New World Notes

What Happened to the Arab Community in Second Life?

A reader named "MH" stopped by last Friday's open forum to ask an interesting if concerning question:

Were are the Arab Sims? After 4 years i have returned to SL to find the entire Arab community gone! What happened to Arab World & Kuwait City and the other 100 region estates? What happened to the 50,000 active daily people in those regions? Kuwait city once had the highest traffic on the grid at 190,000 per day..What happened?

If by "Kuwait City" he means this sim, it's indeed gone. Not speaking Arabic, I can't speak directly to MH's question, though NWN's top 50 sim chart used to fairly regularly include one or two Arab-themed sims, and now none are extant. Arab language speakers reading NWN, any ideas?

Watch Huckleberry Hax's Poetic Tribute to Second Life

Linden Lab's 12 anniversary "What Second Life Means to Me" marketing campaign is a bit too marketing-y for my taste, but this new entry by Huckleberry Hax has a dreamy, vivid poetry (both visual and in Hax's resonant narration) that's well-worth watching:

If you're wondering about the poetry part, there's a very good reason for that:

3D Artist's Homepage is a 3D Web Masterpiece

3D artist Aaron Meyers unsurprisingly has a 3D-rich homepage worth a look if you have the bandwidth to load it up - click here to start. Compare with Jim Hall's equally cool 3D homepage.

Via: Andy Baio.

Top Five New World Notes Posts from Last Week!

• If Second Life is a Game, Then Everything is a Game: Virtual Worlds Academic Tom Boellstorff Weighs In
• How Long Will People Stay Immersed in Virtual Reality?
• For Dishonored 2, Former Kidnap Victim Emily Kaldwin Becomes Playable Damsel Causing Distress
• Exploring Second Life's Ancient History as an Online Game
• Valve Adding Augmented Reality to VR System So User Needs to Leave Virtual Reality Less

NWN Weekend Open Forum: Events, Ideas, Self-Promotion

Today may be a bit too busy for much blogging, so please talk amongst yourselves. What's going on in your virtual life lately?

Linden Lab CEO Addresses Second Life Virtual Land Bubble, Suggests Successor Sansar Will Monetize With 5% Sales "Tax" UPDATE: Linden Lab Disputes El Pais' Story

Update, 4:15pm: Linden Lab's Peter Gray says the El Pais report inaccurately quoted Altberg around the 5% claim -- see his full statement below.

SL blogger Canary Beck (who'll soon be blogging for New World Notes as well!) has a great scoop, translating a recent interview with Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg in the Spanish paper El Pais:

Altberg said (and I paraphrase / translate from the Spanish original) that Second Life has suffered from its own real estate bubble, where residents can rent a 256×256 metre plot of virtual land for $295/month, and that this business model was not intended for the average consumer. Renting virtual land is an expensive hobby or for those who want to run a virtual business.

Sansar, he said, will offer land for less, and Linden Lab will take a commission on any purchase or sale that occurs. “But only 5%”, he added, “which is extremely low compared to the usual 30% for this type of thing.”

More thoughts from Canary here. 30% is pretty clearly a reference to the commission Apple and Google charge developers for selling content on their app stores, which further suggests this is going to be how Linden Lab monetizes Sansar, or at least one of the ways. (I'm checking with Linden Lab in any case.) What's also notable is this:

If Second Life is a Game, Then Everything is a Game: Virtual Worlds Academic Tom Boellstorff Weighs In

The debate over whether Second Life should be classified as a game continues generating really interesting reader comments, one of the best of which is from my good friend and pioneering virtual worlds academic Tom Boellstorff:

As Richard Bartle, a pioneer in virtual worlds, once said: “virtual worlds are not games. Even the ones written to be games aren’t games. People can play games in them, sure, and they can be set up to that end, but this merely makes them venues. The Pasadena Rose Bowl is a stadium, not a game.”

The problem is that if you say Second Life is a "game" then it's hard to not classify everything humans do as a "game," and a word that refers to everything refers to nothing. When people say that virtual worlds like Second Life are games, they usually mean (1) some people play games in them (which is true); (2) some people engage in some form of role-play in them (which is true); or (3) the things some people do in virtual worlds do not have physical world consequences (which is true). But all of these things are true only some of the time; they are not hard-wired features of virtual worlds, but one way they can be used.

Tom goes on to point out why this debate draws so much passion:

How Long Will People Stay Immersed in Virtual Reality?

A friend of mine recently put on a pair of virtual reality goggles, and was lost to the rest of the world for five hours straight. And with one VR announcement after another coming out of E3 this week, such as Valve's technology which enables people to avoid real obstacles while in VR, I've been spending a lot of my hours wondering just how typical his experience will soon become.

Here's what Blair Erickson thought after spending 5 hours in VR:

"By the end of it all, the regular world was so... Regular. Even with the currently limited resolution and somewhat heavy device, you can immediately see how powerful this medium is going to become... it already works its magic on the brain pretty damn well." (Blair, by the way, is a VR pioneer himself, directing the first feature film to be displayed in the Oculus Rift.)

Blair stayed in virtual reality even when he sensed outside intrusion happening beyond his goggles: "When an outside experience occurs, you usually ignore it or flip to Pass Through mode which allows you to see outside the headset through a camera image displayed on your vision."

"How's it feel to have to cut out of the VR experience to see what's going on in real life?" I asked him.

Is Second Life a Game Due to Co-Existence, Playfulness, or User Confusion Based on Superficial Appearance?

Second Life's homepage from 2004, via Archive.org

There's a really interesting conversation happening in this post about Second Life's early years when it was marketed as an online game. To the argument that Second Life is not a game because it has no goal, reader "irihapeti" makes a fascinating counter-point:

Yes there is a goal. The primary game goal is to co-exist with others. There are rules to guide the play to reach this goal, lots of them. ToS/Community Standards. Enforced by technical limitations in many cases. Limitations imposed on players by the provider to enforce the reaching of the goal.

irihapeti then points out all the actual game-like mechanics in SL:

SL has a built-in game system. A full-damage push combat game system. There are safe zones in the system provided by LL. There are also safe zones provided by residents who own/rent parcels. There is also a mining mechanic in the game provided by LL. You can mine crystals in the game and convert to in-game currency and buy stuff with it to enhance your gameplay. Same like in any other game.

Nathan Hopkins references an academic's definition of "game", and argues that SL is perceived to be a game due to confusion over its surface appearance:

Philip Rosedale Favorite Fove VR to Integrate with SteamVR

FOVE, the VR industry's first eye tracking headset that Philip Rosedale suggests is the next-generation for HMDs, has not only raised nearly double its Kickstarter funding goals in under two weeks, it's now going to be compatible with SteamVR and Lighthouse motion tracking technology from Valve, the world's most important 3D game publisher and developer:

According to the company, once FOVE reaches the $700k milestone it will “pursue development integration of Valve’s Lighthouse technology into their developer kits, shipping in Spring 2016.” The company also announced today that they will support the OpenVR SDK and the Steam VR platform.

Says Yuka Kojima, FOVE’s CEO and co-founder, “Both of our companies are very excited about the applications of eye-tracking in VR and the support for SteamVR will bring a wealth of content to FOVE. We have strong confidence that FOVE can and will deliver a revolutionary experience in VR.”

Currently the FOVE headset only has head tracking, but the addition of the Lighthouse system would give FOVE full room scale tracking capability which, in addition to it’s eye tracking capability, would make it far more than just an acquisition target – but rather an outright contender.

It's striking how fast this industry is moving: Oculus Rift and Sony's Morpheus may be the current VR darling at this year's E3 conference, but people are already moving money and attention toward the next leap in virtual reality.