New World Notes

There's Likely Thousands of Ukraine Citizens Who Use Second Life -- This Weekend, Consider Reaching Out To Them

I'd estimate there's roughly 3000 active Second Life users from Ukraine. According to data from SimilarWeb, .5% of visitors to SecondLife.com are from Ukraine.  And based on public data from Linden Lab and from what insiders tell me, there's roughly 600,000 active SL users. So simple math gets us to 3,000 Ukrainians, more or less -- not a huge part of the international Second Life community, but quite a decent number. Many of them are content creators on the platform -- here's a list of just some of them -- and many are active in the virtual world in other ways.

At the moment, however, most or nearly all of them are not looking at any digital depiction of a better world on their screen, But more likely, at a bare basement like this. That was a temporary shelter for Hanna, creator of the beloved SL fashion brand Osmia, when she fled her home with her husband earlier this week, even though she is over 6 months pregnant.

I've been trying to keep in touch with Hanna on social media as much as possible. Since writing about her on Wednesday, the updates have gone from grim to worse. She is now hiding out in a city under active Russian occupation:

Osmia in Hiding: Messages from a Second Life Creator in Ukraine During Russia's Invasion - UPDATE: Her City is Now Occupied

While the Second Life community rallies to support Ukrainian users in the virtual world, such help during a time like this can only go so far. I've been thinking about that over the last few days while intermittently messaging Hanna, creator of the beloved SL fashion brand Osmia.

While Osmia is listed among the Second Life merchants based in Ukraine, Hanna has not been able to access her SL account lately, and her access to the Internet has been sporadic too. 

Or as she expressed it via a social media Instant Message: "You can ask questions. But if I disappear for awhile, it will mean that we are hiding."

Second Life users have been buying items from her and other Ukrainian merchants in the hopes that they'll be able to convert the Linden Dollar sales into local currency.

But in Hanna's case, at least, that won't happen any time soon:

"I am very grateful to everyone who is worried about me and my [Second Life] store," she tells me. "Unfortunately, getting money now is not realistic, currency exchange offices do not work with us and it is very dangerous to go to the bank."

Now sheltering in place with family in one of Ukraine's major cities, Hanna has more immediate concerns, than cashing out Linden Dollars: She is over 6 months pregnant.

Second Life Community Rallies to Help Ukraine-Based Creators on Platform

A Tribute to Ukraine  - "Long may Ukraine stand proud and free." by Rhaenys Targaryen

Update, 2/26: Bumped up for weekend support!

This is a Google Spreadsheet of Second Life stores and website Marketplace shops owned by Ukraine-based creators on the virtual world platform. It was quickly created by SL community members within the first 24 hours of the Putin regime's invasion of that country, with a goal of supporting these merchants with L$ purchases -- which they can subsequently convert into their local currency. (Whenever, that is, they are able to find a stable Internet connection in the now-embattled region.)

I have not yet personally verified that all the listed merchants are indeed based in the Ukraine, but a top expert in the SL economy confirms that these brands on the list, at least, definitely are:

• Loki (Marketplace here, SL store teleport link here)
• Osmia (Marketplace here, SL store teleport link here)
• Rouly (Marketplace here, SL store teleport link here)
• RAMA Salon (Marketplace here, SL store teleport link here)
• Evani (Marketplace here, SL store teleport link here)

The "Ukrainian Stores" list, as it happens, was created in great part by Second Life users based in Russia, who are now sickened by their government's military assault:

Six Surprising Ways Using Second Life Improved Users in Real Life

This is a pretty fascinating thread on /SecondLife where community members answer the question, "How has Second Life helped you sharpen for any real life experiences?" 

The examples given range from the funny:

Fashion. I used to dress well, then during lockdown started dressing like a trash pile, but dressing up my avi made me want to get my nice things back out in RL too. - greeneyedwench 

To the poignant:

I started playing SL in 2004. 6 years later I was in Afghanistan and another year and a half after that. SL put me in contact with fellow Vets and helped me relearn how to adjust to Civilian life and how to cull my social anxiety. - HellHoundActual

Several more of my favorites after the break:

Expect a Real Life Crackdown on Second Life Gachas, Says Expert Lawyer

Update, August 2: As Vaki predicted, Linden Lab announced the end of gachas in Second Life:

Due to a changing regulatory climate, we’ve had to make the difficult decision to sunset a very popular sales mechanism for content in Second Life.  It’s widely known as "gacha", and is defined by a chance-based outcome as a result of a payment. We know that creators plan their content releases far in advance and will need to re-tool their products, so to mitigate the impact to those affected, we are giving a 30-day grace period, until midnight SLT on August 31.  After that time, selling content via gacha machines will no longer be permitted in Second Life.

Read her analysis here. Original post from June below.

Loot boxes in videogames are considered gambling and therefore illegal in some countries, and regulated in many other jurisdictions. But does that have anything to do with user-created gachas in Second Life? Extremely popular within the SL community, they are a vending machine game of chance to win valuable virtual goods. Should we expect a crackdown on them at some point?

In a word, yes.

"Gacha games/loot boxes/etc. are gambling" says Vaki, a longtime Second Life user who is also a real life attorney specializing in privacy and internet issues; she's even represented SL users in this field. "And they're starting to slowly be regulated as such. Best way to see this is in Chinese games like Genshin Impact, where gacha functionalities are regulated and providers are required to display the actual percentage of likelihood to receive each reward."

While it remains an open question whether SL-based gachas in particular are considered gambling, Second Life creators of gachas, along with Linden Lab itself, should prepare for regulations around them:

Long-Dormant Second Life Users Brought Back By the Pandemic Contemplate a Post-COVID Return to Reality

Where do virtual worlds go when the pandemic’s gone? It's a topic I'll be thinking a lot about in the coming months. The tragedy of the global pandemic accelerated the need for online work and virtual social spaces as never before -- hence the explosion of Zoom-meets-virtual worlds startups such as this one.

But as the COVID outbreak thankfully ebbs in much of the globe, many organizations are already calling for their personnel to come back into the office. Can virtual world spaces and platforms adjust to this new era, while maintaining its cultural gains? Or are they destined to fall back to simply being entertainment platforms mostly targeting teens?

I thought about this while recently reading this thought-provoking Reddit thread by veteran Second Life users who drifted away years ago, then returned to the virtual world during the pandemic (as a fair amount did)... and are now contemplating a return back to base reality:

What Are Your Favorite Virtual World Locations for Great Ambient Sound?

You'll likely need to wear your headphones to hear it, but on a recent visit to my office in Waterhead in SL, I noticed the location was starting to sound really lovely. Not just due to my artificial tide, but recently a neighbor added one of those lonely pier bells, while another had installed a clocktower chime. So lovely, in fact, when I went back to RL work, I kept the virtual world running in the background, so I could keep hearing that soothing ambience. Most locations in Second Life are pretty scant on atmospheric audio, so I'm lucky to have this for my own location. 

What are your favorite virtual world spots for ambient sound? Post in Comments so we can give a listen.

Oh, and about my shrine to Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash:

Watch: Epic BattleBots Duel, Fire-Breathing Slapbox vs. SL Fave Sharko!

In case you missed it last week, here's the Discovery Channel's BattleBots fight between SlapBox and Sharko, prototyped in Second Life by Artorius Constantine, owner of SL's Nano Station Technologies store.  Sent to us via BattleBots super-fan Devin Vaughn, it is almost more brutal and merciless as a major fashion drop in SL, which is saying something.

"Overall that was one of the best episodes of BattleBots I have seen in a long time," Devin reports. "Good even matches, much spark and explosions! Sharko had a good match against a rookie bot SlapBox, and a crazy moment: Shark bites down good, but then SlapBox lifted the entire shark, all 250 pounds was lifted into the air, totally inverted and shot flames down the mouth of poor Sharko who refused to let go. Wow."

Watch above to see what happens next! As to why it happened, Constantine and his crew have a good post-mortem in Reddit's /BattleBots community: 

Fascist Leanings of Trump's Most Extreme Followers Already Evident in Their Online Behavior Back in 2016

As the United States takes stalk of the violent riot of Trump supporters at the Capitol last week, led in part by people wearing Nazi shirts and carrying Confederate flags, I thought back to the behavior of Trump supporters in Second Life before the 2016 election -- mobbing the virtual HQ of Bernie Sanders, for instance. And not just to troll his left-leaning Second Life followers, but to confront them with a clear symbol of hate:  

“There is a picture I managed to capture of one of the flags spewing from a particle dispenser at HQ,” Sanders support group member Macaria Wind tells me, handing over an image file of a Trump swastika. “Left there by one of Trump's supporters when no one was around.”

Racist behavior like this led to at least one Trump group being expelled from Second Life and their private island, aptly called The Wall, where they had rezzed a massive version of the Nazi Party's eagle-headed Parteiadler. Online activity like this was eerily similar to that on other sites where Trump's most extreme supporters congregated, including Reddit and 4Chan. At the time, Trump supporters in Second Life (as with other online sites) insisted this fascist behavior was simply a bad apples anomaly, or meant ironically, or both. The events of last week definitely show this justification to be tragically, horribly wrong: As it turns out, there were more than enough bad apples to threaten democracy itself -- and far few of their members to stop them.

Monday Memory: That Time a Former Governor Made a Whistle Stop Appearance in Second Life as Part of His Potential Presidential Campaign

August 31, 2006: Read my interview with now-Senator Mark Warner here. His SL appearance came at a time when Democratic insiders were considering whether the former Virginia governor should be their "fallback" presidential candidate in 2008, should Senator Hillary Clinton’s presumptive ascension as the party’s choice for President in 2008 ever fell through. (Funny these insiders hadn't yet considered who'd actually go on to become their candidate.) A few months after the SL event, I was lucky enough to meet Warner in person and found him an impressively knowledgeable politician with a keen knack for grasping and synthesizing competing opinions. When we shook hands, one of his assistants reminded him of the Second Life event, and he grinned broadly, saying something like, "Wow that got us lot of a buzz, didn't it?"

Warner's virtual world appearance in Second Life was covered by multiple news outlets as a novel (if strange and geeky) thing for a potential political candidate to do. Fourteen years later, the fact that Joe Biden had an official campaign headquarters in Animal Crossing scarcely merited much notice -- now, virtual world appearances by well-known cultural figures are taken for granted.