New World Notes

Special Sinespace Black Friday Offer: Get 1 Month Free Premium With 150 Gold Per Week + Other Benefits!

Just in time for the holiday season, NWN partner Sinespace has a special offer for anyone reading New World Notes: One month free Premium benefits, which include:

• 512 megabytes of space for customizing your free home region. (Up from 128mb for basic account holders.)
• 25 maximum concurrent users in your home region. (Up from 10 maximum for basic accounts.)
• 150 Gold per week for shopping in Sinespace’s massive in-game store!

Plus all the benefits listed here.

Read below for how to redeem this offer:

Cajsa's Flickr Pick: The Stunning SL Action Scenes of Marino Sandalwood

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

Marino Sandalwood loves the action shot and does them well. In “Death Target” she got together with two friends. It is always fun to see how two people shoot the same scene. Here is the same scene taken by Eripom Moonwall. By shooting from below, she increases the power and menace of the women charging forward. 

Electronic Gaming Monthly Explores the Rise & Fall (& Semi-Rise) of Second Life Through Its Ancient Wiley Guidebooks

Interesting long read on Electronic Gaming Monthly covers the perennial "Whatever happened to Second Life?" story through a fresh angle: The five official guidebooks to Second Life published by Wiley, and the mass of contributors for wrote it. The author Mark Hill compares and contrasts the glowing words wrote or said back then, with Second Life as it is now. That includes SL co-founders Philip Rosedale and Cory Ondrejka, though Hill mixes up Philip's real name with his avatar handle:

[T]he final two chapters of The Official Guide, “A Cultural Timeline” and “The Future and Impact of Second Life,” further highlight Linden’s own divided focus between SL’s core users and its media darling status. The timeline is introduced with overwrought claims like “‘I’m not building a game,’ Philip Linden once said, ‘I’m building a new country.’ And in many ways, the history of Second Life thus far resembles the first centuries of America itself.”

... Linden’s own hype reaches its loftiest with comments like “Imagine being able to access from SL from literally anywhere [with wearable computing], holding conversations across worlds, or overlaying your friend’s SL avatar on them when you see them in your first life,” and “What excites me the most about the future of Second Life is its potential to fundamentally improve the human condition.” Second Life may not have improved the human condition, but it certainly highlighted certain aspects of it. Terdiman referenced an infamous 2006 interview that was invaded by a horde of trolls wielding flying penises. 

... In an interview for The Entrepreneur’s Guide, Linden Lab CTO Cory Ondrejka went further in painting a picture of Second Life as a corporate utopia. “Even with video conferencing, you can’t really get up, move around, pace. … And Second Life helps with [that]. You have place, embodiment, and a method for having real-world style conversations a la a cocktail party (i.e., multiple, parallel conversations). I think the first new opportunity is going to be helping companies that have dispersed work forces save money on recruiting, on-boarding, training, and collaboration. This is a lot like what IBM has said they are working on. But they are just scratching the surface.”

The article misses the chance to mention that both both Philip and Cory, while no longer working on Second Life, are still actively involved in virtual worlds and virtual world technology, Philip with his new startup High Fidelity and Cory (up until a few years ago), driving Facebook's acquisition of Oculus (for good and ill). But then again, the story of all those who started at Linden Lab and Second Life back in the earliest days and continue to work on reviving the old magic -- even if that means developing other virtual world platforms -- could be a whole other article in itself.

As for what Second Life still is now, DJ Nexeus Fatale and myself reflect on that, also for good and ill:

Cajsa's SL Flickr Pick: Portilly Takes Dramatically Dark Screenshots

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

Portilly is not afraid of the dark. This untitled photo shows an embrace of the darkness. Notice that even with the dim lighting, we can see details, the shades in the shadows. I love her willingness to demand something of viewers, to look deeply into the picture to see the window frame, the posts, and other details are there, hidden in the shadows. Good photos are ones that make us stop and look more closely. She is demanding we work at it.

Will Real World Politics Influence Players of SEED, the Exoplanet Colonization MMO? Majority of Fans Surveyed Say Yes

In my latest essay for SEED, the exoplanet colonization, world-building MMO with a political system designed by Larry Lessig, I surveyed the game's most passionate fanbase on Discord, asking them how SEED might related to their real life political outlook. The results were pretty surprising, at least to me:

Regardless of national origin, most respondents [49.6%] are decidedly unhappy with the current state of their real-world government. Despite (or because of?) this dissatisfaction, a majority of respondents say that their real world politics will guide how they play SEED, with 44% saying it will have “some” influence on their behavior, while 1 in 4 answering that their politics will shape their gameplay on Avesta “quite a bit”.

But what are the real world politics of SEED’s first wave of settlers? We asked respondents to indicate their ideology along the traditional left-right axis. A plurality (36%) put themselves on the center-left, with 1 in 5 indicating that they are either left wing or center-right. Just as notable: Nearly 1 in 10 place themselves on the far left, while just a sliver of respondents (3.4%) place themselves on the far right.

As to the crux question, and a key reason why Larry Lessig is involved in this MMO: Will we learn anything about real politics and organization from this game? A strong majority of 56% say Yes, reflecting this opinion from one survey taker:

SLers Furiously Debate Whether They Should Pay to Change Their SL Names

Last chance to take this survey on whether you want to pay for the chance to change your SL name; I'll post the results tomorrow. In any case, it's definitely provoked a passionate conversation among readers. Here's some highlights:

I love having the limited selection as long as it's long enough, like in the old days. I can hardly wait to see the list of names and to see avatars that aren't stuck with "Resident." Currently I'm happy with my avatar names, so there's no reason to pay for new ones. I just wish that all those stuck with "Resident" could, without charge, add a last name from the list. So much nicer.

-- Acacia Merlin

Please do not make us choose from a list of names. I doubt we will get what we want that way! Custom name is worth a fee, otherwise. Unless you have my last name I want, I'll keep the old one!

-- kedvenc ivanovic 

Sorry we took all those profits we collected from your $300.00 imaginary lands and used them to make a gigantic VR bonfire and dissed you in the process.

Luckily, in the ashes, we finally hear your pleas. Our little elves are working like mad to make a doohickey that will take us back in time to the days when we knew how to give people names. You'll need to pay a fee to pay a fee to get this amazing regifted fruitcake. Happy Holidays!

"Names" was on my 2011 Christmas List. In 2019, I want justice.

-- Jenny8675309 Resident

Several more after the break!

Top 5 Posts Last Week, Including: Why Wales Wants Pseudonyms on WT:Social, Why Stadia Should Shift to Virtual Worlds, and the New Sign Language Invented for VRChat

• Nylon Pinkney Is Online: The Rift Between Rifters
• Jimmy Wales On WT Social, His New Social Network: Pseudonyms Allowed On The Platform's "Real Names Culture"
• Why VR/AR Devs Should Stop Referencing Minority Report-Ish Gesture Control
• Struggling Stadia Should Shift Away From Twitch Games To Virtual Worlds
• VRChat Attracts Community Of Deaf Users & Supporters Who Communicate With Unique, VR-Based Signs

Nylon Pinkney is Online: The Rift Between Rifters

Jimmy Wales on WT Social, His New Social Network: Pseudonyms Allowed on the Platform's "Real Names Culture"

WT:Social is a new and much-needed social network led by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, which unlike Facebook, Twitter, and the other market leaders, won't make money on targeted (often intrusive or dishonest). Instead, like Wikipedia, it'll be run on donations. It's not however affiliated with the online encyclopedia. As Wales puts it to me: "This is just me having fun trying to invent something new." 

You can go here to sign-up  as Wales and his team scale up the system to take on more new users.  "[We have] only 2 developers who are mainly scrambling to keep the site running," Wales explains. "I am hopeful that the waiting time will end in a few weeks time as we beef up our infrastructure (again!)"

While Facebook in particular has ongoing controversies with real name identities, and the company's insistence on them, Wales tells me WT:Social will have a more nuanced approach to that question. When I ask him, "What's WT Social's policy around anonymous/pseudonymous user identities, such as game handles?", here is his take in full:

Watch: Fantastic Tribute to Avatar Artist Tralala Loordes

Simon Sonnenblume created this dazzling montage video tribute to the SL images of the avatar artist known as Tralala Loordes, every single one of them jaw-dropping. As it happens, Cajsa profiled Tralala for New World Notes a couple years ago, and her SL/RL background is just as fascinating: