New World Notes

Haunting Indie RPG The Yawhg Walks You To The End Of The World And Back

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

What is a Yawhg? I don't know.

Where does it come from? I'm not sure.

What does it do? Destroy.

What can we do? Nothing.

As it turns out, Indie storytelling RPG The Yawhg is about everything but the Yawhg.

Best Mod Yet? Skyrim Savegame Manager Makes Juggling Multiple Adventurers Easier Than Ever

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

As I slide ever deeper back into playing Skyrim, one of the best parts of the experience is seeing mods and utilities that other players have created that solve the aproblems I was grudgingly dealing with when I played before. For example, since I play multiple characters, I used to have to switch my saves into custom folders manually after each session. Cloud saves made the whole process far messier than it should have been, and even though it was better than trying to keep track of ambiguously named saves kept all in one location it was just an all-around hassle.

Enter RedawgTS's TES V Savegame Manager, which has made the whole process utterly pain-free.

Chinese MMO Age of Wushu's New Castration Mechanic Might Be Going Too Far In The Name of History

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Age of Wushu, an MMORPG inspired by Chinese fantasy, is adding a controversial new feature to their world of colorfully dressed, gravity defying warrior-calligraphers: Castration. Yes, you read that right. An MMO where male player characters can be forcibly castrated by enemy players.

This is definitely not something you're going to see in the WoW patch notes.

While I might know where I stand on the issue players of enslaving NPCs in a game, I'm not at all sure where I am on this. (Trigger warning; proceed with caution)

NWN Survey: Should Educators & Non-Profits Get a Second Life Sim Under the Restored 50% Discount Plan?

Last week's news that Linden Lab had restored its 50% sim discounts for qualified education and non-profit groups provoked a lot of discussion, so I wanted to put the controversy in the form of a survey question. Whether you're in that potential market or not, please choose the answer that's closest to your opinion. Results shared next week!

Iris Asks: What's The Point of Stealing Someone Else's Profile?

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Last week, SL artist and writer Whiskey Monday found out that someone in Second Life had copied her profile for their own. Since then, the accused profile thief has commented on the blog post that Whiskey wrote on the subject, trying to paint herself as an ignorant, innocent person now being victimized by Whiskey and her "SLebrity" status. She claims she took the words off of a website and not directly from Whiskey, as if that makes it better. But whatever, I'm not going to get into how readily people steal words without applying even a fraction of the concern they might apply to stealing any other form of media, because there's something else about this whole affair really gnawing at me...

Neither her comment nor Whiskey's post answer what I would consider to be the most pressing question raised by all of this: Why would you even bother stealing someone's profile?

Linden Lab Offering Short-Term 50% Discounts on Premium Accounts -- Smells Like Revenue Spirit

Linden Lab is offering a 50% discount on premium accounts, good until August 11, 2013... but only if you choose a Quarterly billing plan. And only for the first quarter you sign up. ("[A]ll future charges will be at the regular Premium price; price will return to USD 22.50 [per quarter].") So a good deal for a short time if only for a short time. Still, can't hurt to help boost Second Life's shaky revenue base. In that sense, it feels related to the recent restoration of the 50% education/non-profit discount:

Top Seven New World Notes Posts from Last Week

• A Must-Watch This Weekend: 8 Minute Documentary The Pixel Painter
• Second Life Combat System Claims 80 Sims Using Its Engine
• Linden Lab Restores 50% Land Discounts for Educations & Non-Profits in SL -- But Will They Come Back?
• For Bitcoin to Work as Money, Expert Researcher Suggests, Its Supporters Must Build the Social Infrastructure That Makes Money Money
• This Skeezy Skyrim Mod Makes Me Question The Ethics of Enslaving NPCs
• Attack on Titan Fan Game in Second Life Attacked by Attack on Titan Publisher?
• Remembering Helen Thomas, Who Challenged 9 Presidents About Their Policies... and Philip Rosedale About Second Life

A Must-Watch This Weekend: 8 Minute Documentary The Pixel Painter

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

If you're like me and you need a little inspiration/motivation to get a particularly gnawing creative project done this weekend, look no further. The story of a partially-blind 97-year old digital artist named Hal Lasko has been going viral since an incredibly touching short documentary about his work was shared on Vimeo this week.

Lasko was a designer by trade, as well as a draftsman during World War II. In spite of his failing eyesight, his artwork is painstakingly precise, and done pixel-by-pixel entirely in MS Paint. When most people talk about pixel art, '80s, '90s, and modern indie game design might come to mind. If not that, then the little animated doll gifs you can find all over DeviantArt and Tumblr and anywhere else that creative teenagers call home online. What Lasko does has a much more vintage flavor to it. Some of his work would feel perfectly suited hanging in Pete Campbell's living room, while other pieces have a pointillistic style that could make Seurat blush.

You can see more of Lasko's work, learn more about him, and of course order prints from his website. Honestly after watching this mini-doc I feel pretty guilty for ever complaining about spending more than a half hour touching something up in Photoshop.

Second Life Combat System Claims 80 Sims Using Its Engine

Estelle Pienaar has an in-depth review of the Grim Combat System (GCS), which claims that 80 regions have shooter games created with its system. That's quite a lot, and reading Estelle's review, it's easy to see why:

GCS does not only provide weapons and a meter that measures the players health. They provide a whole game construction kit for region owners. The GCS system includes - amongst many other items - all kind of monster spawners; exploding cars, barrels and dumpsters; low lag city building kits; scoreboards; recovery systems; fog machines; breakable glas; quest items and even quest NPCs (non playing characters).

A zombie game called Axis of Evil is built with the GDC system, and while the graphics and the MOBs are pretty primitive, it looks like a genuinely fun game for that genre:

Love SL Shopping Fairs? Love a Great Cause? Check Out Love Donna Flora!

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

While Hair Fair is winding down (and wrapping up this weekend), an event to help raise money for beloved SL designer Squinternet Larnia's cancer care is just getting started. Love Donna Flora [SLURL] opened its gates today, and as a long-time fan of both the brand and the designer I made it a priority to swing by as early as I could. Here are just a few of my top finds: