New World Notes

BREAKING: Tempura Restored to Second Life As a Preservation Sim After Belated Outreach by Linden Lab

Just received this fairly excellent message:

Dear Tempura island friends, lovers, visitors:

We would like to inform you, that after our decision to close Tempura, we were contacted by Linden Lab and made the decision to accept maintenance of our region by joining The Second Life Region Preservation Society provided by Linden Lab.

We have received so many messages from SL residents about closing Tempura and we are very happy that it will exist still.

Please enjoy Tempura sim as you have been in all these years. We would like to express our gratitude to Linden Lab who recognized and decided to keep Tempura as part of Second Life existence. Thank you everyone who loves Tempura!

- Kikunosuke Eel/Tempura Island Team 

P.S. Special Thanks to Mr. Wagner James Au for his support

And thank you, Mr. Eel and team! So that said, click here to teleport to Tempura in all its preserved glory.

This restoral happens two weeks after the blog reported its imminent departure, which strongly suggests the Linden team scrambled to save it after its departure. Last week I had suggested this might happen, while warning that there's a flip side to preservation:

Even when Linden Lab takes a sim over, that doesn't mean what's meaningful about it will continue on. An active user community, first and foremost, brings meaning to the virtual world. 

May that community continue on. Here's the official announcement:

The Challenge of Saving Beloved But Financially Unsustainable Virtual Places

Tempura, the popular and much-loved Second Life island, is now gone from the grid, with only screenshots and video to remember it by, another victim of SL's high monthly server maintenance fees. As when any other beloved virtual place meets a digital death like this, community members post well-meaning if belated ideas on how to save it:

Could these amazing regions be resurrected in OpenSim (Kitely)? Seems such a shame to lose them altogether. --  Kaylee West

Hypergrid and OpenSims are using SL's open source software and are in most cases entirely free. SL has the largest infrastructure but its been killing creativity and beauty in the name of profit for over a decade. Tempura can exist at no cost or $5 a month really. -- Domino Effect 

OpenSim definitely is an option! The first challenge there is, the original owner/creator would have to expedite that process, and be prepared to see their works "ripped" and copied by others for uses in other worlds -- content theft in OpenSim remains an ongoing problem. The other challenge is that OpenSim continues to have a small active userbase, with the top 10 OS grids attracting fewer than 20,000 active users. (Active users in the aforementioned Kitely: Fewer than 1300.) An OpenSim version of Tempura may not attract enough regular visitors to justify even a $5/month fee, especially when you add on the (presumably free) community management time.

Another option, as longtime SLer Saffia Widdershins writes, is plead for patronage from Linden Lab:

Final Photos from Tempura, the Beloved Second Life Sim Recently Removed from the Virtual World Due to High Server Fees

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

“Last memories from Tempura” is a gorgeous picture by Romuśka commemorating the lost of the beautiful sim. As reported earlier in New World Notes, the beloved sim will be leaving our world after fourteen years. I love the way this picture captures its pacific beauty, quiet, placid, and restful. It is a restorative place for battered spirits. For today, I thought as we said goodbye, we could also look at some of the best pictures from that gorgeous island. 

For more Tempura memories, click here:

Last Chance to Visit Tempura, Beloved Second Life Sim Leaving the Virtual World at the End of This Month After 14 Years & Millions of Visits

Click here this month to teleport into yet another Second Life landmark that's going away: The luminously beautiful island called Tempura, which since its inception 14 years ago, has attracted well over 2 millions visits.

It is, however, leaving the virtual world grid at the end of this month. Owned and lead created by Japanese SLer "Kikunosuke eel", Tempura is a dreamscape of forests, gardens, and ancient buildings. But with his real life work taking up more of his time -- and Tempura costing him well over $2000 a year in landlord server costs to Second Life owner Linden Lab -- Mr. Eel decided it was finally time for Tempura to end.

For all these years, he subsidized Tempura at a loss, partly subsidizing it through sales from MANDALA, his virtual jewelry brand. Completely free to visitors, it's been full to near capacity since launching, with thousands visiting and exploring every week.

Mr. Eel subsidized their visits despite the expense as an expression of personal faith:

The Life & Death of NPR's Science Friday in Second Life Ends on a Mystery

This is a really good new segment of Science Friday on the life and death of Science Friday's own Second Life islands over a decade ago, where the much-loved NPR show hosted an audience of avatar fans during the live broadcast, with host Ira Flatow even occasionally taking questions sent in-world via group message. Produced and hosted by Daniel Peterschmid, it expands from that story to talk about the value of virtual communities and virtual world play, especially now in the COVID age, and ends on a nice rebirth and reunion segment that I won't spoil here.  (Also, a couple nitpicks: Suggesting Second Life's graphics "haven't changed" since 2009 only seems true if you're running it on a low-end PC, and Jim from The Office doesn't actually say Second Life is only for "losers", but that's a whole other post.)

For longtime SLers, it does introduce a mystery: Why exactly did the Science Friday sims disappear, especially when the in-world group had grown to over 2000 members? The segment's answer (around 20:13 in) only raises more questions:

University Of Western Australia's Second Life Art Sims Closing This Year -- But Artists Can Feature Their Work There in a Grand Finale Festival

The University Of Western Australia's virtual campus in Second Life has been among the most active and longest lasting educational presences, hosting regular art festivals like this one featuring cinema great Peter Greenaway But after years of hanging on, I'm told the UWA regions are finally being closed at the end of this year.

That's disappointing news. The good news is UWA is going out with a digital bang, hosting a huge final art festival on a massive platform above the campus. Curated by longtime virtual art advocate Chuck Clip (above) and Mariposa Upshaw, with the blessing of UWA's Jay Jay Zifanwe, this is meant to be, as Clip calls it, "one last thank you to the men and women of the institution that touched all of our lives." 

If you're a 2D or 3D artist who wants to feature your work in this space, the submission details from Mr. Clip are below. And I do mean "massive", take a lot at its scale:

Crowdfunder Saves Second Life's Hangars Liquides from Imminent Extinction -- But Cyberpunk City's Long-Term Survival Still Not Assured

From left to right: Indiegogo donors Softparade Bing (China), Hangars creator Djehan Kidd, 5Sasha (Russia), Ruby Beta Sabaea (UK), Silverhaze Koenkamp (Japan), and Bixyl Shuftan (USA)

Good news: With just days left to go, Hangars Liquides, Second Life's masterpiece cyberpunk city -- scheduled to be dematerialized at the end of this month -- has been saved. An Indiegogo crowdfunder launched by its lead creator has raised over 50% of its target goal, enough to cover its immediate land tier expenses.

"I can send a wire transfer to Linden Lab on August 1st," Djehan Kidd tells me. "I'll keep fundraising until the final goal... It is a 'by the day' approach now, but this gives me more time to think about future funding methods in the medium term future."

Donors from around the world rallied to save Hangars Liquides, from across the European Union, Finland, Russia, China, Japan, Singapore, the United States, Costa Rica, and beyond. (Some of those donors depicted above.) "It is amazing," Djehan says. "They are amazing, I feel so grateful..."

However, this initial round will only keep Hangars Liquides operational for awhile:

Watch: Machinima Tribute to Hangars Liquides, the Masterpiece Cyberpunk City Still Set to Disappear from Second Life at the End of This Month

Recently created by "Inworld Films", this is one of the better machinima tributes to Second Life's legendary cyberpunk city Hangars Liquides, which is still set for dematerialization at the end of this month, capturing the scope and detail of this metropolis that was more or less hand-painted and hand-sculpted by artist Djehan Kidd. More than many other machinimas featuring Hangars, this one conveys not just the vast scope but also the self-consistent logic of an operating city. And also, Djehan's artistry -- not satisfied with just assembling a bunch of futuristic buildings together, she also brings to them a sense of dark irony and mordant wit. For example, look for the most famous line from the diary of Anne Frank, flickering outside a nightclub, giving those words a new, horrible context.

Speaking of Hangars Liquides' death date, an update:

Last Chance to Save Hangars Liquides: 15 Days Before Deletion, Creator of Second Life's Legendary Cyberpunk City Launches Indiegogo Crowdfunder

Djehan Kidd outside a Hangars Liquides apartment - available for a year with a $112 donation

Click here to consider helping save Hangars Liquides, Second Life's legendary cyberpunk city which is set to disappear at the end of this month. In a last gasp effort to preserve the metropolis, lead creator Djehan Kidd launched this Indiegogo campaign, which would cover the costs of the underlying sims for a year. Fittingly, the perks for donating are parts of Hangars Liquides to call your virtual home -- for a $112 donation (above), you get a Hangars Liquides apartment for a year; for $1,121 USD donation, you get a premium rooftop loft (below) which Ms. Kidd can customize for you by request.

Djehan Kidd is doing this crowdfunder because Linden Lab does not allow non-profit organizations like hers to rent out land -- which is what led to Hangars' imminent demise in the first place -- while donations are permitted. And there's no other way for her to save it in its existing form. As her crowdfunder explains:

William Gibson & Others Note, Celebrate, Mourn SL's Hangars Liquides

Here's the correct teleport link to visit and explore Hangars Liquides, Second Life's legendary cyberpunk city that's still set to close at the end of this month. Thanks to a retweet of my story by William Gibson, this viral Reddit thread, and massive social media shares by Second Life users past and present, the city has been inundated by visitors. However, my post originally included a teleport to a store in Hangars, and not the official landing spot. (Shopkeeper Beev Fallen helpfully added the proper teleport to his showroom.) 

The original post also includes some lovely tributes to Hangars and its lead creator,  Djehan Kidd: