Going Toward Better
Second Life
Now,
you can hope to get a more customizable Second Life experience. Linden
Lab, creator of the virtual world Second Life, today (April 22)
announced a series of initiatives to achieve that.
“From
the beginning, Linden Lab has led the way in the development of virtual
worlds and has set the standard on many cultural and social issues
involved with virtual communities,” said Mark Kingdon, CEO of Linden
Lab. “Preferences and community standards vary tremendously across
industries, countries and cultures; our goal is to retain as much of the
freedom as possible while continuing to push the medium and our platform
forward.”
In its
attempt to improve Second Life experience, in January this year
Linden Lab had announced acquisition of two
Web-based marketplaces for virtual goods, Xstreet SL and
OnRez. It planned to consolidate the two marketplaces on the Xstreet SL
platform, offering one online shopping experience for customers and
merchants.
Second
Life continues to be an 18+ environment. This will now be supplemented
by the following initiatives:
• The
definition and implementation of a three-tiered rating system – PG,
Mature, or Adult – that will be used to identify content and set
individual preferences for Residents. Definitions of each of these
maturity ratings are available here.
• The
implementation of a new account verification system. In order to access
Adult regions and search results, Second Life users will need to verify
their accounts in one of two ways: a) by having payment information on
file, or b) by using Linden Lab’s age verification solution, provided by
Aristotle.
• The
setting of maturity ratings for all regions, classifying them as PG,
Mature, or Adult. Mature remains the default setting for all Second Life
users. Access to Adult regions will be restricted to Residents with
verified accounts.
• The
migration of adult-oriented content from the Second Life mainland to a
newly created continent. A timeline and specific details on how the
migration will be managed and implemented is being finalized in
consultation with those affected and will be published later in Q2.
• The
filtering of search results according to maturity ratings and content
preferences. Search results using Adult keywords will appear only for
Residents with verified accounts.
To help
enforce, manage and measure the success of the program, Linden Lab is
implementing several automated processes to supplement its existing
abuse reporting procedures.
From a
technical perspective, it says, Linden Lab will soon make available
version 1.23 of the Second Life Viewer available as a release candidate
(RC). This iteration will have a series of controls that will enable
Residents to set maturity levels for regions, set individual
preferences, and filter search accordingly.
Developed and launched by Linden Lab in 2003, Second Life is a leading
3D virtual world environment. It enables its users – known as Residents
– to create content, interact with others, launch businesses,
collaborate, and educate.
Photo courtesy: Second Life
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