New World Notes

The Phoenix Viewer Project is a Registered Non-Profit Corporation Based in Minnesota

The Phoenix Viewer Project which develops the third party Phoenix and Firestorm SL viewers is a registered non-profit corporation based in Minnesota -- you can see the company's listing on the state's website here, with a registration address and the real name of the company's president, Jessica Trinity, who's known in SL as Jessica Lyon. (And is the rare person whose real life name is more metaversey than her avatar handle.) I mention this fact for at least two reasons:

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Leap in PC Computing: Kinect-Style Control of Your Desktop!

CNET's Dan Terdiman has a pretty impressive write-up of the Leap 3D motion control system from SF-based Leap Motion, which promises Kinect-style command of your computing experience with the wave (and pinch, and poke) of your hand. Watch this demo video:

Read much more from Dan here. If it works as demoed above, it could transform desktop/laptop computing. For virtual world/gaming fans, it could be the kind of technological leap we've been looking for. As Beverly "Bettina Tizzy" Millson just put it: "Hey Linden Lab developers! Integrate this well and I might use SL again."

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SL Pathfinding: Less a Potential "Tsunami" Than Postulated?

Nalates Urriah has an update to a post on the SL pathfinding tools that I blogged about last week, in which I quoted her that there could a "tsunami" of problems when it's officially introduced to the main grid. Apparently some parts of her analysis were not accurate, and has some geek-heavy clarifications here. (The Lindens pointed me to her post as well.) However, while some of her concerns are less concerning, she cites an NWN comment by DBDigital Epsilon, who described his first hand experience in the pathfinding Beta, and it does suggest another problem point:

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Settlers of Catan Parody Music Video ft. Keiko Takamura!

Here's a fun video to start the week, especially if you're a Settlers of Catan fan (and really who isn't) -- spun off from The Ting Ting's hit, here's "That's Not My Game", starring Keiko Takamura:

This is a music interlude for "Level 20-Something", the animated web cartoon I blogged about last year, which features mixed reality pop star Keiko starring as herself. "Keiko and I were Skyping one night and one of us uttered the song title in the context of a sentence I don't quite remember," series creator Michael Szymanski explains. As fans of Catan, "We decided immediately this was a thing that had to exist, so I opened up notepad and typed out the lyrics." But creating the retro 8-bit animation to go along with the song is a lot harder than it looks -- according to Mike it took over 150 hours:

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Top 7 Posts You Might Have Missed From Last Week

• Lumiya: Second Life Viewer for Android Phones & Tablets -- With 3D Graphics Display!
• Second Life Usage Dominated by Third Party Viewers -- Linden Lab's Own Software Only Used by "Minority" of SLers
• Makies, Customizable, 3D Printed Avatar Doll Creation Site Alpha Launches
• New Mesh Eyes Will Revolutionize the Way Avatars Look -- and How We'll Photograph Avatars
• Top 25 Most Popular Second Life Sims for April 2012
• Diablo III's Virtual Economy About to Transform the Real One
• Why Virtual World Content Creators & Game Developers Will Like Storybricks -- Brian "Psychochild" Green Explains

Makies, Customizable, 3D Printed Avatar Doll Creation Site Alpha Launches: Make Your Own Makie Today!

Makies, the customizable avatars that become 3D printed dolls, just Alpha launched, so you can go to the site and create a customized avatar of your own -- and when you're ready, you can get it printed up, and sent right to you in a tube in the mail. Makies are the brainchild of my friend the lovely and brilliant UK game design star Alice Taylor, who co-founded the company with Sulka Haro, formerly lead designer for Habbo Hotel. And Alice has a special message for readers of this blog:

"As trufans of the genre -- avatars and virtual worlds -- we're really excited and nervous to hear what your readers will think. Obviously we're at maybe 10% of what we want to be: Selections and actions are currently super alpha, but over the next 12 months we're going to be building all sorts of things: creativity tools, games, unusual items in both digital AND physical.

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SLer Harlow Heslop Says: Pay it Forward to Another SLer

Harlow Heslop has launched a great Pay it Forward Project, encouraging SLers to take some time to praise and help other SLers:

Each week I will pick one person in the Second Life community that I feel has displayed a positive attitude and an overall kind nature that week. I will then offer to do a free portrait for them!

She wants other SLers to join the pay it forward chain however they see fit: "Whether you are a designer, blogger, photographer, or just someone who enjoys what the Second Life community as to offer…GET INVOLVED. Pick someone weekly... show them how you appreciate them, whether it be a small gift, a photo, or a kind word, it does not matter. Then as you have done, encourage them to pay it forward to someone else."

Read more about paying it forward here. And I'll pay it forward by praising Harlow Heslop for coming up with Pay it Forward.

Hat tip: December Dollinger.

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The Second Life of Facebook: How SL Helped the Social Network Go Big

Facebook, a social network which earns about 15% of its revenue from virtual goods sales (i.e. Facebook Credits) and depends on avatars, virtual worlds, and games to maintain its user activity (about a third of the userbase play one or more games on the platform) today became a public company, with shares trading as high as $42 for a total company value of up to $115 billion. Its success owes a fair amount to Second Life, not just for pioneering the mainstream acceptance of virtual goods and avatars, but in ways even more direct: Second Life co-founder Cory Ondrejka has been with Facebook since 2010, and is a major player in the company's game platform development. Lawyer Ben Duranske, who wrote a book on virtual law and often lectured on that topic in SL as an avatar named Benjamin Noble, has been Payments Counsel at Facebook for the last two years. Then there's all the former Linden Lab staff who also now work/have worked at Facebook: Ian Wilkes (one of the original Lindens), along with Lindens like Brad Kittenbrink (one of the lead developers of WindLight), and other Lindens like Bethanye McKinney Blount, Leyla Farazha, Sean Lynch, and Steffan Mejia. (I'm probably missing many more.) I suggested this in relationship to the rise of Zynga, which also owed a lot to SL, but it bears repeating today:

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Fashionography: SL Fashion Blog for Manly Metaverse Men

Mister Nathan Chafee has a metaverse fashion blog for manly men (maybe meterosexually so). Replete with clever poses and excellent screenshot photography and (this is especially good for dudes what are looking for duds) Marketplace and Map links for buying the items he shoots. See some stylish samples above -- see much more metaversey manliness here.

Hat tip: Gracie Kendal.

Why Virtual World Content Creators & Game Developers Will Like Storybricks -- Brian "Psychochild" Green Explains

The Storybricks Kickstarter which which I blogged recently has a new video better demonstrating how cool this build-a-story kit project for MMO/RPG players and developers really is -- watch:

I've been e-mailing with Storybricks development lead and longtime veteran designer Brian "Psychochild" Green, and he explained why content creators and game developers (such as those who create in Second Life and other open platforms) will like Storybricks:

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New Mesh Eyes Will Revolutionize the Way Avatars Look -- and How We'll Photograph Avatars

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

Damien Fate's latest release, FATEeyes [Marketplace page here], brings a pretty groundbreaking level of customization to our SL avatar's eyes, putting detailed control of their color and position right at your fingertips --  take a look at this demo video by fellow fashionista Strawberry Singh to see what I mean:

 

It's not just texture-changing and size control that makes these eyes such an awesome addition to your avatar's wardrobe, though. One simple slider, allowing you to control the direction of the eyes, makes these eyes a total must-have for SL photographers, artists, and bloggers alike. Let me show you...

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SL Pathfinding a Potential "Tsunami" (If We're Not Prepared)

I rely on Nalates Urriah's blog for getting geek-heavy updates about Second Life code and features, so when she mentioned in a recent post that Linden Lab's new pathfinding features presented a possible "tsunami" of problems, I paid attention:

When the pathfinding code is released to the grid, she explained to me in an e-mail, "Doors need to work in new ways. Bridges will become a performance issue. Anything that moves and cuts the Navmesh [pathfinding objects], anything would cause an AI critter to change path... will incur a lag cost. Again, how much is a question." Right now, she continued,  "[i]t seems the plan is to roll out pathfinding enabled on all regions and let estate managers turn it on or off. If that is done, tsunami."

Whether there's a tsunami or not depends on how Linden Lab rolls out the pathfinding code, and how SL landowners deal with it. Here's Nalates with the full geek exegisis -- read and discuss after the break!

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Second Life Usage Dominated by Third Party Viewers -- Linden Lab's Own Software Only Used by "Minority" of SLers

Third party viewer developer Tonya Souther recently pointed out a very important March interview on Treet TV with Linden Lab's Open Development director Scott "Oz Linden" Lawrence, which includes a crucial passage I initially missed. It's so important, it needs to be highlighted here. At about 33 minutes into the conversation, Lawrence says this in relationship to the official Second Life viewer as compred with Phoenix and Firestorm, which are third party SL viewers made by The Phoenix Viewer Project team, a large consortium of SL users (none of whom are well known by their real names):

"Our own viewer users are a minority. A significant minority -- we're the number three viewer behind, behind the two... Phoenix is far and away the number one viewer, although it's quite steadily losing market share these days, has been for some months now. And Firestorm is the newer technology viewer from your project, is the number two, and it's gaining market share... And our viewer is number three behind Firestorm."

This admission came in March, as I said, so I checked with Linden Lab if it remained true:

"The 'market shares' of various Viewers isn't a data point we're currently sharing," spokesman Peter Gray told me. Still, it's unlikely the shares have changed drastically in two months, and based on what Oz says, along with what some SL insiders have suggested elsewhere, I think the following is a very plausible estimate:

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Cool Kickstarter: Word Realms MMO from Kingdom of Loathing Team -- Think WoW Meets Words With Friends

World Realms is a very new cool Kickstarter game project with a great premise: MMO questing combined with word games matched to the uniquely wacky humor that made Kingdom of Loathing such a successful indie MMO. Think WoW meets Words with Friends, and watch the hilarity-spiked pitch:

As I suggested above, it's from Asymmetric Productions, the guys who made Kingdom of Loathing, so even the Kickstarter write-up is pretty funny. Don't take my word for it, read the FAQ... I mean, the NUTSAQ:

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Run Second Life on a Samsung Galaxy Tablet (Like a Boss)

On Monday I wrote about Lumiya, the app that runs SL on Android phones and tablets, and now here's Wolden Avro taking it for a test drive on a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1:

Frame rate and display ain't super great, but as Lumiya creator Alina Lyvette told me, it's not about creating a full immersive experience, but "more about getting rid of that feeling of being blind and stuck" while running SL on a mobile device. For that matter, while I like the ability to pan the camera with the touchscreen, that's also immersion breaking, in my opinion: The effect makes it less about being in a virtual world, and more about looking through a world behind a layer of glass.

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Ask Miss Metaverse Manners About the Etiquette & Ethics Around SL Templates

Last week, our post about SL templates -- pre-made kits/pieces that fashion designers can use to easily create their own sellable content -- caused a fair amount of controversy and conversation; clearly there's a lot of questions out there that Miss Metaverse Manners can help with. For example, what price is fair for something made from templates? Or what do you do if you discover the templates you're using are based on stolen content? Miss Metaverse Manners (hopefully) to the rescue: Anonymously post your touchy etiquette and ethics questions around templates on Iris' Formspring account by Thursday afternoon. (Or you can post them anonymously in Comments below, as long as they're civil.)

Diablo III's Virtual Economy About to Transform the Real One

Blizzard's Diablo III is launching today, and with it, the Auction House, where players can trade game items for real money. (Check out Blizzard's FAQ on it here.) The latest installment in a best-selling franchise (Diablo II sold 4 million copies), from a major media corporation, this will easily become the world's most prominent real money-virtual goods marketplace. We don't know how big this will be, or all the unintended consequences it will bring, but I'm pretty confident major transformations will follow. Here's some initial thoughts:

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Phoenix SL Viewer Probably Has About At Least 50K Active Users UPDATE: But Likely Much More Than 50K

Interesting: The official site for the Phoenix 3rd party SL viewer gets about 47,000 unique monthly visitors, according to Google Ad Planner. Traffic to the site has remained constant over the last year (with occasional spikes, presumably for important updates), so assuming Google's tally is accurate (and who dares doubt Google?), I think it's safe to estimate (rounding up a touch) that Phoenix has roughly 50K active users. Quite impressive for a third party viewer, especially one that has a somewhat checkered past. There's about 400K to 1 million monthly active users of SL overall (depending on how you count "active"), so Phoenix usage would be 5 to 12 percent of the total. My guess is Phoenix usage is even more common among the very active 135K or so SLers who log more than 50 hours a month. After all, Phoenix lends itself to power users with great hardware, who can run SL so that it looks like this:

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Storybricks MMO Builder/Kickstarter Project Alpha Launches

Storybricks Alpha launched in Unity for the web recently -- check it out, though remember it's Alpha and rough around the edges (and elsewhere). As I blogged recently, Storybricks is an innovative, build-a-story kit project for MMO/RPG players and developers now raising funds with a Kickstarter, so this Alpha will give you a better idea of where they're heading. You can read an extended Massively interview with the project leads here, and I'll be interviewing head Storybricker Brian "Psychochild" Green later this week. The Kickstarter still needs about $225,000 to make its goal -- go here to consider pledging.

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Lumiya: Second Life Viewer for Android Phones & Tablets -- With 3D Graphics Display!

The latest version of the Lumiya Second Life viewer for Android phones and tablets comes with a pretty cool feature: 3D display of the world itself. (Lumiya homepage here.) Unless I missed another one, this is now the only SL app for mobile which not only shows text-based features like chat and user inventory (others on the market can do that too), but also displays SL. According to app creator Alina Lyvette, it's not (yet) a replacement for SL displayed on laptops or desktops, but displays pretty well all the same:

"Let's say I'm having around steady 10 frames per second on my tablet even with a lot of objects," Alina tells me. "It stutters a little when objects appear in draw range (mostly due to slow texture decoding), and the texture loading itself isn't fast, either (like, say, two or three times slower than typical desktop). To me, it feels... 'acceptable', but far from perfect. It could be better, and I hope to make it better in due course." She's running her app on an Acer Iconia A500, but reports good results from folks who've bought the app and have run it on other hardware:

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Top 25 Most Popular Second Life Sims for April 2012

Courtesy Louis Platini's Metaverse Business, a Second Life/OpenSim analytics company that gathers publicly accessible in-world data for its clients, here's April 2012's top 25 most popular Second Life sims including Adult-rated regions, which are generally porn, listed according to their average visitor count at any given period:

Click here to use SL's map function on the web to search and directly teleport to any of these sims. Last week, I posted the top 50 excluding Adult sims, but from now on, after reading the advice of readers, particularly Arcadia Codesmith, I'll be posting two charts: Top 25 without the Adult sims, and below the break (where things get kinky) the Top 25 uncensored. For this month, compare and contrast with the Mature/General-only list:

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Get a 40% Discount for My New Wiley Book on iOS, Facebook, and Web Game Design!

Coming this September, my new book Game Design Secrets from Wiley will focus on games for iOS, Facebook, and the Web, and the key features to marketing and monetizating them. All three platforms have opened up huge opportunities for low budget/indie game production, and my hope is this book helps developers turn their passion for games into a full-time profession and thriving business. It'll include expert advice and insights from many successful designers, including some developers you'll recognize from their work in Second Life and Linden Lab. And thanks to the folks at Wiley, the book's publisher, anyone reading this can get a pre-order discount of 40%:

Preorder Game Design Secrets from Wiley.com and get 40% off of the print version. Click here to order, and enter “GDS12” at checkout. Offer available through 8/31/12.

Watch this blog for more announcements. And If you're a game developer working on or interested in games for the Web, iOS, or Facebook, please get in touch with me:

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Skyrim: How Marketing Turned a Niche Product Into a Mass Market Hit

"Skyrim: How Marketing Turned a Niche Product Into a Mass Market Hit" is my latest article for The CMO Site edited by Mitch Wagner, and as you might have guessed, it's about how Bethesda and advertising agency AKQA launched a marketing campaign that marketed Skyrim so it could get out of the fantasy roleplay niche to compete with big gamer franchises like Battlefield and Call of Duty. I think they have some lessons certain other virtual world/game companies could learn from. Sample:

Lesson 2 - Find and promote an emotional core that aligns with current market leaders: The first challenge in Skyrim's campaign, as AKQA account lead Ed Davis put it, was overcoming "a stigma" of fantasy games, and the skepticism of console gamers who "think it's really nerdy." Some marketers try to mask the geeky genre elements by emphasizing gore, or layering the ads with a heavy metal soundtrack. Instead of doing either, Skyrim's marketing team sought to identify the emotional core of Skyrim. And while the game is very much in the orcs-and-elves roleplaying genre, it also has a high attention to detail and believability (within the fantasy context) -- or what the marketing team dubbed "epic reality."

Read the rest here, and please create a free CMO account to join the conversation with Mitch and me!

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7 Posts You Might Have Missed Last Week (But Shouldn't)

SL News, Culture, and Opinion

• Iris Rants: Why Templates (and the SL Designers Who Use Them) Get Under My Skin
• Second Life Users' Tolerance of SL's Technical Troubles Helps Stymie SL's Growth -- Here's Why
• SL's Latest Mesh-Based Style Craze: Petite Fairy Avatars!
• How to Rent Virtual Land for Your SL Store (Excerpt from Second Life Business Advice)
• Top 50 Second Life Sims for April 2012, Excluding Porn

General Tech and Gaming

• Waking Mars: Thief Designer Randy Smith on the Virtual Ecosystem & Emergent Gameplay in His New iOS Game
• Are Tablets the Breakthrough Virtual Worlds Need? Tech Editor Mitch Wagner and Me Debate

Waking Mars: Thief Designer Randy Smith on the Virtual Ecosystem & Emergent Gameplay in His New iOS Game

Waking Mars is an acclaimed new iOS game which has just been updated and discounted; in it, you play a lone, stranded explorer with a jetpack, in caverns of Mars recently discovered to be full of life. It's by Randy Smith, a lead designer of the classic Thief games, with co-writing and character development by Terri Brosius, another Thief designer who also provided the dulcet-but-dangerous voice acting for Viktoria in the first two games of the series. Masterpieces of immersive and emergent gaming, the Thief series convinced me over ten years ago that games could be an art form, and they're a chief reason why you're reading these words. Randy has been adapting some of the core principles which made Thief so great for the iOS, and I'm interviewing him for my upcoming book on iOS/web/Facebook game design. During our conversation, he shared some insights on how Waking Mars might also appeal to fans of virtual worlds like Second Life:

"The game mechanics of Waking Mars combine to depict a living, breathing ecosystem of alien lifeforms," he explains. "Individually, each lifeform is dictated by fairly simple rules: the Halid produces seeds when watered, the Phyta eats those seeds, the Larian is one of the natural predators of the Phyta, and a decomposing Phyta corpse spit out by a Larian will produce the nutrients that can make Halid grow to their enriched size, which in turn causes them to produce more seeds. As you can see, when the various lifeforms come together in different combinations they produce different emergent behaviors, which a clever player can leverage." (Reminds me a bit of the classic Svarga island in Second Life, but in a game setting.)

Because Waking Mars' ecosystem operates on a set of interlocking principles, a savvy player can come up with new ways of playing:

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Linden Lab's Emily Short Drops Hints on Linden's Next Project: Relaxed Storytelling for the Angry Birds Audience

Gamasutra's Leigh Alexander has a good long article on text-based gaming, including an interview with Linden Lab's Emily Short, co-founder of the Little Text People studio recently acquired by Linden. Some hints are dropped about the project Ms. Short is working on for Linden, and it sounds quite casual, and quite mass market: To wit:

"The approach that we're taking tries to leverage people's familiarity with books to make it feel like something they already understand," Short says of Little Text People's project. "We're doing something that is very unusual in terms of game formats; you understand how to read a story, and here's a page -- but things are being added to that page."

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Ashraya Project: Second Life Fundraisers for RL Indian NGO

The Ashraya Project is an SL fundraising effort to benefit Ashraya, a Bangalore-based organization "dedicated to finding solutions for children within the frame work of their own biological families, or in adoptive homes". The project's blog isn't very clear on the relationship between the SL project and Ashraya the organization in India, which is somewhat frustrating fro a reporting perspective, but for SL fashionistas, there are dozens of content creators who are selling items for the benefit -- here's a list of places where you can buy them.

Hat tip: Strawberry Singh, who shows off some fashion from the benefit here.

Oz Linden on the Mesh Deformer: We Want it in SL's Viewer

Here's an update from Linden Lab's Director of Open Development Scott "Oz Linden" Lawrence on the need for mesh samples from SL content creators in order to test the mesh deformer, which he previously suggested might not be integrated at all, if Linden didn't get enough test items. He makes the update in the comment thread of the blog of Nalates Urriah, and as he explains there, his goal in stating the need so drastically was to motivate SLers to contribute:

Really, the very last thing I want is kill this project, and I’m going to keep trying until we get it done. Maybe this time my way of getting attention was just a little drastic, but it was in a good cause.

Read the rest here. Progress on the deformer seems to be happening now, but if anything, this incident illustrates one thing:

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Iris Rants: Why Templates (and the SL Designers Who Use Them) Get Under My Skin

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

There was a boom in Second Life fashion a few years ago when several enterprising residents realized just how much people would pay to have access to pre-made, full permission designs and resources in Second Life. The fashion community has become even more sprawling and diverse since then (due in no small part to templates themselves), but this design renaissance came at a tremendous cost as well...

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Cool Kickstarter: Panzer Pets, Customizable Pet Robot MMO

Panzer Pets is a cool new Kickstarter project that integrates user-customizable, rideable robot pets into a cross-platform MMO for iOS, Android and PC browsers -- watch the pitch:

The art and design specs are really appealing, and I think this is destined to be huge, appealing to both male and female gamers. Plus as a person who pledges, you can get a 3D printed version of the MMO's robots. (I just hope the developers carefully considered shipping costs, so they don't end up like this cautionary Kickstarter.) They aim to raise $85,000 in the next 24 days -- go here to consider pledging.

Second Life Users' Tolerance of SL's Technical Troubles Helps Stymie SL's Growth -- Here's Why

I got a lot of interesting comments from hardcore SL users when I mentioned last week all the troubles I was having running Second Life on my Alienware laptop from Dell (a brand owned by nearly 1 in 4 laptop users). Most of them have the same underlying theme, and point to a fundamental Second Life problem. Roughly summarized, they were:

• Buy a better laptop to run SL.
• Get a better graphics card to run SL.
• Stop using a Dell/Alienware to run SL.
• Stop using Windows 7 and install Linux OS to run SL.
• Use another third party viewer (made by non-Linden staff) to run SL.
• Stop expecting SL to work like a mainstream product and just learn to run SL.
• Here is a long and detailed technical explanation on how to fix your problem that would be nearly impossible for an average consumer to follow, but you should do so anyway to run SL.

I definitely don't mean to criticize any SLer who made a comment like this, for on one level, they show a lot of passion for the community which is admirable. But it's important to point out the troubling, unifying theme:

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Founding Linden Hunter Walk on the Power of User-Generated Content on YouTube

My pal Hunter Walk has a good Fast Company guest post on the power of user-generated content online, specifically, online videos uploaded and shared on YouTube, where he's now director of product management. Sample:

Online media is effectively creating a global living room by transforming how people across distances can share an experience. Video especially can pack a powerful punch of humanity. It can convey sights, sounds, and emotions in a different way than written word, audio, or other mediums... It allows us to identify via our interests rather than just our demographic. As media moves from being created and shared regionally to more open, international platforms, empathy and understanding follow.

If that sounds similar to Second Life, you shouldn't be surprised: Before joining YouTube, Hunter helped found Linden Lab and (as I explain in Making of Second Life) is the very guy who gave Second Life the name Second Life. So it's interesting how these two platforms might begin to better merge: As I blogged yesterday, YouTube is rumored to be investing in machinima.

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SL's Latest Mesh-Based Style Craze: Petite Fairy Avatars!

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

While giant avatars may very well be the next big thing in Second Life (pun totally intended), right now there'sa different kind of mesh avatar that's all the rage among fantasy fashionistas: Petites. These diminutive elves and fairies were originally released at Yabusaka, but the creator quite wisely offered creator packs as well so that other designers could not only design clothing for them, but also release their own versions of the avatars themselves. This has led to an explosion of itty bitty outfits, accessories, and even home and garden decor to target the rapidly growing (or should I say shrinking?) community.

Petites aren't SL's first miniature avatars; the Tiny avatar community has been going strong now for longer than I've even been in SL. What makes Petites different is that they have the same basic proportions as a full sized human avatar, scaled-down to the size of a doll. So how should you get started assembling your own petite self?

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How to Rent Virtual Land for Your SL Store (Excerpt from Second Life Business Advice)

Successful Business in Second Life is an e-book for the iOS (and for Amazon Kindle here) by Ron Andrade (Ari Blackthorne in SL), who's been running successful businesses in SL since 2006, now in its third edition.

With permission of the author, here's a very useful excerpt in which Ron explains how to find the best place to rent land for your SL business, and negotiate the best deal with the owner:

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Google Reportedly Investing $30 Million in Machinima.com -- Now's a Good Time to Promote SL Machinima, Linden Lab!

This could be really big: Google is reportedly investing up to $30 million in Machinima.com, according to AllThingsD, which has a YouTube channel of over 100 million subscribers. The money would be a huge boost for user-generated 3D digital content; YouTube has been pushing to create more original videos, and this could do just that. Assuming this happens, I do have some concerns: A lot of machinimators are not wild about Machinima.com's restrictive contracts, and from a content perspective, most of the stuff on Machinima.com are just stunt videos and other in-jokes for fans of the games, with little appeal outside the fanbase. Even more concerning is this:

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Old Republic MMO Losing Subscribers Faster Than Expected, Hurting EA's Stock in the Process

Less than 6 months after launch, Electronic Arts' Old Republic has slipped from 1.7 million to 1.3 million subscribers, which is a drop much faster than expected -- as I noted last week, analysts expected it to fall to 1.25 million subscribers by 2013. At a reported budget of up to $200 million (plus tens of millions of more in marketing), and such a fast loss of paying subscribers, it's now worth wondering whether Old Republic will not break even (or at the very least, make enough profit to justify such a massive investment). The stock market is definitely worrying about just that thing: "[T]he drop in [Old Republic] subs -- as well as the company's reduced financial outlook -- have caused shareholders to offload stocks tonight," reports Gamasutra. "As of this writing, shares are down over 7 percent in after hours trading." Which brings up another reason to think the subscription-based model for MMOs is now dead as dead:

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Kinect-Driven 3D Holographic Chat: Is This the Future of Avatar Interaction?

When I think about the future of virtual worlds and 3D-based interaction, I'm less likely to think of tablet computing, and more apt to look at things like this -- Human Media Lab's TeleHuman, a Kinect-driven 3D holographic chat:

Read about how they do that on Gizmodo: "The director of the Human Media Lab says the TeleHuman could be available for $5,000 within five years." If there's market interest, I bet it could be done sooner and much cheaper. And because you're converting a person into 3D visual data, it's easy to think about immersing them into a simulated 3D environment, so it doesn't feel like you're talking with a disembodied ghost.

Hat tip: Jeremy Owen Turner.

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Awesome Kickstarter to Turn an iPad Into an Etch A Sketch!

Etcher is a totally kickass Kickstarter project which aims to create one of the very first user-generated content platforms -- that is to say, Etch A Sketch. Not only will it recreate the classic experience of the original toy on your iPad, but you can save and share your pictures with friends online. Kickstarter hint: If you don't add a Draw Something-like game feature to this, you're crazy. And yes, the project is authorized by the original Etch A Sketch manufacturer to use the trademark and original design in the iPad version, and the development team is full of engineering ninjas -- chief among them being Lee Felsenstein, who quite literally helped launch the personal computing revolution. (Full disclosure: Lee's wife Lena is a friend of mine. But then, I think Lee was also friends with Steve Jobs, so what the hell does my connection matter?) We were just talking about the iPad as a platform for innovation, and I think apps like this, rather than virtual worlds, is what the iOS is better suited for.

Read more on Tomorrow's Next Web, and watch the Kickstarter pitch video after the break:

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Are Tablets the Breakthrough Virtual Worlds Need? Tech Editor Mitch Wagner and Me Debate

Will tablets finally turn 3D virtual worlds into a mass market product? That idea was recently suggested to me in an e-mail conversation with my pal tech writer and editor Mitch Wagner, who's been a longtime admirer of Second Life (but has turned somewhat bearish in recent years.) Mitch makes a compelling case I wanted to share here -- then share my own reply, which is, "Maybe, but..." First, Mitch's argument:

"I think virtual worlds may be a medium like mobile photos or ebooks. These kinds of media putter along as cults until the right technology comes along to make them mainstream.

"For ebooks, that enabling technology was the epaper reader, particularly the sub-$100 Kindle available in the second half of 2011 (although the iPad also did a lot to drive ebook sales). Until then, ebooks were the domain of a few fanatics willing to read books on their phones, but afterwards, they exploded.

"For mobile photos, the driving technology was the cameraphone, particularly the iPhone 4, which had a lot better camera than its predecessors.

"Similarly, virtual worlds require some underlying technology to rip it away from the PC -- PCs are becoming less popular -- and put them in people's hands:

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Linden Lab Needs Mesh Samples to Test Qarl's Mesh Deformer -- Or May Not Incorporate It Into SL Viewers At All

Click here if you're a mesh content creator in SL who wants to incorporate Karl "Qarl Fizz" Stiefvater's crowdfunded mesh deformer, which greatly improves mesh-bashed clothing (see above.) According to Linden Lab's Director of Open Development Scott "Oz Linden" Lawrence, the company needs samples of mesh clothing to evaluate this feature, but hasn't received enough since putting out that call last week. In fact, the lack of samples from content creators has inspired Oz to wonder if the mesh deformer is worth integrating into the SL viewer code at all. For as he put it:

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Top 50 Second Life Sims for April 2012, Excluding Porn... But Should I Exclude Porn from These Lists?

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 General and Moderate rated sims (i.e. excluding Adult-rated porn sims) in Second Life for April 2012  listed according to their average visitor count at any given period:

Click here to use SL's map function on the web to search and directly teleport to any of these sims.

Question for readers before checking out 26-50: Do you prefer to see the absolute most popular Top 50, including the porn sims, or do you prefer listings this way? All or almost all of top Adult-rated sims seem to be strictly virtual porn/prostitution/BDSM-themed, so I don't know how interesting they are to a general readership. If even some of the big Adult-rated sites were, say, roleplaying regions which include graphic sexual and violent content, but were not necessarily their main purpose (like the ambitious and story-heavy Midian), that would be different. But I don't know how many NWN readers wake up wondering, "Gosh how popular is Bukkake Bliss Island nowadays?" Mabye I'm wrong there.

Let me know your thoughts in Comments, because NWN is here for you, whether I come bearing Bukkake, or I'm Bukkake-free.

Top 26-50 sims after the break:

Continue reading "Top 50 Second Life Sims for April 2012, Excluding Porn... But Should I Exclude Porn from These Lists?"

SL Marketplace Makeover: Linden Lab, Your Search Function's Fail, So Create a User-Made Collection Feature!

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

I recently shared some choice words about the shortcomings in Second Life Marketplace's "Mad Style" featurette, which was supposed to showcase SL styles similar to that seen in Mad Man, but only showed just how atrocious the search function in Linden Lab's e-commerce site is. It's time for Linden Lab to add a collection feature to the Marketplace, for users who want to make their own lists of recommended content. (Similar to what's worked so well for sites like Etsy and Amazon.) Let's call it a Marketplace Treasury.

What would that look like? Just imagine a Mad Style feature in which content creators could categorize items of theirs which had a Mad Man-esque style. Here's the prototype I came up with:

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Augmented Reality Sandbox Displays Virtual Water Flowing Through Grooves You Make in Real Sand

The Augmented Reality Sandbox is a National Science Foundation-funded project at UC Davis which uses Kinect to simulate real time water which flows through the grooves you make in the actual sandbox. It's an awesome demonstration of augmented reality for use in a simulation, and it's also just cool. Watch:

Read more about the project here. The site explanation is pretty heavy reading for a non-technical audience, but this is basically how it works:

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Francois Hollande Nationalizes Second Life (Or Something)

Speaking of parody, shortly after Socialist candidate François Hollande was elected President of France last weekend, someone named FrancoisHollande Resident showed up on my SL office waving a French flag, and assuming control over the metaverse -- or something:

"Given your well-documented pro-Sarkozy bias [Ed. note: What is this I don't even], I see no other choice but to nationalize, by decree with immediate effect, Second Life in its entirety," he informed me via e-mail. "This nationalization, of course, includes your small piece of land, which I have already visited (see photo). Kindly remove the old-looking pieces of furniture still scattered here and there at your earliest convenience, so that I can give a more French-looking, stylish look to that nationalized landmark."

So there you go. I'm not entirely sure, but I think this avatar might not actually be Francois Hollande, let alone an admirer of the new President. I wonder if he knows that Hollande's longtime domestic partner and fellow Socialist, Ségolène Royal, once actually had an official campaign headquarters in Second Life, and even made a video greeting French SLers.

Anyway, for my many French readers, here's FrancoisHollande Resident's full statement to me en Français:

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SL Parody: What if Humble, Rod (I.E. God) Was One of Us?

By a fortunate circumstance, Linden Lab's latest CEO is named Rod, which rhymes with "God", which is how SLers often see the Lindens, especially in the "detached and indifferent to human pain and need" theologicial sense, which got us this pretty funny if somewhat bitter parody by Botgirl Questi based on Joan Osborne's "One of Us", watch:

What If Rod Was One Of Us from Botgirl Questi on Vimeo.

Just needs a machinima version, stat. It's funny because it's true, or at least true enough. Isn't it ironic? And by ironic, I mean ironic the way Alanis Morissette thinks ironic is ironic, which is to say, not very ironic at all.

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How to Advertise on Reddit & Not Be a Big Advertising Jerk

"How to Advertise on Reddit" is my latest article for The CMO Site, edited by Mitch Wagner, about all the interesting nuances needed for marketing on everyone's favorite content submission site without being ignored or coming across as a Spamming jerk. Sample:

While sponsored links have a slightly different color, they come with a user comment thread, just like any other user-submitted Reddit link. This is where Reddit's uniqueness as an advertising platform comes through, because advertisers can and often do participate in these threads, directly responding to Redditor feedback about their ads. "There's nothing more engaging than asking a question in the context of an ad and having it answered [by the advertiser]," argues [Reddit General Manager Erik] Martin.

Read the rest here -- hope you create a free CMO Site account and join the conversation with me, Mitch, and everyone else there.

10 Posts You Might Have Missed Last Week (But Shouldn't)

SL News, Culture, and Opinion

• Second Life Drops from Nielsen's Top 10 Most Played PC Games, Sees Significant Drop in Average Minutes Played
• Ex-Lindens to Linden: Make Bold & Radical Changes to SL!
• Beautiful SL Machinima Music Video Created & Performed by Ole "Mr. Bones" Etzel Who's a Rising Star Don't You Think?
• Meet SLer Ceri Quixote, Whose Avatar Stands at 200 Feet
• Was This Absolut Vodka Ad Inspired by Second Life?
• Second Life Problems Go Viral - Though Many Are Actually Linden Lab Problems

Gaming/Tech News, Culture, and Opinion

• Elder Scrolls MMO: Massively Missed Opportunity (So Far)
• Boobs for Humanoid Cats? Guild Wars 2 Controversy Latest in Debate Over Female Avatar Sexualization
• Galactica MMO Probably More Popular Than Old Republic
• Swimbots: Free Evolution Sim Game for iPad by Linden Alum Jeffrey Ventrella, Ported by Karl "Qarl" Stiefvater

Continue reading "10 Posts You Might Have Missed Last Week (But Shouldn't)"

Swimbots: Free Evolution Sim Game for iPad by Linden Alum Jeffrey Ventrella, Ported by Karl "Qarl" Stiefvater

Swimbots is a free artificial life game for the iPad created by Jeffery Ventrella, a former Linden engineer who developed Second Life's much-beloved flexi-prims, and has been doing innovative work in avatar interaction before and since. The game is an iOS port of Ventrella's earlier game Gene Pool (read more about it here), "a virtual Darwinian Aquarium where you can witness evolution unfolding before your eyes." (Trailer after the break.) What's more, it was ported by fellow Linden alum Karl "Qarl" Stiefvater. Wish I owned an iPad to try it out myself, but if you do, you can -- get it here, and please share your gameplay experience in Comments.

Thanks to Aemeth Lysette for the tip! And speaking of iPad games, I'm writing a book on game design for iOS, Facebook, and the Web, so if you know of other projects on those platforms I might want to include (especially if they have an SL origin) please get in touch.

Continue reading "Swimbots: Free Evolution Sim Game for iPad by Linden Alum Jeffrey Ventrella, Ported by Karl "Qarl" Stiefvater"

Elder Scrolls MMO: Massively Missed Opportunity (So Far)

After reading early details on Elder Scrolls: Online, the highly anticipated MMO, this seems like an appropriate macro:

Specifically:

• No player housing. It's "too hard to implement in an MMO" (yes, an actual quote from one of the developers.) You know that world that's so vivid, you felt like you could live there? You can't live there.
• Traditional MMO combat: "You're playing the game in third-person," says Kotaku, "and its combat centres around hotbars activating skills. Your attacks have cooldowns. In clear terms, that means no real-time combat. It is literally explained as using 'World of Warcraft mechanics'."
• No word about crafting or a user-driven economy.
• No word about user-made mods, sure to disappoint the thriving community around them.

The game is set for release a year from now, and things can always change before then, but so far, the "MMO" in this case seems to stands for Massively Missed Opportunity.

More from my MMO expert Iris Ophelia:

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