New World Notes

The Incredible Power of Virtual World Ownership & Creation -- And the Real World Absence That Drives It (Comment of the Week)

Photo by Grazia Horwitz

Reader Luther Weymann, who describes himself as a tech industry veteran who last ran a company with 1000 employees, recently wrote a comment on New World Notes that is among the best things I've ever read about the power of virtual worlds and the people who use them, in order to own and create content -- and includes some good advice for people who might criticize the quality of their creativity:

Because I have poked into every nook and cranny of the grid for the past seventeen years, I have come to one inescapable conclusion. There is a humbleness that comes from many of the creations made by the residents of SL that cannot be dismissed with any argument. It cannot be criticized or misrepresented by any debate because it was the best work they could do.

I have seen current houses that were made by residents fifteen years ago out of a hollow block with a misaligned roof, with block prim furniture they managed to get a wrong texture on. And they have paid their SL Premium account for fifteen years for this mainland location they have never moved from and all the mainland regions around them are almost totally abandoned.

When they log in, they have a classic body and old classic clothes. And they love SecondLife.

I’ve visited a thousand tiny shops where no sales may ever be made, where the ladies who own that shop put every ounce of effort they had in their being into attempting to make 6-7 pieces of ladies classic clothing more than ten years ago. It's sold on an SL prim that sells a copy of the contents, and the vendor texture can be very humble. They pay their rent for a decade for their humble shop, they log into to SL and they get to look at their “business” they own.

They own a business and I’ve watched them reduce their prices to pennies just to get one sale a year.

If you don’t know that billions of us on this earth lead lives of quiet desperation, you don’t know what the hell is going on with Second Life.

That even applies, he goes on, to content creators who actually work for Linden Lab, aka "Moles":

Want Some Free Cartoon Clouds Floating Above Your Second Life Sky?

Because you can get them right here. Created by SLer Stevie Davros, who says "[t]hese clouds will slowly scroll across the sky like the regular ones, but the shapes are fixed." These exist because Davros was recently experimenting with (really fantastic-looking) realistic skies. "Whilst tinkering," he says, "I came upon the idea of going for the opposite - cartoon=look clouds. So I made a few cloud TGA files and tweaked sky settings to work with them. Version 1 clouds are 1024x1024 and the res was not ideal, so I pushed the envelope and made a 2048x2048 TGA for cloud style 2." More about his naturalistic virtual clouds soon (hopefully), but meantime here's his cartoonified clouds to play with.

Versu's Epilogue: How an Interactive Fiction Pioneer's 15 Year Project Ended Up in Limbo at Linden Lab

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

When Linden Lab discontinued its interactive fiction platforms dio and Versu not long after Ebbe Altberg took the reins as CEO, it seemed like most people understood why. For some, these two products were a bit too far removed from the Lab's wheelhouse. Others were relieved, assuming that by trimming the fat LL would be refocussing some of its energy on Second Life. In Altberg's own words, it was just "clean up". "There’s some things that are not as aligned," he told Hamlet during a recent interview.

However there's a particularly sad tale tied up in Versu's fate (literally) and it's why you won't find me applauding this clean up any time soon.

First Impressions of Scribblenauts Unmasked: The Good, The Bad, And The Uncertain

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

I teleport into Gotham City, prepared to fight crime shoulder-to-shoulder with Batman himself. He's the hero the city deserves, but I'm the one it needs--a young boy with a magic notebook and a fangirl sister. A citizen immediately begs me for help from nearby construction scaffolding. I run up to her, notebook at the ready. With the swipe of a pencil I can rescue her from any distress imaginable.

She cries out in desperation and raw anguish, "I need something to tie my beluga whale to!"

Reviews for Scribblenauts Unmasked: A DC Comics Adventure have been mixed, and after playing a few levels for myself last night I can understand why. As much as I love this series, it feels like there are a lot of little things getting in between me and the joy of solving ridiculous problems with even more ridiculous solutions.

Even so, this comics-based puzzle adventure isn't without its charms. Here are my initial impressions of this highly creative (and slightly flawed) game:

The Drax Files: Robin Sojourner And The End Of Second Life As We Know It

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

Every couple weeks there's a new episode of The Drax Files: World Makers, and every couple weeks Draxtor Despres raises the bar a little higher. Last friday he released the latest episode, with Robin Sojourner in the spotlight. It's inspirational, motivational, and definitely one of the best episodes to date.

... Do I say that every time? Well, judge for yourself:

New SimCity Used to Recreate Player's Local Traffic Woes: Super Neat, but Not Super Realistic

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

A contributor to Gamasutra approached last weekend's one-hour SimCity beta with an interesting plan in mind. Unlike a lot of players he wasn't trying to find the magic planning layout needed to maximize city population, or the most efficient arrangement of residential, commercial, and industrial zones--Mike Rose was trying to figure out how a town with a relatively modest population of approx. 15000 could have rush hour traffic jams that would give urban centers a run for their money.

The results are incredibly interesting and seem surprisingly accurate, but that doesn't mean we should expect SimCity to be capable of providing serious solutions to real life urban planning issues... Especially not at launch. Here's why:

Story-Building Platforms Like Linden Lab's Versu and dio Are Already Succeeding -- Which is Why Versu and dio May Not

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

The more I think about Versu, Linden Lab's latest storytelling platform (which I covered late last week), the more it bothers me. Why? Maybe I'm cynical, but it feels like one more clever and creative little thing that just isn't going to go anywhere--even though it absolutely could and should. Interest in interactive stories like these is probably higher now than it's been a decade and a half at least, and lots of other little engines to create and support such stories have been springing up and developing devoted followships. So where does that leave Versu, and its older sibling, dio? Hint: Not in a very good position...

Hands on With Versu: First Impressions After My First Hour With Linden Lab's Latest Storytelling App

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

This morning Linden Lab launched Versu, an interactive storytelling app for the iPad (other platforms are in the works) with a relatively respectable pedigree behind it. Hamlet posted an overview of Versu as well as its launch trailer earlier today, so I wanted to talk about what it's like to actually use this app, and what I think of it beyond the trailers and the PR (a bit like what I did with dio almost exactly 2 weeks ago.)

Roll up your sleeves because this might get messy.

Sextan Shepherd Makes a Mirror in Second Life!

Not long ago in Second Life, an artful Frenchman named Sextan Shepherd created an underwater steampunk city that paid tribute to Jules Verne, with more opulent detail than I'd ever think possible. Not happy with just doing that, Mr. Shepherd went on to make a reflecting mirror in Second Life, something that's supposed to be flat out impossible full stop. But boom, baby, voilà:

"Mirrors are fun," Sextan said, "aren't they?" Why yes they are, especially when they're supposed to be impossible to make in Second Life. And then Sextan Shepherd proceeded to tell me how he did it:

Uccello Reviews Smart Cam For Customized SL Views

Uccello Poultry has a thorough review of the (mirada)smartCAM, a new system created by Damien Fate which helps you create customized, preset views of Second Life -- a useful resource for SL photographers. Another useful function of the system, which will probably prove handy to lots of folks: "You can give a special HUD to anyone else and their view will synchronize with yours with the press of a button," reports Ms. Poultry.