New World Notes

Facebook Restores User Account Named After His Second Life Avatar - Here's How He Did It

Facebook seems to be bending its just-announced policies prohibiting the use of game character names for Facebook profiles -- at least in the case of Toysoldier Thor, which is the Second Life avatar name of a guy actually named Scott in real life. However, after getting his account suspended, Scott sought the intercession of Sister Roma, a famed San Francisco drag queen who has been helping Facebook improve its real name policy. After I blogged about this last month, Scott contacted Sister Roma with lots of supporting evidence:

"It seems Facebook NOW just wants ample proof that your name in Facebook is clearly used widely and consistently as a well known/used identity for the person," Scott tells me. "And I provided that with my screen shots of over 10 sites where I used Toysoldier Thor."

Scott did this through Sister Roma about 6 weeks ago, and frankly, I was skeptical he would succeed, primarily because Sister Roma herself told me "Your [Facebook] user name should reflect the name you are known by as use in your everyday life, on- and offline.” So it seemed that showing that your Twitter/Instagram/etc. accounts also bore the same name wouldn't cut it for Zuckerberg's crew.

However, Sister Roma is known for doing wonderful things, and in this case, at least, she did for Scott:

Behind the Surreal and Highly Personal Second Life Art of Whiskey Monday

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

It seems like Draxtor Despres, the creator of the ongoing mixed reality (Linden Lab sponsored) mini-documentary series The Drax Files: World Makers, is working his way through a bucket list of his most sought after subjects. Last month it was the quirky but elusive designer Nylon Pinkney, now it's Whiskey Monday, one of the most recognized artists active in Second Life today (and a favorite here on NWN).

OpenSim Usage See Relative Monthly User Growth

OpenSim, the open source spin-off of Second Life, passed 30,000 active users last month, according to HyperGrid Business, which represents a relative growth spurt from 2012, when it was floundering with around 15,000 active users. The largest OpenSim world is InWorldz with 8,212 active users, which is not surprising, as that one is probably the most consumer-facing. Notwithstanding HyperGrid's "record-breaking month for OpenSim" language, it's still worth keeping in mind this is relative growth for OpenSim, but compared to the larger market for 3D avatar-based worlds, not so much. With 30,000 monthly OpenSim users, for instance, more people still use Second Life at any given moment than use OpenSim for an entire month. (Median daily  concurrency for Second Life is around the 40,000 range, according to Grid Survey.)

Businessman Gets 4 Months in Federal Prison Partly for Failing to Disclose $150K in Income Earned in Second Life

Gregg Kaminsky, CEO at Atlanta-based Circlenet, LLC, was convicted last year of hiding money in a Swiss Bank and for failing to report nearly $150,000 in taxable income earned from business activities in Second Life; according to the Wall Street Journal, he was just sentenced this month to 4 months in prison, even while claiming “'there truly was some confusion' about whether earnings from the Second Life virtual world were taxable." Reading the Biz Journal report on this story, the harshness of the sentence is not primarily over the unreported Second Life based income, but the Swiss bank shenanigans. However, the US attorney who successfully convicted Kaminsky did announce this:

Sally Quillian Yates said this sends a strong message that "U.S. taxpayers are required to report all of their taxable income to the IRS, whether that income is earned in the real world or in a virtual world."

Emphasis mine, because it bears emphasis. Linden Lab has been cagey about Second Life economics in the last few years, but back in 2009, the company reported that 50 Second Life users grossed US$100,000+ each from the SL Economy, with the top entrepreneur cashing out US $1.7 million yearly. Linden Lab's Robin Harper explained the numbers to me in even more detail:

"[S]everal people/accounts are cashing out US$ amounts in excess of $1M per year (with the highest amount estimated at $1.7M), based on annualizing one quarter of data. Most of the top 10 are in the real estate business, but the group also includes a company that does events and one that designs virtual goods including shoes."

So thinking on the fate of Mr. Kaminsky, I hope they're all reporting their taxes!

Second Life Fashion Bloggers Are Scrambling to Show off LeLutka's Upcoming Release (and I Can See Why)

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

Over the past few days Second Life fashion bloggers have been scrambling to show off the new line of mesh heads that LeLutka will be releasing on April first. Aria, Ever and Leda (as the three available faces are called) have a high fashion look with fairly compressed features and expressions ranging from soft to stern. Apparently these mesh heads are all designed to work only in tandem with mesh bodies, which means that for a lot of us they'll be off the table for now. For others they're all the more appealing, seeming to guarantee an even more seamlessly augmented avatar.

So far no blogger has captured the expressions and elegance of each of these upcoming faces quite as well as Nana Minuet, who put together a post highlighting the upcoming release yesterday. Her shot of Aria, shown above, is easily my favorite of the lot. It's so bright and clean that you could almost expect to find it in a magazine with a perfume sample or some ad copy streaming down the side, rambling about jojoba or CC creams. And that's not a slight against her work. Her pics are vivid and polished, and easily picked out from a crowd.

You can visit Nana's blog to check out the rest in the set, though she doesn't have much to say about any of the heads in question. For that Strawberry Singh's blog post about Aria, Ever and Leda should be your next stop. As for reviews, well, so far most of the bloggers are sticking to the technical details. Expect stronger opinions to emerge after release.

Top Seven New World Notes Posts from Last Week!

• 'MM' Versus 'TSR': The Feud That's Tearing The Sims 4's Fashion Modding Community Apart
• Will Improbable Transform Virtual Worlds? 
• Can Steven Spielberg Do to Virtual Reality in Ready Player One What He Did With New UIs in Minority Report?
• MMO Takes Choice of Avatar Race Away from Players, Provoking Racism
• How to Get Started Creating Your Own Interactive Visual Novel with TyranoBuilder on Steam
• Watch it This Weekend: Virtual Fashion Designer Maylee Oh Works Her 3D Modelling Magic on Twitch
• Stroke Victim Reports Partial Recovery Playing Second Life

Stroke Victim Reports Partial Recovery Playing Second Life

Not too long ago, someone who works at Linden Lab (I'll call her Leah) happened to meet a bright and energetic woman at a party. As they chatted, it came out that Leigh is a Linden staffer -- and in fact, used to provide in-world Second Life support (that's her avatar pictured here). And when the woman learned that, she proceeded to tell an amazing story:

"About 8 years ago, she had a series of small strokes," Leah recalls, "which caused her to lose oxygen to her brain and to be medically dead for a short time before being revived. That resulted in permanent brain damage, with a range of symptoms from intermittent poor fine-motor coordination to forgetfulness to slurred or incoherent speech."

As you'd imagine, this was devastating to the woman.

"She became rather socially isolated, because she couldn't work or drive," Leah goes on. "But one of her friends encouraged her to join Second Life and chat with him there when they couldn't meet in person."

And this is what happened after the woman began playing in Second Life:

SL Flickr Stream of the Day: Anouk-Anna's Shadowy Second Life Fashion Photos

Anouk-Anna has a gorgeous and fairly dreamlike Flickr stream of Second Life fashion photos, and while I know next to nothing about virtual fashion (that's Iris' department), I do know an excellent aesthetic eye fixated on the play between light and shadow, sometimes for surreal purposes as above, and Anouk-Anna has it.

Hat tip: Marianne McCann, who has a whimsimical Flickr stream of her own.

Watch it This Weekend: Virtual Fashion Designer Maylee Oh Works Her 3D Modelling Magic on Twitch

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

In spite of streaming service Twitch.tv's relative hostility towards Second Life, they do still seem okay hosting developers and artists who are streaming their process while they work on game-related assets. I hope that never changes, because I love the idea of going to the same site to watch people making games (and things for games) as I do to watch people play them. For the time being there are still plenty of Second Life content creators using Twitch to share their creation process too, including designer Maylee Oh -- and she's been particularly busy there this week.

Maylee, who runs the adorable virtual fashion brand The Secret Store, has been streaming the process of modelling her latest design with particular voracity over the past few days. Through her Twitch archives, you can watch her manipulate basic shapes into a beautifully gathered top like magic. Complicated, incredibly technical magic. In the later streams she experiments with some more complex tools and techniques, so if you're a 3D modelling beginner you may want to avoid skipping straight to the end.

The downside to watching Maylee's archives instead of catching her live is that some sections of the video are muted because of the music she was listening to at the time. Then of course there's the fact that Twitch archives have a very limited life span, so you'd be wise to watch them while you can.

You can check out Maylee Oh on Twitch here.

How to Get Started Creating Your Own Interactive Visual Novel with TyranoBuilder on Steam

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

TyranoBuilder, a user-friendly drag-and-drop visual novel/dating sim maker, will be launching on Steam tomorrow. It seems ridiculously easy to use, to the point that even if you've never dabbled in game-making or don't know a lick of code, you could fire it up on Friday and have a playable program for Mac or Windows (or both) by Monday. You could even whip up a last minute entry for NaNoReNo, a month-long event held every March where people develop and share their own visual novels.

But where to start? Just because you have an engine to build your game on doesn't mean you're even close to being ready, so here's what you'll need to start fleshing out a project in TyranoBuilder this weekend: