and all they want to do is go into a bar. If that bar is cool, they'll come back. Ultimately, it's up to us (Adult Land Owners/Shop Keepers/etc) to present something that makes people want to come back - and there is plenty of shoddy merchandise out there - but that's not limited to just adult areas. There are TONS of great adult roleplay areas and sims out there. Some will most assuredly be relocated on Zindra. Some will be on private sims. Either way it won't matter much.

Here's an interesting poll to take... you have been asking people about whether they knew what Zindra was. Ask them,also, to tell you (without looking at the map) if they are currently standing on the mainland or a private sim. Ask them if they know the difference between a mainland sim or a private sim. If they aren't land owners, they won't know the answer to one or both of those questions, either. I'm a land owner and usually the only time I ever even consider if I've landed on the mainland or a private sim is if it is exceptionally laggy - in which case I will sometimes check to prove my assumption that mainland tends to be laggier. lol

Zindra, itself, is really irrelevant, just as mainland is irrelevant to the majority of users in SL.

So it really just comes down to "Do you want to play Plain Vanilla SL with no surprises and the restriction of totally free creation? Or do you want to buy a few Lindens or fill out this little form here and be able to get the entire SL experience?"

After a week of running around in Vanilla SL, I suspect that there will be very few people in the game who don't say, "Hmmm. I wonder what I'll find if I do this and check off that other button there....?"

--added as an afterthought-- And those that don't, wouldn't be your customers anyway, so you haven't lost anything. lol

Estate owners can place Adult regions next door to Mature or PG. So if you want to have all your stuff in "one" location, get land that straddles the border.

This has several advantages. The new search does not show adult places if they do not have the adult settings turned on, so you can still advertise with the Mature or PG side of your place. Also, while people cannot *enter* adult land without verifying, they should still be able to *see* stuff and cam shop (that has not been tested yet though, but it should work).

Its much easier of course to manage a "single" location, even with the hassle of sim border crossing, than to have it in parts that are wildly far away from each other.

People who have an adult roleplay sim can use a lower rated region next door as the "lobby" with information on what you do there and how to upgrade. It does not have to be an entire region, just a parcel large enough to land on.

This is also a use for an openspace region attached to a full island rated adult. Rate the openspace as "Mature" and use it as a lobby, since openspaces are relatively inexpensive.

Unless people stay on viewer v1.22 which I am planning to do until the whole viewer debacle is resolved or I am forced to upgrade.

They're not calling it "adult verification", they're calling it "account verification". As in "this is a real account and they won't be able to easily get another after we ban them", I guess.

Don't worry, there will be adult-acceptable 1.22-based viewers from third parties. And I suspect the "--channel" trick will work as well.

Yep. This is definitely a future possibility for us too. As of now we can't afford more than a single sim (and a small outlet or two for the PG stuff). Would be nice if I could swing another homestead or something (especially before the up-price, but... oh well) to have things together.

End of the day, our PG stuff on the sim is the most fun (the golf course is a blast and we have about 140 custom "fish" for fishing) but at the end of the day - it's 80% of our land and makes up 10-20% of the revenue. With the exception of our "Narnia" themed scene for the holodeck, our "adult" themed holodeck scenes outsell the PG ones too.

If business keeps growing as it has (and I can't see why it wouldn't - the people who are interested in our stuff will find it because they want to find it and the people who don't want to find it won't find it - same as before) then maybe by fall we can swing two sims and move some of the rental cottages over to the PG/Mature land and put the PG stuff over on that side - but really just double the whole experience for everyone else who wants to cross that line into the evil adult sim. lol (Yeah, chances are there will be someone playing an ACTUAL skins match on the 9 hole golf course! Yay!) lol

Try Snowglobe, or one of the third party viewers.

I have had good luck with KirstenLee's viewer, which has the 1.23 features included. Its been rock steady as far as not crashing, but whether you crash depends a lot on your operating system and other stuff like graphics drivers, so what works fine for me may not work for you.

Snowglobe is the viewer being developed that uses HTTP to communicate (Until now they have used UDP, which is prone to data errors, and data loss or corruption is a major cause of problems in SL, including crashes)

I put a bunch of links to other viewers in the Adult Information Kit wiki page:

http://www.slapt.me/wiki/index.php/Information_Kit

(thats also a handy page for people who need to learn about all the adult changes in general)

The kit, including a verification HUD, and other notecards is also available on XStreetSL:

https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=1555750

Well I did expect that too but to be honest I am very Meh about Zindra. I have a personal feeling there will still be a lot of adult content on mature land despite everything. Besides there is very little adult content I need/want that I don't already have.

There will still be a lot of adult content on Mature land for three reasons:

(1) Adult content that is in private (such as your home in SL), is still allowed on Mature land

(2) The G-Team is only 11 people, so their ability to track down adult stuff and force it to move is limited.

(3) Linden Labs has done a terrible job telling people about all this, especially in languages besides english, so a lot of people dont even have a clue they are supposed to move yet.

Also, rememer that Estates can set regions to adult too, so Zindra will only be the Mainland portion of adult land. As of right now the regions break down like this:

* Estate - Adult: 118
* Estate - Mature: 18803
* Estate - Offline: 99
* Estate - PG: 3364
* Linden - Adult: 162 (Zindra)
* Linden - Mature: 3806
* Linden - Offline: 33
* Linden - PG: 1422

So already the estates are almost as much adult land as Zindra, and they will adjust their region ratings according to demand.

LOL That is a very good point

Hey Argent, It says "Adult Verification" on the left-hand side menu after you log into your account. Even though I'd used payment (many times) I couldn't visit Zindra, until after I did that...