Firestorm News Week 1

It is probably important for some to know that Firestorm Viewer 4.7.1 Public Beta will be blocked starting tomorrow 1/7/16. Reference Also, after the next release (February? March?) the version 4.6.9, used by Windows XP and Mac 10.6 users, will be blocked.

Help

The Firestorm Team has made a second request for help with their gateway project. This time they are asking for user testimonials. They will be adding these to their web gateway pages that lead new users to their gateway regions. See: Share Your Love of Second Life with a Testimonial.

Firestorm Gateway Dec 2015

Firestorm Gateway Dec 2015

If you have a blog or other web site, you can help by linking to Firestorm’s gateway landing pages. See their ‘share’ post for a list of the 6 landing pages. You’ll also find them in my blog roll.  Continue reading

Ghost Town Screw Ups

This time I’ll warn you up front, the title is a deliberately ambiguous headline.

Ghost Town Welcome Sign

Ghost Town Welcome Sign

We have lots of interesting Second Life™ promotions stuff going on. Firestorm is asking for people to submit photos: Share your photos this weekend to promote Second Life. The photos will go in the Firestorm Gateway section of Flickr. Canary Beck is moderating the photo pool. It has 4,678 images as I write this.

CAUTION: SPOILER AHEAD!

Continue reading

Second Life: The Conspiracy to STOP Ghost Town

As I scan through the posts in the Second Life™ blogosphere I find more and more articles are about places. The blogosphere is becoming a tour guide. It seems Second Life is fashion and tourism. Fashion makes money, tourism doesn’t.

Ghost Town?

Ghost Town?

Whatever the case, Inara has an article on Ghost Town. But, her story is not about tourism. Ghost Town is a training area in the Firestorm Team’s regions designed as a game by MadPea. The area opens today (12/19) at 14:00 SLT or 2 PM SLT/PST. They will have entertainment from various people/groups. They are expecting the 4 regions to handle about 200 people.  Continue reading

Is the Firestorm Viewer on schedule?

At the Third Party Developers’ meeting Jessica said the viewer is  on schedule for a November 16 or 17 release. That of course depends on whether a serious problem is found or things work as planned.

This release will also be caught up with the Linden made viewer. I think that means the Linden version 3.8.6-305981, which is the current default viewer as I write this.

Firestorm Gateway Regions - Nov 2016

Firestorm Gateway Regions – Nov 2016

If you made it to the Firestorm Halloween party you have seen the Firestorm gateway regions. The Halloween celebration was also a launch party (reference) for the gateway build. Some well known designers/builders have helped. One being MadPea.  Continue reading

Firestorm + MadPea

Inara has an article up about the new testing of Community Gateways. We have seen the idea of community gateways appear a number of times over the years. We are now on the eve another iteration. In this one Linden Lab, Firestorm Developers, and MadPea Game Designers have teamed up to create a new gateway.

See: Firestorm ready to launch Gateway; MadPea join as partners.

The new gateway will be open Saturday 10/31 with events at; 13:00 SLT – Mankind Tracer, 14:00 SLT – Nance Brody, 15:00 SLT – The Changhigh Trinity Sisters Fire Show, and 14:00 SLT onwards – DJ Quad.

Check Inara’s article for more information.

Community Gateways for Second Life

Once upon a time Second Life™ had community gateways, Linden sponsored, built, and managed. In 2010 they closed. In 2011 user sponsored gateways opened.  (Reference – an out dated list of gateways) In 2011 when Rodvik Linden, then CEO, was asked if they would ever come back, he didn’t know what they were. Then in late 2011 we got the Destination Guide and user gateways were depreciated.

So, are they coming back?

1 stare at the hole

Portal ? Gateway? Trap? Conveyance?

First, if you don’t know, community gateways are places where new users are dropped at first login. The location is designed for new users and is typically filled with tutorials and teaching experiences. Back in 2011 Prim Perfect did a piece on what are Community Gateways: So what were these community gateways? An answer for Rodvik Linden. Gateways are sort of synonymous portals. The portal is the sign up web site. The gateway is the region the portal sends you to. That it isn’t set in stone, but it will give you a since of how the words are often used..

We have already been speculating on whether portals for Sansar are a good thing. See: Drama: Community Portals for Second Life 2. We have had loads of people documenting how bad some of the gateways are: Second Life: The New New User Tutorial. We have had some great gateways: Second Life Player Retention 2014-21. Continue reading

Drama: Community Portals for Second Life 2

Hamlet pointed to my article: Ebbe Altberg Interview in his article SL 2 to Launch Without Shared First-Time User Experience. He took an idea in my writing much farther than I did. His quote from my article:

For SL2 they are developing toward user created experiences and will thus bypass a uniform path for all new users. So, the concept of a single entry door for SL will vanish. The Lab will provide retention data to experience owners. They will let designers compare their experience retention to other experiences, designs, methods, and retention rates. With solid objective data flowing back to the designers, it may be possible to find the magic combination.

It seems he and others took this to mean there would only be entry to SL2 via community portals. I never it took what Ebbe said to mean that. But, obviously others inferred that was what I implied.  Continue reading

Second Life Player Retention 2014-21

Prim Perfect did a show on Player Retention issues in Second Life. The video is now up on their site. The video runs 57 minutes. Saffia Widdershins and Elrik Merlin host the show. The Guests are; Brooke and DaveR Linden, Carl Metropolitan – academic, and Jo Yardley – historian and creator of 1920’s Berlin in Second Life.

The Inspiring Orientation - Learn to Fly (2012)

The Inspiring Orientation – Learn to Fly (2012)

I’ll paraphrase what I have heard. Listen to the video before complaining to any of the participants.

Index

02:20 – End of introductions. Elrik starts a clip of a video that sets the context of the discussion. You may have seen this video. It is entitled the New Avi Experience in Second Life. It portrays a disastrous first encounter with Second Life. The full video runs 10 minutes. It can be found by clicking my link just above. Continue reading