General News

Second Life: How are User Groups Doing?

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There is a page in the Second Life™ Wiki listing the official user groups. Currently there are four weekly meetings;

The Bento Development group has changed to the Content Creation group. There was another Content Creation/Mesh Import group that stopped meeting in 2014. The meeting transcripts for that old group are still available. They are not the same groups but, similar.

Imagination
Imagination

This week and next there are no Content Creation group meetings. The next meeting is February 17.

Currently the Content Creation group meeting in Hippotropolis is the most interesting. They are dealing with the challenges of creating Bento Content. As problems come up the Lindens look at ways to make fixes or changes and users work to figure out work-arounds and better methods for creation. Various Lindens attend the meetings. 

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Second Life Adult: Not Intuitive

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SexWe all have our thoughts and beliefs about sex. In Second Life™ we can push the envelope on our thinking. Plus, we encounter people from all over the world that have very different ideas about sex and the roles of male and female.

The Walk
The Walk

In SL I continue to find aspects of life I hadn’t thought of before. For instance, bloggers tend to write reviews of the previous year about now. It is interesting to be reminded of what changed this year. Caroline, of Second Life Adventures blog (NSFW), did a review of the 2016 events and happenings that affected her the most. There is a new meme. See: My Second Life Story in 2016 (NSFW XXX).

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Gaming in 2016 – Predicting 2017?

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According to SuperData Research  people spent US$91,000,000,000 on games. Billion… This is an all-time record. But, they are hyping things a bit. In 2015 Statistica shows $91.5 billion spent and $99.6 billion in 2016. I suppose it depends on where one gets their numbers and categorizes them. Game revenue is notoriously flaky as companies like to hype their increasing sales and keep decreases secret.

Still that is about a 10% increase year-to-year. Eight billion isn’t chump change, unless your spending $10 trillion on credit, like some governments…

Data From Statistica

They break the revenue down into subcategories. Handheld games are dying. Smartphone games are the hot item. They show the largest growth from 2015 to 2016 and that is expected to continue, which seems reasonable as smartphones are selling well.

In 2005 smartphones sales were just $3.8 billion. Eleven years later in 2016 sales of smart phones was $55 billion, a 1,447% increase. So, as more people get smartphones there are more possible users of smartphone games. According to Statistica a little less than half of the 2016 game revenue was from smartphone gaming.

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Second Life: Cheap Thrills

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Cheap is good. Thrills are… well… thrilling. So, where do you get yours? Thrills…

I was playing around and got a notice that the Cheap Thrills show was about to start. For whatever reason, I decided to check it out. I was impressed.

I took the opportunity to video the show. It lasts an hour. I didn’t want to make an hour-long video. So, I edited out lots of the show. But, there is enough to give you an idea of what it is like. I took out some of the more interesting parts… I didn’t want to spoil the surprises.

The show is impressive. SL tech is put to surprisingly good use. Slick presentation. A few very good illusions are used. The choreography obviously requires some serious animation effort. 

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