Recently the New York Times did a fascinating article on new mediums of art on the web that included Second Life. Most of us have known for some time that Second Life is a great medium for art, and it is nice to see some outside recognition of that fact.

I thought I’d take you to three places that exemplify the idea of a “medium of art”, specifically all three of these builds are what I would call “pure environments” in that they take a 256×256 meter space and build a space that invokes a feeling and can be appreciated like a painting would. These spaces are not subdivided into different environments, nor are there stores or rentals to fund them. They simply exist. They are great places to explore or take cool screenshots.

All three are kind of famous, and regular SL explorers may already be familiar with them. But I have never mentioned any of these here before, so hopefully there will be some new visitors.

The first pictured above is called Euphoria Realm on the REZ server and it is a very simple build by Yuki Aabye. A railroad track runs through a flooded valley. There is an abandoned flooded house in the water, and above ground there is a bus stop with a fire built in a barrell and two broken TVs. Looks like the former resident of the house had to find shelter elsewhere.

Next stop is The Refuge in Wales Springs. Built by AM Radio, he was one of the artists featured in the above mentioned NYT article. He has become famous for some of his creative builds. This build is reminiscent of a midwestern farming community circa 1948, and covers two servers. The unique dusty yellow sky is courtesy of  painted megaprims. You’ll find lots of creative details throughout.

Finally, I visited a dark and rainy swamp called Crucible by Cuwynne Deerhunter. It seems to rain here all the time. Lots of plants and animals (watch out for the piranah).

Well that does it for this tour. I need to get out of these wet clothes and take a warm bath.

Virtual Society 3D art, exploring, Media, secondlife, surreal

The Kaaos Effect is a cool in world time travel adventure game built in Second Life. The starting point is here, there is a players guide here, and a way to track players progress here.

Back in the early beta days of There, the company hired a story writer to create weekly “quests” consisting of 10 message bottle clues telling a story as a whole with each message giving a clue to the whereabouts of the next clue. They were a lot of fun and were one of the earliest really good game within a game concepts in 3D virtual worlds, I must have played a couple of dozen of them.

The Kaaos Effect is a logical evolution to those early quests. Designed by SL resident Kiana Writer, it consists of 10 cool “rooms” representing 10 time periods. Each room has a puzzle to solve and a “bonus” to find. Solving the puzzle gets you to the next room. Each room is also themed around some mode of communication (the game being sponsored by a French telecom)

At the starting position, enter the weird dome and click on the wrist band object. It will give you a folder. Open your inventory, and click on the “recent items” tab. Wear the HUD and matching wristband. You will need both to play.

Your “recent items” inventory is very useful while playing, there is a lot of objects you pick up along the way that you wear to use. You will also pick up a lot of pictures along the way which you will have to view for clues. Also extremely useful is CTRL-ALT-Left Mouse Click, which aims your view toward whatever object you click on. If you are new to Second Life, and don’t know this trick yet, learn it!

There is no linear progression, each player has a random path that they take. The game can be played by up to 20 players at a time, but it is a solo game, so you can’t play with a friend. Because the order you get is random, the levels do not get progressively harder, and there is no boss fight at the end or anything, winning gets you a free SL T-Shirt.

Some of the puzzles are harder than others though. There is a “darkroom” puzzle I found fun and easy since once upon a time I was into photography with actual 35mm film, even worked in a lab, so I picked up on what to do after only reading the first few instructions. But I can see it being frustrating for others.

My hardest challenge was the lost typewriter keys puzzle, it took me forever to find the stupid L key (its behind the left rear leg of the chair). On another I had to write down which Chinese stamps go with which word, since I don’t read Chinese.

Overall this is a very fun game, I loved each environment and the variety of puzzles to solve. The biggest problem with the game is that if you get stuck on a puzzle, you are stuck. The web based hints are either broken or non-existent (I’m guessing the latter) but I did finally complete it in about two hours, only failing to get some of the bonuses.

Try and see if you can do better than me.

Media, Virtual Society adventuregame, event, secondlife

Second Life is falling off the mainstream radar, ironically Linden Labs is making a potentially hazardous move to try to become more mainstream. I have to ask: Is the party over in SL?

SL’s Declining coverage

I am noticing a major shift in the attention that Second Life has been getting lately. Mainly it is getting a lot less of it.  I have an RSS aggregator dedicated to SL which pulls stories from the biggest and best SL outlets I can find.

I used to feature Reuters, they dropped covering SL. Same with Wired. Electric Sheep Company seems to be pulling out of SL and blogging less. I yanked them all.

Of the ones that are left, they are still covering SL, but at a reduced rate. Former Second Life Herald, now Alphaville Herald (thanks to trademark enforcement) is shifting to Metaplace and other VW coverage. Massively, a site dedicated to all online gaming that bought up SLNN for more SL coverage, still has the occasional SL story, but only when there is some interesting development. They no longer seek out the stories themselves. Of the other blogs I list, only New World Notes continues to blog regularly. To keep the aggregator busy I added Koinup popular places and the Second Life Bloggers group at ning.com.

Mainstream press in general no longer seems that much interested. Part of me suspects that when SL was being judged by the number of accounts, the tens of millions generated some interest. Now that the “active” account number seems to hover around 500,000 and hasn’t grown much in nearly two years, its considered old news.

A couple of years ago the announcement to section off a continent for “adult content” would have gotten a few mentions in the mainstream press. Today nary a blip. The last SL story to get mainstream press coverage was last November’s headline of a real world divorce over the husbands SL “cybering” with another player. It was a strange human interest story, but that kind of thing happens a lot more often than you think. That story reinforced SL’s reputation as a “cyber sex” haven. The recent “adult content” announcement was an attempt to lessen that reputation.

“Adult Content” Continent

As  I have said before, the age verification is a game changer. There has been quite a confusing discussion about what exactly counts as “adult content” and many players are upset that Linden Labs is engaging in censorship.

What LL is proposing is a new mainland continent where adult content will be allowed reachable only by acconts that have been age verified or that have used a credit card for billing. The general consensus is this will be a “ghetto” continent, which could eventually be closed completely if LL decides it is necessary.

Personally I have a suspicion that this may backfire completely on every level. First of all, you are going to lose some of the 500,000 active players who no longer want to have anything to do with SL, best case is that they are replaced with new active players not looking for adult content.

But from my perspective, there are unforeseen benefits to this island. Adding verification for admittance means there will be no “kids” on this island, no “alts” or “alt griefing”, the vast majority of people allowed will be paying customers with lindens to spend, few “noobs”, few free accounts = no lag due to “camping”, and no one complaining about the content there, because everyone goes in knowing what to expect.

No doubt the immediate focus of this continent will be on the adult content, but these other ancillary benefits may actually drive more really active players there, possibly making the adult continent more popular than any other continent, possibly making the rest of SL the “ghetto”. A recent NWN post agrees with my assessment.

If Linden Labs sets the adult content bar real low (like no nudity) and strictly enforce it, this will almost certainly be the outcome. If this does occur SL’s reputation may continue to sour. New players will find new obstacles to the “good content”, ultimately driving a wedge into the community as a whole.

On the other hand, If they set the bar real high (like no XXX porn anything less is OK) and don’t enforce it much, it will change SL not at all and then LL can tell anyone interested that they are doing “something” about it without really doing anything.  The new adult only continent really will become a “ghetto” no one wants to go to.  Unfortunately, lax enforcement will lead to more player complaints ultimately driving a wedge into the community as a whole anyways.

Either way the community loses. Linden Labs has put themselves in a tough position that will affect every player one way or another.

Based on interviews at NWN and reports from the SL forums, there is lots of contradictory info coming out of LL’s offices. If they hope to have these policies in place by the end of summer, they got a lot of work ahead.

A divided community is an unhappy community, opening the door to the next cool thing taking away LL’s business. The party in SL will truly be over, moved to another venue.

Metaverse News, Virtual Society philosophy, secondlife, virtual sex, Virtual Society

Last year I mentioned the Dublin build at least 3 times, including listing it as a top 10 of 2008. With St. Patrick’s Day coming up, I thought I’d see what other Irish builds I could find.

Traditional Irish spirit is alive and well in West of Ireland, a series of themed shopping, museums and pubs over a group of regions run by an Irish non-profit charity Project Children. If you are looking to get into the St. Patty’s day spirit, this place should be on your list. They are hosting a bunch of live music events all month, details on their web page.

Recently going through blogs I found this article about SL in a Belfast news site. It made mention of a Belfast build a group of players built, but unfortunately the article did not leave very many clues as to its whereabouts. I believe the Belfast Construction Group build on a mainland server is what they were talking about.

Belfast is the capital of Northern Ireland, known for its years of religious inspired terrorism which thankfully seems to have ended after a 1998 agreement. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, but still has close cultural ties with the Republic of Ireland.

Size wise The Belfast build is small, taking up only part of the mainland sever it is on, but has a decent amount of content and details. It is filled with textures taken straight from the streets of Belfast giving a decent feel as a real place.

Among the Belfast tributes on the build is a small Titanic museum, the infamous ill fated cruise ship built and launched from Belfast.

As I did with China and Japan earlier, I like to find some variety in these cultural regional tours. After two contemporary Irish builds, I sought out something historical. I wanted to see if I could find a historical Irish build. That seemed like a tall order at first, until I realized that all I needed to find was a “Celtic” role play sim. Chances of finding such a build in SL: 100%

And so it did not take me long to find Eternia a place with medieval castles and combat based on historic Ireland. For the picture I would be considered inappropriately dressed. These RP sims prefer historical dress and provide freebies to visitors. There is a LOT of sculpties in this build that took a while to load, but results in a more organic feel to the landscape.

And there you have Ireland in SL

Virtual Society event, exploring, Ireland, secondlife

Back with a much anticipated Dating Sim update.

I released version 5.0 of the dating simulator a year ago, and thought it would be fun to do an update release. Since the last release I have found a few alternate “hacked” versions to the dating simulator. The general trend of these hacks were to make the game 1) easier, 2) more erotic, 3) more “Rebecca”. Two of them had the same “doin’ it twice” alternate ending, which I agree is better than my “lights out” ending in 5.0.

This is version 5.5 because for the past year I have been sneaking in minor changes to the online version. Last April I snuck in an alternative “pants” photoshoot. Last September I changed Rebecca’s annoyingly generic striptease routine to something completely ungeneric and just plain silly. Besides these changes I have been adding extra pictures here and there for better story flow, and replacing pictures I wasn’t happy with. Nothing really major.

One of the hacked versions I got came from “Rick” who did a version with sound effects, which while cool ultimately makes things too complicated. He also rewrote a lot of the dialogue, making it funnier and more playful. That I really liked enough to incorporate a lot of it. The text is now centered on every page and the text area is larger for up to 4 lines of dialogue. Instead of changing fonts of other characters, I changed the color of the text. Rebecca is in blue, all the other minor characters are in red.

In addressing the other changes people like to hack around:

Making it easier: Going from version 4 to 5, I established some rules and made them consistent. This was good until you get to the ending scenarios. Some of these were extra difficult. So I established some more consistent rules for ending scenarios. Some are a little harder as a result, most are easier. (hint: Ariane loves to dance!!)

More erotic: For purposes of keeping my website from being tagged “porn” I try to keep things R rated. There are some highly erotic moments in the game, true, but I follow this simple code: The difference between “erotic” and “porn” is in the lighting and camera angles. I did incorporate the “doin’ it twice” ending, adding two new animations to do it right.

More Rebecca: The original basic plan for Rebecca was to pick her up at the lingerie store, take her to the bar, go back to the house and swim. But what if you have already been to the club (and got thrown out)? I had to add a scenario that got you to a different club. But what if you have already been swimming? Well in 5.0 the game abruptly ends at the club, which is kinda lame. My original plan to fix this was originally big and elaborate (like 60 pictures big). Way too big for such a rare occurrence. Took me a while but I got it narrowed down to a size that only needed about 12 new pics. This is the only new “scenario” in 5.5. You still may experience the abrupt end by the way, but for different reasons (hint: Ariane loves to dance!!)

Other than that, most of the changes consist of rewriting some of the older scenarios and adding or changing some pictures, mostly for story flow purposes: “beer”, “whisky”, “truth or dare”, “skiing”, “swimming”, “park photoshoot”, and “convenience store”, have all been at least tweaked.

Since it was hacked versions that helped me out this time, I thought I’d change the licensing of the game. The game is now under creative commons: You are not allowed to make money off of it, or any derivations of it, you have to attribute the original source, and any versions you make should be open source as well. If you want to host it advertisement free somewhere else, go ahead. If you want to translate the text into other languages, go ahead. If you want to do versions on other media (i.e. ipod touch, console, flash, etc.), its OK. Actually, I’d love an ipod touch version, but if this isn’t allowed by Apple, I doubt the dating sim will.

Note: The version 5.5 has been up for a week, but I only fixed the last of the bugs (hopefully) today. If you downloaded it last week, you might want to download again.

Media 3D art, Dating Simulator

I recently launched Google Earth only to be told I need to upgrade to version 5, so I did. I reported in December that the southern half of Manhattan was converted to 3D. Well playing with version 5 a ton of other cities have been converted to 3D as well. Check out the above Washington DC. Still a lot of missing texture maps, but a lot of buildings appear in exquisite detail.  The columns of the Capital building are 3D columns.

Many other cities are in 3D. I checked out the Las Vegas Strip in 3D, and my hometown of Phoenix (pictured above) looks great.

Google is promoting the ocean detail available in the new version, but another less promoted (probably because it is still a bit buggy) is LIVE WEATHER MAPS!

Yes, with the Weather layer enabled, not only can you see global temperatures, but clouds overhead from the most recent weather sattelites. As you can tell from the first two screenshots, it is a clear day in Washington DC and it happens to be partly cludy in Phoenix today.

Those familiar with the book Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson know that he describes a piece of software similar to Google Earth where the user can even track the movements of an approaching fleet of ships. Google Earth is not quite that sophisticated yet, but it is quickly getting there.

Metaverse News 3D art, 3D navigation, 3D Web, googleearth, mirror worlds