New World Notes

SL Bloggers & Vloggers: Sign Up for a Secret Santa Swap

BVN Blogger & Vlogger Secret Santa Swap, as the name suggests, is a fun online event for the holidays:

Join in the BVN Secret Santa Swap and we’ll pair you up with another blogger or vlogger for you to ‘gift’ a blogpost. It’s the season of giving and goodwill to all bloggers (and vloggers) and to share the joy of the season we’re organizing the chance to be randomly given the name of another blogger for you to promote on your blog. Just fill out the form here before the 5th December if you would like to participate and we will draw all participating bloggers names from a Santa hat.

Event hosted, of course, by the Blogger & Vlogger Network for SLers on social media. I just signed up to participate in the Swap, as did Strawberry Singh, who tipped me to this project after coming back from a brief blogging hiatus.

Amazon Unveils Sumerian, VR Creation Platform Directly Competing With High Fidelity, Sansar, Et. Al.

Behold the new Amazon platform called Sumerian:

Amazon Sumerian lets you create and run virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and 3D applications quickly and easily without requiring any specialized programming or 3D graphics expertise. With Sumerian, you can build highly immersive and interactive scenes that run on popular hardware such as Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and iOS mobile devices (support for Android ARCore coming soon). For example, you can build a virtual classroom that lets you train new employees around the world, or you can build a virtual environment that enables people to tour a building remotely. Sumerian makes it easy to create all the building blocks needed to build highly immersive and interactive 3D experiences including adding objects (e.g. characters, furniture, and landscape), and designing, animating, and scripting environments. Sumerian does not require specialized expertise and you can design scenes directly from your browser.

In other words, Sumerian is a direct competitor to Sansar, High Fidelity, Decentraland, and every other would-be VR platform enabling user-generated content for VR experiences.

Unless I missed it, the only differentiator High Fidelity et. al. can now offer is monetization through virtual currency. However, Amazon could easily add direct in-app payment monetization via payments for content from anyone with a credit card registered on Amazon (which basically means roughly half of everyone on the Internet), or indirect monetization through Amazon affiliate codes. (I.E., Click on some virtual furniture depicted in a Sumerian experience, get taken directly to the Amazon web page where you can buy a real world copy of that same piece of furniture.)

The other advantage Amazon Sumerian has is that virtual experiences created on it are hosted on Amazon Cloud Services:

The Experiences of Those Who Left Second Life Are As Important As Those Who Stayed (Comment of the Week)

Discussing her approach to her Atlantic Monthly feature on Second Life, Leslie Jamison wrote:

I also wanted to be upfront about my own visceral reactions to Second Life over the several months I spent there, confessing subjectivity rather than pretending to be a neutral observer—in that particular sense, perhaps, I was representing an experience of SL more akin to the 200,000 people who show up each month and leave, rather than those who stay.

Inspiring this reply from reader Irihapeti:

This is a pretty important point. As a long time player I do find it odd sometimes when the long time are a bit dismissive of the stories of the leavers. Like somehow in leaving, the leavers have some personal failings or something. As Leslie also mentions the article is also highly subjective from a particular leaver's POV. Altogether I thought it was a good article. For sure there is quite a bit in the article that I don't see as relevant to my own understanding/experience of SL. But that's the point really. It's not my story that's being told here.

Subjectiveness is a good thing in storytelling. Context also.

Seconded by me. Not only is it unfair and unfeasible to expect that a journalist fully learn and understand how to use Second Life before writing about it, that expectation can easily lead to an inaccurate depiction of the actual SL experience:

Sansar News Blog's Top 15 Experiences in Sansar (So Far)

Good list of 15 solid Sansar experiences chosen from nearly 800 that have been uploaded to Linden Lab's new VR platform including the one above, The Diner by C3rb3rus (video walkthrough shot by YouTuber Zarrakan below the break).  Notably, most if not all of the top 15 (not counting those made by Lindens) seem to be made by SL veterans.

Top SL-Related Subreddit Taking Nominees for Weekly AMA of SLers

A moderator of /SecondLife, Reddit's largest SL-related subreddit (now with nearly 4000 subscribers), just posted this open thread:

"Would a regularly recurring AmA (Ask me Anything) be something people would be interested in?... Who would you like to hear from? What kinds of people would be of interest?"

I'm definitely interested! Good to see /SecondLife trying to launch this series. (A successful SL scripter launched a one-off AMA awhile ago which led to a provocative conversation.) I'd be most curious to have current Linden Lab staff do an AMA, along with top content creators (hint hint).

Top Six New World Notes Posts from Last Week!

• Leslie Jamison Responds To Virtual World Academic Tom Boellstorff's Criticisms Of Her Atlantic Monthly Feature On Second Life
• Cajsa's Choices: The Floating SL Fantasy Art Of Coqueta Georgia
• If You Don't Want Your Second Life Usage To Get More Expensive, Ask Congress To Keep The FCC's Net Neutrality Rules For An Affordable Internet
• Second Life-Based Installation Featured In National Gallery Of Australia Show
• Despite Multiple Complaints, Unauthorized, Unlimited Sale Of Second Life Gacha Items On The SL Marketplace Continues
• Broken, Or Resilient? Dialog On Second Life Users Depicted In Leslie Jamison's Atlantic Monthly Feature

Leslie Jamison Responds to Virtual World Academic Tom Boellstorff's Criticisms of Her Atlantic Monthly Feature on Second Life

Last week's open forum with Leslie Jamison, author of this month's much-discussed Atlantic Monthly feature article on Second Life, "The Digital Ruins of a Forgotten Future", unsurprisingly provoked many pointed comments from Second Life devotees and experts -- most prominently, from my pal Professor Tom Boellstorff of UC Irvine, author of Coming of Age in Second Life  (which Leslie cites several times in the article). Tom posted a strong critique which you should read in full here, and I'm excerpting below -- and after that, Leslie's reply. First, Tom's turn: 

I do appreciate all of the time you put into it. I also recognize the incredibly strong headwinds we face when writing about Second Life, because the misconceptions about virtual worlds and what people do in them are so significant. But for that very reason, three comments are in order...

[I]t’s unfortunate that throughout your article you distinguish Second Life from “the real world.” From the moment you do that, on some level you might as well pack up your bags and go home, because you have assumed from the outset what you should be investigating... We must remember that the Euro-American culture that dominates the tech world, there is a Christian metaphysics that assumes the physical is more real, as when Christ becomes flesh.

... It is empirically, obviously wrong that not everyone who spends time in Second Life does so to escape or compensate for something they cannot find offline. That might be true for some people on occasion, but for the vast majority of residents, Second Life is additive not supplanting. It creates multiplicity, new possibilities in one’s life, rather than compensating for a lack... Your article simply gives us no way to understand experiences in Second Life that are not about compensating for a lack of what “good fortune,” and this is the vast majority of what happens in-world.

... It doesn’t seem that you ever built anything in Second Life, owned (or even rented) land, or participated in a community in any ongoing manner. The fact that your interaction with the virtual world was quite superficial seems to shape your rather superficial understanding of the virtual world. A limited understanding seems to also seems to be behind the contradiction that on the one hand you speak approvingly of “the grit and imperfection that make the [physical] world feel like the world,” yet speak disapprovingly of the errors and crashes you encountered in Second Life. That virtual grit and imperfection is also part of the online experience: it doesn’t indicate failure.

Leslie's reply to this (and more generally to other commentators in the open forum thread):

It's true that I was present in Second Life as a writer and journalist, not as someone going for a social experience--that's part of why I was so interested in talking to people who had sought and found intimacy and community in SL, more permanent residents of the snow globe! If I'd been offering a first-person account of a decade of SL residence, it would have been a different piece, written by someone coming from a different place; and I would love to read that piece! I found some of the blogs of my interview subjects fascinating for precisely that reason. I also appreciate the questioning of “escapism” as an overly reductive term for a complicated, fascinating, and often adaptive or generative human impulse--I try to get at that very idea in the piece itself, but I agree that there is so much more to say about it.

Addressing Tom and his points in particular, Leslie continues:

Cajsa's Choices: The Floating SL Fantasy Art of Coqueta Georgia

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

I don’t know who was the first Second Life photographer to compose photos in the style I have come to call “floating fantasies”, but Coqueta Georgia was the first I noticed. It was seeing her photos that made me notice other people working with similar weightless aesthetics, though of course, each with their own distinctive style. Coqueta’s style is certainly distinctive -- I immediately recognize her work without looking for her name. I admire her creativity, not just in framing her photos, but the styling of her outfits and the “set decoration” that makes her compositions so very complete.

In daily life, Coqueta is a musician. She plays instruments, gives lessons and directs choirs. Then logs into SL to disconnect. She wanted a creative outlet that was a rest from music, and found that in virtual photography.

She’s been blogging for three years at El Ático de SL (The SL Attic.) Originally she blogged with a partner who styled and posed for the photos that she took. When they parted blogging ways, she continued on her own, taking pictures of herself which she says became addictive, particularly when the positive response led to stores asking her to blog for their styles.

Tell us about yourself -- how did you come to SL?

Ten years ago, I read an article in the newspaper about a virtual world, a parallel world in which there were communities from all over the world and from my country. I found the concept of "Second Life" very interesting and to be able to fulfill there what in real life I could not do, so I decided to enter this world and became so addicted that I'm still here ...

What keeps you here?

It is like a therapy to disconnect from my real life, work, family, problems etc ... here I feel free and I feel that it is my world and my private space and I can do what I like. That makes me continue to enter this world that for me is wonderful.

If You Don't Want Your Second Life Usage to Get More Expensive, Ask Congress to Keep the FCC's Net Neutrality Rules for an Affordable Internet

Here's a web-based form for contacting Congress to preserve the FCC's net neutrality policy. As a term, "net neutrality" is an extremely confusing way for describing how the policy impacts most consumers -- it preserves an affordable Internet by prohibiting ISPs and cable companies from charging extra for different Internet sites and services. If the FCC ends net neutrality, as has just been announced, the people most likely to pay more are power Internet users -- i.e. online gamers who rely on heavy bandwidth usage, i.e. MMO players, i.e. Second Life users. Yes I'm not kidding:

The end of net neutrality could even raise the price of video games, especially for those played online. Service providers like Comcast and Verizon may decide to charge extra for the ability to connect to a game server, and that price could be tacked on to future games. You might even end up paying an extra fee for every hour of online gaming.

Emphasis mine, because it bears emphasis -- especially for a virtual world like Second Life, which depends on constant content streaming.

Yes, yes, there's an argument (mainly promoted by cable company lobbyists) that ending net neutrality will encourage more competition and better services. Which may happen for some consumers, especially in some wealthier cities which have competing ISPs. (Then again, most Americans don't have a meaningful choice of broadband services.) So basically, it comes down to this: Do you trust your cable company/ISP provider not to arbitrarily raise your rates? If not, consider contacting Congress.

Second Life-Based Installation Featured in National Gallery of Australia Show

If you're in Australia between now and next February (and don't you wish you were, besides the giant spiders) the National Gallery of Australia's "HyperReal" show is featuring "RMB City", the seminal SL-based installation created by renown artist (and dear friend) Cao Fei:

Alongside video and photography, Cao Fei is known for her internet-based art, in particular, for works that take place within an online world, a platform known as Second Life. Blending fantasy and reality, Cao Fei’s technicolour playground combines Mao statues with aerial shopping malls and floating architectural icons in her RMB Cityseries. Under the pretence of a game, the artist’s avatar China Tracy acts as guide to participants, who are able to realise impossible dreams through virtual reality.

I know this because someone named Mangrovejane was walking through the gallery and suddenly saw my avatar on a screen, dancing around like a fool: