New World Notes

Rod Humble's Cults & Daggers Inspires Deep Thoughts on Religious Belief

The Game That Let Me Mourn My Lost Faith is a good long weekend read by Nathan Grayson on Kotaku that as it happens, is how Rod Humble's new Cults & Daggers game inspired Grayson to think long and mournfully about losing his faith. This reflects something Rod told me about the game when it launched: "This is a game about the religions that did not make it and the people who devoutly believed in them. It takes a view point that individuals make a difference in the trajectory of a belief. My hope is that people of faith and non believers will both enjoy it, there is nothing in here which is likely to offend anyone, but some I hope to provoke thought."

For Grayson, thought is often provoked by the game's very user interface:

Religious experiences are, in some ways, as personal as they are universal. The underlying systems [in Cults & Daggers] might function similarly—might even lead to similarly dire ends if misused or mismanaged—but the rest is as much behind your eyes as it is in front of them. Viewed in that light, Cults and Daggers' minimal window dressing functions as a strength. Players can layer their own experiences, their own values, on top of the no-frills menus and numbers. They can think more about the religions they practice or preach. Or the ones they used to.

Grayson mentions the religious aspects of Black & White, the classic PC game lead developed by Peter Molyneux, and as it happens, I once wrote how that game provoked thoughts about religion in its own way:

Star Trek Fans Remember Leonard Nimoy in Second Life

Ciaran Laval has a good list of Star Trek-themed places in Second Life that are mourning the loss and celebrating the life of the late Leonard Nimoy. For a time, as Ciaran recalls, the great man's face was literally created as a giant bit map on the Second Life world, which I hope someone does again this weekend. (And if they do, please let me know in Comments.) Until then, take a look at Laval's list here.

High Fidelity is Hiring: Must Love Virtual Reality, Awkward Avatar Baseball, Spinal Tap References

You read that High Fidelity raised $11 million last Wednesday, now here's Philip Rosedale and team making the announcement as High Fidelity avatars:

Read much more on the High Fidelity blog here, including details on who they're hiring:

We are hiring right now for many open positions in engineering, design, and content development – so if you’ve considered diving into VR or wondered whether now it the right time – it is! Our work is fascinating and challenging, with a wide range of components from physics to network streaming to character animation, graphics, lighting, and distributed computing.

Hopefully some of those hires help with avatar puppet manipulation, because I gotta say, it still looks pretty awkward and off-putting. I know it's seriously impressive from a technical perspective that High Fidelity is already doing real time animation with lip sync with multiple avatars, but anyone who doesn't know that (i.e. most of the world) will probably find it off-putting. (Then again, that's what the money's for.)

Oh, in case you're wondering why Philip's post is called "This one goes to 11", it's from this:

Iconic Second Life Designer Nylon Pinkney Tells All in the Latest Episode of The Drax Files

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

For those of us who regularly watch Draxtor Despres' Linden Lab-sponsored mixed-reality mini-documentary series, The Drax Files: World Makers, this particular episode has been a long time coming. Draxtor finally got the chance to sit down with Nylon Pinkney, offline wedding photographer and online fashion designer, and neither of them disappoint.

Nylon Pinkney has been one of Second Life's most popular (and esoteric) creators for years now. From the Deimos Boardwalk to Tableau, her distinct painted technique and vibrant style have been a mainstay of Second Life for the better part of a decade. Because of this I was pretty excited to see what she had to say...

Ambitious Dragon Age-Inspired Roleplay Region With RPG HUD Launched in Second Life

What you’re looking at here is an incredibly detailed Second Life region that’s been transformed into a faithful recreation of the Dragon Age world, for SL roleplay inspired by that game:

“Our sim is faithfully built based on the village of Lothering of the game Dragon Age Origins and lots of love is being put on the decoration and ideas,” an SLer named Kitti Swords, who leads a team of fellow Dragon Age fans, in building and maintaining it, tells me. “For example, the tavern keep decorates the tavern, the Revered Mother decorates the Chantry, etc... For that reason we also offer free housing for players interested in taking such important non-combat town roles.”

Click here to see it on the world map, or put this address into the SL viewer of your choice: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Six/39/233/22

As you would probably guess, their in-world group group name is Dragon Age Roleplay and it’s not just improvisational roleplay, but comes with an RPG-style heads-up display:

“The character sheet communicates with the dice roller and calculates everything automatically for the players, as well as keeping track of each player's quests in the campaign,” says Kitty, “and showing an inventory that is linked to in-world objects. All this in a single small, practical window. The HUD will be optional however, as we don't want to keep the focus off the good ol' RP.”

The Dragon Age franchise is famous for exploring issues of sexual orientation and identity, and Kitty says fans are welcome to do that here too: “Our philosophy will be that of trying to keep the world as realistic as possible, so adult themes in general (not only sexual/orientation related but also related to violence) are entirely possible to happen there, depending on the direction the RP goes. Basically, anything that is agreed by two players to happen between their characters, I won't intervene at all; unless there's a player whose focus is solely on such themes and not on the story and setting itself.”

Choosing Dragon Age as a roleplay theme was inspired by Kitty’s longtime love of RPGs -- and dissatisfaction with Second Life’s roleplay areas, which tend toward kinkier sexual extremes:

8 Ways to Make Games More Welcoming to Women & Girls

New York University had to install a metal detector so people could come to hear Anita Sarkeesian make these incredibly controversial and inflammatory proposals for making games more welcoming to women and girls:

• Avoid the Smurfette principle - Don't have just one female character in an ensemble cast, let alone one whose personality is more or less "girl" or "woman."
• "Lingerie is not armor" -- Dress female characters as something other than sex objects.
• Have female characters of various body types
• Don't over-emphasize female characters' rear ends, not any more than you would the average male characters.
• Include more female characters of color.
• Animate female characters to move the way normal women, soldiers or athletes would move.
• Record female character voiceover so that pain sounds painful, not orgasmic
• Include female enemies, but don't sexualize those enemies

Yes, Anita Sarkeesian needs a metal detector and a bodyguard to make totally reasonable, practical suggestions that every game developer should already be following out of pure naked self-interest.

Read about her whole talk as extensively covered by Stephen Totilo here.

It's Time to Reassess How We Think About Early Access and Crowdfunded Games

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

I've been thinking a lot about crowdfunded games, lately. It's been hard not to. Earlier this month Under the Ocean (one of my first forays into the world of buy-in betas) removed itself from sale on Steam Early Access after the loss of its lead programmer. According to the developer progress on the game will continue, but at a much slower pace. Days later, the story of the myriad disappointments surrounding Peter Molyneux's Godus broke. And yet just before these two lows was a pretty satisfying high: Starbound released an utterly phenomenal new patch, complete with the long awaited Novakid race. 

Up until now, I haven't been all that shy about buying into unfinished games. I, like a lot of people probably do, looked at it a lot like buying a game I would eventually be buying anyway. The difference was that I was buying it at a point when that money could still be used to improve the game and ensure its eventual release. Depending on the funding format, I might even get to play it (albeit in an incomplete and unpolished form) immediately. Win-win, right? 

Not necessarily, and that's why I've had to seriously reconsider the way that I think (and talk) about buying unfinished games.

Ello, Goodbye? Widely-Hyped Social Network Suffers Massive User Dropoff Six Months After Peak

Less than 6 months ago, Ello was widely-touted across the tech blogosphere as a great alternative to Facebook, for its lack of ads or anything like Facebook's "real names only" policy. Since then, however, the social network has seen a massive dropoff in usage, according to Similar Web: From a peak of 30 million visits in October, to just 9 million last month. Since social networks depend on highly active usage, I'd estimate these visits translating to Ello having about 1 million active users. Which is not nothing, but also quite niche -- for instance, that's about the number of active Second Life users still extant. Which is ironic, because Ello was also widely touted by some Second Life users angry at Facebook for prohibiting SL avatar names as accounts. 

"Disaffected Facebook users are abandoning ship," one SLer told me last September, "led by the LGBT crowd, in particular the Drag Queens who Facebook gave the ultimatum to this week. Second Life avatars have the same issues with the Drag Queens and so they are finding Ello an attractive, nonjudgmental alternative." 

Since then, however, a well-known drag queen is directly working with Facebook to help LGBT users with pseudonyms on Facebook, and the official Second Life fan page on Facebook has grown to nearly 380K members. Maybe Ello has suffered some technical/funding setbacks that a Google news search doesn't immediately reveal, and it's too early to count Ello out. (And there's nothing at all wrong with a social network being a niche, if you don't mind a niche, that is.) But so far, the proposition that the market is clamoring for a new social network with no ads or real names required... that's not quite panning out.

High Fidelity Virtual World to Monetize with Names, Content Sales & Ads (Including Virtual Billboards)

Philip Rosedale in High Fidelity via Oculus Rift

High Fidelity, Philip Rosedale's next generation virtual world (all our previous NWN coverage on it here), just got $11 million in new funding from Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital, TechCrunch just reported. That's noteworthy, because it gives his company more than enough capital to launch High Fidelity and devote a year or two trying to get traction. Also noteworthy in the TechCrunch post are some hints about how High Fidelity will monetize, two which Philip discussed with me off the record awhile ago, another which might shock some:

Rosedale plans to monetize High Fidelity at the points where the community provides value to itself. While you can generate a temporary name to send to friends so they can quickly jump into a world with you, you’ll also be able to pay a fee to keep a distinct name for longer-term use — kind of like reserving a good URL for your site or username on Twitter. Since users can make all kinds of content for their worlds, High Fidelity also wants to host the go-to repository for models and code in a digital store resembling Unity’s Asset Store. Given the product’s open source approach, generous users can give out their offerings for free if they’d like, but if they want to charge money, High Fidelity will take a small cut.

So monetizing with virtual name sales, much like Second Life monetized with virtual land sales, and also taking a cut of virtual content sales, a bit like how the Second Life Marketplace works. That, plus another potentially controversial revenue stream:

Blink and You'll Miss Them: 5 Exclusive Collabor88 Deals to Grab While You Still Can

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

February is a deceptively short month, and that means that right now lost of avid Second Life fashion fans are rushing to make sure they have everything they want from their favorite limited-time events. For me, Collabor88 sits at the top of that list. February's lineup was ridiculously strong, featuring a lot of guest designers and collaboration between many of the regulars. While the event was centered around love and romance (because, you know, February) just about everything there manages to hold up to post-Valentine's day scrutiny.

So if you've yet to make the trip over to C88 yourself this month, here are a few items you won't want to miss: