New World Notes

5 Hot Male SL Fashion Bloggers to Spend Your Weekend With

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Lately there's been a lot of talk about the boys of the Second Life fashion blogosphere, and frankly the more talk the better! It's easy for the ladies, myself included, to get wrapped up in our own little fashionable worlds and forget that there are oodles of handsome young men out there who are just as stylish as us, if not more so. Male bloggers traditionally have a smaller audience and fewer options than their spoiled female counterparts, so today I wanted to tip my hat to a few well-dressed gents you may or may not have seen before.

SL Barons Like Me Don't Matter Much Anymore, but the Rip Van Winkles Who Silently Pay Tier Still Do (Guest Post)

In this guest post, Desmond Shang, owner of Second Life's steampunk-themed State of Caledon sims, offers his perspective as one of the "land barons" who own most of SL's private land, and provide Linden Lab with most of its revenue.

Recently, Hamlet asked me, "Can Linden Lab lower tier without hurting land barons -- and do land barons matter, anyway?" I had to smile a bit to myself... my first thought was that as a class, many people would happily run all the land barons like me right off the grid if they could, with prejudice! But to answer his query, I'd say something like this:

Land barons themselves don't matter as much as they once did, but if most closed down it would be disastrous for the entire Second Life userbase, because a lot of estate residents simply wouldn’t bother to resettle elsewhere.

Let me explain what I mean:

Guild Wars 2's Mac Beta Client: A Step in the Right Direction, But Still Far from Ready

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Less than a month after their official PC launch, Guild Wars 2 recently debuted their Mac beta client, a Cider port that's still very much a work in progress. It took me a little bit by surprise, but it's a great idea. If you think about the western MMOs that have found the most long-term success in the past decade, the majority have supported both Windows and OS X: World of Warcraft, EVE Online, Runescape, Everquest, City of Heroes, and even Second Life. All signs point to Mac and PC compatibility as being a smart strategy, if you can pull it off.

I'm a pretty avid PC gamer, but I'm also a die-hard Mac user. I have no problem installing games on my harddrive's Windows 7 Bootcamp partition, but lots of Mac users aren't as willing or able to use Bootcamp, so they usually miss out on a lot of outstanding titles like GW2 as a result.

I love this game, but as much as I want to tell my fellow Mac users that this beta is ready for prime time, I can't, and here's why:

With Creatorverse, Linden Lab Finally Thinking About the Real Future of Virtual Content Creation - On Tablets

If you want to know why Linden Lab's unveiling of the iPad app Creatorverse is so important to the future of virtual content creation, you should probably watch a kid playing with a tablet. (Like my three year old nephew Henry, pictured rocking an iPad above.) According to Gartner Research, 665 million tablets will be in use by 2016, over 45% of them iPads. Children who first experienced the iOS at 5 years old in 2007 are now 10, and in the next few years, will become a major sector of the gaming market. As the market grows, they'll come to expect interactive experiences on touchscreen tablets, not laptops.

I wrote about this recently in a report for Sylus (reg. req.), a trend-watching journal. There I noted the success of Toca Boca, an iPad game developer which makes sandbox creation games for kids, selling over 12 million copies:

The Elder Roles: How to Play Skyrim as a Skyrim Peasant

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

The Elder Roles is a new blog I'm publishing that solves a big problem I've been having with Skyrim lately: As much as I love the game, there was a period where I was feeling pretty lukewarm about playing it. I backtracked to other Bethesda titles like Fallout: New Vegas to feed my addiction with fresh content. At the same time, I never uninstalled Skyrim because I knew I wasn't done with it -- I just didn't know what I wanted to do next. The answer to that came when I read a woefully short series on PC Gamer called The Elder Strolls, following a character in Skyrim who wasn't a hero, a villain, an adventurer or a rogue. He was just some poor sap trying to stay alive. The author had even done the same thing before with The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion in a series of blog posts called Living in Oblivion. In game worlds that can support so much dynamic content and choice, even the most mundane lifestyle offers plenty of opportunities.

My own peasant playthrough has been a refreshing and even relaxing way to replay old content and stumble across things I'd never seen before. If you're curious about trying it yourself, here are a few tips for getting the most out of the experience:

WELL Users Buy Influential Virtual Community from Corporate Owner -- Could Second Life Users Do the Same?

After a lot of negotiation and planning which I've written much about before, a corporation founded by users of the pioneering virtual community The WELL (where I happen to host a couple conferences) have bought the conferencing system from its owner, Salon Media Group. (New York Times story here, official .pdf announcement here.) "The Well Group, Inc. consists entirely of long-time WELL users with an average tenure exceeding 20 years," as the report explains. "The purchase marks the first major online business taken private by users of the business itself."

But it's certainly not the only online community that might want to claim its ownership back from the company that owns the technical infrastructure. Specifically, Second Life and Linden Lab. A number of insiders and community members have openly voiced the idea, which roughly goes like this: Since revenue keeps slipping, and the company is adding new projects, wouldn't it be better if active Second Life users form a company of their own, and buy the world and its infrastructure from Linden Lab?

I'd say it's potentially feasible, but not right now. Here's why:

SL Fashion Tips: 6 Tricks for Getting the Perfect Fit with Mesh (and Prim) Eyelashes

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Although I love a basic pair of tattoo lashes for day-to-day wear in SL, nothing beats the crispness and dramatic effect of a pair of mesh or prim eyelashes. Attachment-based eyelashes have been a staple of fashion in Second Life for more than 5 years now, if you can believe it, and the variety of lashes available has exploded. One thing hasn't changed at all, though. From plain prims to sculpties and now to mesh, eyelashes can a huge pain-in-the-ass to fit. 

Luckily I've got a few tips to share, whether you're a vamp-lashed veteran or a bare-lidded amateur. Starting with:

New World Notes Survey: What Category of Posts Do You Want to See MORE of on NWN? UPDATE: Please Select ONE!

Update, 9/25: Please choose only the ONE option that is most important to you and ignore the instructions about choosing three. Due to blogger error, the format only allows for a single choice.

New World Notes began with in-world journalism from Second Life, but just as SL's creators are changing, so should NWN. Dear readers, please tell me the kinds of posts you'd like to read more of in the future.

Click here to take the survey.

Check Out These Ultra-Simple (and Ultra-Sweet) SL Portraits by Marie Coy - and Learn to Shoot Like Her

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Recently I stumbled across the work of Marie Coy on Flickr, and I absolutely fell in love. If you're a regular reader, you may have noticed that my favourite style of Second Life photography is often minimalistic without too many dramatic lighting effects or edits. I like things simple but immaculate, and Marie's work has that in spades.

Keep reading to see more, and for a few tips on how to replicate this style yourself!

Top 7 Posts You Might Have Missed From Last Week

• The Second Life of Linden Lab: Re-branded Company No Longer World Builder, But "Maker of Shared Creative Spaces"
• First Look at Patterns, Linden Lab's Upcoming Minecraft-Style Sandbox Game
• Linden Lab Unveils iPad-Based Creatorverse & 3D Sandbox Game Patterns, Two of Four Non-SL Products for 2012
• Losing SL's Land Barons Could be "Seismic", Says Steampunk Estate Owner Desmond Shang
• Cloud Party Marketplace Grows -- With Alternative Avatars!
• Second Life's Lost 1600 Private Sim Owners Since 2010; But 500 Land Barons -- SL's 1% -- Own Most of What Remains
• Crazy Cute Mesh Hamster Avatars Take SL by Storm!