New World Notes

Start Your Virtual Holiday Shopping This Weekend at One of Second Life's Favorite Seasonal Events

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

Winter gacha season is almost upon us, and The Arcade, one of the most popular fashion and decor events in SL, will be opening its doors once again this Sunday. For the uninitiated, gacha machines are like a lucky dip where you pay a very low price (usually less than L$100) for a random chance at any of the items inside, including rare ones.

Gacha events are fun year-round, but they're particularly great around the holidays. They make great places to pick up gifts for friends and family in the metaverse because, with a few rare exceptions, most gacha items are transferable. This is so that you can swap or sell the random gachas you may get but don't want to keep, but this also means that gifting them is easy as pumpkin pie. It doesn't hurt that many of the items in this upcoming round are quite festively themed, including the holiday decor set from Apple Fall pictured above.

One more thing: If you decide to drop by during the hectic early hours of this wildly popular event, don't go in unprepared. You can plan you gacha shopping spree in advance using The Arcade's official December 2013 shopping guide.

Iris Wants To Know: What Are You Thankful For This Thanksgiving... In Second Life?

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

Well, it's Thanksgiving... At least in the U.S. it is. Being in Canada myself I had my fill of turkey in October, but nevertheless it's hard not to consider what I'm thankful for, even when it comes to SL.

We Got Your Back: Here's How to Respond to Microsoft's Incredibly Sexist Xbox One Email

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

Earlier today, the Xbox One marketing team pushed this little gem out into the world; a form email that you can send to your loved ones to really drive home how much you want this particular console under the Christmas tree. (Playstation 4? More like Playstation BORE, amirite? #teamxbone)

The letter is peppered with green sections that you can click to swap around with various other predefined words and phrases. You can address the letter to your "sugar daddy" and tell them how much you want to "experience the golden age of pirates" in hot release titles like "Zumba Fitness: World Party". I guess that explains why they didn't set the blank sections to randomize, but it definitely doesn't explain why they chose the default options that they did. [Update: The site has since been tweaked so that all those changeable sections are now blank by default. It's actually the second change they've made, the first being when they changed the line about knitting, visible in the header image, to one about taxes. You can find a screencap of that and the rest of the letter, unchanged, here.] Although there are plenty of more neutral choices available, perfect for a non-specific and ideally inoffensive preset, they decided to string together the most sexist, bullshit letter they could manage. Good hustle, team.

It's so dumb and so blatantly sexist that I'm not going to spend the next 700 words unpacking it piece by piece. Instead, I'm going to write the kind of reasonable response you might expect to see from someone on the receiving end of this trash. Enjoy.

Twilight Town Reborn in SL for Kingdom Hearts Roleplay

I first came across the Second Life tribute to Kingdom Heart's Twilight Town totally by accident in 2006, when I was randomly exploring the virtual world while giving a talk about it at a Creative Commons event in San Francisco. When it fully loaded, the audience gasped. It disappeared from the world for awhile (sad to say), but now it's back, and it's just as beautiful if not moreseo - watch:

Here's the official site. Direct teleport to the city here at this link.

There's also rules here for Kingdom Hearts-themed roleplay in the city, which are pretty elaborate -- such as:

Walk The Streets of Glitch Once More With A Loyal Fan's Ever-Expanding Recreation of the Beloved, Defunct MMO

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

Twitter user and Glitch fan @revdancatt has been working on a rather interesting project since Tiny Speck released assets from their defunct MMO into the public domain last week. It started with a simple HTML5 recreation of Marrakesh Meadow, unveiled just a couple days after the assets were released. While you could move your view of the scene back and forth to observe some rather well implemented parallax scrolling, that was about it. But a few days after that, Rev Dan Catt had released a slightly more expanded version of the world, with street after street connected together. It's all still a bit broken but development is ongoing, so who knows how far this unassuming little recreation could go?

No, there are still no avatars to control, no platforms to jump, no vendors to shop at, no resources to gather. No homes, no sound, no chat, no dozens of other things that made Glitch what it was. Maybe there never will be. But if you would like to revisit some fond memories and favorite locations from the world of Ur, it's well worth your time to explore this project.

Explore Rev Dan Catt's work for yourself here.

Here's Second Life's 25 Most Popular Sims This Month -- But Should I Revive This as a Regular Feature on NWN?

Courtesy Louis Platini's Metaverse Business, a Second Life/OpenSim analytics company that gathers publicly accessible in-world data for its clients, here's the top 25 most popular sims in Second Life for this month so far, listed according their average visitor count, the unique visitor range at any given period, and the sim's rank the previous month. I haven't blogged this chart in awhile -- not since last March, actually -- and there's two related reasons for that:

This Screenshot Blog Will Blow You Away With Stunning (And Highly Technical) Game Photography

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

If you're a game enthusiast, Dead End Thrills is one hell of a site to follow. This blog is acked to the brim with screenshots that could be mistaken for promotional images or, in the case of the shot above taken in EVE Online, even concept art. 

These shots aren't simply point-and-click (or even point-and-PrntScrn), but taken using mods, tricks, techniques, and tools that can improve lighting, alter the player camera perspective, and of course allow for stunningly high-res results. Of course all of this info is shared (along with a high-res download link), however not every aspect can be easily recreated without some technical know-how. To recreate the shot from EVE Online, for example, Dead End Thrills recommends "CCP 'Jessica' toolset, 3:4 and 2:1 ratio viewport, 15K tiledshot rendering, high in-engine antialiasing, custom FOV."

While you or I might not necessarily be able to take shots like this one ourselves, Dead End Thrills also has a sizable community, along with a Flickr group open to any screenshot-minded gamers looking to share their work. If you're looking to lose an afternoon ogling some of the most amazing virtual environments you've ever seen, Dead End Thrills is certainly a good place to start.

Top Six New World Notes Posts from Last Week

• If Bitcoin is Such a Revolutionary Virtual Currency, How Come Few Apparently Use it As, You Know, Currency?
• The Best Part of Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag Might Just Be The Employee Bathroom
• Hatch Puts Face-Punchingly Cute Virtual Pet on your iPhone
• Second Life's Mesh Deformer Is Dead, But Project Fitted Mesh is Ready to Take Its Place
• Upcoming Second Life Graphic Improvements (Region Caching & Contextual Loading) Should Help Grow Userbase
• Anita Sarkeesian Explains The Problem With Ms Pac Man In The Latest Tropes Versus Women In Video Games

Coming Soon to SL Mobile Lumiya App: Block/Mute Feature

Lumiya, the 3D Second Life viewer for Android devices (which I'm proud to have as a sponsoring partner of NWN) is getting a powerful new feature in an upcoming update: a block/mute list. (Sneak preview above, though it'll be polished when it's pushed as an update.) Lumiya developer Alina Lyvette is adding it, she tells me, "because of the recent spike of griefing behavior in SL. I should have done it a while ago, but now, as it seems, there's an increased need for it." Go here to get it in the next update.

Metaverse Whovians Rejoice: Second Life's Geeks'N'Nerds Fair Opens This Weekend

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

Whether you're a Whovian, a Trekkie, a Potterhead (that's what they're called, right?) or a fan of any other facet of geekdom, there's a Second Life event opening this weekend with you in mind. The Geeks'n'Nerds Fair will be running from this Sunday right until December 8th, and with designers steadily finishing work on their fair exclusives we're already getting a peek at what's in store.