New World Notes

This First Look At The Sims 4 May Be Cool As Heck, But Will Maxis and EA Hang Modders Out to Dry (Again)?

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

Earlier this week EA dropped a first look trailer for The Sims 4, the next installment in the wildly popular Sims franchise. Although there's not a lot to this video, it seems like there are two big changes in store: The Sims 4 will refine the current moodlet system into something a little more natural, and will also have a much more organic and intuitive Create-a-Sim process involving direct manipulation of the sim's figure. Although these sorts of trailers are usually pretty polished, it seems like the graphics will also be a step up from The Sims 3... But maybe not as much of a step up as we saw between The Sims 2 & 3. Either way, it's looking pretty good so far.

It's not surprising. I've had my share of technical problems with The Sims, but generally speaking I think it's an appealing and well-designed game. I think most of the choices they make will turn out to be good ones.

That's not to say I'm not worried, though.

Forget About Saving the Galaxy, Save Yourself in Space-Bound Life Sim Redshirt

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

When it comes to going on an away mission, there's really just one person you don't want to be: The Redshirt. The Redshirt is generally young, low-ranking and, to be entirely blunt about it, no one's ever heard of them before. Maybe they drew the short straw to end up as the one nobody in a team of somebodies, but it's science-fact that if anyone's going to die on that mission, it'll be the Redshirt.

It seems like between Hate Plus and upcoming game Redshirt I just can't get my fill of horrible tragedies in space this week. Redshirt has been a pet project for developer Mitu Khandaker for some time now, and it offers a pretty cute twist on that classic trope: You know exactly what's coming, and you have to do everything in your power to become a somebody if you want to make it out alive.

Cloud Party Adds Free Customizable Spaces, Social Sharing

Cloud Party has a bunch of new updates, as I just learned from Cyn Skyberg, the former Linden Lab VP who's now Community Director at the web-based 3D world co-funded by SL co-founder Cory Ondrejka. In brief, the major updates are free customizable spaces, and social sharing features that make it easier to find and promote cool Cloud Party places. Here's Cyn's breakdown:

"In a nutshell, we've made small space free to use - we're going for fast to load, lightweight experiences that anyone can use easily. You can upload templates (we have a few starter ones, more to come) to create a quick meeting or chat space, have a party or just hang out with friends without a lot of work. The free small spaces are totally customizable, just as any part of Cloud Party is, and allow you to have a full and rich experience with very little setup."

Cloud Party's updated homepage displays a bunch of user-made builds listed according to most "Likes", which is part of the social sharing action. More about Cloud-berg from Skyberg:

Love and Hate: Explore the Rise of a Doomed Dynasty in the Sequel to Christine Love's Analogue: A Hate Story

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

I experienced Hate Plus in much the same configuration as my character: With a drink close at hand, squinting into the glow of my monitor, poring over pages and pages of files and records, piecing together a devastating history with the help of my chosen AI companion. I devoured in a single night what's meant to take the investigator/player three real-time days to complete. How could I not? These were answers to questions I'd been holding on to for a long time.

Eventually I had almost all the answers I had ever wanted, and I had the ending I'd earned. I was exhausted and the sun was rising. I tried to sleep, but couldn't. I tossed and turned for a few hours, mind racing, unable to resist peeking at the Joseon dynasty Wikipedia page (I promise that will make sense shortly) on my phone every few minutes. In the end I slipped out of bed and back in front of my screen to play Hate Plus again, this time choosing a different AI companion to see how the game would be different. That's just the kind of game this is; that's just the kind of game Christine Love makes.

Blocksworld Making Pretty Good Money for Linden Lab -- Here's Why That's Good for Second Life Too

Blocksworld from Linden Lab is not just an extremely popular iPad app at the moment, but according to analytics company App Annie, it's also bringing in some decent revenue to Linden Lab. At the moment, the free app ranks 4 and 25 among top grossing Educational and Family apps in the United States, through in-app payments. (Players can buy in-game coins for payments of 99 cents to $24.99.) It's also in the top 250 of money-making apps in the Games category, which is where most app money is made. That's not a great ranking, but as the chart above shows, it's trending upward in Games. As a point of contrast, the current hit mobile game Candy Crush Saga (which Blocksworld is currently more popular than) brings in an estimated $880,000 a day. If Blocksworld made just a fourth of that daily revenue (i.e. $200,000), it would be making more money than Second Life.

Speaking of which, when I first blogged about Blocksworld's success, longtimer SLer Wizard Gynoid demanded in Comments, "And how does this help the SL community exactly?" Which is a common question many in the SL community ask, and frankly one I don't understand, with its implication that only things which benefit the Second Life community are worth talking about. But yes, Blocksworld's success is also good for Second Life. At the risk of stating the obvious, here's several reasons why:

New Singularity Viewer Lets SL Creators Convert & Export Their Prim-Based Works to Unity 3D & Other Top Platforms

Everyone who's ever created prim-based objects in Second Life or OpenSim which are important to them (especially educators, developers, and other professionals), needs to read this blog post by ex-Linden Lab evangelist John "Pathfinder" Lester and watch the video below, both of which explain how to convert a prim-based object in Second Life or Opensim into a mesh object, and export it to your hard drive. This is seriously important for reasons he and I will explain below, but click Play below now to get the party started:

The latest update of the third party Singularity viewer (which you can download for free here) includes a killer feature which lets users export their prim-based creations from SL or OpenSim into Blender, Unity3D and other industry standard modeling applications and game engines. If it works as well as Pathfinder explains (and I have no reason to doubt that), this is a great solution for content creators who want to truly own the prim-based works they make in SL. (Instead of leaving them as data that only exists on Linden Lab's servers, which users don't own or control.)

Control isn't the only factor here, because commercial and audience viability is too -- the Unity 3D engine, for instance, has a much much larger userbase than Second Life. And for John Lester, who was Linden Lab's education evangelist, this Singularity viewer technology is a (relatively) easy way for folks like him to jump into this larger market:

9 Years Later, Virtual Democracy Experiment in SL Still Thriving (Comment of the Week)

Neufreistadt in 2006 (from this post)

Last week, an SLer named Tor Karlsvalt stopped by New World Notes to offer his update on Neufreistadt/Neualtenburg, an ambitious experiment in virtual democracy on a cooperatively-owned simulator created to look like an old Bavarian city 9 years ago -- a project which was subsequently wracked in internal strife and, ironically enough, a DMCA trademark dispute which I wrote about in 2006. According to Tor, Neufreistadt still thrives in another version, not just on a single sim (which is how it began) but on many:

"Just browsing through your old articles and found this one pertaining to a period of Neufreistadt history that is now more part of the 'national myth' of CDS than anything relevant today," he wrote in the post's Comments. "Neufreistadt is still in SL and not in any danger of disappearing. This Oktoberfest we traditionally celebrate our founding, just as was done during the time of Kendra and Ulrika. This Oktoberfest will mark the ninth anniversary of the foundation of Neualtenburg. Yes we were renamed, but alas the citizens of Neufreistadt were on the land while our prominent members left to form a different group, Port Neualtenburg, which has since closed back in 2008." Here's what's happened since then:

SL Artist Graphic Dix Shoots Paper Couture's Latest Virtual Collection, And The Result Won't Disappoint

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

It's no secret that Hamlet and I are both huge fans of the work of SL artist Graphic Dix, whose gorgeously edited snapshots are also favorites among Second Life's fashion community. Graphic is easily in the top tier of virtual photographers in SL, and his newest work makes it easy to see why.

Blocksworld Becomes Top 3 iPad App, Beats Mobile Game King Candy Crush Saga - Linden Lab Finally Found a Hit Besides Second Life?

For the first time in its 10 year+ history, Second Life is not Linden Lab's sole hit product: Blocksworld from Linden Lab launched in the iOS App Store earlier this month, and this weekend, CEO Rod Humble was on Facebook crowing that the game had jumped to number three on Apple's Top Free iPad App chart:

That's right, Blocksworld is currently getting more downloads than Candy Crush Saga, which is far and away the hugest mobile game in the West right now. It's just one slot behind the current iPad favorite, Plants vs. Zombies 2, but that's no surprise, seeing as it's the sequel to The Best Casual Game Ever Made. (Humble's friend Bernard Yee is the lead developer of PvZ2 at PopCap, hence his friendly joshing on that tip.)

So yes, while other Linden Lab mobile apps have not done so well, Blocksworld is so far an unambiguous hit:

Top Five Posts from New World Notes Last Week

1. If You Don't Stop Online Harassment, No One Else Will
2. How to Use Facebook Using Your Second Life Avatar Name
3. Death of the WoW-Killer: With WoW Subscriptions in Decline, Will Upcoming MMOs Take More Risks?
4. Artist Turns SL Inventory Into Performance Art, Deleting Every Virtual Item She's Owned Over the Last 7 Years
5. Wear At Your Own Risk: Liquid Mesh's Days In Second Life May be Numbered