and anyone can see the signs, mittens in the summertime

Good and bad from the Powers that Linden.

Good: debug options for those of us who never understood things like "cheesy beacon", and weren't particularly motivated to click settings at random. That'll help.

Bad, really, really bad: the new policy on gambling. And let me tell you why it's bad--because yet again, it is vague and inspecific when it needs to be clear!

For example. I dance at Dorian's. Since the slow crackdown on gambling, and casinos offering their services, we don't get as many people flush with winnings as we used to. Tips have gone down--drastically. Tips are how dancers pay rent.

So how do we make rent? We play the club's Sploder. And those wins, by and large, tide us over so we make our landlords happy, have enough to buy new outfits to dance in, continue dancing.

Oh, I'll still show up at the club, but...trust me, the Sploder goes away? I start getting pretty damned desperate for tips, which results in one kind of needy dancer, and I won't be the only one, and trust me on this too, people don't tip the desperate.

Or let's talk things like Slingo. I just learned how to play Slingo. I like it. I rarely win, but it's not about winning for me--it's about the fun in the game. Are games like Slingo, Tringo, the new "Zyngo", whatever that is, Greedy Greedy...are all games of such chance now prohibited??

Of course, with zero tips happening at my club, hells, why am I worried about playing Slingo? I won't be able to afford to!

I understand, they don't want to fight the Feds, I get that--they want things nice, and easy, and clear, and understandable...but they should then concentrate on making the rules they change, also clear, plain and simple to understand.

Comments

Stiv Rych said…
I CANT GAMBLE???

how will stiv love the world?
Emilly Orr said…
Stiv will not. Stiv will become a vengeful God, I think.

NO ONE can gamble now. We're still trying to figure out where Sploders and games like Slingo and the like fit in, because damn it, the "clear rules" mention NOTHING.

SO irked over this. But yes. Stiv cannot gamble. NOW what do you do?
Stiv Rych said…
im just gonna calm down, get me a elephant rifle and BAG ME A LINDEN.
Emilly Orr said…
Now God, calm down, the last thing your followers need is a God in exile...
Anti-micropayment gambling laws are the same thing as trying to enforce a law against flipping a quarter in the air.

This new policy and its enforcement have imho a potential to become an outlier event.

http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/7/26/114634/335#commenttop

Vote here if you want. This is a well read political blog. The person who wrote this did a good job laying out the groundwork for why this kind of unitary executive action can snowball, its kind of dramatic prose but its good + it does give you a chance to vote. which is cool.
Emilly Orr said…
Actually, the person who wrote that shares a writing style in common with yours.

*looks at you*

Still, the point's well made--to a point. I have no beef with the Powers that Linden wanting not to get involved with the group of governmental thugs currently patrolling online gaming. They're vicious, they eat raw meat, and they go for tender parts, without hesitation.

Where I have a problem is specifically where I listed above--say, the difference between gambling in Vegas, and going to a bingo parlor. Are they both still gambling? Sure. Should the same set of rules apply to both? I profoundly don't think so.
Seraph Nephilim said…
I'm not thrilled with the policy, but I understand it. Xploders definitely out -- strictly chance. Poker, too -- again, considered a game of chance, though skill is involved. (Explicitly listed in the blog, too.)

Don't know how any *ingo game is played, other than Tringo. Tringo is not a game of chance by most definitions. While the piece order is at random, all players play against the same board -- it's how they choose to place the pieces that makes the difference. That being said, LL can be very arbitrary about things like this.
Emilly Orr said…
I don't know how Tringo, "Zyngo", and similar games are played--I know Slingo is Bingo, with numbers, and a combined pot bet going to the player with the highest score at the end of twenty rounds of drawing random numbers. Is it gambling? Tacitly. Is it low-stakes, though? Generally. Does it matter? I'm not sure.

I do know they are steadily impacting all income sources rather than just plugging money-for-Lindens in on your own, which yet again--as with the upcoming age verification fee--penalizes those not in the upper income brackets.

But that's a separate rant entirely...
Hank Rucker said…
Damn them! Damn them to hell!

I hope they understand that this is the beginning of the end...

SL is predicated on trickle-down. Big spenders get L$, which are earned or won by the next level, who pay/donate to other players, who in turn spread it around to yet another level, lather, rinse, repeat.

Bah. There are days...
Emilly Orr said…
Oh, I don't think they do in the least. But I know I do.

I network. There are people on my friendslist who are there only because they are club owners, casino owners, business owners...or just plain have money. They have been clients, contacts, opportunity generators. They make serious money in SL; I get some of that, in product or Lindens. It's in large part how I survive.

This? Is going to make most of that list impossible; not just to continue to get work, of the weird sort I do, but because *they* won't have the income-generating potential they had before.

I don't like what's happening, I don't like the restrictions. I don't see that the Lindens have any more aggreeable *choices*, mind, all of them present some level of difficulty, and they may just not want the hassle and the fight that goes along with standing behind what we believe in.

But still. It'll be interesting--in that disheartening, we're-all-going-to-die way--to see what happens next.

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