New World Notes

Educator: Second Life as a Teaching Tool Would Never Work on "Woke" College Campuses of Today (Comment of the Week)

Pictured: Gorean roleplay, one of Second Life's most popular roleplay subcultures

There's a very interesting reader thread on the recent Electronic Gaming Monthly article on Second Life as told through its old guidebooks. including this thought from "Iggy", who some ten years go, when SL had hundreds of "virtual campuses" owned by real life colleges and universities (up to and including Harvard!) was once among the most passionate educators advocating for the use of Second Life as a teaching tool in colleges:

Second Life Community Moves to Sansar... and Then, To Roblox. Here's How They Compare

1867 is an interesting game experience on Roblox with an intriguing backstory. It started out as a Second Life-based community called Pfaffenthal 1867, associated with a real life museum in Luxembourg City. But as I wrote last year, community leader Hauptmann "Cyberpiper" Weyder moved it to Sansar. Yesterday (completely separate from the news of Sansar's recent woes), Cyberpiper posted an update in Comments to that old post, reflecting on his experience -- and his surprising new move:

I miss what we had in SL. But the problem lies in the rather volatile nature of the SL community. You do something new, nice, interesting, and folks will come. In order to keep it up though you have to put in a bug work load, mainly organizing one event after another. But despite our best efforts, traffic waned. Gosh we offered free housing to our 1867 community!! Rare in SL! The contract with the [RL] museum came to an end, and frankly we could not afford to pay 7000.-€ tier to LL a year out of our own pocket!

Sansar has been a disappointment. We managed to do a whole street eventually, but had to start over because of too much lag, trying to figure out ways of more efficient texturing or building. Also Sansar had promised mobile development, which was then taken off the roadmap, a big disappointment for us.  And... we all know it... no traffic in Sansar... for now...

So we have put Sansar development on the backburner, and decided to develop our own MMORPG, starting off by developing a ‘childrens version’ on ROBLOX.... check it out.

Yes, Roblox -- where it's getting way more visits than what it got in Sansar or possibly even Second Life: Nearly 3,500, since its launch last April. (Not a complete surprise, as Roblox has 100 million monthly users.)

"One thing to say is that we are not completely giving up on Sansar," Cyberpiper tells me now by e-mail. "We still like the philosophy behind it, and might continue building there at a later stage, when it is more developed."

Until then, here's how Cyberpiper compares Roblox's building tools and features, to Second Life's and Sansar's own:

Watch: A Halloween Visit to Cetatea Poenari, Home to an SL Vampire Family

Dark, foreboding, and full of shredding metal, here's Erik Mondrian making a fly through visit of  Cetatea Poenari, a devilishly detailed Second Life sim owned by a "family" of roleplaying vampires. From Erik's description/dedication:

Built by Vlad Drakul-Dragonash & Nazaire Dragonash and named after a ruined Romanian castle that was once occupied by the real-life Vlad III Dracula (also known as Vlad the Impaler), Cetatea Poenari defies description and seems to stretch far beyond the limits imposed by its virtual borders. From the Valley of Horses and Arefu Prison to The Slaughtered Lamb pub and Snagov Monastery—and with the magnificent castle itself keeping watch over all from above—this is a region with many different paths and hidden places for the curious traveler to find. Thanks again to Vlad, Nazaire, Rain, and the entire Drakul family for asking me to film here!

More on it here, and click here to visit in SL. A recent arts school graduate whose thesis was created in Second Life, Mondrian had some incisive thoughts on the social group based within this sim:

No, Virtual World Ageplay By Consenting Adults Is Not Legal (In Many Places)

There's been lots of heated reader discussion about last week's update on the lawsuit against Linden Lab, which alleges the company has not adequately prevented money laundering, sex abuse, and virtual world ageplay in Second Life. Some of these comments, unfortunately, contain a profound misunderstanding of of age play in particular that should be addressed -- for instance, this:

Is it pedophilia when two 45-year-old people using the SL system have pixel sex, and one has a mesh female adult body and the other a mesh child-like body? Is this pedophilia?

Is it pedophilia when two 45-year-old females using the SL system have pixel sex, and one has a mesh male adult body and the other a mesh female child-like body?

Legally speaking, the answer to both questions is yes -- in many countries around the world that are essential to Second Life's survival as a virtual world. To quote this analysis by lawyer Benjamin Duranske from 2007, when the age play controversy as reported by a German TV news story, utterly tarnished Second Life's brand forever:

Survey Results: Tepid Interest in Attending Second Life's 16th Birthday

Not a scientific survey by any stretch but still worth talking about: With 101 readers responding, about 54% say they have "Somewhat" or no interest at all in attending Second Life's official 16th Birthday celebration. Reasons for the relative disinterest? Judging from reader comments, the main reason brought up most often is lag. However, "Cormoran" also alleges a loss in shared culture:

Psychedelic Zebra Sex, Alien on a Stripper Pole: What's Your Strangest Second Life Experience?

Reddit's /SecondLife has a fun thread on "the Wildest/Weirdest Experience you've have on SL", including some that are just horrible and disturbing (i.e. racist roleplay) while others are refreshingly zany:

Long time ago I was in a sandbox and suddenly a lamp avatar started talking to a toaster avatar. It got a little NSFW. The light got turned on and the toaster ejected burnt toast all over the sim.

Well OK then! The thread inspired blogger Meri to go into further detail in a post, including the time a Linden staffer showed up as an alien (above) which danced on a nearby stripper pole.

All of which reminds me that I've never got around to telling my story of Psychedelic Zebra Sex:

SL Should Adopt VRChat's Avatar Rankings -- And SLers Should Be Less Like Barbie, More Like Elizabeth Warren (Comment of the Week #2)

Great conversation in this post praising VRChat's new avatar optimization rankings (from Excellent down to Very Poor, for avatars over 70,000 triangles) -- including this great comment from reader "Finni Graves", who agrees with reader "Cake" that Second Life should adopt these rankings:

I've invested a lot of my SL esteem in the whole crazy avatar adornment scene. Then one day, after trying to navigate a horrible shopping event, I've got to stop being so selfish and hogging so much resource. What's the point of looking good, if I don't feel good? These ridiculous mesh bodies, heads, hair. clothes, and accessories are literally sucking the life out of our SL. We must simplify ourselves because this whole hamster wheel isn't working.

Cake is right. All of us need to be graded harshly and it is our duty to ask ourselves, " do I really need this?". It's also the duty of content creators to make consumers aware of the optimization of their products and to guarantee it. They should have to be graded too, at least on Marketplace. 

Finni says SL's many fashion bloggers should advocate optimized avatars and stop promoting resource heavy avatars which degrade the performance for everyone around them. And then, notably, likens these reforms to the plans put forth by the US Presidential candidate who's leading the charge to reform the American economy by penalizing people whose greed hurts society and the environment:

Linden Lab Needs a Prominently Placed FAQ for Second Life Users (Comment of the Week #1)

My interview with a famed YouTuber turned Linden Lab staffer Strawberry Singh provoked some reader complaints that the company is not very responsive to SL user feedback. As reader "Mac" points out, there's an easy way to partly address that problem:

People need context to understand. Just as important, however, this context needs to be accessible and available.

My suggestion: Have Linden Lab make a bullet point FAQ list. '20 Top Misunderstandings Explained' -- something like that. Put this list up on the Forums and PIN IT, so it stays up there and people are forced to see it. Pinning it will also help with (formerly answered) questions that keep coming up, such as "Why won't LL tell us the exact time when they're going to do big maintenance?" [Linden Lab community forum staffer] Grumpity (I think), has answered that several times, but without a pinned answer, her attempts have vanished into the ether. Add to, and update, this list when necessary.

One great thing about having a prominent FAQ is it encourages oldtimers to point to it, when noobies ask a basic question. It's why RTFFAQ is a commonly used acronym. And as Mac continues, it helps convey more transparency:

Petition Against L$ Processing Fee Increase Slows, Draws Some Skepticism

The signatures to this online petition protesting Linden Lab's plan to increase the cost of processing Linden Dollars in Second Life recently passed over 2500 total total, but the numbers of new signees is noticeably slowing (most signed signed within the first couple days). Given that there's roughly 100,000 highly active Second Life users, it's likely that the vast majority don't have much incentive to sign on.

Also, since the petition went up, I've seen quite a number of skeptical comments from other SLers who have misgivings with the petition itself. For instance, it mentions (in a message to Linden Lab) "[S]hould you agree to have a direct conversation with representatives for those who have signed this petition, we will work with you to choose those delegates." But that brings up a potential problem:

Inside the Avatar-Based Transgender Community of Second Life

ECLIPSE magazine has a fascinating and beautifully illustrated feature on the transgender community in Second Life. Perceptively written by NWN contributor Cajsa Lilliehook, who interviewed six transgender SL users, it connects their struggles in the virtual world with the real life activism of the LGBTQ community, and the tension they sometimes encounter with the SL community at large -- for instance, by resisting the traditional concept (and accusation) of "catfishing":

“SL allows us to be seen as the men or women we are inside," as one member explains to Cajsa. "Because of this, I feel this is not catfishing and is incredibly different than people who 'role play' a different gender. My interactions with anyone in SL, whether a romantic interest or friend, are much more genuine and real than how I interact with most people in RL because everyone in SL knows me as Tiffany... not the person I was born as."

Read it all here. Also read: "Second Life's Strength Is Its Power To Transform Identity -- And The "Weirdos" Who Embrace It".