New World Notes

Is This The Average Second Life Avatar Shape? If It Was, It Probably Wouldn't Be Such A Popular Punchline

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

This weekend an odd little piece of satire was circulating around Second Life's social network of choice, Plurk, satirizing an increasingly popular SL avatar style. Creator Marcia London's photomanipulated image (see the full image on Flickr) is titled "The Average Avi Body on SL", though I suspect the actual average Second Life woman's shape is just as conventional as ever. These cartoonishly curvaceous shapes are certainly some of the most distinct virtual figures available, however, and their popularity among edgier alternative virtual fashion bloggers has made them some of the most visible as well.

It's tempting to say that these digital body types resemble funhouse mirror reflections more than any real-life trends, but I'm not sure that's the case. More importantly, I'm not sure I care about how silly or not silly anyone else's shape is, anymore.

Get Real: ToS Aside, Most Second Life Content Isn't Very Valuable Outside Second Life (UPDATED)

Last week's posts over Linden Lab's controversial new Terms of Service have generated a lot of interesting conversation (some here, some more here), and I wanted to highlight two harsh but apt comments from readers Masami and Ezra. Responding to the notion that Renderosity and CGTextures forbidding its content in Second Life was going to lead to a mass exodus of SL content creators, Masami argued this:

It seems [SL content creators] are not realizing that SL is literally drowning in content. There is just too much stuff on the marketplace competing for the almighty Linden Dollar. Each creator actually pulling out of SL would improve business conditions for those who stay. Also, stopping people from monetizing CGTextures and Renderosity content will benefit those who create meshes and textures from scratch. Nothing wrong with that, if you ask me.

And again, what is the alternative? Inworldz and Avination have already shown that "If you build it they will come" does not apply to virtual worlds. SL is, first and foremost, a social network. People will not leave their friends and communities just because some OpenSim grid has a marketplace too. They will not throw away years worth of inventory and restart from scratch just because a few creators are unhappy with LL's new TOS.

There will be no exodus. It's all talk but no action because the choice is between a business on LL's terms and no business at all.

Echoing these points, Ezra noted this: "[T]he technical and creative realities [are] that most Second Life content is utterly useless outside of Second Life." Here's why:

Top Seven New World Notes Posts from Last Week

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

• SL Not On Steam Due to "Complications", Says Linden Lab
• Linden Lab's New Terms of Service Changed to Enable SL Users to Sell Their Content on Desura?
• Iris Rants: Advertising Your Second Life Event Without Second Life Images Sends A Bad Message
• Renderosity Bans Its Products from Second Life -- Concern Over Linden Lab's New Draconian ToS Continues
• Second Life's New "Post to Facebook" Feature is Pretty Cool, But Needs a Privacy-Protecting Page Option
• First Impressions of Scribblenauts Unmasked: The Good, The Bad, And The Uncertain
• Longtime Second Life Content Creators Remove SL Work in Protest Over Linden Lab's New Draconian Terms of Service

Play it This Weekend: Eldritch, A First-Person Lovecraftian Action-Adventure Now in Beta

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

My first trip into the strange red book didn't end particularly well, and it was as much my fault as it was the fault of the creature that killed me. I was done in by my own greed, in fact. Thankfully no lessons are ever learned too late in Eldritch, an immersive game world where you're caught in a cursed loop of death and rebirth, with your only escape obscured by cryptic texts, ungodly relics, and dangerous magic.

But let's start at the beginning, so you might learn the same lesson I did, without making the same costly mistake.

Linden Lab's New Terms of Service Changed to Enable SL Users to Sell Their Content on Desura?

Nalates Urriah has a plausible interpretation of Linden Lab's new Terms of Service, which claims rights over "all or any portion of your User Content (and derivative works thereof), for any purpose whatsoever in all formats", and has subsequently caused much agita. The new wording, he argues, is to enable the selling of SL content on Desura, the digital distribution service Linden Lab just bought:

Desura is a software sales point and Linden Lab property. If Linden Lab were to expand The Marketplace to sell Second Life content to Desura game makers, in an effort to expand our markets then they need to go beyond the Second Life service. Such sales would not be an integral part of the Second Life services they provide.

Hence the ToS change. That sounds right, and that interpretation is in line with what Linden Lab said in its clarification statement (which to judge by the ongoing controversy, has clearly not clarified), noting:

Gatsby-Esque Second Life Fashion Lights My Green Light

I love that these two look like supporting cast members from Baz Lurhmann's Great Gatsby bored while they wait for Leo to get back into character so they can re-shoot a scene. They're actually from the Modavia Second Life fashion blog, and you can find out what they're wearing right here.

Iris Rants: Advertising Your Second Life Event Without Second Life Images Sends A Bad Message

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

One of my biggest pet peeves in the world of metaverse fashion is when event organizers choose to advertise their Second Life event without any Second Life imagery. Sometimes they'll use stock photos, sometimes they'll use clip art, sometimes it's beautiful artwork like the picture above. This picture certainly seems thematically appropriate, but it just doesn't get the job done as well as a picture of the actual event or any of the items that will actually be there would. Here's why:

Renderosity Bans Its Products from Second Life -- Concern Over Linden Lab's New Draconian ToS Continues

Right now if you go to the front page of Renderosity, which is an extremely popular community site/online store for graphics content creators, you'll see the latest fallout over Linden Lab's new draconian Terms of Service:

Full announcement from Renderosity here. Now that Linden Lab's new Terms of Service includes wording which claims rights over "all or any portion of your User Content (and derivative works thereof), for any purpose whatsoever in all formats", Renderosity managers have rendered this decision:

Second Life's New "Post to Facebook" Feature is Pretty Cool, But Needs a Privacy-Protecting Page Option

An official Second Life viewer with an optional post-to-Facebook feature is now available here (as Hitomi Tiponi first told me) and it works pretty well. The "Post to Faceook" option is hidden in the Me menu, which is sort of odd, but once you use it, and connect to your Facebook account through the internal web browser that pops us, the posting process works well enough. Of course, a lot of SLers won't necessarily want to reveal who they are in Second Life on Facebook, but then many of them will enjoy doing so. ("Hey FBers, look at this insane furry robot vampire orgy going on in here!")

In any case, the feature is missing a really important option:

First Impressions of Scribblenauts Unmasked: The Good, The Bad, And The Uncertain

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

I teleport into Gotham City, prepared to fight crime shoulder-to-shoulder with Batman himself. He's the hero the city deserves, but I'm the one it needs--a young boy with a magic notebook and a fangirl sister. A citizen immediately begs me for help from nearby construction scaffolding. I run up to her, notebook at the ready. With the swipe of a pencil I can rescue her from any distress imaginable.

She cries out in desperation and raw anguish, "I need something to tie my beluga whale to!"

Reviews for Scribblenauts Unmasked: A DC Comics Adventure have been mixed, and after playing a few levels for myself last night I can understand why. As much as I love this series, it feels like there are a lot of little things getting in between me and the joy of solving ridiculous problems with even more ridiculous solutions.

Even so, this comics-based puzzle adventure isn't without its charms. Here are my initial impressions of this highly creative (and slightly flawed) game: