New World Notes

New World Tableau: "Tres Seul" by Kee Llewellyn In [Rec]

Though it may seem so at first glance, this is not a recently discovered Edward Hopper painting, but an untouched photo taken directly from Second Life.  (Besides the addition of Kee's signature, that is.)  Taken in [Rec], the moody survival-horror region, the richly drab hues were achieved naturally, so to speak. "The lighting effect was done in WindLight," Kee Llewellyn tells me, "along with some tonal shifts of the ambient light. I added a touch of Fog.  I also shot with a relatively long 'lens', jumping in a few steps using Alt+0 to do so."  It's one in a series of photos the artist has taken in SL using minimal after-image processing.  "I'm trying to punch the envelope of what can be done without resorting to Photoshop," she explains. "I guess this is one of the images that worked."  You can see more and just as lovely on Kee's Koinup profile, where this image was first discovered.  (See "Tres Seul" here in full glory.)

View the entire Tableau album here, and read on for guidelines to submitting an entry of your own.

Open Forum: What SL Games Should Vidal Tripsa Play?

I'm very happy to welcome Vidal Tripsa as an upcoming contributor to this blog.  She'll be reviewing some of Second Life's many in-world games for New World Notes, with a focus on mini-MMOs and adventure games.  (As you might guess by her bio below, she is herself already immersed in the roleplay possibilities of SL.)  I'll still write about Second Life games when I can, but there's so many now, I've enlisted Ms. Tripsa to help explore this burgeoning industry.

Question is, what games should she play first first?  Please post pointers in Comments, with SLURLs when possible.  Meantime, I'll let Vidal introduce herself to this blog in her own words (she also has her own blog here):

"My name is Vidal Tripsa, and I am a toy; a marionette whose strings are tweaked by a puppeteer in First Life. It seemed natural then for me to play inside Second Life, be it playing with dolls, role-playing or gaming. My puppeteer's passion for video games and games design has seeped its way in too, and so I come to explore the games that are native to our grid.

"My gaming tastes generally lean towards platform-hopping adventures and role-playing quests, but I do what I can to keep a broad palette. Outside of gaming I spend much of my time building and designing in Extropia - another symptom of First Life interests!

"One day soon I hope to develop my own immersive game inside the Grid, however for now I am happy to be a consumer of the fun manufactured by other, talented people."

Koinup's Latest Contest: WindLight Photos With No Post-Processing

<p>&lt;p&gt;&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Koinup: Your &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;http://www.koinup.com/&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Virtual Life&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;</p>

Here's the latest cool challenge from NWN partner Koinup:  Create beautiful SL screenshots using the various settings of WindLight, with no after-image touch-ups with Photoshop or other software.  Instead, in the Windlight, No Postprocessing Contest, you must take the screenshot and send it in-world to the Koinup server as a Second Life postcard.  Here's a tutorial on how to do that.  (The image frame above is displaying thumbnails of postcards already uploaded to the contest channel.)  Top four entrants get a free copy of Liquid Void, the insta-terraforming software, currently retailing at L$25,000.  Submission deadline's August 29-- all the details here.

Survey Results: 54% Of SL Entrepeneurs Report In-World Recession; Fashion, Housing, Real Estate Biz Hardest Hit

Here's the results to last week's survey on SL business performance, and they track with the Lindens' official economic stats; more than half the respondents say their earnings have suffered a downturn in recent months.  Deepest impacted were the Donna Karans and Donald Trumps of the world-- 59% of those who reported a loss are in the fashion/avatar enhancement industry, or housing/housewares/real estate sector of the economy.  (I suspect these are far and away SL's two largest industries, and if that's true, it follows that they'd be the most affected.) 

But why the downturn?  In Comments, Eristic Strangelove of [nautilina], a firm which manufactures SL showers, suggests it's due to a market saturation of free/cheap content. 

Cthulhu's Hair Club For Avatars

For an evil demigod, it must be the ultimate indignity: Dread Cthulu, the Great Immortal One, the primordial incarnation of unspeakable horror, is now an adorable test tube baby you can raise inside your bouffant Second Life hairdo.  Worse still, it's all for a remarkably good cause: the hairdo is being sold at Hair Fair, a massive three week hair expo in which half the L$ proceeds are converted into US$ donations to Locks of Love, a non-profit that provides wigs for kids undergoing chemotherapy and other medical treatments that cause hair loss. 

While Hair Fair mostly boasts dozens of top designers creating glamorous hair attachments for SL's many fashionistas, Rikka Koi wanted to do something different at her booth.

"The inspiration for the Baby Construct was really all those fashionistas out there who walk around with great big pregnant avatars in miniskirts and high heels," Ms. Koi tells me. (Which is actally news to me, as well: virtual pregnancy has become a popular fashion statement?) 

"I kind of consider that a fashion faux pas," she continues.  "Who wants to see mommy-to-be in a mini skirt and tube top? So I decided to solve all their problems while furthering my own goals to bring back the Great Old Ones and raise unspeakable eldritch horrors from the deeps. And I wanted something really killer for Hair Fair."

Since going on sale, it's been a phenomenal hit; she estimates selling 200 a day for between L$200-400, with over a thousand sold so far.  Given the popularity of H.P. Lovecraft tropes in Second Life, the viral success is unsurprising to me.  (Indeed, minutes after I mentioned the find to metaverse developer Eureka Dejavu, she had plopped one on her head.) 

But Rikka Koi tells me she's had numerous complaints.

Burning Life Gets A Blog

Last week I wondered if Burning Life was still relevant in Second Life's post-Burning Man era; recently I noticed that GavinLeigh Wake created an unofficial blog devoted to the upcoming temporary arts festival in SL.  Right now it's mostly a compilation of Burning Life announcements, recollections of past Burns, but I can see it becoming a great resource and community gathering place for 2008 and beyond.

SL Entrepeneurs, Are You Experiencing An Economic Downturn?

Please take these two surveys if you haven't already.  I should be compiling and reporting the results in the next few days!

The Second Life Of Tokugawa: How The Metaverse Resembles Japan's Transformational Era

As it turns out, Second Life culture is not a uniquely odd society with no real world analogues.  Instead, it's useful to compare SL to the Tokugawa/Edo period of Japan, which ushered that country into the modern era, preparing it to become the global power it is today.

That's the revolutionary thesis of "Avatars Are For Real: Virtual Communities and Public Spheres", a groundbreaking academic paper by Eiko Ikegami and Piet Hut, recently published in the first volume of The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, a peer-reviewed publication.  Pictured at left, Ikegami is a Sociology professor and Department chair at Manhattan's esteemed New School, and the paper is based on her experiences in Second Life as Kiremimi Tigerpaw, at right.  (Hut is the Princeton astrophysicist whose work simulating Newtonian mechanics in SL and OpenSim was featured here; he also happens to be Eiko's husband.)  Through their in-world Second Life activity, they began noticing commonalites to a period in Japan that emphasized culture, the arts, and the sensuality of Ukiyo lifestyle-- literally, "floating world."

So how does the culture of 16th-19th century Japan resemble Second Life?  How about Tokugawa activity that eerily resembles avatar-based roleplay, virtual world construction, and communities based on creativity, not social barriers?

Vote For Bettina Tizzy To Discuss Metaverse Art and Architecture at SXSW In 2009!

Now here's an image that makes me smile: Bettina Tizzy at Stubb's, Twittering a post-talk after-action report over a plate of ribs and several Lone Star beers.  You can help make that possible, because Ms. Tizzy, metaverse art maven supreme and founder of the Not Possible In Real Life group and website, has submitted a panel topic for the Interactive arm of South by Southwest 2009 next March in Austin, Texas.  It is, of course, perfectly aligned with the stellar reputation she's developed to speak on the subject:

Does the Future of Art and Architecture Reside in Virtual Worlds?

SXSW panels are selected in large part via democratic process, so if you click the above link, create an SXSW account, and vote for her panel, it'll help boost Bettina's chances to get selected.  I'm a five year veteran of SXSW and fully plan on being there too.  If it's selected, I think it'll be another first: a SXSW panel whose host is listed by her avatar name.

If SL's Too Freeform For Gen Y, Why's Habbo So Huge?

Friday's post, "Is The Second Life Experience Fundamentally Gen X-Centric?", has garnered a very interesting, thought-provoking Comment thread, including several educators with first-hand experience trying (with much difficulty) to interest their Millenial students in Second Life.  Most of them seem to agree that there is indeed a generational divide in perception, with Generation Xers more attracted to SL's open ended, freeform creativity, while Gen Yers are intimidated or even bored by it. 

That may be, but I want to pose a counter-point:  the virtual world Habbo Hotel is dominated by teens, and with 10 million monthly active users, is about as popular as World of Warcraft-- and of course, far more popular than SL.  But like Second Life, it's also a non-game with a freeform structure.  As I wrote for GigaOM last year:

[The company] created a number of themed rooms and let the players devise their own games around them. Habbo users have joined together to run their own roleplay areas, and the company keeps a light hand on community management, because then, “the players forget that the player-created content is the core of the world.”

So if a generational divide over open-ended worlds isn't an absolute, why has Habbo succeeded to attract the very young where SL is still struggling in that regard?  A couple months ago, I suggested it was due to the Habbo management's gentle nudging of user-created content.  But then, that would also apply to the Lindens.  Other alternate reasons come to mind: