New World Notes

New on Steam: Kitty Powers' Matchmaker Takes Dating Sims to a Whole New Level

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

The heartstopping Kitty Powers has just made her glamorous debut on Steam, launching a Windows and Mac version of the popular Kitty Powers' Matchmaker for Android and iOS devices.

I reviewed the mobile version of Kitty Powers' Matchmaker here on NWN when it came out last fall. My favorite thing about it was (and continues to be) the follow-up letters you receive when some time has passed after a 'successful' match. I say 'successful' because these letters can reveal the cracks in any relationship; even if you completely aced that first date, fundamental incompatibilities between your newly minted couple are a ticking time bomb just waiting to explode. When it comes to games about dating and romance, this kind of mechanic is pathetically uncommon. The genre is plagued by the "Kindness Coins" approach, where doing and saying the right things almost invariably guarantees a happy ending. That's as unrealistic as it is boring, which is what makes Kitty Powers' Matchmaker such a breath of fresh air in comparison.

Kitty Powers' Matchmaker is 25% off on Steam until Wednesday, but it's a steal even at its regular $9.99 price tag.

Top Four New World Notes Posts from Last Week

• The Steam Workshop's New Paid Skyrim Mods Aren't the End of the World, I Promise
• Should MMOs & Virtual Worlds Use Amazon AppStream? A Pioneering Developer Weighs the Pros & Cons
• Bitcoin Still Used Less Than Linden Dollars (Despite Years of Hype & $400 Million+ VC Funding)
• Viral App MyIdol is Good for a Laugh, Even if it Won't Earn a Permanent Place on Your Phone or Tablet

The Steam Workshop's New Paid Skyrim Mods Aren't the End of the World, I Promise

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

Yesterday Steam announced a brand new system that will allow modders to sell their content on the Steam Workshop, starting with one of the most actively modded games out there, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Since that initial announcement people have been, to be perfectly frank, losing their shit. They've been losing their shit on the Steam forums, they've been losing their shit on Twitter, they've been losing their shit on Reddit... Phrases like "modding is dead", "this will kill mods" and "it's the beginning of the end for modding" are being bandied about even more frequently than they are when some ill-advised developer/publisher starts sending modders Cease and Desists -- and that's saying something. But this isn't the end of the world or the death of the scene, I promise. It's just a change, and like anything else it has its pros and cons. 

As someone who ostensibly got her start writing about games by reviewing what amounts to paid, user-created mods, let me try to assuage some of the fears and concerns you may have about this new aspect of the Steam Workshop... And maybe plant a few new ones in their place.

Visit This Weekend in Second Life: Cica Ghost's Lovely, Alien "Balloons"

This is a dreamy SL machinima by Jackson Redstar depicting an even dreamier Second Life installation:

It's "Balloons", a new Second Life installation by acclaimed metaverse artist Cica Ghost, featuring faceless aliens -- or humans alienated from themselves? -- seeking flight above flowers and a twisted cityscape. To visit, copy/paste this SLurl into the viewer of your choice:

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Wondering%20Dew/128/128/27

Via Kara Trapdoor, who's always finding excellent places in Second Life, so you should probably just go there now and make a habit of doing so often.

Oculus Rift Commercial Launch Probably Not in 2015

Reading the tea leafs of Facebook's latest earnings call, Christian Nutt of Gamasutra concludes it's likely the mass market rift of Oculus Rift is not happening this year. Mark Zuckerberg's specific words are:

So we have not announced any specific plans for shipment volumes in 2015 related to Oculus. I just note that Oculus is very much in the development stage, so it's early to be talking about large shipment volumes, and our expense guidance reflects any volumes that we might do in 2015.

Which I'd interpret to mean it's likely my prediction from January is going to bear out:

Should MMOs & Virtual Worlds Use Amazon AppStream? A Pioneering Developer Weighs the Pros & Cons

Can Amazon AppStream effectively replace OnLive's SL Go? There was a lot of talk around that question recently, and I put it to Cristina Videira Lopes (aka Diva Canto), a Xerox PARC alum who's now an ICS professor at UC Irvine and a longtime innovator in virtual worlds. She deferred on whether AppStream was right to stream Second Life in particular, preferring to talk about using AppStream for commercial applications of virtual environments. (Which she uses, as it happens, for her OpenSim-based world.)

Short version? The main obstacle is cost: At the moment, AppStream costs 83 cents an hour per user, so much more expensive than SL Go. So AppStream is probably not a good fit for extended use -- but appropriate for virtual world use for shorter, business/real world/educational based applications.

Anyway, here's Diva's full breakdown:

What Do Diner Dash and Knitting Have in Common? Read About the Appeal of Time Management Games

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

Yesterday, Offworld's Laura Hudson posted a pretty fascinating article examining her personal fondness of time management games. These games tend to be based around unglamorous scenarios that she's lived out in reality (the life of the harried waitress, for example) so their appeal to her might be a bit surprising. In her own words, "Why did I want to play intentionally stressful games that simulated the exact work experiences where I'd once felt so underpaid and undervalued? And why the hell did playing them make me feel so relaxed?"

Hudson's answer to that question not only provides insight into the widespread appeal of the "____ Dash" time management genre, but reminded me of my own profound fondness for a similar kind of play...

SL Flickr Stream of the Day: katat0nik's Creepy Cool Kawaii

I kept trying to come up with a way to describe the SL Flickr stream of katat0nik, and I finally landed on "creepy cool Kawaii". Because: Well to start, just look at this adorable quartet carrying adorably deadly spiked maces and morning stars. (Click to embiggenate here.) And there is much more on the stream to fit that theme, like this deadly nurse, or this vision of avatar taxidermy. There's seriously dozens of beautifully and eerily presented SL images I'd love just as much to feature as any of these, so just go to katat0nik's stream and start perusing already.

Bitcoin Still Used Less Than Linden Dollars (Despite Years of Hype & $400 Million+ VC Funding)

At a recent high tech conference (I forget which one, so let's just say SXSW), the topic of Bitcoin came up, with a very young developer enthusing to me how it was going to be The Next Big thing. I pointed out (as I often do) that Bitcoin still lacks the key thing a currency needs to be a currency -- that is to say, a mass group of people regularly using it to buy, you know, stuff.

But my new friend stood his ground. "Transactions have been growing like crazy since last year," he insisted, "they're over 100,000 a day now." I checked Bitcoin's daily transaction info, and that's indeed the case: Over 100K transactions a day, almost double what it was in the Summer of last year. Which is definitely solid growth of some kind, I'll give him that. 

But here's the thing, and it bears emphasis: At 100K transactions a day, Bitcoin is still less used than Linden Dollars.

I mean, just look at the data:

According to Linden Lab stats, Second Life has about 1 million monthly users, and about 125K+ hardcore users (i.e. in SL over an hour a day). Insiders tell me about 400,000 users regularly spend Linden Dollars. So with all that activity in mind, it's safe to estimate 100K Linden Dollar individual users a day. (Conducting a lot more total transactions.)

Contrast with Bitcoin:

Viral App MyIdol is Good for a Laugh, Even if it Won't Earn a Permanent Place on Your Phone or Tablet

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

The modern experience of watching something go viral is pretty bizarre. Maybe it starts with a retweet that trickles down to you from friends of friends, then another, and another, until it feels like everyone is in on this conversation and naturally you want in too.

That's how I ended up downloading 小偶 - 我的3D萌偶 (a.k.a. MyIdol), a free Chinese app from a developer called Huanshi that sticks your photo on a bobbleheaded avatar so you can dress them up, take pictures and record video of them performing a variety of pre-made routines. It's exploded in popularity over the past few days, to the point that the developers are working on an English quick-start guide to help the influx of new users until they're able to release a full English version of the app itself. At the moment, the guide link just leads to a page that says "Guide for non-Chinese users is coming soon. Please wait for a few hours," which should give you an impression of just how sudden this has been.

After seeing video after video popping into my feed, I eventually cracked. I downloaded it to my iPhone, loaded it up, muscled my way through the interface and made this: