New World Notes

Top 8 New World Notes Posts from Last Week

If you haven't read or seen it, click here to learn about Glyph Graves incredible Kinect-to-Second Life project (video above).

Other highlights from the world of SL, gaming culture, and beyond:

• Second Life No Longer Among Nielsen's Top 10 Most Played PC Games (Most of Which Are About as Old as SL)
• Ozimal Stats: Virtual Animal Business in Second Life Has 1000s of Customers, 30 Employees & 1 Blind Lead Developer
• Philip Rosedale Adds Gaming System to New Real Work-for-Virtual Cash Startup
• Linden Lab Reports Second Life Has 1 Million+ Monthly Users (After Changing Their Definition of SL User)
• Miss Ophelia's Metaverse Manners: Plurk Etiquette for the Avatar Who Wants to Avoid Stalkers, Backstabbing & More
• John Romero Plays Minecraft With Brenda Brathwaite's Kids: 20 Years of User-Generated 3D Gaming in One Photo
• Watch Level 20-Something, a Hilarious Cartoon About Videogame Character Temps (Featuring Keiko Takamura!)

Philip Rosedale Adds Gaming System to New Real Work-for-Virtual Cash Startup (Bet Aspects Would Work in SL Too)

Second Life co-founder Philip Rosedale recently announced he added MMO-style leveling and achievements to Coffee & Power, his new startup which exchanges virtual cash for real world tasks. (No, I'm not going to call this "gamification", my hate for that term has surpassed its usefulness.) As you can see at left, Philip's a Level 8 on his C&P system profile.

The way these rankings are created is pretty interesting. As he writes:

Sid Rufus' SL Fashion Photos Are Gorgeous & Make Great Use of Depth of Field

I love the SL fashion blog of Ms. Sid Rufus, and I'll tell you why: The compositions are stylish, gorgeously textured, and a touch surreal. (Why's this woman with a red balloon standing on the edge of a cliff that drops down into the sky? Because she can, that's why.) Just as important, Sid makes great use of depth of field, a relatively new feature to SL viewers that simulates the photographic effect when a lens focuses on a foreground subject. This helps make virtual photos seem more like real world photos, and is just a cool element to play with creatively. So far it seems like most SL fashion bloggers aren't leveraging it much, but I'd love to see that change. See more what Ms. Rufus does with depth of field here, and get inspired.

Hat tip: Cajsa Lilliehook, who has an excellent compilation of SL photographer recommendations here.

 

How to Create a Second Life Avatar With a Last Name (If You Hate SL's New Naming System, Which Many Do)

Prim Perfect has a tip on how to create an SL avatar with a last name chosen from a selected list, as it used to be -- basically, you do so through a third party portal. For example, click here to do so on the New Media Consortium portal. This advice is necessary because many active users aren't too happy with the new system, and if they want to make an alt (for example) I imagine a lot would like to do it this way. Also, as Prim Perfect's Saffia Widdershins puts it, "[W]hy is Linden Lab still insisting on something that a large number of existing residents hate, and which is causing misery and confusion for new residents?" Good question. Interestingly, I've talked to several Lindens past and present about the topic, and they don't like the new system either. But it may be too late to change, or too far done the priority list to change it any time soon.

Abbotts Aerodrome, One of SL's Oldest User-Made Installations, Saved By a Last-Minute Buyer

Abbotts Aerodrome, a vast and grand air base that's existed in Second Life for nearly 8 years, has been saved from imminent closure. After writing a farewell post to the place he'd co-built and preserved for so long, Cubey Terra recently announced in an update that a buyer, Cheshyr Pontchartrain, has stepped in. The Aerodrome will remain as it is, just with a new name. I believe Cubey wanted to close the Aerodrome from the simple desire of wanting a break from the constant requirements of running it, but hopefully the new owner will bring new energy to that task. So good news, and a post I had planned to file under Sim Deathwatch is now better dubbed a Sim Savewatch. Still, without strong growth in new, monetized users, or a change in Linden Lab's land-based revenue model, we're destined to keep seeing closing announcements like this -- and a last-minute savior won't always be there.

Why Does Plurk Seem to Provoke So Much Drama?

The latest edition of SL Secrets (like PostSecret, only SLier) is now up on Shopping Cart Disco, and it includes this drama-ridden confession. It's for precisely outbursts like this that Miss Metaverse Manners wrote an advice guide to dealing with Plurk drama (click here to read it.)

Much of the drama on Plurk, of course, actually originates over various Second Life controversies (allegations of content theft, complaints about various fashion designers, etc.), but I have to wonder if Plurk's very structure lends itself to drama. Unlike Twitter or Facebook, where the update timeline is vertical, Plurk's is horizontal and expands into conversation threads, and once you reply to an individual Plurk, it's easy to return to it by clicking Responded. This makes Plurk chattier than Twitter and Facebook, and more chat means more chances for drama. Add to that, most SLers on Plurk often jump between talking about their real and Second Life, which likely causes severe mismatches from update to update, that can also provoke resentment. ("Why is she blathering about her new fashion line, when I just Plurked that my husband is leaving me?")

Just my initial take - what's yours, fellow Plurkers?

Awesome Kinect Hack Links Real World Facial Expression to Dynamic Sculpture in Second Life

This is an awesome hack that links Kinect to Second Life in an incredibly innovative way: Kinect reads the head movement and facial expressions of someone in real life, and those movements are translated into data which then dynamically alters a face sculpture in SL, composed of thousands of cubes. Created by an artist known in SL as Glyph Graves, he narrates this video above, featuring a friend who volunteered to demonstrate. This mixed reality sculpture has already been avidly blogged by a number of SLers starting with Chestnut Rau, but I begged Glyph to shoot this video, so we could see what was happening on the other side.

“It seemed like an obvious thing to do,” Glyph tells me, when I ask what inspired this project. “[Kinect] does face depth. I thought I could do it in SL. So I did.” The reaction in-world when he’s showed this to avatars has been pretty stellar: “Shock, amazement, some disbelief. Part of it is the potential it suggests for SL.”

To make it possible, he had to create a fairly complex interaction between Kinect and SL, read on:

Watch Level 20-Something, a Hilarious Cartoon About Videogame Character Temps (Featuring Keiko Takamura!)

Level 20-Something is a pretty damn funny animated web cartoon with a great premise: What if characters from your favorite videogames were really just twentysomething temp workers trying to make a living, and hung out in bars when their shift was over? Watch:

"Let's make some pancakes" indeed. This episode has a special surprise for NWN readers: a kung fu cameo with voice acting by Keiko Takamura, a famed live music performer in SL, and a star of an MTV feature on the topic. Here in Level 20-Something, her 3D avatar becomes an 8 bit bartender who wants to quit her day job and become a cutscene actress.

"Character-wise, Keiko was added to the story because I needed a 'fish-out-of-water' character," series creator Michael A. Szymanski tells me. "The reason I chose Keiko for the role was because I know she digs video games (and virtual worlds a la Second Life) and I knew she would not be microphone-shy, as she's a musician/performer." While her real name is Amy English, Szymanski uses her SL name for the series "because for the first 5-6 months that I knew her, I always called her that." (Yes, another case where someone is about as well known by their avatar name, as their real one.)

As for the series, Symanski told me more on what inspired it, and how he brings it to life:

Blue Mars Launches Light Client for Mac/PC With Google Street View Feature to Put Avatars in RL Locations

My former colleagues at Avatar Reality just put out a new light client for Blue Mars for Mac and PC (as I mentioned was coming a couple months ago) and it's now available in Beta -- click here to download it. Botgirl Questi recently did, and below, shows off what looks like its coolest feature: Integration with Google Street View, so you can chat with several other avatars in real world settings. Ms. Questi chose the oddest, most oddly appropriate location:

Demo of New Blue Mars Lite: How to Visit Virtual Linden Lab from Botgirl Questi on Vimeo

The client is under 50 megs (much smaller than the original client, which was over a couple hundred), and is designed to run on pretty much any laptop (though your mileage may vary.) It's integrated with the larger full client Blue Mars experience, so you can access your pre-existing friends list and inventory from it too. As a former consultant and ongoing pal of the Avatar team (past and present), I'm quite biased of course, but overall I think it's a good direction for client-dependent 3D worlds to take. Will be interesting to see how it compares to the light web/tablet client Linden Lab announced was in development last weekend.

Second Life No Longer Among Nielsen's Top 10 Most Played PC Games (Most of Which Are About as Old as SL)

Though it was listed at number 9 in May, Second Life is no longer among the Top Ten most played PC games in the US, according to Nielsen, based on data the ratings service gathers from application activity in 180,000+ homes. For June, Second Life ranked at 11, Nielsen's Bradley Raczka tells me, and what's more, its total share of the market dropped significantly: In June, it had just a .539 share. In May it had a .814 share, and in May 2009, a .996 share. This data belies recent claims from Linden Lab that Second Life is growing, though I suppose it's possible this chart reflects greater market usage of PC games in general.

Looking at the top 10 chart more broadly, isn't it interesting how old most of these PC games are? World of Warcraft has been around since 2004, and most of the other titles have been around for 5 years or more. (And for that matter, League of Legends (2009) is based on a map from Warcraft III (2003), and Sims 3 (2009) is just the latest in a decade old franchise.) Pretty telling datapoint to show that the market for PC games is aging, and isn't being refreshed by new titles.