New World Notes

SL Production of Through the Looking Glass Debuts

This weekend, the Avatar Repertory Theater, the troupe behind the acclaimed SL-based adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, returns with a performance of Carroll's Through the Looking Glass: "ART brings Lewis Carroll’s characters to life in a new production of Through the Looking Glass based on the original Tenniel drawings, with lively animations, original costumes, and a fresh musical score based on familiar nursery rhymes." Click here for all the details, including ticket purchase info.

Still not convinced? Watch the performance trailer after the break:

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Second Life Client Gets Big UI Upgrade: Customizable Icons & Toolbars, Basic & Advance Modes Merged, More

This week Linden Lab released SL viewer 3.2 with some pretty significant updates, which you can read about here. Among the changes: the "Basic" and "Advance" modes have been merged, and you can now customize your controls with draggable icons and toolbars. I haven't had a chance to check it out yet (hopefully next week), but here's an extensive review by Inara Pey. To be sure, Tateru Nino has some rants about the upgrade, which you can check out here. Among them: apparently the new viewer has more failed teleports that lead to disconnects, and trouble with some graphics cards. My NVidia-powered Alienware didn't play nice with the last version, so I dread the update. What's been your take thus far, NWN reader?

A Beautiful Second Life Art Sim Called HuMaNoiD

NWN alumnus Ms. Chestnut Rau has found and blogged about a beautiful SL sim called HuMaNoiD, owned by Wendy Xeno, and it surely seems magical: "The landing point places you in the center of a circle of doors. You are surrounded by shallow water, dotted with random islands that call out to be explored... Click on the doors and walk through the openings and you will find yourself transported to imaginative places where the music and the lighting set the stage." Read and see more here, and when you are ready, click here for a direct teleport to the place itself.

How to Light Second Life Photos the Graphic Dix Way

I've blogged about the awesome-tastic SL fashion photos of Mr. Graphic Dix, which achieve much of their visual impact with some very talented post-processing. But starting off with a great raw screenshot is just as important to his work, and fortunately for all his many admirers, he's explained how he uses Second Life's lighting system to shoot his photos for maximum impact: Click here on the Modavia fashion blog for his lengthy tutorial.

Are You Fascinated by the Virtual World of Skyrim?

When we say "virtual world", we usually refer to an online space shared by other users who are avatars, but starting today, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim presents another kind of virtual world, which every user wanders alone, free (more or less) to create a new life. Watch:

I'm most impressed by the fully contiguous world, and the breadth of player options. We'll be writing more about it soon, I think, but for now I put the question to you: How fascinated are you by the world of Skyrim?

Second Life Art Maven Bettina Tizzy Explains Why SL Artists Should Credit Works With Their Real Life Names

Bettina Tizzy in Cutea Benelli's Okeanos maritime gown

If Second Life ever had an essential art maven, it was Beverly "Bettina Tizzy" Millson, founder of the Not Possible IRL blog and the large SL group of the same name. With her amazing eye for talent and flair for promotion (she's a publicist in real life) Beverly has done more than anyone to bring the greatest works of SL art to a wider audience. When the New York Times magazine devoted a Sunday feature to SL art, for example, all or most of the works covered in it were by artists originally championed by her. So when she recently told me her strong advice to artists now working in SL, I took it as important advice indeed. Namely this: Second Life artists should credit their SL creations with their real life names.

"With artists, your name is everything," she explains to me. "A pseudonym isn't a bad deal in real life for them. But limiting your persona to a virtual name in a walled garden (especially one that isn't growing) that can only be shared via still photos or machinima... it's a trap."

Many or even most well-known SL artists, however, are only known by their avatar names -- names that are largely dependent on the fate of the for-profit corporation which owns Second Life. Here is what Bettina suggests that they do now:

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Miss Ophelia's Metaverse Manners: The Etiquette of (Public) Second Life Voice Chat

SL Voice isn't exactly news, but it's become ingrained in the SL experience for many of us (for better and for worse.) Unfortunately, some people treat a system that can broadcast voice practically across a sim the same as they would treat text chat, and that can be as problematic for them as it is annoying for everyone else. I just had an irksome experience with SL voice, which I'll talk about down the way. But first, here's a couple reader questions:

My friend loves using voice chat, but she won't make private calls, she always uses the public voice channel. When we go shopping she's talking about things that the whole world doesn't need to hear, sometimes eating with her mic on. She says everyone in Second Life uses voice like her and that I'm being silly because in real life stores everyone is talking out loud too. I think she's the silly one though! What do you think?

                    - Anonymous

Private voice chat is a blessing for those of us who don't want to hear stranger drama every time we want new pants. Here's a good way to explain it to your friend:

In a mall, everyone is in a public space. We all have our public selves on, and we generally act and speak differently than we would when we're at home alone in our pyjamas at Noon on a Saturday. At home, you're generally more comfortable and less guarded, and it's easier for private things to slip out in conversation. The other side of it is that everyone else is in their private spaces as well, so they may not be in the mood to deal with all the background chatter of the mall. Maybe they just want to listen to their music, relax, and do their thing without hearing about your friend's argument with your other friend. Or worse, maybe they find your friend's personal drama incredibly entertaining. A lot of us are guilty of listening in on some epic voice drama at one point or another, you can even find it posted on Youtube. If she doesn't care about the people who don't want to hear her, maybe she should care about the people that do for the wrong reasons.

Keep reading for another voice-related etiquette dilemma, and for the personal experience that inspired this week's subject!

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NWN in Japanese: 美しいファッションモンタージュ マシニマ ft. Chouchou

今週は、この数ヶ月ずっとブログに書こうと思っていた素晴らしいマシニマで始めることにしよう：撮影Tadakuma Kuma、監督Akira Balog、彼らは昨年好評だった、このsci-fiマシニマのクリエイターでもある。何も知らず、このマシニマだけを見た人は、物悲しげな映画だと思うかもしれない。しかし、このマシニマには、ちょっと驚く製作背景があるのだ：

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The Myth of Second Life's Failure to Go Big: It Wasn't Lack of Practical Applications, But Poor Execution & Market Timing

The new business book The Myth of the Garage by the Heath Brothers, authors of the excellent Made to Stick, contains an unfortunate and inaccurate analysis of why Second Life failed to live up to the hype wave it experienced from 2006-2007. You can read the passage on Slate here; according to the Heaths, Second Life failed due to a lack of practical applications:

[W]hen you evaluate the next big thing, ask... What job is it designed to do? Most successful innovations perform a clear duty. When we craved on-the-go access to our music collections, we hired the iPod. When we needed quick and effective searches, we hired Google. And looking ahead, it’s easy to see the job that Square will perform: giving people an easy, inexpensive way to collect money in the offline world. But what “job” did Second Life perform? It was like a job candidate with a fascinating résumé—fluent in Finnish, with stints in spelunking and trapeze — but no actual labor skills.

This is factually wrong, but at least it's wrong in interesting ways. (And I agree with the Heaths on the general principle.) It's quite easy to find numerous "jobs" that Second Life has been used for, in ways that other platforms couldn't provide as well. Here's just a few:

• Second Life has been used by many filmmakers as a low-cost, resource-rich platform for making 3D animation -- i.e. machinima.
• Second Life has been used by therapists and veterans as a high value therapy platform for treatment of PTSD, which is "Working when nothing else has.”
• Second Life has been used by architects as a low-cost, resource-rich prototyping platform.

Many more such examples abound. In Myth of the Garage, the Heaths only mention the failed attempts to use Second Life as a marketing tool, but don't seem to be aware of these more robust and meaningful applications.

So why did Second Life fail to go mass market and become the next generation of the Internet, as was suggested by many (including, for a time, well, um, me)? If I had to summarize the explanation in five words, I'd say this: Poor execution and market timing. Here's what I mean:

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The Sims Social: The Virtual Goods & Demographics That Make The Facebook Game So Big

I have a new report about the virtual goods and revenue of The Sims Social now up on Inside Social Games, and judging by Facebook friends' activity, it may interest the many SLers who are also playing that social game. For instance, I got some interesting data from the developer, EA Playfish, on the virtual goods that sell extremely well:

Durable virtual goods that enable new gameplay experiences — [T]his category of virtual good allows the player to engage in different gameplay activities when purchased. For example, a single-bed allows the player’s Sim to perform sleeping or napping actions while a more expensive double-bed item allows the Sim to engage in sleeping, napping, and sexual intercourse actions (referred to in-game as “WooHoo”). Other items — like a stereo or a gazebo — allow Sims to dance. These item-based interactions also feature a viral component where a player can share the activity on other players’ Facebook Walls, thereby attracting more users to purchase the item.

Read it all here.

DECO's New Mesh Parkas Show How Revolutionary Mesh in Second Life Fashion Can Be

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of virtual world and MMO fashion

Believe it or not, there are still some people who don't think mesh can revolutionize Second Life fashion. Admittedly, both designing and wearing mesh can be a huge pain right now, and I absolutely don't think everything needs to be mesh for to look good, but there are some clothing items that really demand it. Parkas and bulky coats are a perfect example. In the bad old days, these coats were made of tori prims looped around your avatar's limbs like the Michelin Man. Sculpties improved this some, but the prim shapes made creating unisex items incredibly difficult. Even with painstaking adjustments to the prims, certain animations or poses would mess up your look entirely.

DECO's new mesh-based Parkas suffer from none of this. [Click here to teleport to DECO this Friday]. This coat is exactly how a parka should look, and exactly how they couldn't look before the advent of mesh. It's very well textured, as good as unisex, and parkas are always so bulky that a lot of the shape issues that make wearing mesh so frustrating for some of us get literally swallowed up in the heavily-padded figure of this coat, just as they would in real life. A parka may not be the sexiest winter coat choice, but as far as I'm concerned, the quality of this piece is sexy in itself!

A note on the picture, since I'm sure you're wondering...:

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The FBI Thinks Second Life is a Likely Haven for Real Life Gangs -- Here's 5 Reasons Why That's Probably Not True

The FBI recently listed Second Life among the candidates for potential exploitation by real life criminal gangs, Kotaku reports, including it in the "National Gang Threat Assessment", where it resides near listings of such actual gangs/pseudo-criminal organizations as the Hells' Angels, the Latin Kings, and Los Zetas. Here's the FBI's assessement [.pdf link to the report here]:

Second Life is a computer-based virtual world with a simulated environment where users inhabit and interact via avatars, or graphical representations the virtual world may depict a real world or a fantasy world. Users communicate through text-chat and real-time voice-based chat second life provides versatility and anonymity and allows for covert communications. Because of its anonymity and versatility, gang members could potentially use Second Life to recruit, spread propaganda, commit other crimes such as drug trafficking, and receive training for real-world criminal operations.

On the surface, this suggests a fairly hilarious sequel idea to Point Break, the 90's classic in which FBI agent Johnny Utah (played by Keanu Reeves) becomes an undercover surfer to catch a gang of surfing bank robbers. However, before the Feds start suiting up Utah with an SL avatar, here's some friendly advice from a US citizen: If you think Second Life is a viable haven for real life criminal gangs in the US, you're probably wasting your time and my tax dollars.

Here's a few reasons why:

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Top 20 PG-Rated Second Life Sims for October 2011 - Most Much Less Popular Than the Top Mature & Adult Regions

Courtesy Louis Platini's Metaverse Business, a Second Life/OpenSim analytics company that gathers publicly accessible in-world data for its clients, here are the top 20 PG-rated Second Life sims for October 2011:

This lists the average number of visitors in each sim. If you compare this to the list of top 50 October sims overall, you'll see some overlap. Franks Place 2, a fancy dress jazz nightclub, is consistently at or near the top of the SL charts every month. VIRTUAL GAMES, I believe, is a relatively new art/game installation. (I'm not entirely sure, because ironically, it's not showing up easily in search.) The top 50 overall, as you'll see here, spans an average of 31 to 73 visitors, so most of the top PG-rated sims are significantly less popular than the top M-rated and Adult-rated sims. (Last month, only five of the top 50 were rated PG.)

This top 20 listing of PG sims, by the way, comes after requests from folks like educator Joe Essid, who has a fairly hilarious rant on his blog about trying to tell his Dean why the school should have a presence in Second Life, when a top SL sim is called "Bukkake Bliss Island". Note to Professor Essid: Suggesting that "bukkake" might be "a new type of Sushi" only creates an even more vomitous image in my mind.

Got an Etiquette Question About Using Voice in SL? Ask Miss Metaverse Manners!

For her next installment of Miss Metaverse Manners, Iris Ophelia takes on a topic likely to be touchy: Etiquette and ethics around using voice software in SL. Doubtless there are many social rifts between people who use voice, and those who'd rather chat in text -- or for that matter, between people who use chat, and say horrible things into their mics. Miss Metaverse Manners to the rescue: Anonymously post your touchy etiquette and ethics questions around voice in SL on Iris' Formspring account.

Second Life's Auto-Loading HUDs: Important Step for Growing and Expanding SL's Market

I took a quick look at "Project LR", Linden Lab's new game area built with tools which will soon be available for all SL developers. (So says Linden CEO Rod Humble, who tells New World Notes, "After we get the experience scaling and solid then we will pass on the tools and creators will hopefully enjoy making stuff far better than we ever could.") The best tool in LR, in my opinion, is the auto-loading heads-up display, which installs on the user's viewer when entering the game area. This will eliminate the incredibly arduous process of installing custom HUDs, part of what makes playing (and running) an SL-based game such a user-unfriendly experience. A game experience that's much more seamless from the user's point of view would be a big win for SL developers, and will probably help grow the overall userbase.

That said, if you do try playing in Project LR, you'll also see still much more that needs to be done:

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5 Ways to Spot a Breakout Facebook Game - My Analysis

My first analysis report for Inside Social Games, "How to Spot a Breakout Facebook Game", is now up for your reading pleasure. I'm now an analyst for Inside Network, part of the same company who published my Social Times Pro reports for the last year, but my ISG reports are fully readable on the web. Excerpt:

The most important indicator of a breakout success is a relatively strong daily active user-to-monthy active user percentage. In general, a rate of 20% or higher suggests healthy retention and consistent monetization, as supported by data from our Inside Virtual Goods series... As is the case for most games in the early days, Backyard Monsters’ DAU-to-MAU ratio was extremely high for the first month. Going into the third month, however, the game maintained a retention rate of just under 25% DAU-to-MAU... We can say, based on our own gameplay experience during the first three months, that Backyard Monsters proved itself innovative and engaging. Even without features added over the past five months, the game was a well-made resource-management strategy title with special appeal for “hardcore gamers.”

Much more here.

Beautiful SL Fashion Montage Machinima Ft. Chouchou

Let's start the week off with some gorgeous machinima I've been meaning to blog for the last several month: Shot by Takakuma Kuma and directed by Akira Balog, who also created this acclaimed sci-fi machinima last year, if you saw this without any context, you might think it was just a melancholy mood piece. But the background is a bit more surprising than that:

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Top 9 New World Notes News Items from Last Week

Second Life:

• Linden Launches Monster-Dodging Game for Premium Users. Rod Humble Explains -- It Was Made With New Tools Coming Soon for SL Game Developers
• Insiders Share How Will Wright Will Influence the Future of Second Life & Linden Lab
• Top 50 Most Popular Second Life Sims for October 2011
• F*** My Second Life: Hilarious Machinima From the Creator of Man Vs. Second Life

General tech/gaming:

• Philip Rosedale's Coffee & Power Can Succeed on a Massive Scale in Ways Second Life Could Not -- Here's Why
• Buy & Sell Someone's Real Time With Virtual Tokens
• About Half Who Played Deus Ex's Malik Mission Earned the Difficult "Good Soul" Achievement
• Sims 3 Pets: Great Sims Expansion, but PetVille, Pocket Frogs & Meeroos Fans May Hate the Breeding Limitations
• What I Blog About on New World Notes (Besides Second Life)

Big SL Event With Music & Art to Benefit PTSD Victims Opens

Starting today and running to the 13th, there's a big Second life fundraising and awareness event for people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. It features a lot of live musicians and a massive installation with many well-known metaverse artists contributing. Honour McMillan has a preview on her blog. The installation was curated by Eliza Wierwight, who sent along this photo.

Click here for a direct teleport to the event site -- here's an alternate landing spot. And click here for the full event schedule. This is all on behalf of Fearless Nation, a registered non-profit that does outreach in SL.

Linden Launches Monster-Dodging Game for Premium Users UPDATE: Rod Humble Explains -- It Was Made With New Tools Coming Soon for SL Game Developers

Alicia Chenaux got an early look at a new game area that Linden Lab apparently just introduced and is rolling out to select Premium subscribers of Second Life: "I think it's pretty much in the alpha stages right now," reports Alicia, "but it's kind of fun! You're fitted with a HUD when you go in, and then it tells you what to do. Basically all I did was run around collecting crystals and trying to avoid rock monsters. Oh yes. Rock monsters." Read more of Ms. Chenaux's take here. This looks like the new game feature that insiders told me about last week, which I mentioned is part of SL's Will Wright era; I'm checking with the Lindens to get more details now (if any.)

Meantime, if you have a Premium account, you may be able to check this out for yourself: Click here for a direct teleport.

Update, 11:45AM: In Comments, Linden CEO Rod Humble explains what this is: "Just FYI this whole game was built by us so we could go through the process of creating the tools to pass on to our content creators. After we get the experience scaling and solid then we will pass on the tools and creators will hopefully enjoy making stuff far better than we ever could."

Update 2, 1:15PM: Ehrman Digfoot took a much more representative (and impressive!) photo of the new game area, which I just excerpted and added above.

Style Oven: Fantastic SL Fashion Blog From RL Photographer

Style Oven is a fantastic SL fashion blog with a flair for the fantastical, as the above detail from this photo series suggests. StyleOven is created by someone known as GasOven in SL, and in real life she's actually professional photographer Erin Black (RL site and bio here), who brings her real life experience to her virtual photography:

"Second Life has allowed me a fun hobby for when I’m not working," she explains. "I enjoy taking images in-world and I try to use everything the viewers offer to my advantage. I use shadow settings and depth of field for many of my images. Also, I enjoy using different windlight settings and various face and body lights to assist... However, since I’m showcasing SL fashions that you might want to buy, I will try my very best to shoot the images in a very clear manner in-world." See much more here.

Hat tip: Ms. Gorgeous Yongho of Juicy Bomb, which is also a great SL fashion blog, but then you probably already knew that. (Images in this post copyright Erin Black, no infringement intended.)

Insiders Share How Will Wright Will Influence the Future of Second Life & Linden Lab

Will Wright has been a member of Linden Lab's board of directors for about 3 months, and quite curiously, it's a move that the company has done little or nothing to publicize (besides quietly putting his name on the Linden website.) How will he shape the future of Linden Lab and Second Life? Since blogging the news, I've talked with some insiders on background, and here's a general picture:

Wright's guidance will be strongest around the development of Second Life as a product from the user experience side. His influence will also guide broader corporate strategy, and continue an evolution that began when Rod Humble left Electronic Arts to become Linden Lab's CEO: A company that operates less like a web services provider, and more like a hierarchical, traditional game publisher. More about what this means after the break:

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Moral Revolution: About Half Who Played Deus Ex's Malik Mission Earned the Difficult "Good Soul" Achievement

I wrote about the "Malik mission" in Deus Ex: Human Revolution recently, a section of the game that's quite difficult to complete in an emotionally and morally satisfying way, but here's a very interesting thing: According to Steam's general achievement stats for the game, 27% of all DXHR players won the "Good Soul" award, which means they made the time and effort to do just that. And if we're looking at just the players who played the game long enough to even reach the Malik mission (which occurs about 2/3rds into the campaign), the percentage is much higher. Because according to Steam's stats, only 49% of players got far enough in the game to meet and defeat "The Snake", a boss who appears a few hours after the Malik mission:

So it's safe to estimate that about half the total players who got as far as the Malik mission took the time to do it "right". And as I said, that's no easy task. It took me maybe 2-3 hours of trial and error to do so. To me, this leads to a very interesting realization: When faced with a difficult and optional task which has a "better" outcome -- better in a storytelling sense, better in a moral values sense-- many or even most players rose to the challenge.

Here's what I mean -- and be warned, DXHR SPOILERS are below:

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Sims 3 Pets: Great Sims Expansion, but PetVille, Pocket Frogs & Meeroos Fans May Hate the Breeding Limitations

 Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of virtual world and MMO style

The Sims 3 Pets expansion pack has entered a gaming world that's changed dramatically since Sims 2's Pets came around. Pet breeding and caretaking games have been around for ages, but now Facebook games, mobile apps, and even Second Life have opened up the world of casual pet-themed games to even more people. It may seem like Sims 3 Pets will be able to tap into this market easily, but the world of pet gaming is far more diverse than it seems, and the same people addicted to the current pet care games may be disappointed by what Sims 3 Pets has to offer.

Don't get me wrong, I love The Sims 3 and the latest expansion has been incredibly fun, like the equally creative and engaging expansions before it. They've changed a lot of the pet design and care mechanics since The Sims 2, where the dogs and cats available were little more than objects in a larger household, like furry furniture.

By contrast, the newest animal additions to the world of The Sims 3 are worlds apart. Now pets (including cats, dogs, and horses) are literally members of the family: They can be controlled like human Sims, they can have good and bad personal relationships, they can learn skills, they can be given traits from creation or trained with new ones during gameplay. Pet creation is also significantly more flexible than it was in The Sims 2, allowing for both small and large breeds with an incredibly detailed coat and shape customization interface. The only real limit I've found with the customization options is that leg length cannot be controlled, which means that breeds like Munchkins, Corgis, and even toy and teacup breeds won't look as accurate as more conventionally shaped breeds.

Most important for many, though, is that these pets can be bred, passing on physical features and traits to their offspring. That's the heart of the massive breedables industry in Second Life, which is generating substantial revenue for creators and lucky breeders alike, as well as microtransaction-riddled games like PetVille and Pocket Frogs. Hamlet speculated a couple weeks ago that much of this SL market would be drawn to the new Pets expansion, and while I agree that's true, I don't believe that it will last. Here's why:

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Philip Rosedale's Coffee & Power Can Succeed on a Massive Scale in Ways Second Life Could Not -- Here's Why

Philip Rosedale's new startup Coffee & Power, which connects real work to virtual currency, just received a slew of media coverage (like on TechCrunch here, and on The Economist here), but New World Notes readers got all the main details last September, in this interview here. I've been thinking about it quite a bit since then, and my strong sense is that it has a far greater chance to succeed on a massive scale, in ways that Second Life could not. Fundamentally, this is because Coffee & Power has debuted at a time when faith in our traditional economic structures is at an all-time low, and we are searching for sustainable alternatives, especially via social media and our smart phones.

Here's how:

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Bid for My Time Or That of Many Other SLers on AllThis

I gave into curiosity (and probably some vanity) and just created an account on AllThis, the new social network where you bid on 10 minutes of someone's time for virtual currency; I'm offering to talk about writing, blogging, and virtual worlds, and any profits from the bidding process will be donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. You'll have to outbid Jo Yardley, who currently owns my time token. I kinda doubt I'll reach the going rate of Philip Rosedale, who's now selling for 12126ŧ to my 2904ŧ. But Jo, Philip, and I are not even the only folks spinning off from Second Life on the system. You can also bid on the legendary Torley Linden, or metaverse and iOS interactive music creator Robert "Dizzy Banjo" Thomas.

Will this become a new robust virtual economy and community to rival Quora? Will this continue moving us toward a economy where traditional goods and services matter less, and intangible qualities like time and convenience matter more? I'm very interested to see how all this plays out on AllThis. To come along for that ride, click my head and consider bidding.

Top 50 Most Popular Second Life Sims for October 2011

Courtesy Louis Platini's Metaverse Business, a Second Life/OpenSim analytics company that gathers publicly accessible in-world data for its clients, here's the top 50 most popular sims in Second Life for October 2011, listed according their average visitor count, the unique visitor range at any given period, and the sim's rank the previous month:

11 of the sims are new to the top 50 since September: VIRTUAL GAMES, Miami Island, Brasil Rio, Zapp, Li Tieguai, Kos, Schirra, AMTS, Virtual Spain, Thunberg, Rinji. See listings 26-60 after the break:

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Popular Request for Last Names in SL Finally Under Review

There's been a user campaign on Linden Lab's JIRA bug tracking software to bring last name options back to SL, and after running since July and garnering 1855 votes (making it one of the top requests), Linden Lab has finally responded to the request. Ambivalently: "It's clear there is a lot of interest in SVC-7125," writes ProductTeam Linden. "The intent [with the new system] was for users to specify their last name using the Display Names feature found in users' profiles, which most Viewers now support." However, they added, "Know that we hear you and value your passion and that we are currently reviewing some of the decisions that were made with the username /Display Names implementation."

So that's a definite maybe. My prediction: Linden Lab will keep the existing username system but add the last name option as a, well, optional feature. (Which only the existing hardcore userbase will use.)

Hat tip: Rocky Constantine.

What I Blog About on New World Notes (Besides Second Life)

New World Notes began as a blog about Second Life, and as long as SL remains interesting to me and most of my readers remain interested in read about it, that will largely continue to be the case. In addition to Second Life (and its open source spinoff, OpenSimulator), here's the subjects I also cover:

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F*** My Second Life: Hilarious Machinima From the Creator of Man Vs. Second Life (Mildly NSFW)

F*** My Second Life is a pretty hilarious SL machinima about a real life couple trying to spice up their sex life by getting virtual. It's by Sean "Hugity" Krueger, who also created the hugely viral Man vs. Second Life series, and as the title itself suggests, it's mildly NSFW:

"SL relationships is a topic I've always wanted to take on," Hugity tells me, when I ask him about the inspiration, and continues:

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Buy & Sell Someone's Real Time With Virtual Tokens

I was randomly noodling on Facebook recently, when Philip Rosedale's head suddenly appeared, in an ad that offered me the chance to buy 10 minutes of Philip's time for some virtual currency. It's an offer on allthis.com, "the 10 minute exchange", which offers to connect you with "the greatest minds, celebrities, and leaders of industry" with virtual tokens you puchase on the site. (Write-up on Mashable here.) You can buy a token to talk with Philip (in this case) for ten minutes, but here's the hook: someone can buy that token from you for a higher bid. "You'll get back what you paid plus 5%," explains the FAQ. "The other 5% go to the person whose time is being traded." So if someone out-bids you, you still get a small commission. Pretty clever way of making celebrity access transparent, while also creating a market that shows how much that person's time is really valued. As for Philip, I checked with him, and this project is not related to his new start-up, Love Machine, or Coffee & Power, which operates on a somewhat similar idea. The founders just asked Philip to put his ten minutes up for auction, and he readily agreed. Now who wants to buy that token to talk with him?

Kirsten's Viewer Crowdfunder Update: 13% Raised So Far, In-World Volunteers & Promoters Needed!

The SL Mesh crowdfunding project was successful, but another, equally important SL viewer crowdfunded project still needs more donors, and in-world volunteers: The Kirsten's Viewer Project, for the popular third party Second Life viewer of the same name. Its creator, programmer Lee "KirsteenLee Cinquetti" Quick, had to suspend development because his partner Dawny Daviau has health issues. He will return to work on it, if the viewers' many fans donate enough to sustain them through development. So far, however, only 13% of the £25,000 goal has been pledged. One problem: Due to personal issues, neither Lee or Dawny can currently spend much time in-world to help promote the effort. In other words: The crowdfunder needs volunteers to raise Linden Dollar donations that can be converted into cash pledges, and bring more general SL awareness to it. If you're a fan of Kirsten's Viewer, please consider donating your time to help Kirsten's Viewer development continue. Contact Dawny via e-mail: dawny at live dot nl, or via her Twitter account, @dawnydaviau.

Questions? Concerns? Suggestions? Please raise them in Comments below.

Portal 2 Puzzle Creator Coming Soon -- Hey Valve, Please Let Creators Sell Their Levels on Steam!

Very cool platform for user-generated content coming soon: The next update of Portal 2 will come with a puzzle creator, with a pretty intuitive-looking user interface that should make building new Portal 2 levels relatively easy. "They'll then be able to immediately upload those levels to their Steam Cloud," the Portal 2 blog announces, "and share them with other players online. We're also building a community site to host all of these player-created puzzles." As a huge fan of Portal 2, I can't wait. As a huge fan of user-generated gaming content, I think this could be huge in ways that might surprise even Valve. When the company behind the classic PC game Thief was shut down shortly after the sequel came out, its fans continued the franchise by creating new missions with the level builder, many of which were as good as the original, professionally-made levels. I'm positive Portal 2's even larger and just as passionate fanbase will begin creating new adventures for Chel and GLADOS that will rival the work of Valve itself.

One thing I don't see in the announcement -- any hint that the best fan-made levels will be available for sale on Steam, Valve's online distribution platform. I sent an e-mail to Valve about this, and will update if I get any details. However, given that Valve incorporated fan-made content into the latest version of Team Fortress 2 and split the revenue for the creators, I would not be surprised if that move were next. That would help turn Portal 2 into a great, 12 hour gaming experience into an ongoing, evolving, endlessly innovative 3D creation platform developed by fans and original developers alike.

Hat tip: James Allenspach.

Top 10 NWN Posts Last Week: Will Wright Joins Linden Lab, Why Bitcoin Can Be Free & Much More

• Game God Will Wright Joins Linden Lab's Board of Directors!
• How Will Will Wright Help Second Life? Linden Lab Replies
• SL Users Raise $5400 to Hire Ex-Linden to Fix SL Mesh Issues in Under 3 Weeks
• How Graphic Dix Makes Amazing Post-Processed SL Images
• Misunderstanding SL's Magic Circle Leads to SL Social Strife
• Turn Your SL Avatar into a Lichtenstein Painting
• Get all Dolled Up in Second Life with DOLL COCO's Mesh Ball-Jointed Doll Avatars

General Gaming & New World Culture

• Bitcoin Can't Be Free from the Powers That Be, Because It Rides on Rails That They Control
• Google Still Maintains Policy of Deleting Pseudonymous G+ Accounts, Reports Jamie Zawinski
• Deus Ex's Missing Link Mission Provocatively Evokes Post-9/11 Fears, Poses Morally Complex Choices

Misunderstanding SL's Magic Circle Leads to SL Social Strife

Update, 10/29: Bumped up. Be sure to read the very interesting conversation in Comments it's inspired!

Senban Babii has some thoughtful thoughts about Second Life social drama, relating them to "the magic circle", a concept first described by historian Johan Huizinga. In a virtual world like Second Life or an online game like Modern Warfare 2, different standards of morality apply. With Modern Warfare, as Senban notes, suicide bombing is actually rewarded, whereas in the real world, it's generally considered horrific. So with SL:

[W]hen those residents playing in Second Life attempt to force other residents to conform to certain moral values and expressions, they are actually showing themselves to be unaware of the fact that not only is the Second Life playspace different to the outside world, it also contains an asymmetric morality and that if they are not prepared for this simple realisation, then perhaps they should not step inside.

This is roughly true, but I think the sociology of SL is even more complex: In Second Life, there are multiple, overlapping magic circles, which often have conflicting rules. Here's why:

Continue reading "Misunderstanding SL's Magic Circle Leads to SL Social Strife"

Google Still Maintains Policy of Deleting Pseudonymous G+ Accounts, Reports Jamie Zawinski

Google is still reportedly enforcing a policy around banning pseudonymous Google+ accounts, tech pioneer Jamie "jwz" Zawinski reports on his blog. As noted last week, Google has said at the Web 2.0 conference that they plan to introduce pseudonymous Google+ account options soon, but that leaves one big question open: What happens to all the pseudonymous G+ accounts that already exist now? Zawinski's suggestion to just stop deleting them was raised in a company meeting with Google CEO Larry Page, who reportedly had this reply: "To nobody's great surprise, his answer was a very long-winded 'no'."

So if you do maintain a Google+ account with a non-real name now, I frankly wouldn't get too attached to it. Page's answer also gives credence to Zawinski's previous speculation of what Google's pseudonymous "options" will be: "I'll bet they still require you to register with your 'real' name, but then they'll graciously allow you to have a linked nickname or two, meaning they're still fully prepared to roll over on you to authoritarian governments or advertisers at the drop of a hat."

By the way, I asked a Google spokesperson about Larry Page's response as blogged by Zawinski, and she told me they had nothing to add that hadn't already been said at Web 2.0. She even sent me the specific video, which you can watch below. I continue to be amazed by Google's incoherence on this matter. So much so, I really feel the need to put my opinion in bold:

Google, if you do not give Google+ a powerful and distinctive market differentiator to Facebook's real names-based social network, you will lose to Facebook. If you lose to Facebook, you will become a subsidiary to Facebook. The company's future position on the Internet depends almost solely on how you handle this one policy.

That's my take, at least. Here, this weekend watch Google+ lead Vic Gundotra, to see if you think he's on the right track:

Continue reading "Google Still Maintains Policy of Deleting Pseudonymous G+ Accounts, Reports Jamie Zawinski"

Tonight: SL Halloween Party for Cystic Fibrosis Foundation

Here's some good scary fun for a good cause: Tonight at 7pm SLT in The Labyrinth Dungeon in Avalon Town, there's going to be a Halloween Party which includes an auction of spooky SL art, with proceeds benefiting the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation: Prim Perfect has all the details here. [Click here for direct teleport]

Second Life Connection Troubleshooting Advice

Trouble connecting to Second Life? I know, who doesn't have trouble? Nalates Urriah has exhaustive and immensely helpful troubleshooting advice. Here's a nugget about testing the connection between you and Linden Lab's servers in San Francisco:

SpeedTest.net will let you test your Internet connection. Run it at its default settings or point it to San Francisco, USA (SF). If you have good numbers now, point it to the server name or IP address you got in Help (or the one above) and try the test again. If you get bad numbers to SF, the connection problem is you or somewhere in the middle.

Much more here. Amusingly, I can see the general location of Second Life's servers from the windows of my San Francisco apartment (about a three miles away, in the South of Market area), but somehow, that proximity doesn't help my connection much.

The SL Photos of Maclane Have a Lonely & Luminous Beauty

The Second Life photos of Maclane, an SLer based in Tokyo, have a lonely and luminous beauty, and you can see many of them here, on his Flickr stream. Among my favorites is this one detailed above, but definitely see the whole thing here. Maclane also has a blog, called Absence, with more art, images, and reflections by the artist, for example his thoughts on the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, which he concludes by saying this: "Whenever I log-in the Second Life and meet various artists, I feel consolation and energy to live although they are only in a world of the Internet. That was felt as a matter of course before the earthquake disaster, but now I feel it has a special significance." Much more here.

Hat tip: Cajsa Lilliehook, who seems to know of every SL photo artist, and who has an SL fashion blog that you should surely see too.

Turn Your SL Avatar into a Lichtenstein Painting for Virtual Halloween With This Makeup Layer Inspired by His Style!

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of virtual world and MMO fashion

Roy Lichtenstein is known for his very recognizable comic art, in particular his romance-style heroines, who are frequently shown reacting to soap opera caliber drama. My font choice might be a bit off from the artist's own hand, but I just had to try my own take on one of his damsels in distress in Second Life. This look is perfectly easy to pull off, for Halloween or for fun, thanks to Airedine Poe of Adore & Abhor [Click here to teleport to Adore & Abhor in MUDHONEY]. She recently released these Lichtensteinesque faces as tattoo layers to wear over any skin you like, and they're also available in a couple less emotional variations (although this particular one, called That Cryin' Dame, is by far my favorite!)

To really make this costume sing, a medium length blonde hairstyle (tinted a little bit more yellow) like the style I'm wearing from Kin will really capture the look of a Lichtenstein girl. Collared shirts as well as retro dresses and ensembles like those from Ingenue or Icing will also work beautifully with this avatar, though I'm wearing a recent Fifty Linden Friday dress from tres blah. The polka dots reminded of the dotty color printing style of original comic art, so I couldn't resist. The most important element, though, are the eyes. Go for a pair of anime or cartoon-look eyes, like the ones I'm wearing from ~*By Snow*~. Cartoonish eyes will keep your face looking pop-art perfect without breaking the effect like realistic eyes would.

That's my take on the Lichtenstein look, but how about yours? Are you a Damned Dame, a Tricksy Dame, or a Cryin' Dame?

Iris Ophelia (Janine Hawkins IRL) has been featured in the New York Times and has spoken about SL-based design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan and with pop culture/fashion maven Johanna Blakley.

Bitcoin Can't Be Free from the Powers That Be, Because It Rides on Rails That They Control

Bitcoin, the innovative virtual currency, may be a good idea for many reasons, but as it's currently conceived, it cannot really be free from corporate and state control. That's my strong belief after recently talking to Bill Maurer, Professor of Anthropology and Law at UC Irvine, whose specialty is money. (He wrote a very fun paper on Bitcoin and other non-traditional currencies for the July issue of The European Economic Sociology Electronic Newsletter -- click here for PDF link.)

"[I]t's not that they could easily pull the plug on the whole thing," he tells me, "just that they could easily stop the cash-in, cash-out side of Bitcoin, and effectively stop the flow of value into the system." Basically, as Professor Maurer explains, Bitcoin depends on infrastructures that corporations and states already control -- including a little-known protocol that handles financial transactions across the Internet:

Continue reading "Bitcoin Can't Be Free from the Powers That Be, Because It Rides on Rails That They Control"

How Graphic Dix Makes Amazing Post-Processed SL Images

You may remember this wholly awesome SL-based image by Graphic Dix, which I avidly blogged about recently. (Turns out it's the cover of the latest Modavia Fashion Directory, with Queen Watanabe posing.) While it is heavily post-processed, it's done so with such artistry, I asked Graphic Dix more about his technique. In real life, he tells me, he's a graphic designer in advertising (no surprise there), an Italian living near Milan (pleasant surprise there.)

So how does Graphic Dix do it? If you create post-processed SL images, you'll want to click "Continue reading", and start taking notes from the master:

Continue reading "How Graphic Dix Makes Amazing Post-Processed SL Images"

How Will Will Wright Help Second Life? Linden Lab Replies

So Sims creator Will Wright is now on the Board of Directors of Linden Lab, developers of Second Life, and has actually been a listed member for at least a month or two. (NWN reader Ciaran Laval reports seeing Wright's name displayed on the Linden management page as far back as August.) Curiously, the company hasn't made any fanfare about gaining one of the game industry's most admired and successful designers to a team led by new CEO and Electronic Arts veteran Rod Humble, and just declined my request to interview him about his role at Linden. However, company spokesman Peter Gray did just give me this official statement:

We are thrilled to have a leader and pioneer of creative gaming and user-generated content join the Board of Linden Lab. His experience and insight will be incredibly valuable as we look to make the creativity that makes Second Life special today more easily and widely available.

So there's that. Of course, there's always this possibility:

Continue reading "How Will Will Wright Help Second Life? Linden Lab Replies"

Get all Dolled Up for Halloween in Second Life with DOLL COCO's Mesh Ball-Jointed Doll Avatars

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of virtual world and MMO fashion

Second Life fashionistas seem to have a very self-aware love for doll avatars. From Marionette-string accessories to the Bloom Doll boom a few months ago, a lot of us just love the idea of dressing our virtual "doll" as a real one. That's why it shouldn't shock anyone that Cocoro Lemon's new brand, DOLL COCO [Click here to teleport to DOLL COCO at COCO DESIGNS], is making a big impression in SL fashion right now, just in time for Halloween.

Cocoro (who also helped pioneer realistic sculpted prim clothing in SL under her other brand, *COCO*) opened DOLL COCO just this week, revealing her new line of mesh avatars mimicking the build and look of asian ball-jointed dolls with remarkable fidelity. True to their inspiration, these dolls are hauntingly pretty, and cute to the point of making your teeth hurt. Even better, they're far more economical than many doll avatars that have come out in the past. The bodies, which are made up of individual jointed pieces, are free with group membership (along with some bonus elf ears and a cute costume), while each head (there are a half-dozen to choose from) costs just under L$500.

The clothing for these dolls is a little pricier, but the detail on each piece justifies it. I'd kill to have the embroidered dress and scalloped button-up boots I'm wearing above for my regular avatar, for example. As with most mesh avatars, it's possible that you will be able to find mesh clothes elsewhere that will fit it, but it will be hit or miss so always demo first. You can also obviously still wear regular prim items with them as well, which makes finding hair or accessories for these dolls as easy as opening your inventory.

I'm expecting to see a lot of brilliant photography springing from the DOLL COCO community. Check out Cocoro's blog for more dolly details, or head straight to DOLL COCO for yours. [Click here to teleport to DOLL COCO at COCO DESIGNS]

Iris Ophelia (Janine Hawkins IRL) has been featured in the New York Times and has spoken about SL-based design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan and with pop culture/fashion maven Johanna Blakley.

US Army's 2012 Virtual Worlds Challenge Now Accepting Entries -- $25K Prize for 2 Real World Applications

The 2012 Federal Virtual Worlds Challenge is now accepting entries for its yearly contest taking civilian proposals for applications of virtual world technology with real world benefits. Grand Prize in each track is $25,000. Just as cool, "Submitters maintain all intellectual property," say the guidelines, which means you can spin your entry off into projects of your own. Sponsored by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory - Simulation & Training Technology Center, for last year's contest, four Second Life-based entries won awards -- go here to read about them for inspiration. Application deadline is December 7 -- a date that will live in infamy, if you're late. Click here for more details, or e-mail fvwc dot sttc at us dot army dot mil.

Game God Will Wright Joins Linden Lab's Board of Directors!

Well this is a very interesting turn of events: Will Wright, "game god" creator of the groundbreaking Sims franchise, along with Spore and SimCity, recently joined the Board of Linden Lab, developer of Second Life. His name and stellar biography is now on the company's site.

This isn't a totally surprising turn of events: Rod Humble, who became Linden's CEO this year, is a longtime veteran of Electronic Arts, home to Wright's first game studio, Maxis, and led development on The Sims 3, the latest addition to a franchise that's sold 140 million copies since launching in 2000.

What's this mean for the future of Second Life? Too soon to tell -- I hope to interview Wright about it soon -- but I suspect this means a continued move to make Second Life more engaging and mass market, like The Sims, while still fostering diverse user-generated content, like The Sims. I spoke with Wright in 2002 about his original vision for The Sims Online, which ultimately wasn't realized in the actual game, but here's what he told me then:

"I think another approach to [MMOs] is that you give the players that canvas," Wright says, "and let the players create the back story and the theme and whatever, and you focus on being innovative through the [game] mechanisms."

Second Life has come closer to that vision, though so far hasn't been able to do so while reaching critical mass. But now Wright himself will have a hand in taking the vision into SL's next generation. Whatever happens, I will say this: Will Wright joining the board of Linden Lab is the most hopeful sign for Second Life's future that I have seen in the last couple years.

Image credit: Wright's new company, Stupid Fun Club.

Deus Ex's Missing Link Mission Provocatively Evokes Post-9/11 Fears, Poses Morally Complex Choices

I just finished "The Missing Link", the new downloadable mission for Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and while it's a fun, 6-9 hour add-on to the original game which I also enjoyed, where it really shines is the underlying story and design: Essentially, "The Missing Link" is a nightmare scenario meant to evoke our post-9/11 fears and an era of outsourced private military contractors. On top of that, the mission ends on a complex moral choice for the player, where neither option is good, and either choice says more about your values and reasoning, than the outcome. From just that perspective, The Missing Link is much more successful than the original Human Revolution game, where the theme of human engineering was pretty trite, and the endgame moral choice too simplistic to mean much at all.

Here's what I mean -- and be warned, Missing Link SPOILERS after the break:

Continue reading "Deus Ex's Missing Link Mission Provocatively Evokes Post-9/11 Fears, Poses Morally Complex Choices"

Challenge Accepted: SL Users Raise $5400 to Hire Ex-Linden to Fix SL Mesh Issues in Under 3 Weeks

Well that was fast: Less than 3 weeks after SL mesh developer Maxwell Graf launched a Kickstarter-style fundraiser to pay former Linden Lab graphics developer Karl Stiefvater $5400 to fix SL mesh so that it can better fit avatars, the funds have been raised. I mentioned we were only $700 away from the goal just yesterday, but last night, an anonymous donation of 600 dollars took it all the way. The fixes Karl will now develop, as Graf has explained it, will "eliminate a plethora of unavoidable problems with mesh clothing, reduce workflow considerably, open the market, allow avatars AND clothing to be worn (both mesh), one size would fit all and we could keep our physical (virtual) identities." This comes after Graf and hundreds of other SL content creators and users made the same request to Linden Lab through official channels, only to have the company mark it as a feature to be developed "Someday/Maybe". Not satisfied with that answer, over a hundred SLers have pledged funds to get the fixes now, many of them pledging hundreds of dollars.

So for SL mesh developers and users, more and better options are coming for you soon. And by raising so much money so quickly, a potential precedent has been made: Second Life users have proved they can take the lead on shaping the future development of Second Life.

US Army Experimenting With Second Life to Create Inception-Like Dream Therapy for PTSD Victims. Really.

The US Army is funding a project called "Power Dreaming", Wired reports, which will create simulated dreams in Second Life to treat military veterans and others suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Yes, really:

“Power Dreaming,” Naval Hospital Bremerton in Washington State will help traumatized troops battle their nightmares — with soothing, digitally-made dreams crafted in virtual worlds... The hope is that these “power dreams” can be watched from laptops and “home training and 3-D goggles work to gradually enhance the strength of these new neurological images"... The computer program for soldiers to build out imaginary worlds and avatars on will be based on the virtual world Second Life. It will allow dream sequences to be custom designed “to develop physio-emotional states to counteract the reactive stress response inherent in trauma memories.”

More here. From the description, this project may actually be made in OpenSimulator, the open source spinoff of SL, and the "dreams" will be machinima. (I'll try to get more details from the developers.) At any rate, this may be the coolest and potentially transformative real world application of Second Life I've come across after writing about Second Life for over 8 years. As you may remember, in the Chris Nolan movie Inception, the dream technology is first developed by the military for combat simulation. As it turns out, the military is making a real life version, but as therapy largely for those suffering from the after-effects of real combat.

This isn't even the first therapeutic application of SL for combat veterans, by the way:

Continue reading "US Army Experimenting With Second Life to Create Inception-Like Dream Therapy for PTSD Victims. Really."