New World Notes

How Eric Boccara Makes His Kickass Second Life Machinima

I wrote about this excellent test footage for an upcoming machinima last week, but some people were skeptical it was even shot in Second Life -- but yes, creator Eric Boccara confirmed soon after I blogged about it, it's fully an SL creation: "Everything is filmed in Second Life," he wrote in Comments. "And all animations are custom made by myself for the machinima. Every scene has a few tricks up its sleeve." Later, Eric told me the full machinima is about 35% finished, and as you might have guessed, is about a sniper on a deadly mission (are there any other kind?), this one to take out a crime boss.

But how about one of those tricks, the overhead jet shot? How he did that is pretty clever and kind of funny, and his technical tips are worth reading for anyone who also wants to make SL machinima -- read on, read on:

SL's Adult-Rated Sims Grow in Number -- and Popularity, Too

Last week I noted that the number of Adult-rated sims in Second Life enjoyed a significant increase last year, while Moderate and General-rated sims declined -- but does that mean popularity in terms of user activity has become more Adult, too? On an initial review of top Second Life sims by user visits, that seems to be the case: In recent months, there are somewhat more Adult-rated sims in Second Life's Top 50 most popular sims by traffic.

Take a look at the chart below, courtesy Louis Platini's Metaverse Business, listed according to their average visitor count, their unique visitor range at any given period, and the sim's rank the previous month. First, the top 25:

The rest of the 50 after the break. 19 of this top 50, i.e. 38%, are Adult-rated. That's somewhat more than the count typically has been in 2010 and 2011, before Adult sims saw an increase. For instance:

Who Wants a Sneak Preview of SkyDance V in SL Tomorrow?

SkyDance V, the latest iteration of a live virtual dance/multimedia art performance in Second Life that is one of the most ambitious and impressive uses of SL as an artistic medium, is opening very soon. The brainchild of San Francisco artist DC "DanCoyote Antonelli" Spensley, there's a sneak preview of the show tomorrow night at 7pm SLT, and here's some what you can expect:

The ZeroG SkyDancers log into Second Life from all over North America to perform for audiences in real time. The SkyDance V program consists of dramatic in-flight choreography telling a story of an interstellar people whose bliss is to dance forever in the depths of space.

DC is generously offering seats at tomorrow's preview to New World Notes readers -- especially if you're interested in covering it on your own blog too. Here's how you can request a reservation, and some technical information on preparing to attend:

Elder Scrolls Online Now Open for Beta Sign-Ups & Promises a Single-Server, Socially Networked World

Click here to register for the upcoming Elder Scrolls Online as a beta tester, which is an MMO to the groundbreaking franchise that we sure love here at New World Notes. (See below.) I was a touch skeptical when the world was first announced last May, but Gamasutra offers some niblets of new info that suggest some interesting innovations:

Bethesda says that its Megaserver technology will allow players to join a single connected world with a built-in social network, meaning that you can keep up to date with everything that your friends are doing in-game.

I love the idea of an in-world social network and a single-sharded, unified world, both of which exist now in Second Life (and no other MMO, unless I miss my guess), but in SL's case, built on old architecture that's been difficult to scale. It'll be interesting to see if Bethesda can deliver on this "Megaserver" technology.

Anyway, read more NWN coverage of Elder Scrolls below:

Experiment in Avatar Race Provokes Prejudice, Acceptance

Years ago I wrote about a woman who learned many things when she changed her Second Life avatar's race, and recently, a reader shared his own experiments with racial prejudice and acceptance, when he went in-world as an avatar who was black and then Asian, and found out how things changed, when others saw him that way. And since this is Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, I wanted to share the experiences of Quark Static and his alt Zandor Wizardly, as recounted by their owner:

"I have been in SL for over four years now. My original avatar looks like a long-haired blonde biker, kind of an idealized version of a biker fantasy I had when younger. I noticed there were few black avatars on SL, and I had noticed some being treated badly. So as a social experiment, I created an alternate avatar that was black, with a different name. I sent him to the same place my white avatar lived and interacted with a lot of the same people. In some ways it was very revealing about some of the people I knew...

That Time SLers Fought an Anti-Immigrant Party Beneath a Sun Emblazoned With the Face of Dr. Martin Luther King

Happy MLK/Inauguration Day, everyone. Once upon a time (by which I mean six years ago today), a virtual war in Second Life broke out; a far-right political party, an autism support group, and exploding pigs were involved. And since that was back in a time when the visage of Dr. King would shine in the Second Life sun, his face looked down on the aftermath. Read about "Fighting the Front" right here.

Top 5 New World Notes Posts from Last Week

• State of Second Life Estates: In 2012, Adult-Rated Land Grew as General & Moderate-Rated Land Declined
• 5 Games Women's Magazines Should Feature (When They Want to Get With the Times)
• Meet Emma Gilmour: RL Fashion Blogger, SL Fashion Creator
• On List of 75+ Great Second Life Sims from 2009, Nearly a Third Now Seem Gone
• How to Stop SL Land Loss: Require Land Ownership to Sell Lots of Items in the SL Marketplace

Jonathan Coulton and My SL Avatar are in a Viral Video Now Blowing Up Because of the Glee Scandal So Here's Why

I woke up this weekend to messages that my avatar shows up in this video tribute to Jonathan Coulton's cover of Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back" which is currently going viral like crazy thanks (or no thanks) to Glee, so in case you're wondering, here's the back story:

In 2006 and Second Life's salad days, Jonathan Coulton made a live appearance in Second Life sponsored by PopSci and Creative Commons, and since the producers made a very JoCo-looking avatar named Yonatan Coalcliff for him to perform through, I interviewed him here, and took this screenshot with my Hamlet Au avatar to accompany it. Many years later -- good lord, seven to be exact -- the TV show Glee aired an episode featuring another cover of "Baby Got Back" which sounded suspiciously similar to Coulton's cover, understandably provoking his ire, and the firestorm of Internet drama that's now exploding. Which is why this video from a few years ago is also going crazy viral and getting filled with flames back and forth between Glee fans and JoCo fans:

Lost World Closing Soon -- How to Stop Loss of Other Great SL Sims Remains Open Question

Click here to teleport to a beautiful sim called Lost World, which as Kara Trapdoor blogs, is about to be lost from the world of SL. "This is a huge loss for SL, photographers, and explorers, and well... everyone," she writes. "Truly one of the best and most loved sims I know of." The sim's owner has more on this Flickr page (from which comes the image above). At the beginning of this week, we discussed the idea of requiring Marketplace sellers to own land in SL -- a suggestion that most, I think, rejected. So remains the open question, to discuss this weekend in Comments below: Is there a way to help private sim owners better monetize their sims, or should we just accept this continued loss as inevitable?

OpenSim World Avination Also Apparently Losing Users

Virtual world explorer Daniel Voyager has some valuable year-on-year stats on Avination, one of the more popular OpenSim-based virtual worlds:

• On the 17th of January 2012, Avination had 43,787 registered users and 3,226 unique log-ins in the last 30 days
• On the 18th of January 2013, Avination had 55,146 registered users -- but only 1, 773 unique logins in the last 30 days

More here. So in the last year, monthly user activity (the core metric) has gone down by over 50%. It's possible this is an anomaly, but it definitely suggests an overall loss of users. This tracks with OpenSim usage in general, which has remained more or less flat over the last few years. None of this is meant as a criticism of OpenSim, of course, because it still remains a pretty impressive open source-based virtual world platform for many uses. However, the lack of user growth points to an important consideration: