Pixel Scoop

You know the sort. You’re just hanging around on a platform floating 500m in the air with your girlfriend and a hula dancing smurf, when some giant ass elephant in a wig comes and pisses all over your parade by standing in your graveyard…. Man I hate those days.

[2.45pm - Crescent Cove] Unexpected server errors forced frustration upon hundreds of residents this afternoon as ‘unexpected difficulties’ prevented profiles loading, texture uploads and other functions in game. However, more than the loss of functions, questions were raised about the definition of ‘unexpected’. Wordsmiths, lexicographers and vocabularly snobs from all over the globe reached for their references to double check the definition and all found the following:-

UNEXPECTED: not expected, foreseen or anticipated.

Confusion as to this definition arose owing to recent server performance, particularly on weekend days. This was all cleared up, however, when Linden Labs released the following excerpt from their own dictionary.

UNEXPECTED: An event that happens frequently. This adjective is used to describe perfectly anticipated events in such a way that allows the deflection of the true extent of technological issues being suffered by a company.

As well as the excerpt from their dictionary, a small statement was released. “Get over it. Pay up.”

We’ll keep you informed.

I’m not talking Linden costs here. I’m talking avatar rendering costs, which, in the new client (released July 23rd) can now be switched on for all to see! Avatar rendering costs were very well explained on the official blog recently (click here), which is very fortunate as I have neither the time, patience nor desire to go through it.

What I was amazed at though are my own rendering costs. It tells us that if your number is green, then you’re all good. If you’re yellow, then you’re so so and if you’re red… well, your avatar rendering costs are HIGH. I was shocked to find myself a yellow with a rendering cost of 1188. So I started detaching things to see what might make these numbers fall. My prim shoes knocked off just over a hundred. But my hair…. well. Let me show you!

I did experiment with a few others I own (none of which I actually like on me and me being selfish, I will not change to) which were ok! A lot of them kept me in green. But with 8 rendering points per flexi prim attached to you, I’m sure there’s a lot of expensive avies floating around!

One thing I wonder though, with the new viewer allowing people to view the rendering costs of all those around them, is it going to turn into a witch hunt? Will we see the development of anti-lag tribes running rampant up and down the grid demanding the removal of prim hair? I do believe, on the whole though, that it’s worthwhile being able to see these things. If someone complains at my yellow rendering number, my response will be simple. “Don’t like my lag, then don’t come near me.” Besides, what’s a few avatar rendering points between friends?? In true Mastercard Ad style:-
- Cost of random hair that I bought and didn’t like - 1000
- Cost of Flexi hair I eventually found and did like - 375
- Rendering cost of aforementioned hair - 844 avatar rendering points.
- Not having your other half complain that she doesn’t like ANY of your hairdos, nor does she like you bald - PRICELESS.
Some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s Linden Dollars.

Anyway, I’m going to go and hide away from the world so nobody will stab me in the pixel chest for my yellow rendering costs.

At least that’s the theory of Sarah Nerd, whose latest SLX freebie is absolutely hilarious. No, I don’t know Sarah personally. No I’m not being paid to mention this! No, nobody is currently standing at my side with a gun to my head ordering me to write this.

I know it’s unusual for me to ‘review’ something without there being sarcastic comments about the product, but this made me laugh for a good few minutes (out loud!) so thought I’d show you.

They get their good looks from me

Oh and I have just discovered, much by accident might I add, that they fart upon click! Personally I never did understand prim babies. When I’m not working in game, the last thing I would want to do is to be on call to an inanimate farting/pooping/hungry/demanding little [enter expletive here]. I mean, come on?? Who thought them up in the first place?? It isn’t even like they’re cute! I much prefer this parody version!

Anyway that is all for today! Just a chuckle.

Today, I want to tell you a story. It’s a story based on real events. Are you sitting comfortably?

Once upon a time in a big posh office somewhere in San Fransisco, one business consultant/financial advisor, who was clearly overpaid and under-educated, walked into the office of his boss. His boss happened to be the big guy at one of the world’s leading virtual worlds. Obviously, I won’t name names here ;-).

“Boss,” he screeched in sheer delight! “I have the most amazing idea! This is the way to solve all the dissatisfaction from the clients you are completely overcharging for use of your service that is terribly unreliable.”

“Wow. Sit down,” responded the big boss (let’s call him Phil). “Let’s hear it.”

The young advisor was almost peeing his pants in anticipation of his latest idea. An idea, he thought, that would save this company’s backside and make them lots and lots of money!

“Well, Phil. You know these sims you sell at like $1675 and then totally rip people off $295 a month for the pleasure?” Phill nodded, dollar signs replacing his eyes as his entire mind became filled with thoughts of the cruises he’d enjoyed, the sports cars he had purchased and large house in which he resided. “Well, I think we should reduce them to $1000. You still get your big fat monthly chunk. But you make people think they’re getting such an awesome deal that, people being people, they’ll only think about what’s coming out of their pocket now. It will be great! You’ll make so much money!”

Phil stopped for a while. Was this young advisor really telling him to LOWER pricing? Could this really be happening? Was he paying this young fellow $100000 a year to tell him to cut his prices? But then it occurred to him. The young lad had a point. Slash these up front costs, it was the monthly fees that paid for the board of directors to have daily champagne breakfasts anyway! It was the monthly tier that paid the wages of the incapable technicians. He could indeed slash the purchase prices!!

“I like it,” he responded. “But I must ask you… is this really sustainable? I mean, there won’t be any long term consequences of such a drastic move?”

Taken aback by his question, the young advisor sat back in his seat and thought to himself, “Wtf is a con-se-quence?” He’d never heard such a long word before! “And this other one… su-stain-able?” The young lad was getting a little worked up. He decided he would dance around the question by answering,

“Everything will be fine, boss.”

And so the very next day, the move was announced. The people flocked to buy their reduced price sims (after a very long wait for some rather inefficient employees to have the land store back up) and everyone lived miserably ever after in a virtual world oversaturated by private estate sims with ever falling values….. THE END.

Ok, so not quite the happily ever after we might have liked. But that was my somewhat sarcastic way of posing the question: Which moron thought it would be a sustainable idea to cut prices on sims like that? Which fool thought that cutting existing owner’s land values by $695 per sim was going to provide customer satisfaction?? And why on Earth do aforementioned idiots like that get paid like 100k? Do big companies just advertise in newspapers along the lines of, ‘Moronic graduate wanted to pretend to be a business consultant and make rash decisions. You will be expected to wear a suit and tie and pretend to be intelligent. If you can’t manage intelligence, just pretend you’re typing and scratch your chin in a ‘thinking’ sort of way, occasionally making a stupid business suggestion here and there. Salary: 100000. Company car. Health insurance.”

In the long term, however, I am sure that those who’ve held their sims since before this all happened and who had establised private estate real estate companies will eventually be able to take some advantage… given that those ‘Hey, I could so do real estate’ people who flocked to buy cut price sims and are now finding it isn’t really working, are now selling theirs off at rock bottom rates, there’s fewer people who will go to LL for their new sims, I imagine.

Hmmm…..I wonder how long it will be before the blog announces, “Linden Labs to sell Sims at $100 because nobody’s buying from us anymore and we clearly don’t give a s**t about the potential consequences of this.”

Ok, so since I get error messages reasonably frequently at the moment, I figured I would take this as an opportunity to provide you all with a very detailed, ‘academic’ and of course colourful analysis of them! Here’s the first!

Given the frequency with which I encounter these lately, I shouldn’t imagine you’ll be waiting too long for part 2.

In case you don’t know or haven’t heard of it, ‘Second Skin’ is a documentary (due to be released in cinemas in September) which followed the lives of 16 people who spend a LOT of time in virtual worlds such as Second Life™. My understanding is that its focal point is indeed SL and there are a number of relevant themes brought to light - falling in love with someone in game, disabled people finding themselves doing in virtual worlds what they cannot in real life as well as real lives being completely torn apart by virtual world addiction! For more information about Second Skin, click here.

The documentary has been reviewed as being completely unbiassed, which will be refreshing if this is the case. Time will tell, however.

My issue with documentaries and the likes about such gaming habits were summed up in a recent BBC documentary, ‘Wonderland’ which dealt with couple who had met in Second Life. In particular it picked up on a woman living in the US (unhappily) married with three children. She met a guy from the UK in game and as a result her children became somewhat ‘non-priority’. She neglected her home and eventually went off to visit the guy in the UK. I won’t ruin the whole thing in case any of you care to look it up! I hear there are copies of this floating around certain unnamed video hosting sites

It just seems that, although fascinating, when people decide to cover virtual world gaming, they always pick the extreme people! Obviously, this makes good TV! But just because one woman somewhere decided that she no longer particularly cared to cook and clean for, or even speak to her husband and children, doesn’t mean that every single female who plays is  a heartless, evil bitch! Nor does it mean that every single guy who logs on sleeps with his head on his computer for fear of missing a single second of virtual action. But such is TV, I guess. I hope to see Second Skin, for interest’s sake. And I also hope it isn’t as sentationalist as previous attempts at documenting SL have been.

Oh how I love thee teleports,
With such amazing speed,
Picking me up and carryin me
Half way across the grid.

How I love how you’ve no time
For dignity or class,
Spewing us out the other side,
Our shoes stuck up our ass.

Oh, your unreliability,
We love, without a doubt,
How sometimes you do not complete,
Sometimes you log us out.

But what I love the most,
My truest, deepest passion,
Is your basic inability
To work in timely fashion.

Today, I thought I’d share my romantic streak Enjoy!

I swear upon these pixel shoes,
(The ones stuck up my ass),
To never, ever leave your side,
(Unless, of course, I crash).

I swear to never look upon
Another pixel chick,
To always check for updates
For my interactive d***.

I’ll even pay that hefty fee,
Ten Lindens or whatever,
To get you in my partner box,
Where you will stay forever.

I’ll keep you in my profile,
Where I’ll write such loving things.
I’ll never wear bandanas,
Or that freebie gangsta bling.

I promise not to change my av,
Or wear a hover text watch.
All these things I swear
Upon the hair stuck at my crotch.

When the asset server fails us,
And transactions all go down,
When teleports cannot complete,
I’ll still be around.

But should you ever leave me,
I’ll drag you through the pixel courts,
And make you pay that twenty five
For our virtual divorce!

Linden Labs announced on their blog the other day that they are seeking out talented in world animators to come up with a new default walk to get rid of that newbie duck walk. This comes shortly after they released umpteen new, less newbie looking avatars too. So it’sclear for all to see that Linden Labs are finally taking note of the number of avatars set up, used just once and forgotten about for the rest of eternity. The thousands upon thousands of empty ‘old’ avie profiles will be solved, they think (in part at least) by allowing new residents to already look half decent and to be able to walk without it looking as though they just consumed the vodka supply of Russia.

Now, call me controversial here, but I would think their usage statistics might increase if people were able to log on when they tried, were able to teleport between places successfully, buy things, sell things (without transactions errors and list of people who need items resending) and generally perform the basic, essential functions of the game. If you’d just signed up, would you be more concerned by the fact your avatar’s skin is just a beige coloured sheet… or by the fact you can’t seem to login on your second attempt? Once again, allow me to make a suggestions for the Linden Labs PR team:-

“Dear Residents,

We would like to make you aware of our intentions to invest a suitable amount of time and effort into the creation and marketing of our new ‘newbie’ avatars and pending new default walk. Under the current circumstances, where transaction failures and those pesky in world service issues are fairly common, we thought we would like to disguise our shortcomings to the new avatars by making them real pretty with a nice walk. We figure that if it’s easier for them to look good and mingle with older avatars, at least for the few occasions on which they can actually login, they will feel a little better. Of course this goes no way to resolving the transaction errors, the asset server issues and all that good stuff. But please be consoled in regards to the recent poor performance by the knowledge that the sky is so pretty now and, oooooh, look at those water ripples. If that does’t go enough way to consoling you, then perhaps the charitable element of your avatar’s soul will enjoy the fact that YOUR money really is making a REAL difference. In fact, we were able to send 12 moderately wealthy directors off with bonuses substantial enough to ensure they’re now incredibly wealthy. Think of their children’s faces when Daddy unveils a Ferrari for their 17th birthdays or a pony for Christmas.

Anyway, folks, we just thought we’d let you know where we’re currently wasting, umm, I mean using our resources. Have a nice day.”

I still want a PR job there.