Gambling Is Dead, Long Live Gaming!

In their latest blog post, Linden Lab promises to ‘review, investigate and respond to appropriate notices‘ about gambling in Second Life. That means that there will be no active policing. Which means, as I have found out, that nothing much will happen.

I searched for gaming in the Classifieds search engine and discovered that it’s the new gambling. Blackjack, roulette tables, camping devices which let you win a higher payout per minute or more ‘idle cycles’ - it’s all there, run by avatars which are younger than the gambling policy and sometimes on machines built after the introduction of the ban.

Here and there the machines are switched off, and after payment it tells you to ask the owner for a refund. I guess that is one way of making money… Other casinos work with tokens that you can buy; they promise you to refund all your losses eventually, thereby avoiding the gambling ban - or so they say. But a staff member in one such place was happy to pass me a list of casinos, broken down into closed, half empty and still active - and so I found at least one place which doesn’t even advertise as a ‘gaming’ establishment anymore. Welcome to the underground network.

Casino owners go to great lengths, or rather heights, to look compliant on the surface. When I teleported to one ‘former’ casino via Search, an object on the otherwise barren land told me: ‘Laetizia Coronet Gambling is forbidden in SL, please don’t visit this place. Thanks.‘ Through the list provided by the staff member of the ‘legal’ token-based casino however, I end up 400 m above that same spot, in a luxury casino surrounded by Keep SL Gaming Legal signs. Two girls are inside near the roulette table and it’s in full swing (names edited out by me):

[6:50] HRN Roulette GBV.5.0 whispers: 20 seconds until the wheel spins!
[6:50] HRN Roulette whispers: “A V” you bet 4700L$ on 2nd 12
[6:50] HRN Roulette whispers: “A V” you bet 4700L$ on 3rd 12
[6:50] HRN Roulette GBV.5.0 whispers: 10 seconds until the wheel spins!
[6:50] HRN Roulette whispers: “K P” you bet 40L$ on Black
[6:50] HRN Roulette GBV.5.0 whispers: No more bets please ! The ball is in motion. Good Luck!
[6:50] HRN Roulette GBV.5.0 whispers: 22 (Black)
[6:50] HRN Roulette whispers: “K P” you win 80L$ on Black
[6:50] HRN Roulette whispers: “A V” you win 14100L$ on 2nd 12
[6:50] HRN Roulette GBV.5.0 whispers: Ready for new Bets !

Of course, as a Mentor, I am encouraged to send abuse reports upon seeing gambling activity, but clearly discouraged to act like police - volunteer leader Blue Linden really dislikes vigilantes. And therefore the kind of investigation that I have done for this blog is not sanctioned by Linden Lab, which ultimately means that only enthousiastic gamblers will ever find this place - and they are of course not likely to send an abuse report to enforce the hated policy.

What’s left is the usual Linden Lab window dressing. We ban a few words, we publish a harsh policy, and then we’re done with it. You can’t find gambling in the Search engine and therefore it is no longer happening - that’s the image presented to the outside world. In an interview a month ago for a German magazine, about child pornography, our own Philip Rosedale (Philip Linden, the head honcho of LL) even directly contradicts Blue:

“Aber wir haben die Erfahrung gemacht, dass der beste Aufpasser die Community selbst ist. Zum Beispiel haben sich mittlerweile virtuelle Zivilstreifen formiert, die freiwillig „Second Life“ kontrollieren.” ["But we have experienced that the Community itself does the best job in keeping a watchful eye. For example: in the meantime virtual civic patrols have formed which control 'Second Life' voluntarily"]

Long live the vigilantes then - but only when talking to the press, of course.

(comments closed due to high volume of gambling site spam, 5/200

12 Oh: “I Love This Sim”

The surprise couldn’t have been bigger. On the plot of land formerly occupied by the 12Monkeys casino in Topgol a small wooden church has arisen. Owner 12 Oh, looking like an old and angry man, rolls around it in a wheelchair, clutching a 12Monkeys box which says ‘Click box to load website!’ It is sad to see him like that, broken, clutching a lost dream.

But things in Second Life are often not as they seem. I had a short conversation with the man all of us hated because of his laggy, noob-pulling gambling emporium. Lost dream? He, at least, came out on top.

On Free Speech and Gambling

There is a fine American saying: ‘I don’t agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it.‘ Today at Help Island and Orientation Island I witnessed how people struggle with that idea when gambling aficionados peacefully if loudly protested the new ban on ‘wagering’. While Amber and Iridium Linden were very clear about everyone’s right to protest, some of my fellow Mentors thought it better to try to (violently) remove them, send abuse reports, insult them or (quite unjustly) throw the ToS at them.
I have no love lost for gambling. I hate SL casino’s for the ugly, laggy, camper-infested, cheap structures that they are. I don’t visit casino’s, I don’t spend money in them, I do not associate with them. But everyone, from the lowliest camping newb to the most-paying, land-owning ueber-avatar, has a right to voice their opinion. Money does not buy more freedom than others - SL is not an Orwellian fiction.

So then, on to my opinion. Whereas I am against banning any words from any in- or off-world function of Second Life, I do believe that Linden Lab is correct in closing down gambling establishments because of real world laws. It is of course lamentable that RL is infringing on SL in such a way, but those who believe SL to be a completely lawless, unchartered new planet are living in a dreamworld. It would be all the harder on them if the US authorities decided to take action instead of Linden Lab.

Rather than the next step in banning words - ‘gaming’ had already become the new ‘gambling’ - and thus stifling more of our freedom of expression and making it harder to market legit products and services, this step makes sense. The next step should of course be to unban the words associated with wagering, so I can, for example, host a talk under the title of ‘life is a gamble’, and, more importantly, so LL can use Search to actually find illegitimate activities, instead of forcing the organizers to go underground.

And yet… this bodes ill for the future. Are we going to remain largely free in SL or is more restriction going to follow? Are we slowly descending into an entirely child-proof Disneyworld? We need to remain vigilant about these matters and we need to stand up for the freedoms that we have now. And if need be, protest - no matter what some of my fellow Mentors might think about it.

(comments closed due to high volume of gambling site spam, 5/200