Aodhan McDunnough

As in my previous post, I agree they shouldn't be legal if that's the complete scenario. I also agree that they're trying to circumvent the bans.

Individually the machines are legal. The SYSTEM taken as a whole no longer is.

Wildefire Walcott

Well the thing is, if LL doesn't like them they can just modify their TOS. They do that sometimes. I never played a single casino game in SL, and I never will. Good luck to the designers, and to the mainlanders who are about to be living next door to goddam casinos again until LL's sleeping dragon wakes again.

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Joshua Nightshade

The ban says Lindens or their equivalents, so no, even on that basis they aren't legal.

People think it's just the L$ exchange and it isn't.

Gigs

OK I just tried out this system. I paid 500 L$ and got 500 Z$. I played a few hands of blackjack on a fairly well written machine, betting 100 Z$ per hand. I got my balance up to 600 Z$ and decided to quit while I was ahead.

I went to the cash out game, it's a matching game like concentration.
You pay 1 L$ to play, and you get a free Z$ for trying. You have 2 minutes to complete a 4x4 game of concentration. You'd have to be really really slow or bad at it to lose. If you lose the match game, you don't lose any Z$. So you can play as many times as you need to until you cash out successfully. There is nothing at-risk in the game of skill.

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Colette Meiji

Even easier than that.

The days where they even needed to change the TOS are over.

They can just do a two sentence Blog post and it will be done.

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Thing is I think a lot of the Lindens like Casinos ..

They just have to put up with this pesky law that says they cant have them.

Colette Meiji

Makes me wonder if the Chat Log is only refering to the Game of Skill being legal.

Not the combined system of machines ..

as Aodhan mentioned


Its like

The Game of Skill is legal.

And its legal to gamble as long as there is no payout

But together ..


Hmm Is it possible the Lindens didn't even follow the process?

Gigs

I guess it's possible they only showed Zara the game of skill and not the gambling machines.

Colette Meiji

Ya.

But no payout gambling machines are already legal ..


Wow this sounds like a bait and switch.

Aodhan McDunnough

Based on Gigs' report, I'd say it's gambling plain as day.

@Colette

Sneaking elements in to circumvent restrictions. LL better notice the big picture quick.

A court can argue that Lindex + Grid is counted as one machine in which case individually legal components won't count for shit.

Colette Meiji

All the individual pieces are legal .. but the combined system is as rotten as a month old tomato.

Really shady.

Joshua Nightshade

When's the next GTeam meeting?

I already sent Miss Zara an IM about this thread, I think I should pay her a visit in person.

Colette Meiji

Wonder if the Casino Runner poster will be back now that we all know exactly what they are doing.

Joshua Nightshade

Probably.

He hasn't yet accused anyone of being against false advertising and/or scamming to be puritanicals who hate gambling, so I'm rooting on it.

Gigs

I really wish gambling could come back. I've already written all my legislators urging them to repeal the Safe Ports Act Internet gambling provision (on real dead tree paper).

But this just isn't the way to go. They are trying to get through a loophole that doesn't exist.

Colette Meiji

yeah waiting until/if it is really legal is the way to go.

By then the prices on sims will drop again and only the cheapo casinos will be on the mainland cluttering people's SLives

Aodhan McDunnough

We need gambling out of SL ... but not because of the gambling.

Casinos are also the biggest traffic generators - via camping.

Camping lags servers to snot even back when the average SL lag was low.

Camping can keep neighboring landowners off their land by taking up all the avatar resources.

If you hate camping, then keep gambling out of SL.

Gigs

That's silly logic. If you can ban gambling you can surely ban camping.

Aodhan McDunnough

Nope. That's because camping is easier than gambling to disguise if ever it's explicitly banned.

And if such a ban were made, there will also be too many people who may be mistakenly banned because their presence resembles camping.

Go to a club to party, fall asleep while your avatar is dancing. To the world... you'll appear to be camping when all you did was fall asleep.

Winter Ventura

It's clear to me, that you don't understand the camping issue at all.

Camping is a supply-side problem.

if the club owner is paying people a "per-time-spent" salary for remaining onsite, then that is the behaviour you can and should target for removal.

The fact is, the way to target that behaviour, is to remove the "traffic" incentive altogether. Remove any value for a location generating more people-hours, and you remove the incentive for people to PAY others to stand around, and/or use bots in an effort to increase the "appearance" of location popularity

In the process, you punish those who actually HAVE popular places, because they can no longer be recognized compared to unpopular places.. and then there's the whole issue of search ordering, and what defines "relevance".

But, the real world doesn't order search results in the phonebook based on popularity.

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Aodhan McDunnough

I used to say that removing the traffic meters will kill camping, I figure it won't. It will be reduced considerably but not eliminated.

There is another component that will keep camping going: the world map. Avatar concentration can still be seen on the map so even in the absence of the traffic meters we will still have camping.

We will however be rid of the ads that are artificially buoyed by the results.

Gigs

Green dots no longer load except right in the center of your map. It would be a much less compelling reason to camp.

"popular places" is already gone. I suspect it's just a matter of time before all traffic metrics are gone, or severely de-weighted.

Aargle Zymurgy

Probably a poor choice of words. She's chaired the bulk of the meetings I've been at. Frankly, I don't know who is "officially" the head of the group.

Gigs

Robin

Aodhan McDunnough

[1] As long as they can be seen to some distance they are homing beacons for traffic. Weak ones, but still working.

[2] Yesterday is not too soon.

FlipperPA Peregrine

I've just sent the following instant message to both Zara and Kaylee, and will post their reply here when received.

Regards,

-Flip

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