New World Notes

Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg Joins Philip Rosedale to Talk About the Metaverse's Future at the Silicon Valley VR Expo

The Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Expo has added current Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg as a conference speaker, SVVR organizer Karl Krantz just told me. (And unless I miss my guess, this will be Altberg's very first public appearance as Linden's CEO.) Appropriately enough, he's joining Linden Lab's founding CEO Philip Rosedale on a panel called "Creating the VR Metaverse".

I will probably be attending SVVR myself, and if you're reading New World Notes, you can get a $100 discount to attend too: Just use the code "NWN2014" when signing up.

After Brief Bump, Second Life Private Sim Loss Returns

Last month we noticed an unexpected growth in Second Life private sim ownership (according to Grid Survey), which was nice, since sims constitute Second Life's core revenue. This month, however, all that gain has sadly slipped away:

In March, many over-enthusiastic SLers were proclaiming the temporary gain as an "Ebbe effect", attributing it to the entrance and leadership of new Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg -- but were that the case, the gains should still be happening. Instead, this return to the status quo shows what's really going on:

Facebook to Allow Anonymous Login: Good News for Oculus?

March Zuckerberg just announced this at Facebook's F8 conference:

Announcing 'Anonymous Login,’ Mark Zuckerberg said: "We don't ever want anyone to be surprised with how they are sharing on Facebook.” #f8

— Mashable (@mashable) April 30, 2014

I didn't get all the details, but seems like one of the biggest beneficiaries to this will be the Oculus Rift, now owned by Facebook:

You Can Learn a Lot from the First 8 Minutes of Nintendo's Tomodachi Life

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

Daan Koopman (a.k.a. NintenDaan) recently shared a video on his YouTube channel of the first 8 minutes of Tomodachi Life, the upcoming English release of Nintendo's popular Japanese artificial life simulation game. It gives a very good idea of the basics of the game, especially for those who never had a chance to play Tomodachi Collection, the first game in the series which was never released outside of Japan.

But how do Tomodachi Life and Tomodachi Collection compare? Is Tomodachi Life essentially a better-looking remake of its predecessor, or is it bringing something new to the table? I've been playing the first game with the help of a fan patch in anticipation of the sequel's English release, so I'm in a pretty good position to answer those questions. Here are my thoughts on how the opening few minutes stack up:

New World Notes: Now With Ten MILLION Pageviews!

New World Notes launched in March 2006 (after 3 years of being a Linden Lab-sponsored blog), and after 8 years of operation, recently hit a milestone: 10 million page views. (Screengrab at left.) That's thanks to everyone reading this now and in all the years in the past, major sites like Boing Boing, the BBC, Kotaku, and Reddit who bring in occasional traffic spikes, and just as much to Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins, who's been writing for NWN for just about all that time.

10 million is a nice number, but I'm even more boggled by the other numbers here: 7,532 posts, and 47,559 reader comments. If you assume each post is an average of 250 words (equivalent to a single book page), and each comment averages out to 100 words, that means:

Iris Wants to Know: How Would You Fix the Second Life Marketplace?

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

Well I knew these boots were driving me crazy, but I had no idea just how much they were getting under everyone else's skin too. Impressively, some of you even knew exactly what boots I was talking about from reading the headline alone. I've heard so many "UGH ME TOO" and "OMG I KNOW, RIGHT?" responses since I posted the article, I think most of us can probably agree that something about how the Second Life Marketplace favors listings is either broken... Or maybe working a little too well?

So here's what I want to know: What would you do differently? What would you change about the SL Marketplace to ensure higher listing turnover and less undying, ever-present nightmare boots? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Could VISAGE Magazine Be the Next Face of Virtual Fashion?

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

Second Life artist Lewis Jordon (Autumn Ashdene in SL) created this one-off issue of VISAGE magazine as a school project, an homage to the world of Second Life fashion that has been so inspiring to him. And you know what? It's pretty darn good. A bit too short, a bit too clean maybe, but still a solid product.

Virtual magazines have been a favorite in SL for some time, usually offering slightly more polished content than a blog in a pleasingly condensed format. Things have simplified somewhat since the days of scripted presses printing out books that attached tidily to your HUD, and now browser-based magazines from Issuu.com are de rigeur. Just scroll down and look at a few of the recommendations while you're browsing VISAGE and you're see that the virtual world is almost as well represented there as anything else.

While this issue of VISAGE may still be a standalone project, Lewis has mentioned that he would gladly start producing the virtual publication regularly if there's demand for it. Check it out for yourself on Issuu, then show him a little enthusiasm over on Flickr if you'd like to see more.

Why SL's Client Download is a Huge Hurdle to Mass Adoption

Last week's post on Second Life's poor first-time user experience generated a long conversation with a lot of good points -- and also revealed a lot of misunderstandings (understandable as they may be) which are worth addressing. Such as:

"SL's downloading has sped up in recent years, and it takes far less time to install than any client-based MMO I've ever seen...The client is what 56MB on Linux and only 30MB on Windows? Do you know how LONG it takes to download an MMO like STO or LOTRO? Hours! Those are multi-gigabyte downloads."

Actually, two or three years ago, an SL insider told me a large number of new users quit during client download. But whether you take my word (and the source's) or not, the above assertions are problematic for several reasons. Among them:

I Have Explored Second Life Through The Oculus Rift...

Here's my instant take:

Thanks to Jacki Morie of All These Worlds for the Sunday tour; I'll be sharing my thoughts here on NWN later this week. Having now tried Oculus Rift with Second Life, I remain convinced it's a crucial part of SL's future (if it's going to have a future), but at the same time, I'm also now convinced of this:

Unconventional Gaming: Here's How to Beat Diablo III's Inferno Mode Without Even Lifting Your Weapon

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

Diablo III's Inferno mode isn't exactly a cakewalk in the first place, so just imagine successfully completing it without ever swinging a sword, axe, mace, staff, or whatever other weapons you might come across. One ingenious gamer known as Icemaz has managed to do just that with the help of a character build painstakingly crafted around an effect that deals damage to any foe who attacks you without you having to make a single mouse-click in your own defence.

See Icemaz's passive Diablo III build in action in the video above or read more about it over on No Wrong Way To Play, Anthony Burch's blog chronicling the most unexpected and unusual ways that people play games.