New World Notes

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

Sims 3 Pets: Big Competitive Threat and Opportunity for Second Life's Huge Virtual Animal Market

Last week Electronic Arts released its much-awaited expansion to Sims 3, and it's all about pets you customize, raise, and breed. Here's a fairly hilarious intro by Randall, he of honey badger fame:

Longtime Second Life users will recognize all these features, because they're all available in the very popular virtual pets offered in SL, such as Ozimals bunnies, cat-like Meeroos, and Amaretto horses. (Side note: Since there's an ongoing intellectual property lawsuit over the copyright to virtual breedable animals in SL, will Electronic Arts also get dragged into court too? Hint: No.)

Anyway, Sims 3 is quite popular with many longtime SLers, so I bet we'll see the virtual pet industry taking a hit (at least temporarily) as many of them rush to raise their sims pets. At the same time, this is also a very good opportunity for them and for Linden Lab, which has been marketing virtual pets in SL as a major feature. So if Sims 3 Pets does well, there's a new market they can market to. Judging by the videos, the SL pets are about on par in graphics quality as the Sims pets, though of course the animations and probably the AI are not as robust. However, SL pets are cheaper (Sims 3 Pets sells for about $32) and probably enable more diversity of activity. And I imagine Linden Lab CEO Rod Humble, who led development on the original Sims 3 game at Electronic Arts, knows all about this Pets spinoff, and is planning to incorporate similar functionality into SL's upcoming virtual animal/NPC functionality.

Another Sims 3 Pets video after the break: