Alphaville Herald

Avatars & Humans Unite to Fight Facebook

 Facebook group to petition for avatar identities on Facebook

by Pixeleen Mistral, News Idoru


A sadness tinged with arousal - Facebook is already an MMORPG

The grand tradition of self-referential emergent behavior in social software continues as Facebook users have formed a group to petition the Facebook gods to allow avatar and pseudonym personalities to live free from fear in Facebook.

The social networking site has a no-avatar policy which appears to be unevenly enforced -- in some cases media celebrities are allowed to use their pseudonyms or stage names for their Facebook pages, but other have suffered deletion of their Facebook accounts. The Avatars and Humans United group's charter says:

We are legion, the avatars who live and work as our digital selves. We may have other names and lives beyond our avatar forms but we live and work as identities that capture hearts and bond with millions. Avatars and Humans alike ask that Facebook continue allowing avatars to serve as primary profile pageholders so that we do not unnecessarily delete many hundreds of thousands of productive Facebook connectors. Do we ask all film stars to use their real names on Facebook, or any other media celebrity? What are positive network solutions that can come from the deletion and displacement of our friends the Avatars?

To join the avatar rights group click here.

“Secret” NDA for Huxley: The Dystopia Leaked!!!

Shhhhhh... don't tell anyone

by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk

now being translated for your convenience

Huxley is a long anticipated Korean bloodfog-oriented MMO now accepting signups for a closed beta in north america. The trailers for the game include just barely enough cybergrrrls with guns to make the first person shooter look interesting, and the graphics certainly put Second Life to shame, but what doesn't these days? Still, we have to wonder what IJJI’s legal team was thinking.

Is it standard practice to have a non-disclosure agreement says the existence and terms of the agreement are confidential -- then publish the NDA on the front page of your web site where search engines can get at it?

Are IJJI’s lawyers going frag Google for ganking their secret NDA?

Free Realms Not All That Free

Creating demand for Station Cash spacebux

by Suzie Skybeam

 

You'll have to pay to experience the Pro Chef Square Shard

“What is Free Realms? A free online world where you rule!” said that banner on the web site. Recalling similar bold claims from Second Life (“Second Life is a 3D online digital world imagined, created and owned by its residents”) my first thought was, what’s the catch? And how much am I going to end up paying for this?

A free account at Free Realms will let you try out the game to see if you like it, but if you do like it, you’ll probably find that you need to pay the $4.99 monthly subscription to progress further through the game. And on top of that, there’s real money trading for items that will make you look cool or help you progress faster.

You do want a magic sword that glows in the dark, don’t you? Of course you do!

In Free Realms, characters can belong to multiple classes, and switch between them according to the task at hand. You can fight monsters as a Ninja, and then switch back to being a Chef when it’s time to cook some provisions for your next adventure. A free account will let you play a good selection of interesting character classes, but some of them - such as Wizard  or Medic - are only accessible from subscription accounts.

Five Reasons Why Free Realms Kind of Rocks

Butthurt divas of Second Life appear as NPCs in Free Realms

by Tenshi Vielle

Last weekend when I signed in to Free Realms, I cringed upon logon. How fruitcake could a game get? It looked like IMVU and World of Warcraft had a drunken night of debauchery and spawned some kind of freak. The more I looked at it though, the more it reminded me of something else. Spyro the Dragon!

Anyway, here are my five reasons why Free Realms kind of rocks. I would have come up with ten, but the application started glitching on me and wouldn't let me access my friends list so I logged out.

5. They have racing.

I haven't figured out how to get through the gate yet, but anything has to be better than trying to race a car across sims in Second Life, right?

From EVE: More TITANic Fail

Another $10,000 USD Down the Toilet

by Urizenus Sklar, at the He's Everywhere Desk.

Recently we showed you the epic joy that goons and other humanoids can feel at the (permitted) destruction of $10,000 in assets in EVE Online. It involved the recording of the first destruction of a Titan. Forgot? - here is the video to remind you.

Now comes word that another Titan perished on April 17, mostly due to $10,000 of epic incompetence wrapped in fail.

Seems that the Pandemic Legion was messing with Against All Authorities but when they warped out a Titan got left behind with a dying capacitor (cap). From the front lines:

Another MMO Bites the Dust. RIP Shadowbane

Details via Massively.

Of course it's not like no one saw this coming.

--Uri

Kossacks Invade World of Warcraft!!!

by Dr. Legion, staff reporter

It seems like just yesterday that denizens of the politically progressive (i.e. "communist" in Foxlish) social media site The Daily Kos invaded Second Life during their Annual Politburo meeting. That was bad enough, but now they have formed a guild in World of Warcraft. What horrors will these progressive bloggers bring to this game heretofore populated by God fearing Chuck Norris wannabes? Will they subjugate their enemies with taxes and inter them in FEMA Prison Camps? Will they demand that Blizzard seize all weapons? Will they make yiffing and interspecies sexual congress mandatory? Only the brimstone charred black soul of Markos Moulitsas knows for sure.

Ah you think I jest?  Well I quote:  "Let's see if we can make our "socialist" tendencies work on WoW."

There you have it.  OMG, Think of the children!

EVE Game Gods: Council on Stellar Management better than Reading FICky Forums

A Lesson for other MMOs?

by Dr. Legion, staff reporter

In this very interesting interview on MMORPG, Petur Oskarrson talks about the EVE Online Council on Stellar Management (CSM) -- a group of players elected to represent the players interests with the game company at face to face meetings in Iceland. Petur describes some of the changes that were implemented and some of the changes that could not be implemented (he says for technological reasons). Of special interest is his discussion halfway through the interview of the advantages of this method of getting user feedback over the usual way -- which is selectively reading user forums. Obviously users that camp out on forums are not necessarily the people you want directing your operations, but also Petur points out that reading forums is selective and incomplete so that the picture you get is biased.  Shock!

Eat THIS, Ludologists! EVE Fan Vid Made of Win.

by Urizenus Sklar, from the Narratology Roolz Desk

Those of you who don't track the eggheads on Terra Nova may not be aware that there is a VERY SERIOUS debate between narratologists and ludologists. Ludologists think that MMOs are all about play. Narratologists think that MMOs are about spinning collaborative narratives. Then there are people like me who think they are obviously both (or rather, that there isn't much difference between play and narrative). The best MMOs not only provide comvat systems and tools for building things but also provide a kind of artistic framework in which online narrative can evolve (like the dungeon master in table top D&D games). In Second Life those narratives have to evolve organically in the lore of places like the Jessie Simulator, Fort Longcat, Fur communites, Gorean communities, and, let's face it, the pages of the Herald. In MMOs like EVE Online, however, the game company (CCP) provides back stories in the form of their EVE Chronicles. Back stories help direct the gameplay somewhat, but they are also framing and direct the narrative being developed in the gameplay. Good back stories have uptake -- users pick up on them, expand on them, and write them into their own narratives and game play. I submit to you now an example of such uptake -- an EVE fanvid made by one Dire Lauthis, based on the EVE Chronicle The Breakout.

For some narrative covering "current events" below the fold is a vid that Dire made regarding an operation by the Coreli Corporation.  Oh, and since this is the Herald after all I've added a vid of GoonSwarm dropping a Titan in June of 2007. 

Carbonite Makers Cave to Blizzard Directive

by Dr. Legion, staff reporter

We recently posted a story about a dust-up in the WoW community over the new Blizzard policy about addons -- user made enhancements of the game interface. According to the new policy, addons can not be sold and donations can not be solicited in world. Now one target of the new policy -- the maker of Carbonite -- has decided to comply with the policy. They will only solicit donations from their web site (which is allowed by the new Blizzard policy).

It is difficult to know what to make of this. On the one hand it is good that addon makers will continue to develop their products, but on the other hand this sort of quick compliance might embolden Blizzard to flex its muscle against user/developers again in the future. In the meantime, we hope that the Carbonite makers will continue to be able to make money.

h/t WoW Insider

Pimpin' My Crib in Virtual MTV®

Points for friending - and your chicks for free

by Sigmund Leominster

From the network that could be said to have pioneered reality TV comes the unreal Virtual MTV, another 3D virtual world for people like us who are trying to escape from our own versions of the Real World. This latest attempt at establishing a presence in the virtual worlds market is currently in the alpha stage and opened its doors on February 19th, 2009. The original version, called vMTV opened in 2006 and since then, the Viacom-owned company developed several different locations using the There.com platform. Each mini-world was themed after an MTV show, such as Virtual Laguna Beach, Virtual Pimp My Ride, and Virtual Hills.

But in an official press release, MTV announced the closing of the old and the opening of the new. Here’s how they promoted the change:

“In August of 2006 MTV launched its own virtual world where you could watch our shows and live the MTV life, virtually. You’ve sent us your comments and we listened.  We’re excited to let you know that you can now check out a new and improved version of Virtual MTV at virtual.mtv.com!  This new ALPHA version is browser-based and allows you to create an avatar, get your own crib, explore virtual worlds and play games.”

With browser-based applications being the flavor du jour, MTV have clearly taken this to heart by side-stepping the need for dedicated clients à la Second Life. And having already become the virtual wanderer following my recent excursions into Barbie Girls world and WeeWorld, the opportunity to take part in the MTV online experience was too tempting to avoid.

Before you can claim your crib in VMTV, you have to sign up with MTV at their home site. That takes no more than a couple of minutes if you are the sort of person to ignore the legal notices: For the more cautious, here are the documents you are supposed to read:
(a) the  MTV Terms of Use, (b) the MTV Privacy Policy, (c) the MTV User Content Submission Agreement, (d) the Virtual Reality Applications - Terms, (e) the Social Project Terms of Use, (f) the Social Project Privacy Policy and (g) the Social Project Copyright Compliance Policy. 

Blizzard's War Against Addon Makers

You can make our game better, but you can't make money for doing so!

by Dr. Legion, staff reporter

Last week Blizzard made an announcement that has been causing a buzz in the usually politically comatose World of Warcraft community. WOW players are probably familiar with addons such as for Zygor Guides, Carbonite and QuestHelper, which are integrated with the WOW user interface (UI).  Some of the addons are wildly popular, and some of the developers make a living just off of donations from (and sale of) the addons.

Now, the owners of WOW, Blizzard, are pulling back on the leash, insisting that while such addons can be made, the makers cannot charge for the products and they cannot solicit donations for the products (they must also make their code transparent).  One side of this is the Blizzard side, which is to say the tiresome line that "it is their game and they can do what they want with it."  The case for the other side is presented by Adam in comments on T=Machine:

MMO Project Entropia to Get Banking License

Real life banking license for spacebux?

by Idoru Wellman, staff writer

Project Entropia has long been known as a hype machine rivaled only by Second Life, and it has also been known as a de facto online virtual casino. Now, according to Ars Technica, it is applying for a banking license - as in a legitimate banking license:

MindArk PE AB, the company behind sci-fi MMO Entropia Universe will apparently be able to let players conduct real-world banking from within its online game. Of course, Entropia Universe actually features a cash-based economy already, where players can exchange real money for game currency at an exchange rate of 10:1 (ten in-game dollars to one U.S. dollar) and then buy in-game items with the money; the game itself has proven to be incredibly successful, having generated over $420 million last year.

Now, though, MindArk's going to be just like a bank in the real world: it will be backed by Sweden's $60,000 deposit insurance, offer interest-bearing accounts for its clients, feature direct deposit options, let players pay bills online, and apparently will offer loans to customers.

The interest, we suppose, is that other virtual world makers (or users) might do the same if this works out.

 h/t to Raph's blog

Shock!!!! Mid-Missouri Internet Crimes Task Force says Mayor Tortimer could be a Pedo!

Or is Tom Nook the perv?  Concerned parents want to know!

by Idoru Wellman, staff reporter

Kotaku has all the sordid details - but can anything good happen in Animal Crossing -  game that allows children to interact with complete strangers, encouraging them to exchange notes, items, and "favors" in order to reach the next level in the game?

Plurk - Addictive Menace or Tedious Chore?

Tenshi is: trying to avoid the great Plurk web 2.0 MMORPG

by Tenshi Vielle

Have you tried Plurk? Don't. All the cool kids are on it, and consequently, all the cool kids have forgotten any other life they may have had before Plurk's conception. Dishes? They can wait, someone just said they can't get into SL. I must react! Laundry? Pfft. Someone just plurked a Youtube video. HA HA HA “I'm the Juggernaut, Bitch!”

Don't get me wrong -- I love Plurk -- but it's eating my life, RL and SL. I don't do much else. In a digital world where logging in is becoming a chore, and I have RL memories to avoid (hello abandonment, goodbye trust) Plurk is the perfect solution. It's also made me some new friends - and showed me that some of the old friends I had aren't so hot after all.

Open Life Users Banned from Second Life?

Running outlawed clients could end in tears

by Miley Stewart, Open Life correspondent

According to numerous reports, users of the OpenSim-based Open Life are receiving IP-bans from Second Life. Multiple residents have reportedly been unable to access Second Life after joining Open Life. The reason for such bans is currently unknown, as Linden Lab could not be reached for comment. Linden Lab, Inc. currently does not offer support or correspondence services for basic account holders.

Possible reasons for the bans range from conspiracy theories to behavioral issues.

Many OpenSim users create accounts under the same name as their Second Life identities. Rumors abound that Linden employees have created accounts for the purposes of finding similar names to ban the accounts from the Second Life Grid. A number of OpenSim users such as Lalinda Lovell, Prokofy Neva, various Woodbury members, and Nikola Shirakawa have a reputation among parts of Second Life for causing community problems. It should be noted that all such users still are able to maintain accounts in Second Life, however.

According to technical sources, the most likely explanation for the IP bans is that Linden is issuing bans because of client software being used. The use of some viewers such as the Patriotic Nigras' ShoopedLife has been known to be just cause for a Second Life account to be banned. The use of the popular program Second Inventory may also be a reason for the bans.

WeeWorld WeeMee Wears Justin Timberlake’s Wardrobe

by Sigmund Leominster

In my last excursion into the world of adolescents and ‘tweens, I became a new avatar, Pixeleen, and let loose my inner Barbie at the Barbie Girls™ virtual world. My latest trip was as a not-so-undercover reporter into WeeWorld, a virtual chat room populated by thousands of two-dimensional characters called WeeMees.

Sigmund Leominster goes WeeWee

WeeMees are not new. Users of Skype, AOL Instant Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, and Friends Reunited have been using WeeMees for years. You can create your own South Park-like avatars, kit them out in an assortment of outfits, and have them appear as your alter ego.
And now there’s a new dimension to the WeeMee phenomenon: WeeWorld. Now WeeMees from across the globe can meet in a real-time 2D virtual world and do all the things that Second Life residents can do.

Or not.

After signing up as Sigmund Leominster and giving my true age (which is old enough to have credit cards and remember that my first virtual world was inside a Commodore 64), I was given the opportunity to create a WeeMee just like me. The piece de resistance was the all-important reporter accessory – the microphone. Now I felt like a real newshound.

Open Sims – Back to the Brave New World

by Alessandra Narayan

 

Alessandra's look in OpenLife

Joining the new Open Sims is like starting all over Second Life, which means a ‘noobie’ figure, difficulty in getting it presentable – especially when you’re only allowed to change it after getting a new shape – and various problems, which now seem so distant in SL. For example in some days you can’t use teleports or you’ll just shutdown an entire region, having to log off and log back in describing in the start menu the region you wish to enter. Exciting? Another example of how much development Open Sims need is the difficulty of ‘rezzing’ your avatar: sometimes it’s a cloud, in other occasions you can’t ‘rez’ clothes, etc.

Where did I see this problem before? I wonder…

But, as if this wasn’t enough, you’ll find very few people logged in and severe lack of places to have fun. Ok, it’s cheaper, yes. That’s what all of the people who own land say. Right now it’s the only advantage in Open Sims, nominated Open Life viewer. And for those who don’t want to own land? Just have fun and not spending money? What will they do in Open Sims? Nothing really, trust me. Dying of boredom is the only available option at the moment.

I’m a Barbie® Girl, in a Barbie World

Daddy? Can I have your credit card?

by Sigmund Leominster

Barbie Girl Home: VIP girls get SuperB Chat™ then shop for clothes and funky new furni

As a kid, I was never wanted to play with dolls. As a boy, calling them “Action Figures” didn’t make it any more likely. At one time, I’m pretty sure I stripped one of my sister’s Barbie dolls to check out the underlying anatomy, but the lack of genitalia and nipples meant that I lost interest pretty quickly. So the world of childhood doll play quietly passed me by.

Then I became a Capitalist. My initial puzzlement about why on earth people should want to mess around with plastic figurines gave way to the amazing discovery that the people at Mattel Corporation were actually making millions of dollars from this urge to dress mini-mannequins. Maybe billions. Now Barbie became much more interesting.

Today, Mattel, Inc. makes almost 100 million each year from its Barbie-related enterprise. Love her or hate her, she’s pimped out by the boys in suits and her ill-gotten gains keep investors very happy indeed. She may be a slut but she’s one of the world’s most profitable sluts and as long as she keeps opening her legs, people will keep opening their wallets.

Red Light Center Exposed -- Part 4: Bringing It Home

Red Light Center neko confused by SL interface, pay-as-you-go and lag a concern for Goreans
The Herald explores worlds beyond Second Life

by Jessica Holyoke, virtual world explorer

I'm standing in a virtual world, populated by people who like virtual sex or at least virtual relationships. The question in my mind is, why aren't they in Second LIfe? I asked that question of a few residents.

The first asked, what is Second Life? And I responded with the standard sales pitches. He asked, how much does it cost? And I said its free. Then he asked if you can do the same things that you could in RLC and I said, name a fetish. Luckily he said golden showers.

If you go to the sex places on SL, its quite easy to find animations and pose balls for someone to pee on you or for you to pee on them. I'm just glad he didn't say ear sex. So I told him about all the possible animations and stations where peeing is involved. He was impressed, but I don't know if he came over.

The only neko girl I met mentioned that she went to SL because she was a furry, something frowned upon and not supported by RLC, but she couldn't figure out the interface. I volunteered to take her back to SL to help her out.

I took her to a sandbox and unloaded on her many many freebie boxes. When I left her, she was having a great time experimenting with her avatar. But when I tried to IM her later to see how she was doing, I never heard from her and I never saw her online again.

You might remember from Part 3 about my meeting Goreans in RLC. I saw a Master by himself one day and I introduced myself in a way that identified myself in a similar way. We got to talking and I asked about why he wasn't on SL if he liked Gor? After going through the same, its free, and you can do so much with it. He downloaded the program and met me in world.

Red Light Center Exposed -- Part 3: Unhitched

Red Light Center leather clad dommes, furries hard to find
The Herald explores worlds beyond Second Life

by Jessica Holyoke, virtual world explorer

I know everyone has been dying to find out more about the kinkier side of things in Red Light Center. Believe me, so do I. Tracking down the kinkier side of things in RLC is harder than it seems. First, the furries. After many months of careful research, I found one furry and one neko girl. Even though they have Dimes dedicated just to them, those dimes are really just a resting place for others. If you want to get away from all the sexiness, all one has to do is go to the Furry dime.

Now bondage is somewhat prevalent. There should be plenty of bondage enthusiasts as evidenced by all the submissives I’ve seen with their names changed to reflect their Owner’s. Finding out more about them was a different story.

It was easy to find the shared bondage furniture in the care free environments. You strip down, chose a partner and whoever clicks on the furniture first gets to be on top. Which means if you are in a room with a robot and you want to use the bondage furniture, the robot is automatically on the bottom. Just another weird thing about using the robots.

Now as a matter of how things are done, the bondage furniture bothered me because it did not allow for clothing for anyone. Because everyone was naked, there was no leather clad dommes or silk clad males -- not that they had silks, but a girl can dream.

And people openly talked about their bondage experiences in the open streets of the BDSM dimes. But again, no one wanted to be officially interviewed about it.

While I was digging around, one user private messaged me and suggested that I use a RL picture in my profile. Now as I was trying to clearly identify myself as Jessica Holyoke and I wanted people to read about their world on the Herald, I did not include a real life photo, but rather used a SL photo of me. Looking at a number of people’s profiles, it was more likely than not to see a picture of a real person in a profile. Sometimes that person was doing things I only do as an avatar. The cross over of real and surreal took me by surprise after spending so much time in a world that can be seen as encouraging you to be what you are not.

HiPiHi Open Beta Begins

“Heavenly Duke Creating Objects” era gives way to “Dawn of Society”

by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk

Can the HiPiHi liberation army be far behind?

Cindy Jiang tells us in a HiPiHi press release that HiPiHi today announced the beginning of their public beta testing phase with the release of the “Dawn of Society” version - opening the door for new users to join existing “elder” users - or “oldbies” in SL parlance.

Ms. Jiang went on to observe that “the user naming system is the bedrock of a virtual world’s social activities and the individual user’s credibility and reputation. HiPiHi believes that a robust reputation system with its accompanying asset rights system, are the fundamentals for the development and prosperity of the virtual worlds of tomorrow”.

It was unclear if HiPiHi’s security features will include avatar perma-bans 'for any reason or no reason' as is traditional in Second Life - but we expect the Chinese will be able to role play a police state in as convincing a fashion as the Lab has managed, so the dystopian future seems secure - even if is does not belong to Linden Lab.

Red Light Center Exposed -- Part 2: Vanilla

Sex with robots - while keeping your shoes on -- the discrete charm of a Red Light Center VIP account
The Herald explores worlds beyond Second Life

by Jessica Holyoke, virtual world explorer

heading to the space bedroom

Eventually, I discovered what I could about Red Light Center (RLC) as a basic member and it was time to open more doors so to speak. I bought a VIP membership and started exploring the non-kink side of things.

VIP membership costs $20 US per month and it allows for age verification. Not only are you allowed into the adult areas of the RLC grid, you are allowed into the adult areas of everyone’s profiles. On the profiles, you find that people sometimes like showing off their Real Life naked bodies as well as what they’ve done as avatars.

But there was exploring to do. There were a few adult theatres where if you go in and click, you’ll find pornographic movies that will open up in your web browser. If you are concerned about cost and you pay for porn as well, this might be the economic option for you.

Red Light Center Exposed -- Part 1

Free basic account for clothed platonic friendship - VIP accounts for naked pixel-sex
The Herald explores worlds beyond Second Life

by Jessica Holyoke, virtual world explorer

Red Light Center (RLC) is a virtual world that touts itself as a socialized meeting place where you can make friends and even have sex with them. Because some residents would like to see the lascivious go there, because they are not welcome here or There, I decided to check it out.

Accounts come in Basic or VIP. Basic accounts are free to play but you cannot have sex, and therefore, you don’t know what you look like naked. VIP accounts cost $20 US per month and allows for fuller access. I started with a basic account as Jessi_angel.

In opening an account, you have two things to create. One is your avatar. The customization is limited to either what RLC gives you or what you can download onto your PC. Downloaded textures can change your avatar's clothing or tattoos. No one else can see these textures unless they also download those textures into their PC.

One way to get those custom avatar textures is off a person’s web based profile. When you click on a RLC avatar for their profile, the program opens up your web browser and gives you a MySpace like web layout for that resident. This profile is customizable to the same extent as a MySpace page, except you can include pornographic pictures of yourself and others. The age verification comes by having certain pictures viewable only by VIPs or by your friends.

The use of the web browser is frequent as any tips or special rules are opened in an outside web browser and not in the game itself. FAQ’s, as limited as they are, open outside of the game. If more in depth help is needed, one either learns from others or goes onto the RLC forums which are linked to the profile system.

Pixel Clothes, Virtual Fashion Summit, IMVU, and HiPiHi

The Celebrity Trollop interview

by Pixeleen Mistral, fashionable reporter

IMVU fashionista

Recently, Celebrity Trollop took time from her busy schedule for an interview about the pixel clothes scene in SL, IMVU, HiPiHi and elsewhere. Celebrity also mentioned what promises to be a very interesting event - The Virtual Fashion Summit - a conference for virtual fashion designers, texture artists, prim sculptors, committed virtual fashion watchers and shoppers this coming June.

Pixeleen Mistral: Celebrity, you have been a huge figure in the SL fashion scene - where do you see that going? what is next?
Celebrity Trollop: I think Havok4 and Windlight are going to be the next major technical things coming down the pipe from Linden Lab. A lot of content creators are going to have to adjust to those differences between the SL of now and the SL of 3-4 months in the future.

Pixeleen Mistral: is this going to help the fashion scene or hurt it?
Celebrity Trollop: In general I think it'll be huge leap forward in terms of framerates, avatar appearance and general grid stability. But on the other hand, most fashionistas have a pretty huge wishlist of flaws they wish would be addressed.

Pixeleen Mistral: *nods* how are you spending your time lately? is SL your main thing?
Celebrity Trollop: Mostly I've been running around IRL looking for a new job; but when I've been in SL its been mostly on Second Style business. I do spend most of my time in SL, but I also like checking out some of the other VWs - IMVU, or the really rudimentary fashions in places like hiphiphi

Pixeleen Mistral: tell me about the fashion scene in IMVU
Celebrity Trollop: It's pretty active. One big difference between SL and IMVU is that in IMVU you can use some other's creators work as a basis for your own extension. This is called a "derivation" and when you sell a work like that both you and the original creator get some of the fake money they use.

Second Life's Slide vs. Everyone Else

9 months of losing ground against IMVU, TSO, World of Warcraft

by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk

SL web site rank falling since January - WoW, TSO & IMVU rankings rising

By at least one measure, Second Life’s growth since January has not kept pace with other 3D immersive environments - including World of Warcraft, The Sims Online, and IMVU. Comparing growth rates between virtual worlds is a notoriously difficult task. Game companies are infamous for inflating creatively defining subscriber numbers and use different methods for counting players. Even worse - independent, verifiable measures of popularity are simply not available - so PR-driven spin generally rules.

However, at the Herald we have access to an elite team of metaverse researchers who suggested that there IS a way to measure (indirectly) the relative growth rates of the media-darling 3D worlds without the game companies gaming the numbers.

How? Look at the trends in the alexa.com rankings of the various worlds' web sites. Alexa.com is an independent web site traffic measurement service that charts trends in web site traffic in terms of unique visitors, page views, and a composite “rank”. Of course traffic to web sites is not an absolute measure of 3D world popularity - but assuming a relatively constant number of players visit the web sites for each world, the web traffic trends should be indicative of population trends in-world. In light of this, Linden Lab's recent de-emphasis of population and dollars spent in-world on their web site's front page makes sense - no point in advertising trouble.

Anshe Pays US$60,000 to Open Virtual Pawn Shop in Entropia

Land baron Anshe Chung expanded her empire today by winning one of five banking licenses in the wild and wooly virtual world of Entropia Universe, according to a late-breaking report from RCE Universe. Anshe paid PED600,000 (US$60,000, or more than L$16 million) for the right to make collateralized loans in Entropia, meaning any banks that open there will be little more than virtual pawn shops -- for the moment. In announcing the auction, Entropia notes that “Should an interested party hold a real banking license in the real world, many more services and features can be added.” Will Deutsche Bank soon be getting inquiries from Anshe? And what about the cross-world arbitrage opportunities? A whole new world of virtual capitalism awaits! [More details on 3pointD.]
--Walker Spaight

Virtual Worlds 2007, Report #6: Final Score, Babbage Linden 72, Everybody Else, 0

By Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Planets, Worlds, Universes, Multiverses, Metaverses, and Lost Socks in the Dryer

During one of the panels at Virtual Worlds 2007, Michael Wilson, CEO of Makena Technologies, maker of There.com, made a number of astute and penetrating comments. Look up this guy to understand that he's no newb. "Let me tell you the dirty little secret of virtual worlds," he said at one point, abruptly, on a panel. "The dirty little secret of virtual worlds is that there's nothing happening in them." They're empty, nothing's happening.

What he means is the phenomenon everyone knows -- acres of empty sims, nothing visible, nothing seeming to be happening. If television's problem is that there's 57 channels and nothing's on, for the new person, SL's problem is that there are 7800 sims and nothing's on them *for him*. Anyone coming in new doesn't understand what he is supposed to do to get the action started in this self-driven play. He's confronted either with other clueles newbies, AFK "helpers," inane griefers or avaricious managers of clubs where people are mindlessly standing around. It's very hard to connect in this place which is supposedly made to enable everybody to connect.

Giuliani Campaign Dances Into Second Life (Sort of)

[Editor's Note: The following is an unpaid political announcement received this evening at the Herald offices from virtual political operative and Second Life resident GenJCChristian Homewood. Had I not been going about my usual duties of picking up Pixeleen's cigarette butts planning tomorrow's coverage, I might have missed it. Fortunately, we are able to bring you this highly important disco-political newsbreak.
--Walker Spaight]

Remember this date, March 20, 2007. It will go down in history as the day the race for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination entered the virtual world. With the opening of Disco Rudy’s: the Unofficial Virtual Campaign Headquarters for Rudy Giuliani 2008, a Republican candidate now has a presence in the virtual world, Second Life.

"We’re very excited about this opportunity to share our love for Rudy with other Second Life residents," Disco Rudy’s creator [and GenJC's typist], Joshua Christian Homewood, declared as he christened the building with a can of virtual Pabst Blue Ribbon. "But more importantly, we’re thrilled to provide potential supporters a venue where they can share their love with each other by embracing the Giuliani lifestyle," he continued, "that’s why we’re going with a disco theme."

Can U Kaneva?

At the mall in Kaneva, this is about as risque as the public content gets in the WA.

By Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Worlds, Planets, Universes, Metaverses, and Virtual Estate Galaxies with NPC Land Barons

So I finally get an invite to this much-anticipated Kaneva beta virtual world, even though I had only like a 32 in ratings. I spent perhaps an hour farming raves, which is something like what we used to do 2 years ago in SL, go to clubs and plus each other up to raise our stipend rating deltas and get Lindens for free. That didn't last. And you wonder what it means to lay the groundwork of a world and permeate it with rave-farming and gaming up of points -- except many of the people doing the raving are carrying on with such enthusiastic bonhomie that it doesn't seem fake -- the way people in malls down South come up to you and say "Hi, how are you, have a nice day" even if a stranger.

Firefox didn't seem to work with Kaneva, and finally on IE I waited for the game download to upload for ages -- but hey, I was in the mood after having the absolute worst week I've ever had in SL. I could literally not move, fly, teleport, see Linden dollars in my box, even click on myself for 3 days. Something in a patch or something somewhere suddenly made it not work. I tried EVERYTHING and finally hit on the combination of my secret weapon (update your mouse drivers!) plus disabling my keylog finder (after finding 2, you know who you are!). Just as I finally could see green earth and fly again WHOOPs about 100 regions or more went down and "teleport issues" were rampant with colo outages and whatnot. So here I was hoping that this flatter, leaner, web-based world would at least spare me all that crap.

Sony Clone: A Better Second Life?

Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Worlds, Planets, Universes, Metaverses, and Now Those Record People Have Copied Our Game, Geez

Sony has just gone and cloned Second Life!

OMGODZORZ even the welcome areas look like they were *lifted straight out of Ahern".

I kid you not, kids. Go check it out.

I'm still absorbing the shock of this news out of GDC, but will have more for you soon. I hear PS3s cost about $600-700? But this game/world/interconnected user-content thingie is free, so far.

Project: Buzz Kill

by Onder Skall

The BBC covered yesterday what the Herald covered last week- "Project: Top Secret" has launched in an effort to build a user-created MMO. As a trade-off for being a bit late to the party they were able to provide us with an overview of how many signups they've received.

At this point there are 20,000 signups, with an expected total of 100,000 by the time they close things off. Numbers like that are sure to attract headhunters trying to fill a quota, but it means a bit more than that. The music industry is notorious for ripping off artists simply because they can - after all, everybody wants to be a star. Now, with this many people vying for a finite number of positions, will the games industry suffer the same fate? Some feel that it has already.

In this same article David Perry is quoted as saying: "We are not doing this for fun; this is a professional game we are trying to make. It's a business." So much for doing what you love. There was a time where the difference between a good game and a great game resided solely in the passion of the people behind it. Perhaps those days have passed.

As far as the hope that this was an effort to discover some shining stars or for people to showcase their talent, two other quotes seemed to stand out:

Alternatives To Second Life

by Onder Skall, courtesy of Second Life Games

Let me start this off by stating that I have no interest in the “world vs. platform” debate. It’s boring and played out, so don’t you dare try to draw me in. What I’m trying to do here is answer the simple question:

Where are the best candidates as viable alternatives to Second Life?

In order to answer this question, I’ve come up with the three things that in my opinion make Second Life irreplaceable at the moment. Since these are entirely formed from my little brain, we’ll call them “Onder’s Big Three”. They are:

1. Cash transactions must be easy and readily accommodated flowing both into and out from the system.
2. Users must be able to create unique content and retain some form of ownership over it.
3. The fabric of the world itself must be possible to affect. IE: land ownership, room decoration, or some other content that remains viable even when the player who created it is logged off. (”Pervasive” is the word I’m groping for here…)

American Idol for MMO Developers

by Onder Skall, courtesy of Second Life Games

To all Second Life designers and developers looking for a chance at breaking into the gaming industry - this is it. David Perry (Earthworm Jim, Enter the Matrix) has teamed up with Acclaim for a one-of-a-kind project. They are building a new MMO with a full development team and are looking for contributions for design, ideas, art, animation, and audio. In return you will get a major MMO credit on your resume, experience, and a chance at the big prize.

What is the big prize, you ask? One lucky gamer will be selected to be the new Director of this major, fully-funded MMO, and David Perry will be their Executive Producer. Sign ups at the website http://topsecret.acclaim.com/index.htm will only be available for the next short while, and then the entire project will move into secrecy until completion. They call it "Project: Top Secret".

A contest like this is especially appealing to Second Life residents who have been creating content for years without major public recognition. Now the opportunity has come to show their genius, and many will leap at the chance. I have no doubt that the winner of this competition will not come from WoW or Everquest, where creativity is tightly controlled, but from the glorious wilds of SL.

Those registering today receive a message saying to expect an email within two weeks, and are then directed towards Acclaim's other games to play "for free". You have to hand it to them: if nothing else it's a pretty effective marketing ploy. Still, one has to wonder what form this "American Idol for gamers" will take.

I'll be keeping my eye out for details.

POP!!!

By Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Virtual Estate

The real virtual estate bubble which has prevailed in Second Life since island price hikes in November 2006 started to pop today as Linden Land whacked out some 40 new sims opening at $1000 bids, starting the list with one named "Badly Moor," which seemed to set the tone for many suddenly saddened land dealers.

Within hours, waterfront priced $25/m came down to $20/m and below, and some people who had put ugly clubs and spinning junk on their land to "help you get the idea to buy" suddenly replaced the blight with a nice house and a lower price.

The unfortunate soul who bid $4000 on Cajeiri before the newly-minted land was placed on the auction may come to regret it by tomorrow. Perhaps they'll be able to default without penalty.

The sims are off to the West of the brown-sugar-textured "down-under" sims. They look even MORE like lumpy brown sugar, though one has to admire the sculpted edges.

Korean Gold Farmers Form Trade Association

Korean gold farmers aren't taking the news of possible governmental regulation lying down. Instead, they've formed a trade union to lobby the government, according to veteran MMO designer Raph Koster -- who is also the author of the draft Declaration of the Rights of Avatars, a document we at the Herald hold dear. Rise up! gold farmers, we say. Your pixelated swords are your plowshares. All that's needed now is a virtual Eugene Debs.

--Walker Spaight

Meez Too

By Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Spaces, Worlds, Planets, Universes, Metaverses, and Wannabee Virtualities.

I noticed the kids are using Meez more because they're bored with MySpace, which they've pronounced contemptuously as "gay" or "retarded," while still declaring TSL as "fun" but "hippy". They claim they don't care about Meez very much (not having just scored a copy of World of Warcraft Burning Crusade), and they witheringly disparage Meez' nerdy me-too avatars that look like a botch between Bratz and the Sims.

Still, it's an indication that these social software sites are starting to avatarize and go in deeper toward worlds. 2007 is the year of the avatar as I predicted 2006 was going to be ("We're all going to be so amazingly cool, because we already have -- we already *are*? -- avatars"). I can see that free services providing accessories, backgrounds and even animations for avatars might evolve so fast within browsers going forward, that someday they may meet existing 3-D virtual worlds too laggy to log-on to and requiring downloads -- going backwards.

More Worlds!

By Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Planets, Worlds, Universes, Metaverses, and the Eternal One

Game-World Sun-God Ra Raph Koster has made a new game! WOOT! Those who remember the game-meister of Star Wars Galaxies and have followed his amazingly rich and insightful interactive blog adventures were thrilled to find out that this enlightened Horus of the MMORPG Horizon, who thoughtfully straddles games like SWG as well as worlds like SL, announced yesterday that he's leading a company making a....thingie called Areae.

And instead of a big-ass press release and roll-out with industry friendz blurbs, he has a modest, tiny-print statement on his website explaining the absence of the usual PR: "We wanted to talk to you first. People who might be players, virtual citizens, users, customers, some day in the future. And that’s because we want to make sure that putting you guys first is something that is in Areae’s DNA from the very beginning." Hmmm...sounds from that like it could be a game/country/platform/business application!

For gamers and worlders used to devs ranging from indifferent to hostile, this will be welcome news, even if likely something very hard to sustain.

Another World...Kinda?

A gallery opening...that isn't in Second Life.

By Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Planets, Solar Systems, Universes, Multiverses and Omniverses

Wait. I'm pinching myself. I got something in my mailbox from this company called Caligari which makes hugely expensive 3-D stuff which I never looked at too closely, until they...announced an event in a virtual world (wow...some OTHER company does that???). Another world, 3-D...ish. With spaces where you go and "collaborate with others," and even have "forums" and "an art gallery."

Not There. Not Here (and we all know where Here is!) but a place called trueSpace.

Now, I know, I know, it might be just some glorified Flash in a browser. Or it might be some cludgy thing. I have no idea. I tried to download it, and was out of luck. First, it gave me runtime and library errors and their forums sucked and I couldn't find help (why are these worlds always like that).

Then my usual technique, googling in search of some geek-to-go type of place couldn't help. CS was closed. Hmmm. Well, then they had the samples in RAR files. I should be able to open those, but got a face-full of wierd code when I did.

They're having a gallery opening tomorrow, it's free to download and see, the artist's name is Zachary Humway. You even click on a thing that is like a SLURL. I can't get the game working but maybe someone else could go -- I haven't been this intrigued since I found that the sims in ATITD could walk off their parcels and grow flax lol.

Appearance mode? Calisthenics? In a brightly-lit, comfortable-looking and possibly non-laggy place?

New Crimes, New Punishments

The New Scientist is running an article in its May 20th edition all about crime and punishment in the virtual world -- one of the Herald's favorite subjects. In fact, most of the piece could have been ripped from the Herald headlines -- and probably was. Of course, it features yet another interview with mafia don and media hound Marsellus Wallace, but don't let that stop you. Mars even outs his gf in this one!

Relevant portions excerpted below for your discussion:

Capital Punishment for RMT in RF Online

Banning, crucifixion and cornfields are too good for gold-traders in the new MMO RF Online. Though the company recently banned more than 150 accounts for botting currency, a couple of game-masters also treated the transgressors to some in-game punishment, climbing into some pimped-out mechsuits to deliver swift one-shots to the criminal characters. Not only that, but they got it all down on video, which you can watch via a link at this MMORPG.com post. RF Online is also putting the strongarm on anyone who's bought gold or other items from the botters: "In the next few days, following the 150 RMT accounts, we will be visiting YOU, atleast if You bought things from RMT traders. If You had to re-read the last sentence twice you might want to contact us via PM before we reach you. If you reveal the delivery guy, the price you paid including the RMT site and the date you recieved the money we can most likely work something out." It remains to be seen how many players will be willing to rat out their suppliers in a world where justice and revenge can be meted out so harshly.

WoW guild griefs online memorial service for player that dies in real life

This is interesting. As Shoutwire is reporting, an ingame funeral for a popular player was griefed by a guild in World of Warcraft -- griefing event consisting of the attacking guild killing most of the funeral party. Of particular interest to me is the discussion that follows in the wake of this event. A lot of players are saying this is what one gets for having a funeral in game -- "a game is no place for a funeral." On the other hand, this was a player who died in real life, and his friends only knew him through Teamspeak or some such voice server and probably were not in a position to travel across country to have a rl funeral service. The friends logged onto his account and were taking his avatar to a lake where they were going to have an in game service. My tentative conclusion is that the griefers have diseased minds. They made a video of their event, not only to document that they are clueless fucktards, but also to show that they have shitty taste in music and have no idea how to make decent machinima. Video here.

Cornfields Not Enough for Roma Victor

The devs over at Red Bedlam, makers of the new MMO Roma Victor have come up with a novel new way to punish griefers in their virtual world: Rather than suspend their accounts or banish them to a virtual cornfield for a couple of days, they simply string them up on a cross. [Pic after the jump, so as not to offend anyone's delicate religious sensibilities.]

Mafia Boss Gains Control of SL Stratics

In an ongoing investigation into the news that a Second Life portal was coming to Stratics, the Herald has learned some alarming news: the avatar chosen to manage the soon-to-be-launched Stratics site covering all things Second Life appears to be none other than renowned mob boss (and occasional Herald contributor) Marsellus Wallace.

Revisiting Stagecoach Island

paulie Femto created a forum thread yesterday discussing Wells Fargo's Stagecoach Island project that began using a version of the SecondLife viewer, and has since migrated to ActiveWorlds.  As a former ActiveWorlds user myself (I played during the beta period in mid-to-late 1996 and again from 2000 til 2005-ish), the move interested and shocked me quite a bit.  The ActiveWorlds I had known hadn't had its graphics engine upgraded since its early beta phase in the mid 1990's.  Its camera control was utterly horrid, and scripting was almost non-existant, as there was no native scripting language built into the client.  According to the forum thread, though, Stagecoach Island was running in an ActiveWorlds universe (AW uses "worlds" instead of sims, that are grouped into "universes," or clusters of servers that can teleport to one another and have unique citizen sets) that was running the ActiveWorlds 4.1 client, while the main universes were all running the ActiveWorlds 3.7 client still.  I decided to go check it out, as ActiveWorlds Incorporated had long been promising a major graphics upgrade in version 4.0.

There She Goes

It happens to the best of us: the lure of a steady paycheck overcomes the strong desire to sit at a desk in our apartments all day staring into a computer screen (not surprisingly). So it is that Terra Nova's Betsy Book has been snapped up by the virtual world of There.com, which bills itself as "the online virtual world that is your everyday hangout." Hopefully, Betsy, in her new role as Director of Product Management, can do something about that slogan. Although it may not be as hard as it might at first appear. There.com apparently has some 300,000 members, according to some reports. While that number may be just as meaningless as the 150,000 members Second Life records, it's still twice as many meaningless members. And that has to mean something.

"Ship-to-Ship" Services Now Available

The Herald staff had wanted more time to study the deep ramifications of this story, but now that Kotaku is reporting on sexual services available in EVE Online, it was clear that an editorial decision needed to be made.

Kotaku reports on a chat-based cybersex service that has made its way into EVE. But if you're not interested in having another person on the other end of your transactions, there's also a graphical ship-to-ship service available for pod pilots with money to burn. What's perhaps unique about the service is that makes real-world skin shots available within the virtual world, for a much more immersive experience (so to speak). [After the jump: Adults Only, Not Safe For Work]

Sowing the Seed

Though its beta test has only just started, the new MMO Seed is already getting the usual breathless attention from virtual world fansites and other online communities. The latest Seed news comes from online gaming and music radio station Split Infinity Radio, which is advertising an upcoming interview with Runestone CEO Lars Kroll, the man ultimately responsible for nurturing Seed into full blossom.

419 Scam Rocks EVE Online

EVE Online, the virtual world where scams and double-dealing are all part of the starscape, is now the target of the latest manifestation of the "419 scams" that originated in Nigerian some years ago. 419 scammers commonly claim they've got a whole sackload of money tied up in a Nigerian bank, but since the money belongs to a dead relative, they can't get their hands on it without paying a hefty bribe. It's up to you, the recipient of the heartfelt 419 letter, to come up with the bribe money, send it to the bereaved, and then twiddle your thumbs while you're waiting for your cut of the take. A surprisingly large number of people have been taken in by such scams in the real world. Now they've hit the metaverse.

...Let No Man Put Asunder...

by Pat the Rat

Linden watchers inform Pat the Rat that naughty Kremlinden Lab has intervened to dissolve the partnership of Torley nee Torgeson Linden and Jady Lily. As of last report, they are no longer listed as partners, victims of what has become known as "reverse minister's action" on the part of the Kremlindens. :-(

Torley went to work for LL last month, a passage that had some mixed commentary, with most people wishing her well and congratulating LL on taking a voluntary beloved mascot, but others (like the ever bilious and bellicose Prokofy Neva) claiming the Lindens were coopting her and blurring the distinction -- already the subject of controversy -- between Linden and resident.

Robin Linden announced the unilateral move in an email to Torley. The break-up had not been sought by the couple.

"I had nothing to do with Robin's decision to dissolve our partnership," Jade Lily told our sources.