New World Notes

Minecraft Magnets For Your Fridge

In case you didn't get anything Minecraft-related for the holidays and you really wish you did: Minecraft magnet sets for just 10 damn dollars. No idea if they're Notch approved, but judging by the creator's Etsy rating, Etsy shoppers do. Hat tip: Metaverse musician Keiko Takamura, whose husband bought her a set for Christmas. (Now that's true geek love.)

Play The Marriage, The Provocative Art Game of Newly Appointed Linden Lab CEO Rod Humble

Back in 2007 when Second Life was enjoying the peak of media hype, an Electronic Arts executive made a small indie game called The Marriage (free download required), an abstract metaphor for marriage explained in terms of colored shapes that you can manipulate by gently moving your mouse. "The game is my expression of how a marriage feels," he explains in his extensive notes. "The blue and pink squares represent the masculine and feminine of a marriage. They have differing rules which must be balanced to keep the marriage going." When I played it, the gameplay seemed to suggest a man is diminished by the demands of marriage, while the union makes a woman grow -- an apparently retro understanding of the institution that was part of the conversation the game inspired. I admire the ambition that went into his game, though I think the execution is burdened by a mismatch between the weight of the concepts Humble is trying to convey, and the abstract geometry he chooses to convey them with. (Compare for example with The Passage, another indie game that covers similar themes.) In any case, it's an interesting insight into the mind of the man now leading the effort to make Second Life fast, easy, and fun.

Humble, by the way, is a seriously hardcore gamer of the old school, by which I mean tabletop wargaming with Napoleanic era battle figurines -- he even wrote these open source rules for resolving skirmishes of game.

Photo from Arthouse Games, Marriage frame grab from Rod Humble's site.

Top Eight New World Notes Posts From Last Week!

Second Life

• Embracing Second Life as a Game Platform, Linden Lab Selects EA Exec & Game Developer Rod Humble as New CEO
• Alone Together with Sherry Turkle: On Second Life, Online Identity, and Whether SL Undermines Post-Modernism

Noteworthy Machinima

• Two Second Life Music Videos for David Lynch

New World Etiquette

• Balancing Your Real and Virtual Families, and Other Holiday Headaches

New World Tech

• Remote Collaborative Creation in a Virtual 3D Space Using Two Kinects!

Blue Mars

• Live Music Launches in Blue Mars, Here's the Video!

New World Gaming

• SimCity Meets Music Making on the Isle of Tune
• DC Online Has Infinite Options for Stylish Superheroes -- But Superheroines Always Get Superboobs

Iris Ophelia's NWN Rant Against DC Universe Online's Busty Avatars Featured on Jezebel!

Here's a lovely Christmas present for New World Notes style writer Iris Ophelia -- her excellent rant against DC Universe Online's sexist female avatars has been re-posted on the great and massive blog Jezebel. In between gifts and eggnog and such, hope you go there and give our girl some supportive props!

Christmas and Seasonal Events in Second Life

From now until New Year's, you can hunt for Eggnogg the Christmas Troll on Escapades Island, and win a prize if you tag and bag him -- just follow his elephantine footsetps: Direct teleport SLurl at this link.

Tomorrow, Christmas day from Noon to 5pm SLT, there's a Christmas Day concert with ballroom dancing at the Dance Star Ballroom: Direct SLurl teleport at this link.

Also on Christmas from 11:00am onward, there's Feliz Navidad cheer in Plaza Luna of the Lindens for Language and Instituto Espanol, featuring live Latin artist Joaquin Gustav -- dance to live tango for Christmas! Direct SLurl teleport at this link.

Just some of many Christmas events in SL -- post details of more in Comments!

Miss Ophelia's Metaverse Manners: Balancing Your Real and Virtual Families, and Other Holiday Headaches

Exclusive to NWN, Iris Ophelia's take on etiquette and ethics in virtual spaces

This week I'm answering four festive questions, just in time for the holidays:

My SL family wants me to spend time with them on Christmas day, but I think I should be with my RL family. What should I do?

- Home-Position for the Holidays

What you should do really depends on how close your are with your SL family. While I know some people might balk at the idea of spending precious holiday time with a "pretend family", relationships developed over the Internet are increasingly being recognized as real relationships. And why not? The bond between us is more mental than physical, so it makes sense that tangible relationships can develop in worlds completely free of physical presence. You should feel free to spend the holidays with friends and family whether they're on or offline. Consider very carefully who you're closest to, and the impact those relationships have on your life. Just like juggling different sides of your family, those that you're closest to should take priority, but for the other sides of the family, you can set up a time to all get together, like the day before or after Christmas. Even if you don't feel as close to your SL family as that, getting together on the 24th or the 26th is a good compromise that should be able to keep everyone happy without cutting into the festivities.

Keep reading for three more Christmas quandaries!

Embracing Second Life as a Game Platform, Linden Lab Selects EA Exec & Game Developer Rod Humble as New CEO

Rod Humble is the new CEO of Second Life developer Linden Lab, the company just announced. Humble is a veteran of Electronic Arts, where he was Executive Vice President for the EA Play label, which included work on Will Wright's The Sims franchise (a game that Second Life is often compared to, and has inspired enormous amounts of user-generated content online.) Previous to that, Humble was Vice President of Product Development for EverQuest, from Sony Online Entertainment, which in the late 90s was the first MMO to gain a relatively large subscriber base for a 3D online world. (At peak, about 400,000.) This announcement comes after Linden founder Philip Rosedale stepped down as interim CEO position last October, a role he took after previous CEO Mark Kingdon was removed in June following 30% of the staff being laid off. All that tumult happened roughly a year after Linden Lab attempted to position Second Life largely as a tool for enterprise use and education. Since then, however, the company has hired Electronic Arts/Activision vet Kim Salzer as VP of marketing, who has been re-branding Second Life in part as an animal-raising sim.

I generally refrain from commenting editorially on Linden Lab management decisions, but in this case, I'll say this is probably a good move on the company's part, and repeat the point I made last Summer:

Live Music Launches in Blue Mars, Here's the Video!

Via Metaverse TV, here's a clip from last night's inaugural live music performance in Blue Mars (where I sometimes consult.) While I'm profoundly biased, I thought the show went fairly well (for a first time thing), with a modest house of about 25. And even if you aren't impressed by the visuals, do give a listen to Anekretia, who rocks hard. My hope is to quickly see more performer and audience animations, lighting systems and visual effects, an in-world tipping system, and all the things we've come to expect from metaverse-based live shows. But as it's written in the haiku of Kobayashi Issa (or maybe this was Lemmy of Motörhead), Oh snail / climb the Mountain of Rock / but slowly, slowly!

What Second Life Holidays Events are Happening? Post Info Here (Just Follow the Format!)

Help me list upcoming Second Life events coming up this long Christmas/holiday weekend: Please post details of special activities, parties, openings, lectures, fundraisers, shows, etc. happening in the next 7 days, with an emphasis on seasonal cheer. Just follow this format:

• DATE, DAY, and TIME of Event (in SLT)
• Event title (10 words or less)
• 50 words or less description of Event, explaining why it's fun and/or interesting
• Website, Twitter, or Facebook link for more Event info and/or image/video link.
• SLurl to Event

On Thursday, I'll try to post as many worthy Events as I can. Mahalo!

Alone Together with Sherry Turkle: On Second Life, Online Identity, and Whether SL Undermines Post-Modernism

Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other is the new book from Sherry Turkle, an MIT professor whose writing on Internet culture and virtual worlds have been enormously influential on their development and evolution.  (I cite her in my own book on SL.)  Coming to shelves next January (when she'll be a guest on the Colbert Report), much of her book is about Second Life, and the larger lessons she drew from that world:

“I use Second Life as an example of a shift from the 1990s, when people went into MUDs and MOOs and other virtual spaces to ‘cycle through’ into virtual worlds,” Proessor Turkle tells me via email. “Now, because of mobile devices in part, I argue that we live something closer to a continual co-presence, what one of the people I interview who has an active ‘second life’ in Second Life calls multi-lifing. So, I see a shift from cycling through to multi-lifing. I think it's an important one.”

I asked Sherry Turkle about Second Life and post-modernism: in a widely read and debated New World Notes post, sociologist grad student Robert Hooker argued that user activity in SL, which overwhelmingly centers on roleplaying traditional gender and sexual orientation categories, undermines post-modern thought, particularly as expressed by Professor Turkle herself. What did she think of that reasoning?