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The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

June 21, 2010 by Leave a Comment

1. Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) – Log on for a dose of reality. “Fifteen years ago, or thereabouts, my then employer sent me to a conference on “business communications”. It was a largely forgettable and dreary two-day event, the high point of which, I seem to recall, was the muffins at morning and afternoon tea. Baked goods aside, the only thing I remember with any clarity was part of a presentation by a chap from, of all places, the NRMA. Mr NRMA recommended some rules we should adopt at work when using this newfangled email thing. Bear in mind that this was in the dim pre-history of the web. Tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube were barely a gleam in the eyes of a few hardcore geeks.Most of us were still grappling with the ground rules of how we should behave towards each other online.”

2. Stuff.co.nz (New Zealand) – Big brother watches in this virtual world. “RICK Earl is a virtual world sheriff. The 34-year-old Aucklander is executive producer and director of Customer Support for SmallWorlds, a Kiwi-created international virtual community with more than 350,000 active users every month. Earl is largely responsible for writing the rulebook on SmallWorlds’ crime and deciding the consequences for breaking it. He deals with everything from swearing to attempted grooming for under-age sex. In the R13 SmallWorlds, users can create up to five avatars [on-line alter egos] to interact with each other and trade virtual property. Virtual users’ representations are often idealised versions of themselves, and are free to engage in activities often beyond users’ abilities in real life. Earl said SmallWorlds, which has been designed with age 13+ players in mind, is cartoon-like with no nudity and it filters swearwords automatically.”

3. Inside Social Games (USA) – World Cup Goods Fill Facebook’s Virtual Stores. “The sale of virtual goods has always been a primary monetization method for social games, and with the world’s most popular sport, soccer, already in the heat of the 2010 World Cup, you can bet that a number of social developers are taking advantage. We’ve already tracked a number of recently-released soccer apps, so below we’re taking a closer look at what non-sports games are doing in recognition of what is, arguably, the world’s largest sporting event.”

4. VentureBeat (USA) – Which startups will bridge the physical and virtual worlds? “In our pockets sits unprecedented processing power, in the form of smartphones that are morphing into superphones. And they’re on the verge of having next-level software that can provide us with deeper immersion and more interactive experiences. As networks improve, we’ll roam the world virtually, seeking relevant information regardless of time and place. Still, there is a gap between the physical world and the digital experience of it. The question: How do we cross it?”

5. ZDNet Asia (Singapore) – S’pore tech shines at CommunicAsia 2010. “Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star) showcases some of its market-ready technologies at the trade show. The exhibition is organized by two of its arms–Institute for Infocomm Research which focuses on research and development and commercialization wing Exploit Technologies. In what looks like a CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) setup, A*Star shows off its digital forensic evidence and file recovery technology. A spokersperson explained that the files are stored in fragmentation on the hard disk, and contrary to popular belief, files do not disappear when deleted but become shreds of unrelated memory. Contrasted with “state-of-the-art”, commercially-available technology seen on the right, which is only able to recover two-thirds of a deleted image, A*STAR’s technology is able to completely recover a deleted file. A*Star achieves this through its “patent-pending technology” using a novel algorithm with more complex scenarios, she said.”

6. BusinessLine (India) – World’s becoming more ‘playful’. “What do video games do? They amplify particular human tendencies — our innate hunger for learning, our delight in solving problems and challenges, our sociability and rivalries, our pleasure in escaping the uncertainties of the world for more predictable rewards — says Tom Chatfield in Fun Inc. (www.landmarkonthenet.com). He adds that, additionally, ‘games as interactive systems increasingly connect to the ways in which we work, communicate, plan and express ourselves in a digital age, a process that is making the world more playful, and where the business of play is becoming ever broader and more profitable.’ Over the next half-century, in the author’s view, video games are going to become as much a part of everyone’s daily experience as television, radio, automobiles, refrigerators, type and the written word. Another certainty that he sees in video games is money, lots of it!”

7. San Diego Business Journal (USA) – In a Galaxy Far, Far Away … “While console games such as those played on a Sony PlayStation or Microsoft’s X Box still dominate the video gaming industry, a shift is under way that will result in a much larger amount of revenue coming from online games such as a new one now in beta testing at San Diego’s Sony Online Entertainment. “Star Wars: The Clone Wars Adventures” hasn’t been released yet, but when it is sometime in the fall, the game is expected to garner a lot of attention, not only from a target group of young boys from ages 6 to 14, but from their parents, who grew up with characters such as Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi. “We want to make this game a destination where kids can play with their parents,” says Taina Rodriguez, spokeswoman for SOE, which makes its headquarters in Sorrento Valley with some 500 employees locally. To ensure that the Star Wars game has the highest level of authenticity, the folks at SOE worked closely with LucasArts, the video game division of Lucasfilm, which created the blockbuster movie that is still generating revenue for the company.”

8. VentureBeat (USA) – Rixty, Coinstar turn spare change into virtual goods. “Rixty has a system that lets kids and other gamers turn in their coins at stores and then get credits that they can spend in online games. Today, the company says that more than 50 companies have signed up to integrate its alternative payment method into games. With Rixty, you can break that piggybank and take your coins or cash to 20,000 locations such as Coinstar coin-counting machines in grocery stores. The machines count your coins and give youcredit (via a 16-digit pin code) to spend on games. So far, Rixty’s users are spending an average of $30 a month on games. The users spend about $28 a month for games on Facebook.”

9. Tekrati (USA) – Immersive Tech Experts at ThinkBalm End Research Operations. “Erica Driver has announced that she will depart ThinkBalm next month, citing slower than expected enterprise adoption of immersive technologies. While partner Sam Driver will continue consulting with clients on immersive technologies, the firm will discontinue industry research operations and disband the ThinkBalm Innovation Community. Ms. Driver will join QlikView in July as senior director of Global Partner Marketing. ThinkBalm has been dedicated to enterprise adoption of immersive technologies — including virtual worlds, immersive learning environments, and virtual event platforms — since its founding. The small firm has racked up an impressive list of accomplishments during its two-year run: a blue ribbon client list, valuable research available free of charge, and a vibrant community of innovators. ”

10. The Ledger (USA) –Merely Human? That’s So Yesterday. “ON a Tuesday evening this spring, Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, became part man and part machine. About 40 people, all gathered here at a NASA campus for a nine-day, $15,000 course at Singularity University, saw it happen. While the flesh-and-blood version of Mr. Brin sat miles away at a computer capable of remotely steering a robot, the gizmo rolling around here consisted of a printer-size base with wheels attached to a boxy, head-height screen glowing with an image of Mr. Brin’s face. The BrinBot obeyed its human commander and sputtered around from group to group, talking to attendees about Google and other topics via a videoconferencing system. The BrinBot was hardly something out of “Star Trek.” It had a rudimentary, no-frills design and was a hodgepodge of loosely integrated technologies. Yet it also smacked of a future that the Singularity University founders hold dear and often discuss with a techno-utopian bravado: the arrival of the Singularity — a time, possibly just a couple decades from now, when a superior intelligence will dominate and life will take on an altered form that we can’t predict or comprehend in our current, limited state.”

Filed Under: General News, Virtual Worlds, Virtual worlds in the media Tagged With:

Weekend Whimsy

June 20, 2010 by Leave a Comment

1. Second Life 10 – Role Playin Girl

2. SECOND LIFE | Candidates to Miss Virtual Poland

3. Horror’s Night in Second Life

Filed Under: User-generated, Virtual Worlds Tagged With:

Going mainstream means letting in the weirdos

June 18, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Second Life’s generally considered to be a bit of a weird place. A lot of virtual environments are. They go through two phases of weirdness.

The first phase covers the first few waves of users. They’re considered weird because they’re doing something that isn’t usual: using a virtual environment at all, or using one that isn’t particularly well-known.

The second phase is when mainstream users start to trickle or flood in (and depending on the press that the environment has had, that can take place pretty close to launch). That’s when people start really doing weird things with it. Because landing the much-vaunted mainstream audience means nothing less than letting in all the weirdos.

Prior to that, you generally have people experimenting with the platform and the technology, seeing how it fits, where the money is, evaluating it for business, leisure, training, education, or just creating to suit themselves.

There’s typically no organized cadres involved, these are folks who are checking out the ground floor and determining if it is worth getting in on it for a long haul.

Generally, they’re smart, sane, sober, sensible, foresighted and farsighted people. You know, not really what’s considered normal.

Even so, playing the percentages, you’ll find a very small number of griefers, louts, firebrands and locos among them. It’s hardly a large number. Prior to maturity many virtual environments require a good deal of work, and that keeps a lot of the bad elements away.

Later, though. Well, let me tell you a story.

So, there’s an event on, and one of the attendees (appearing as Captain America) sexually harasses one of the venue staff. An abuse report takes place, and governance comes to take care of it. Unfortunately, they’re faced with so many Captain Americas at the venue that there is a little bit of difficulty identifying the culprit.

Only in Second Life, right?

Well, wrong.

A fellow by the name of Adamcik was at a bit of a shindig dressed as Captain America, but it’s okay, pretty much everyone was dressed up as something – though apparently Captain America figured very prominently. He had a burrito and a joint stuffed into his crotch.

He pestered women at the event to touch his burrito. Whether he made comedic humping motions with his hips at the time is a bit unclear. Apparently tiring of these japes, he allegedly groped a barmaid. While his behavior wasn’t exceptionally out of place at the event, he’d crossed a line.

The police were called in, but were faced with so many Captain Americas … well, the police report said “there were so many cartoon characters in the bar at the time, all Captain America’s[sic] were asked to go outside for a possible identification.” Adamcik apparently tried to evade identification by removing the burrito from his tights and concealing it in his boot. Nevertheless, he was hauled off to the lockup.

There, he attempted to flush the joint that had been concealed in his tights, but it was recovered by a police officer.

Adamcik was laid with charges of battery, disorderly conduct, drug possession and trying to destroy evidence.

Some college hijinx was it? No. Adamcik is a 54 year old family physician and the whole event was an American Medical Association shindig out in the physical world.

Yep, that’s right. Adamcik is one of those “normal mainstream people”.

Hey, mainstream dudes? You’ve lost any moral high-ground to call us virtual-environment users ‘weird’. Seriously.

This sort of thing isn’t an isolated incident. This sort of human behavior (and quite a bit that makes this look unexceptional) happens in virtually every human community on earth, every day.

That’s the mainstream. Get a few hours of XBox Live voice communications some time, but have a suicide hotline on your speed-dial first.

Even if the percentage of weirdos in phase one and phase two users remains constant, essentially opening your doors to the mainstream means opening your doors to the weirdos, the locos, the louts, the griefers, conspiracy theorists and every other kind of oddball our modern society spawns.

Come one, come all.

Also, as Linden Lab has noted on a number of occasions and most corporate IT staff will tell you, the average mainstream computer user finds the download and installation of software to be an obstacle, and sometimes an insurmountable one (unless, inexplicably, it’s some 3D screen-saver that installs malware onto computer networks).

Are those really the sort of people who are going to get a major benefit from a virtual environment and a digital economy? Maybe, but per-user they’re going to be incredibly costly to support, and that cost multiplies as their numbers increase.

If you really want to try to court the mainstream markets, you need to be prepared, and you need to give up caring whether people think your virtual environments are weird or sad or filled with folks living in their parents’ basements. That’s the mainstream, and if you want that, you go big or go home.

Filed Under: General News, Op-ed, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: , ,

Linden Dollars: where’s the panic?

June 17, 2010 by 2 Comments

I have to say I was a little bemused at the announcement by Linden Lab of their faith in the strength of the Linden dollar, after a selling run over the past 24-48 hours. On checking the current rate, it shows a 10.4 million Linden exchange throughput with the exchange rate deteriorating to 307.9 Lindens per US dollar at its worst but now bouncing back to 288 at time of writing.

Based on a rough benchmark of 285 or so (which is around half-way between today’s low and average highs over recent months), that’s a less than 10% decline. Sure the volume is up, but did it require a full expression of confidence? Like any such expression, it can cause concern rather than provide reassurance. It also arguably shows a lack of confidence in the cohort of veteran Second Life residents who are on the whole likely to sit through any short-term fluctuations like this.

I had a brief chat to Tateru Nino this afternoon and she made the great point that supply of Linden Dollars on the exchange does tend to rise when there’s a decline of faith in Linden Lab – it’s not a lack of faith in the currency itself. This has been acknowledged to some extent in Linden Lab’s announcement, but perhaps a better tack might have been to provide some more transparency around its recent changes. There’s also another angle that could have been taken: that any fluctuation in the exchange rate can bring benefits as well as challenges. If any government expressed confidence in its currency every time it fluctuated 5-10%, there’d potentially be a lot more fluctuations.

Expressing faith in any currency can set alarm bells ringing, so here’s hoping for some more information in coming days to show that faith as justified. For mine, I did log in to look at buying some Linden Dollars if the decline had been significant. That’s the type of reaction that you’d expect from a Second Life resident with a longer-term view, who’s also happy to make a buck 😉

Filed Under: Business, General News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: , ,

Merged realities – events and issues for virtual worlds

June 17, 2010 by Leave a Comment

1. The USA’s National Space Society had their machinima awards ceremony last weekend, in conjunction with the University of Western Australia. There’s some superb machinima featured – you can view them all here.

Also, don’t forget to check out the May winners of the UWA’s 3D Art competition, or go have a look yourself in-world. The scope and quality of the work on the UWA sim never ceases to amaze me – it would now have to be one of the largest virtual world art repositories.

2. Mandy Salomon has a good piece on the troughs and crests of virtual worlds adoption by business and government.

3. Koinup have announced they have an app for the iPhone / iPad under development called Metaverse Wallpapers.

4. Speaking of iPhone / iPad apps: we’ve added some more feeds to our Metaverse Reader app, including the Second Life Grid Status feed. If you use the app and have a feed you’d like to see added – drop us a line.

5. One of those new-fangled web-based virtual worlds, Habbo Hotel, has just turned 10.

Filed Under: Events, General News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: , , , ,

Second Lie: small business, good sex and humour in SL

June 15, 2010 by 3 Comments

It’s been a while, but it’s time for the latest segment with our resident agony aunt, Second Lie. It’s all about sharing insights, finding common ground and a healthy dose of cynicism.

Remember, if you want to get your own slice of wisdom, you just need to contact us and we’ll forward your question on. Pretty much any issue is up for discussion, as long as it’s legal and potentially interesting.

It’s a win-win-win scenario: you get enlightened, Second Lie gets to spread his love and magic and we get to fork out money to Relay for Life. Does it get any better than that?

=====

Three questions for Second Lie:

Q1: Henrietta: I run a fairly successful small business in SL and I get approached by virtual world developer people and the odd ‘social media consultant’ via Twitter. How do I work out how knows what they are talking about?

Q2. NotStroker: “What do you see as the next natural evolution of good sex in Second Life?”

Q3. Anonymous: “Who do you find funny in SL? There seems to be a lot of try-hards but I’d love some help in finding those who are truly funny and who maybe perform in SL or have a group I can join. Any ideas?”

First off, it’s great to be writing again for the Metaverse Journal. Despite my log absence, they’ve been keeping their fingers squarely on the pulse of virtual worlds development.

(I’m not sure where on virtual worlds they’re getting such a strong pulse, but I’d insist on asking them to wash their hands before shaking hands with them, okay?)

I’ve got to ask Henrietta about this whole “successful business” thing in SL. I thought we got rid of all those years ago. There’s still some out there?

Man, do we need to change our policies again to make sure that everyone fails equally in SL. Can’t have winners and losers wrecking the curve.

The reason why you’re approached by odd social media types is because that’s the only type of social media consultant out there: odd. They never could quite fit in with the rest of their business school mates or selling-knives-door-to-door classes, so they ended up dorking around with Twitter and Facebook and MySpace on their mother’s phones to the point that they actually thought they were experts in this stuff.

None of them know what they’re talking about, or they’d be doing business in Real Life with social media, not cruising around the shallow end of the pool, bothering successful avatars like yourself.

My advice to you is to avoid them on Twitter and stick to your old pal SecondLie. I’ll shoot it to you straight, and at a price you can’t beat!

NotStroker, on the other hand, makes an assumption that many people do: that there’s good sex at all in Second Life.

When I last checked, the only thing Second Life brings to the table is a digital replacement for the nudie magazines under your dad’s mattress.

It doesn’t matter if it’s plain guy-on-chick animated poseballs or a wild dance-orgy with Linden alts at P-Squared after midnight: it’s still you, your hand down your pants, and the overwhelming clouds of loneliness and failure circling overhead.

Know what the next natural evolution is? Getting away from all this weird perverted stuff and trying for something that’s actually natural.

You know, an actual DATE. With SOMEONE REAL.

Feel free to rejoin the human race when you’re ready. We’ve got plenty of room available, and our standards are horribly, horribly low.

Heck, there isn’t even a dress code to get into this club.

Finally, I get asked who I find funny in SL.

Every. One. Of. You.

Especially those of you who take all this stuff so seriously. Or believe all the crazy mindjunk that M Linden pours out in the trough for you to slurp up every time he rings that bell.

Yeah, I know you’re roleplaying all those weird and twisted roles and such, but it’s just so damn funny and silly to watch you bumbling around thinking this all matters on some level.

It doesn’t. It’s just one big Renaissance festival with cheap plywood booths selling overpriced handcrafted trinkets by people with bad fake British accents.

Just hand me my turkey leg, pass me a beer, and keep this ballet of the brain-damaged going.

It’s showtime.

Well, that’s all the letters I have for now. I suspect that the mailman is keeping the rest of them for himself when he’s not banging my wife.

I wish he’d stop that. It’s a federal offense not to deliver the mail, you know.

Filed Under: General News, Humour / Satire, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

June 14, 2010 by Leave a Comment

1. Wall Street Journal (USA) – Second Life Creator Linden Lab Downsizes, Morphs. “Despite some perceptions to the contrary, backers of the virtual community called Second Life say it is growing and healthy. But substantial changes are afoot. Linden Lab, a San Francisco company that was founded in 1999 and launched Second Life in 2003, said this week it will cut 30% of its 300-employee staff as part of a restructuring to more tightly focus on its core business–consumers selling virtual goods to each other–and strengthen its profitability. Among other things, the company plans to close a software development office in Singapore and reduce its customer-support staff, expecting to outsource some of the latter operations, said Mark Kingdon, who succeeded founder Philip Rosedale as Linden Lab’s chief executive two years ago.”

2. ExecutiveGov (USA) – Virtual Worlds Project Helps Service Members Combat Deloyment Issues. “The National Center for Telehealth and Technology will launch a new virtual worlds project for service members who struggle with deployment or psychological healthcare issues related to deployment. During a June 3 DotMilDocs interview on Pentagon Web Radio, Dr. Kevin M. Holloway, a T2 clinical psychologist and the project lead for the Virtual Worlds project, explained how the web-based project uses a 3-D computer-generated environment to help improve psychological services and care.”

3. The Economist (UK) – From Gollum to “Avatar”. “During the ten years leading up to the release of “The Wizard of Oz” in 1939, the world of cinema underwent a dramatic transformation. Films that had been silent and colourless suddenly gained vibrant hues, sound effects and speech. Indeed, “I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore” was as much a commentary on the state of the film industry at the time as it was about being dropped into a magical world by a tornado. Colour and sound led to huge changes for actors and designers alike. The over-expressive acting techniques demanded by silent films were dropped, and designers scrambled to work with colour materials. Hollywood really did enter a new world. Since then imagination and technology have pushed the boundaries of film ever farther. In modern disaster movies, New York is routinely destroyed, in vivid detail. Actors fit seamlessly into computer-generated landscapes depicting this and other worlds. Gone are the dodgy models, unconvincing scenery and painted backdrops of days gone by. But the ability to create convincing computer-generated or “virtual” characters has not kept pace. Historically, such characters have been depicted using animation or puppets—think of the animated monsters in “Clash of the Titans” (1981), or the puppet Yoda in “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980). More recently, however, computer animation has extended the possibilities.”

4. news.com.au (Australia) – Fears rise over kids hooked on gaming and virtual worlds. “School children are becoming dangerously hooked on computer games, with one being offered live-in treatment at adolescent psychiatric facilities to wean him off his addiction. The first teenager admitted to hospital partly due to computer addiction was living full-time at Sydney’s Rivendell Adolescent Unit at Concord, receiving therapy and doing schoolwork. But psychiatrists said they were receiving a flood of calls from distressed families seeking help for children who had fallen victim to the condition known as “pathological internet use”. Mental health professionals said schools were reporting students falling asleep in class after marathon online sessions playing highly addictive games such as World Of Warcraft.”

5. BizReport (USA) – Pente Group, PlaySpan partner for virtual currency hub. “Called UltimatePay, the platform allows merchants and brands monthly metrics and reports to stay up to date with their consumer base. Consumers, meanwhile, have a single solution to pay for virtual goods and services rather than using private credit card information within a host of sub-sites.
PlaySpan is developing the hub, which will be used in coordination with Pente Group’s stable of brands and businesses as the full service payment solution which can be used by consumers around the world. The solution allows consumers to pay for virtual goods, games and other tools via credit card, PayPal, mobile provider and other internationally recognized options; it will embed into the Pente Group application so that merchants don’t have to worry about upkeep.”

6. Forbes (USA) – Top Moneymaking Online Games Of 2009. “In the Forbes article “The Next FarmVille” on Thursday, we take a look at the biggest online games worldwide among massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) like “World of Warcraft,” virtual worlds and social games, ranking them by total revenue in 2009. The figures we arrived at were based on estimates by video game research firm DFC Intelligence, and public information from companies’ filings. Unsurprisingly, Blizzard Entertainment’s “World of Warcraft” continued its unmatched success, raking in more than $1 billion in revenue last year. But what is interesting is who dominated the rest of the list — virtually all titles from China and Korea.”

7. Reuters (USA) – Gameworld: Games are going 3D in wake of Hollywood’s success. “With 3D movies boosting both audience experiences and box office coffers, videogame publishers are following Hollywood’s lead and developing 3D games to immerse players more into virtual worlds. Game makers like Sony Computer Entertainment, Nintendo, Electronic Arts, Capcom, Take-Two Interactive, and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment will unveil stereoscopic 3D video games at the E3 Expo in Los Angeles next week where over 45,000 game industry professionals check out the big titles of the next year. “Gamers are the early adopters and once they experience games in 3D, they’re not going to want to go back,” said Oscar-winning producer Jon Landau, who worked with Ubisoft last year to release the first 3D console video game, “James Cameron’s Avatar.”

8. Nextgov (USA) – With possibility of no funding, Defense still moves on PTSD online project. “The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency plans to hold a conference on Friday to inform industry about a project that would create virtual worlds, social media sites and telehealth services to help treat troops suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and brain injuries — even though Congress killed funding for it earlier this year. DARPA officials said it will develop its ambitious Healing Heroes project using guidance by a board of advisers drawn from the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments, particularly the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury. In April, Army Brig. Gen. Loree Sutton, director of the center, described the project as a new way for troops suffering from PTSD and traumatic brain injuries, their families and communities to communicate and connect in a way that “transcends time and space.”

9. it World (Canada) – Vancouver grads build game with government data. “A group of Vancouver grad students are believed to be the first to use open government data for game development with TaxiCity, a Web-based driving game. TaxiCity lets players take on the role of a taxi driver, pick up passengers and deliver them to landmark destinations in downtown Vancouver, said Dashan Yue, a graduate student at the Center for Digital Media at the Great Northern Way Campus in Vancouver. Yue co-developed TaxiCity with six other students. The game was created in three months using Microsoft Corp.’s Silverlight development platform, Bing Maps and the City of Vancouver’s Open Data Catalogue, he said. The students used multiple data sets from Vancouver’s open data catalogue to generate the maps in TaxiCity, such as block outlines, parks, building shapes and the centre midline strokes on streets, he said.”

10. Los Angeles Times (USA) – Second Life’s thriving music scene. “”If I could get some bubbles, I’d be forever indebted,” singer Craig Lyons tells the packed house at his Monday night gig. The crowd promptly complies, filling the room with bubbles while Lyons plays his tune “Under Water.” Two nights earlier, the audience made it snow as he strummed the chords to his song “Winter.” Strangely enough, the Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter has come to expect this type of supernatural behavior at his shows, which take place several times a week in Second Life, the virtual online world that allows users to interact with one another as avatars.”

Filed Under: General News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With:

Weekend Whimsy

June 12, 2010 by Leave a Comment

1. Star Trek TMP Enterprise Second life

2. Second Life of Furry Guru – Hardstyle Bunnies

3. Flight over Seagull – Second Life machinima

Filed Under: User-generated, Virtual Worlds Tagged With:

Linden Lab announce Viewer 2.1: voice morphing now available

June 11, 2010 by 6 Comments

First – some cynicism on what is otherwise a noteworthy announcement. It’s hard to imagine that it’s spontaneity that led to a fairly significant viewer upgrade a day after laying off 30% of its staff. It’s a move that will be seen through by a lot of Second Life residents for what it is: a carefully planned PR exercise to take the focus off the cutbacks whilst emphasising it’s ‘business as usual’.

On to the detail: aside from a bunch of bug fixes, the flagship for 2.1 beta, is the availability of voice morphing. For an extra fee of L$750 per month you can buy a pack of five voice morphs, with five different packs available. It’s a feature that will go down a treat with a lot of Second Life users and a lot will pay for the privilege – though the Lab obviously forecasted the revenue wouldn’t be enough to cover their wages and salaries bill as it existed a week ago.

You can download the alpha version now. Of course, I’m not sure how you have a 2.1 betaalpha before a 2.01 release version is on the horizon, but maybe that’s just me. I did try checking out Voice Island but was just given an error – either because it’s full or because I tried accessing it from an older Viewer version.

Filed Under: General News, Op-ed, Software updates, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

Linden Lab announce plans for layoff-funded Second Life in-browser

June 10, 2010 by 3 Comments

Linden Lab have now formalised the announcement on staff cuts – not that there’s any detail and plenty of corporate-speak. The whole claim that layoffs improves company focus is tenuous at best, and borders on insulting to those departing. The press release states:

Today’s announcement about our reorganization will help us make Second Life® even simpler, more enjoyable, relevant and engaging.

So does this mean that those employees laid off were making SL complex, frustrating, irrelevant and non-engaging? A lot of those words can apply to the Second Life experience at times – but in the context of this announcement it’s pretty much fluff.

The real reason is cited as well: strengthening profitability to invest in a browser-based SL viewer. That’s a significant (and overdue) announcement on its own – and given the stasis in the userbase and the US financial situation it’s understandable cost cuts need to fund part of that. The issue for me is that tying the old user experience to the departure of any staff caught up in the restructure, looks plain tacky.

What say you? Are you surprised by the way this has been done or is it a business-as-usual approach by Linden Lab to issues like this?

Filed Under: General News, Op-ed, Virtual Worlds Tagged With:

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