New World Notes

I'm Surprised There's So Much Ripping Drama Around Second Life Car Brands Except I'm Totally Not

I should have known when I put up a quick little and (I thought) fun post last week about top Second Life car brands, the subsequent comment thread would largely devolve into accusations and counter-accusations of this or that brand using ripped content. (Which has been locked down for that very reason.) No doubt there's a fair amount of ripping going on in Second Life's automotive market, but as with the SL fashion industry (where similar allegations run rampant), these particular claims are made without any evidence. (And even if they had, persuasive evidence is often difficult to come by.) The equation runs ever thus:

Real money + virtual marketplace x pseudonyms = Drama!

At least one of the accusers came along and discovered something great about SL car culture -- and something not so great:

I Visit A Spooky Second Life Town Called Calico

Kawanishi Yana up and found a spooky Second Life town called Calico:

Suitable for your next virtual Last of Us cosplay, or such like! Click here to visit.

Ms. Yana caught the creepiness so well, I wanted to visit it for myself first-hand... so I did:

Catch This Second Life Designer's Lunch Break Let's Plays (Live Right Now!)

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

Second Life designer Damien Fate is a busy guy. Between raising a family and developing regular content for the multiple virtual fashion brands under his name (FATEwear, FATEplay, and FATEstep to name a few) it's surprising that he has much time for anything else. But, like a lot of Second Life users, Damien loves playing games, and lately he's been making the most out of his lunch breaks by streaming them and doing Let's Play videos that just about anyone can enjoy.

In addition to regular Minecraft interludes with his son, Damien's also been sampling an assortment of other games. Yesterday he took a look at Jazzpunk, an absurdly fun (or just plain absurd) indie game that I wrote about here last year. He's also recently played the popular platform puzzler Thomas was Alone, as well as Double Fine's Matryoshka-based adventure game Stacking.

If you're quick you can catch Damien streaming more Jazzpunk right now, live on his Twitch channel. Otherwise you can swing by his YouTube to catch the archives. He updates YouTube very promptly and keeps everything tidily sorted in playlists, so no it's not the end of the world if you can't align your lunch break with his.

This Real World Church Seems Like It's from the Metaverse

When I first saw photos of this church scroll across my Facebook feed from a friend, I first assumed it was from Second Life. But no: It's very real, it's in Belgium, and it's very solid. Though I do suspect Gijs Van Vaerenbergh has been in the metaverse once or twice:

"This ‘church’ consists of 30 tons of steel and 2000 columns, and is built on a fundament of armed concrete. Through the use of horizontal plates, the concept of the traditional church is transformed into a transparent object of art."

More here, and here.

4/20 Flashback: One of Second Life's Greatest Early Inventions Was a Virtual "Hippie Tamagotchi" Pot Plant

As we mark 4/20 day, let us look back at a milestone in Second Life creativity, from back in 2006: The virtual cannabis plant of Dave and Robbie Dingo, which grew when you watered it, turned brown when you didn't, and sent you messages when it was ignored:

"Well, we toyed with the idea of it dying. But in the end, [we] opted for it not growing." Nothing worse than forgetting to log into SL for awhile, and coming home to a withered pot plant. But you can give your cannabis a name, and like a hippie tamagotchi, when it's running low on water, your plant will send you an urgent Instant Message, to remind you to start praying.

I called my own plant Kona Gold, and it still stands 25 feet tall in my Second Life office in Waterhead. Watering it is still one of my favorite activities in SL: You click and select Water from the menu, which launches a "Pray for Rain" animation on your avatar:

... and moments after you pray, dark clouds form, thunder rumbles, and...:

Say Cheese: Learn How to Make the Perfect Smiling SL Avatar Shape With This Video Tutorial

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

Here's a handy video tutorial for those of you who like taking shots of your Second Life avatar with anything but the standard sombre expression on their face. Hot off the YouTube presses (they have those, right?) SL fashion and lifestyle blogger Alicia Chenaux walks you through creating the perfect "Smile Shape", which is to say a variation of your regular shape specifically designed to look more natural when using a smiling facial animation.

If you're unfamiliar with Second Life's facial expression morphs or the specific way that "smiling" in SL tends to make an avatar's eyes completely vanish, then a Smile Shape might seem unnecessary to you. To avatar photographers including myself who (as Alicia points out) have been stuck blending screenshots of smiling and non-smiling avatar faces together to get something that looks even half-decent, this tutorial is a stroke of brilliance. One of the reasons that mesh heads have becomes so popular with photographers is for their expressions -- not having to deal with the vanilla facial morphs that tend to squish and scrunch an avatar's features has given them a lot more freedom. Even so, there's no replacing your avatar's true face, and anything that can be done to make it more expressive without detracting from its overall... Unscrunchedness... Is helpful.

You can find more from Alicia Chenaux on her blogs, Ch'Know and Ch'Know Style.

Top Seven New World Notes Posts from Last Week!

• Bright Canopy Startup Promises Second Life Streaming So Great, "You Won't Miss SL Go"
• High Fidelity Enters Open Alpha With Many Updates, Including Oculus Setup & Marketplace
• Comedian Who Got His Start Performing Live in Second Life from Pakistan Gets His Own Show on the BBC
• Second Life Fashion Designer's Glorious Rant About Rude and Entitled Customers is a Must-Read
• What Are the Top Car Brands in Second Life? One Hardcore Enthusiast Recommends These Five
• How a Young Novice With No Game Industry Experience Created a Hit MMO in Second Life
• Actual Man Actually Arrested for Alleged Virtual Land Scam

Jedi Permadeath: The Star Wars MMO That Could Have Been

In honor of the geekishly glorious new Star Wars trailer, here's a story of the Star Wars MMO that very likely could have been, and almost surely would have been seriously cool - as related by game designer Raph Koster, who led the design of Star Wars Galaxies, the ill-fated MMO which launched in 2003 and which was way ahead of its time. (And which I interviewed Raph about for Salon at the start of my writing career.) Its chief challenge was trying to create a diverse world where every player wanted to be a goddamn Jedi, even though the MMO was set at a period in the Star Wars narrative history where Jedis were all supposed to be underground. Raph had a left field suggestion that sadly wasn't implemented, but in this era of permadeath popularity (think DayZ and so on), was again, ahead of its time:

Every player would have a special character slot available to them, distinct and parallel from their regular character. This character would be locked into one profession, one class: Jedi. They’d start out weak as a kitten though, untrained in combat or anything, and with barely any Force abilities at all. Luke without womprat-shooting experience maybe...  So this pathetic Force Sensitive character would be able to gain better Force powers by earning Force XP by using the Force. They could also go off and learn other skills. But either way: if they died, that was it. They were dead. Reroll. Start over. It was that dreaded word: permadeath.

Now here's where it gets really cool:

Actual Man Actually Arrested for Alleged Virtual Land Scam

If a scammer sells a virtual forest, do the locking handcuffs make a sound? As it turns out, yes. This announced this week by the Indiana Secretary of State:

An investigation by Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson’s Prosecution Assistance Unit led to the arrest of Josh Bills of Pennsylvania for allegedly selling virtual land investments in an online game called Second Life. Bills was arrested in Pennsylvania over the weekend to face criminal charges in Morgan County.

“Real estate schemes are some of the most common forms of investment fraud that come across my desk, but this is the first time we’ve seen a virtual land scam,” said Secretary Lawson. “I hope this case serves as a reminder to check with my office to ensure the investment is registered before investing... The investigation began when the Secretary of State’s office received a complaint about Bills. In the complaint, it stated that a loan agreement was made with Bills for $53,500 for the purposes of expanding his online real estate company. Bills was to use the money to purchase land that he would manage through his company, within the game Second Life, in exchange for a promissory note that would pay $10,000 for the investment within 24 months.

Much like the man recently imprisoned for not reporting his Second Life income to the IRS, it looks like the clincher here was not the virtual land scam per se, but doing so while running afoul of registration regulations:

Check it Out This Weekend: A Second Life Roleplay Sim Inspired by BioWare's Dragon Age Series

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

Speaking of the Second Life RPG scene, there's a brand new roleplay sim open that has me seriously tempted to bust out my best light and/or medium armor pieces and join in. December Larkham and a group of friends have recently opened up a Second Life roleplaying sim based around Redcliffe Village, a recurring location in the Dragon Age series.

What's Redcliffe Village? Here's a quick refresher to get you up to speed, whether you've played the games or not: