Various W-Hats may have been up to something awful in SL lately, but the Something Awful crew, from whose bosom the W-Hats sprang, provided a trenchant critique recently on other online worlds, shedding some light on many of the things that no doubt drove the goons to Second Life.
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Thanks again to Clickable Culture for reporting on this little gem -- A breakdown of the way Massive Incorporated's in-game advertising works. Seems that not only are the ads placed in the game, but the marketers collect information about the amount of time the ad is viewed by individual players, the size at which they view it, as well as the angle it is viewed from.
Now I'm sure there will be a chorus of "screw me harder" gamers saying if we don't like it we don't have to play, but this "love it or leave it meme" limps as badly in MMOs as it does when we talk about nation states. It cannot be emphasized enough that this is precisely what Lawrence Lessig has been warning us about for years, especially in his book Code as Law. In virtual worlds we are effectively engineering certain values into the world. The question is, are we going to engineer in values and principles of freedom, privacy, and liberty, or are we going to surrender all of that as our lives continually move online? It seems we are on a trajectory in which we are gladly surrendering our liberties to despots with benign sounding titles like "Game Maker." But strip away the friendly title and we don't find a kindly toymaker like Gepetto, or even the Wizard of Oz, but something much closer to Big Brother.
Cindy and Prok
As the flap over the board banning of Prokofy Neva degenerates into a series of thoughtful and productive discussions, you might think the Herald would lose interest. Well, ok, we have, but that doesn't mean we stop posting (i.e., it's a slow news day). Prok called upon Cindy Claveu to lead a discussion at the Gilded Cage, and there were many cyberlebrities in attendence. Prok has posted the transcript here.
Cindy Claveu
For my money the most interesting part of the discussion was when Cindy reminded me of Clay Shirky's paper "A Group is its Own Worst Enemy," which contains the following very interesting and timely passage.
The second thing you have to accept: Members are different than users. A pattern will arise in which there is some group of users that cares more than average about the integrity and success of the group as a whole. And that becomes your core group, Art Kleiner's phrase for "the group within the group that matters most."The core group on Communitree was undifferentiated from the group of random users that came in. They were separate in their own minds, because they knew what they wanted to do, but they couldn't defend themselves against the other users. But in all successful online communities that I've looked at, a core group arises that cares about and gardens effectively. Gardens the environment, to keep it growing, to keep it healthy.
Now, the software does not always allow the core group to express itself, which is why I say you have to accept this. Because if the software doesn't allow the core group to express itself, it will invent new ways of doing so.
Prok holds forth on Sparta and stuff.
A Future Salonista shows us what we will all look like in 2020.
Last night’s Future Salon had its usual share of technical snags, but it was interesting – more interesting for me perhaps, because I had an opportunity to be on the other side of the discussion. It certainly gave me lots to think about in terms of using SL or any other 3D graphical environment for holding meetings. Obviously there is a lot of potential here – one can imagine far flung business execs holding meetings in these spaces, not to mention classes and, well, discussions of emerging technologies. But from where I sit we are a loooooong way from this being a viable format for exchanging complex ideas in a rich and meaningful way.
update: Zero Grace/Tony Walsh has his take on the event here.
Apart from the audio issues – I was on a cell phone and had no sense at all if anyone could hear a word I was saying -- there was the issue of the 1-2 minute lag between when I said something and when the audience heard it. This meant that any typed feedback I received from the peanut gallery was very late, and also out of context when I received it which put a heavy processing load on me while I was talking. It amounted to a kind of weird double tasking in which I had to keep up my own thread of conversation, while remembering what I said 1.5 minutes ago and then reading and processing the comments relative to time t-1.5. It was like joining a conference call from the moon.
Zero Grace (aka Tony Walsh from Clickable Culture) makes a statement.
This magnified another problem that I found with the format, which is that there is no way to read the audience. I don’t know how many thousands of hours I’ve logged in classrooms and in talks in places ranging from Bulgaria to Princeton, and I’ve always been able to read the body language of the audience pretty well. Oh sure, in Bulgaria a nod of the head means no, and a smile in Princeton means “I hate you”, but you can at least tell if the audience is paying attention, tired, distracted etc. Here there is really nothing.
Pathfinder Linen targets Prokofy Neva with his deathray eyes.
This problem requires reflection. I know that several friends of mine in psycholinguistics are currently doing eye tracking experiments and they are finding that being able to track the gaze of your discourse partner is extremely important in many forms of communication. I don’t know what the remedy is, but that is a problem that haunted this meeting for sure.
Robin Linen in a reflective moment, in which she asks herself: "Why oh why did I take this job???"
At a certain point I gave up on the voice altogether and dropped into chat, and from my perspective this was much much better. I don’t know how it was from the audience side, but I at least *felt* like I was engaged in a conversation rather than barking into my phone (“Is anybody out there?”). I know people are tired of Prok, but I felt that even the chat convo didn’t get rolling until I goaded Prok into peppering me with some questions. It was more fun for me anyway, and it got some other people to press questions as well.
Maybe an idea to try would be to have two or three designated interrogators – a meet the press format – and let other people chime in if they want to. We have discussed doing this before in the game, but like all things of the pixel the idea perished of bit rot.
The depressing news of the evening was that Amanda is all hooked up already. :(
I thought the other two presentations were great, by the way, and I enjoyed listening to them, but I’m not sure that anything was added to them by placing them in SL, except perhaps that we got to witness them as a community, and that ain’t nothing I suppose.
Indeed there was a fun sense of community about the whole event – having the Herald Editors, Zero Grace, Prok, several FICs, as well as Pathfinder, Robin, and Jessie Linden in the room was fun. But then as you all know, I am so easily amused…
Coco and friend protest FIC display at 2nd anniversary celebraFICation.
One would think that an anniversary party would be a time for everyone to come together, but this being Second Life, and our benefactors being the Linden’s, the SL Second Anniversary Party appeared to be in no small measure a celebration of the Feted Inner Core (FIC) – the group of elite players that allegedly have the ear of the Linden’s and by some accounts have the Lindens downright collared. At the least, it appeared decidedly unfriendly to Cocoanut Koala when she arrived at the party and found it dominated by a massive FIC sign.
According to Coco, when she saw the sign she became angry and staged a three hour sit-down protest with a friend of hers. When people came by and asked the nature of her protest, she told them it was over three issues:
1. The presence of that sign, which (in the aftermath of the banning), looked as if it were intended to be humiliating to the person who coined the term, or more gloating in victory, and was definitely intimidating to me, and possibly others. It didn't make me feel welcome at what was supposed to be a Linden celebration for everyone.
2. The banning of Prokofy Neva from the forums.
3. The new rule stating that if you are banned from the forums, you are automatically banned from the game.
Reached for comment by the Herald, Coco told us that the protest was an empowering thing, because she “was able to repeat this message many times, to regular people, during the three hours or so [she] was there.” According to Coco “lot of people didn't even realize the new rule had taken effect.”
Meanwhile, back on the Forums Ulrika Zugzwang, who had recently received an official warning on the forums, started a thread about how she thought the new forum rules were unfair, and also that the prohibition on naming names was unfair and counter to principles of free speech:
Because we are all citizens of a virtual world, we should have the right to express ourselves without the standard limitations of a traditional internet forum. To support true free expression within the forums, we need a formalized and consistent system for moderation. I propose that the Lindens officially accept Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Coco could agree in principle to that, but she took exception to Ulrike’s specific proposal which would allow naming names on the forums:
Ulrika: I would like LL recognize, that this is not just a game, it is a virtual world. I would like them to grant us true free expression in the forum, provided that that speech does not denigrate, defame, or break local laws. I want to be able to:
• name names
• bring up possible in-world misdeeds
• link to external sites
• post transcripts of discussions
• post and discuss warnings and infractions
Coco posted to basically support the first part, but took issue with the idea that people should be able to name names on the forums. According to Coco, a new player entered the thread, and, not knowing the history of any of recent events, Coco “filled her in on that” in the thread.
According to Coco “suddenly Ulrika called me a troll. Soon thereafter, [Ulrika] decided I should receive a warning for participating in the thread and for recapping the recent history that led to all this. Her theory is LL should dispense with the exact rules that lead to warnings, and instead institute something which takes in the "entire complex" or something (I forget the exact words), wherein a person could be ousted from the boards and the game for saying something that was not in keeping, with most people's ideas, of what should be allowed to be said, though they break no rules. (You would have to read the thread to get more than my poor paraphrasing of her reasoning.)”
Coco also too umbrage when Ulrika typed out the following paragraph which she suggested everyone send in to the moderators:
Ulrika: “Coco is interjecting commentary into an otherwise productive thread, hijacking it to air grievances about perceived persecution and mistreatment. We feel a separate thread would be a better place for this discussion. While no single post violates the rules individually, could you look at them in context and issue an informal warning, if you feel it's justified?”
Ulrika then cited the forum rules against trolling:
“Flaming, Spamming, Trolling – Flaming (posting a message that is intended to incite anger or directly attack a person or persons), Spamming (multiple posts of the same topic or discussion), and Trolling (a post with an intentionally contrary opinion written with the intent of inciting or getting argumentative opinions) are strongly discouraged. If you think your post might be over-reactive, or that it might fall into one of these definitions, please reconsider posting.”
The war was then on. Coco continued to participate until she had said everything she wanted to to people, then left them with a quote from the Wikipedia definition of troll: "Many times a person will post a sincere message that they are emotionally sensitive about and trolls know that the easiest way to upset them is to falsely claim that they are a troll."
Coco claims she is disturbed by several aspects of the Second Life Board Culture: “The thing that bothers me is some of the regular posters invariably cast everything in personal terms, by claiming I would only say what I do because I am "borderline paranoid" or some such.”
“Another troubling thing - there are some posts in the Hot Line regarding players getting together to create petitions trying to get rid of other players. My friend in the picture thinks all this is indicative of their becoming emboldened after their victory over Prok. It's all just ghastly.”
Coco is coming around the thesis that Prok has been advancing for some time now: “I am beginning to conclude that my input is really quite irrelevant, compared to older, "FIC" players, and that the group meetings which include everybody are really a smokescreen. … It's hard enough to buck the very cohesive group of players who clearly lobby for their own continued success at the expensive of more inclusive things, as if their notions were written gospel - but to suspect that the Lindens will always go with what they say (and the evidence for that is climbing) is very disheartening.”
Could it be that the FIC has won their battle against Prok but might yet lose their war for their 3l337 if not exclusive access to the Lindens? What if the banning of Prok has spawned a new insurgency that may turn out to be a many headed hydra? All the Herald staff can say is “do not touch that mouse button!”
*pulling out lawn chair, cracking open a can of Meister Brau…*
Terra Nova has a preliminary report from The Games Learning and Society conference, with notes from the talks by Henry Jenkins and James Gee. Almost on cue, there is an interesting related post by Zero Grace on Clickable Culture. It does seem like games are promising environments for learning, but Second Life seems disappointing in this regard. I'm not sure why, but it is worth reflecting on the issue.
Yesterday I attended a meeting of the SL Future Salon, organized by Jeffrey Paffendorf (SNOOPYbrown Zamboni ) of the Acceleration Studies Foundation. The idea of the SL Future Salon is to bring clever futurists (and presentists?) together in SL to discuss the shape of things to come. This round the speakers were Betsy Book (Skyllar Skidoo) of Terra Nova and Virtual World Review fame, Clark Aldrich (author of Learning by Doing), and Julian Lombardi of the Croquet Project. SL seems a natural setting for such a discussion, but as we soon learned, the technical limits of SL become painfully salient – so much so that they distracted from the content of the discussion, which is perhaps just as well, given the content of the talks and hopeless chatter from the peanut gallery (self included).
Clark Aldrich (Clark Waves), Jeffrey Paffendorf (SNOOPYbrown Zamboni) and Betsy Book (Skyllar Skidoo)
As with the last meeting of this group of bleeding edge technological leaders, the meeting was plagued with technological problems. It took about an hour just to get the audio feed, and then there was a one minute delay between in-world events and the audio. It *was* interesting to see how the introduction of audio halfway into the meeting changed the complexion of the event. I’m sure the first speaker (Aldrich) was frustrated with trying to communicate anything by typing to a crowd of attention ho’s like yours truly. I had to do that once to an SL group know as The Thinkers and I found it pretty much impossible to communicate anything of value. Oddly, though, when the audio came on it didn’t seem to help that much – it just changed everything to a different kind of bad.
The peanut gallery
The Aldrich part of the presentation is worth reflecting on at length, since the content seemed to mirror the situation we were in – trying to harness technology for more effective modes of communication and learning. The basic project is reasonable enough and to some level of granularity almost certainly true, but could we please have a moratorium on these brain dead slogans about how books are so passé and we are in a post-literate phase of learning?
Aldrich has written a couple books, but you would think from the talk that those are the only books that he’s read. In any case his idea of what books are and what they do was utterly foreign to me. Somehow he has it in his head that books are devices for the communication of lines of information. Read the sentence, comprehend the sentence, store the sentence.
Now if that was your idea of books, then of course you would have trouble seeing how books could be of any use whatsoever in the acquisition of problem-solving skills, conveyance of emotions, yadda yadda yadda. But how on God’s green earth could anyone ever come to such a bizarre view of what books are and what they do?
Books -- and written and verbal communication generally -- are notorious for inflaming passions, indoctrinating people into lifestyles, behavior patterns, attitudes and mores. If the only book you were familiar with was Perl for Dummies, then indeed you might think Aldrich had a point, but I do think there are some minor oversights here – you know, things like THE BIBLE and THE KORAN.
The issue is that books do not directly convey information, for the most part, but use fragments of natural languages as kinds of hints and clues, in conjunction with our ever day experiences and abilities, to convey ideas, feelings, and yes even abilities. What is conveyed is not IN the book per se, but is rather the product of the book plus the agent plus the environment. Books provide hints and suggestions that in the hands of intelligent agents with lots of real world knowledge and practical reasoning skills and abilities can result in understanding or acquiring deep truths and abilities. Nor is it an accident that written communications are able to do this with some effectiveness – the technology has several thousand years of beta testing behind it.
I thought about this a lot during the discussion, and what exercised me was not the thesis being advanced by Aldrich (which was a howler) but rather trying to figure out the source of such a monumental tragicomic error. The theory I came up with was this: You sit in silicon valley, playing with computers, and pretty soon you start extending the computer metaphor into your everyday life. You see books, and you think: ah, these are just like lines of code that we feed into our CPUs. You begin to mistake written forms of natural language communication for lines of code. Once you accede to this confusion you have begun sliding down a path of ever more profound confusion. You think: gosh, all this cool stuff I do cannot have been taught in lines of code, so I didn’t get it from books or verbal instructions. Books are crap! They can’t teach me! Books are just so…so… pre-9/11.
The audio came on for the discussion with Julian Lombardi, which had the odd effect of leading me to turn up the volume and leave the computer entirely, coming back every five minutes or so to read the comments from the peanut gallery (and maybe add some). Not that the comments were taken seriously.
I had been looking forward to the Lombardi presentation because I’ve been a big booster of the Croquet Project for some time now. I even hyped it in my presentation at the State of Play last November. Sadly, I didn’t learn anything new about Croquet here, and more sadly Lombardi didn’t have clue one about Second Life so any kind of comparative analysis was completely off the burner.
Croquet, of course, is a project that provides an open source 3-D graphical environment for collaborative projects that allows building objects, scripting them, skinning them, etc, plus running lots of applications (e.g. web browsers) in the environment. So it is natural to ask, as one person did, “What is the difference between this and SL.” A good question that was never answered. We did get a nice gee we should work together some day sort of answer, but I don’t count that. Also on my mind was the question I asked last November: if you have Croquet who needs SL? That was asked and ignored twice. Oh well…
Bettsy Book’s talk was sort of interesting to me for a while, because I hadn’t exactly thought about it, but now that I have I think I might be done thinking about it. She discussed branding of virtual merchandise in SL, with particular attention to FIC allstars Amiee Weber and Cubey Terra. The general impression I got was that branding strategies are going overlap in a major way with real world branding strategies – possibly to the point where there is no meaningful difference apart from the available color palette. Or if there was a difference it wasn’t made salient to me.
Well that’s about it, except for some comments by the “instant access” peanut gallery. It is really just impossible to sit there and not heckle, I’ve discovered, which is sort of cool. Everything depends then on the moderators and speakers to properly filter the stream of wisecracks and occasional good points. That might be an impossible job, it also makes it very easy to ignore the questions you don’t want to answer by selecting the softballs from the bit stream.
But I rant.
Uri checks out the scarey new skin of Clickable Culture's Zero Grace.
Even naked guys and anarchists are futurists!
by Walker Spaight
Squagmire Stravinsky at the controls of the InfoNet R4
The information revolution comes to SL this evening when The Learning Center's own Squagmire Stravinsky unveils her newest creation, the InfoNet R4 information network, in its new and more powerful laptop edition. Squag's launch party starts at 9pm game-time (see Find for details). Don't miss it -- all the scripterati will be there.
Developed by Squagmire singlehandedly over a period of many months, the InfoNet is a powerful in-world information distribution system that resembles nothing so much as a kind of notecard-driven Internet.
Though official details are hard to come by ahead of the release of the portable R4 version, advance word is that the new system has been completely redesigned in a scalable architecture that will make the clunky information-handling tools now available on the Grid look like chipped and molting quill pens.
Accessed via a portable laptop (an in-world laptop, not the one you're viewing Second Life on now), the InfoNet will provide a global, centralized library/database containing free scripts, the latest news reports (including from the Herald), SL history, a non-profit events calendar and much more.
Reports are that users will at some point be able to create and maintain their own information channels on the InfoNet, though whether that functionality has been fully implemented is as yet unknown.
Some of the things Squagmire hopes to implement in future versions include in-world forums and 'blogs, RPG stats trackers, personal and business InfoNet sites, vendor tracking systems and much more.
In fact, the possibilities are nearly endless. By providing residents with a robust system of text and information storage -- something the building and scripting tools notably lack -- the InfoNet could open the door to any number of new applications and new ways to use and contribute to Second Life.
Linden Lab, probably busy working on Web prims for 1.7, has so far turned down applications for developer support for the InfoNet project, according to Squagmire. But if the present InfoNet system is any indication, the R4 should be a uniquely powerful new addition to capabilities on the Grid.
By Neal Stewart
[Continued from Part I]
Here is Part 2 of our interview with Ryan Dayton - the tech-savvy 14-year-old who claims to have made about $1000 US dollars in the 12 months he has been a Second Life resident. Ryan was banned 11 days ago when his mother revealed his real life age to Linden Labs during a phone call to customer support (the Terms of Service state that you must be 18 or above to enter the Adult grid). It is now Ryan's hope to retrieve his script-work and the roughly $600 USD worth of Linden currency still locked away in his banned account, and to make a new home for himself in the newly-opened Teen Grid. In Part 2 of our interview, Ryan talks about what it was like having to pretend to adults that he was 19. He also shares his thoughts on the Teen Grid, Linden Labs, and what his parents think about his success here in Second Life.
Neal Stewart: How many people do you know of that are under-age residents of SL?
Ryan Dayton: Oh jezzz. Can't say I know any others =)
Neal Stewart: Out of maybe 25 or 30 thousand residents, how many would you guess are under-age?
Ryan Dayton: I have no idea. Sorry, I really don't think there are that many... there's just a few here and there like myself.
Neal Stewart: How many people here, knew you were 14?
Ryan Dayton: About 6. All close friends.
Neal Stewart: It's funny to think that you're the chief officer of a technology business in SL, that you're 14 in real life, and that you have employees in SL that are maybe mid-thirties, late-forties etc :)
Ryan Dayton:Ya I know... LOL. I was in scripting elite. I don't think any of them were underaged.
Neal Stewart: I guess that's something you can't even do in the Real World :) Be a 13-year-old CEO :)
Ryan Dayton: MAYBE.... Doubt it LOL ... But I technically am in a RL business. I make real world money.
Neal Stewart: How do you think the Dayton tech members would feel, knowing that you're 14? Do they all know now?
Ryan Dayton: There are a choice few who know I am. We have told a few others, no one was REALLY phazed by it. I'm sure they were surprised though.
Neal Stewart: Do you think there are tell-tale signs exhibited by underage people in SL?
Ryan Dayton: It depends on the person. Maturity level. No one guessed I was underaged. So it depends on the person.
Neal Stewart: What are your thoughts on the age limit?
Ryan Dayton: Well I don't like them. But how can you trust a kid to stay out of an adult area? They are needed. So the teen grid was the answer.
Neal Stewart: Teens are needed?
Ryan Dayton: Teens are not needed. Teen Grid IS needed. It solves the problem. Teens shouldn't be here. But they are. So the teen grid was a good solution ... That's where I'm going just as soon as I can cash out and pack my bags =D
Neal Stewart: Heh heh. Do you agree with Linden Labs that there should be one grid for adults and one for teens, instead of just one for both?
Ryan Dayton: Yes. They have already started as an 18++ game. So you really can't go back. They would lose all their customers. Plus teens want to be with other teens.
Neal Stewart: Do you basically agree that adults and teens should have separate grids?
Ryan Dayton: Yes, basically.
Neal Stewart: What do you think the new Teen Grid will be like?
Ryan Dayton: I imagine lots of shooting and chaos. LOL.
Neal Stewart: Hahah. What else?
Ryan Dayton: I think its good testing grounds for my arm computer ... I think there will be yelling... fighting... shooting... and lots of suspensions... I also expect to make a lot of money.
Neal Stewart: Hahah
Ryan Dayton: I'm sure not EVERYONE will be nuts, but the majority will be teens shooting each other yes... It will be hectic, but I will be able to start over... If I can compete with 35 year-old programmers then I think I will be el presedente of Teen SL =D
Neal Stewart: Are you familiar with the latest announcements about what the Teen grid will be like?
Ryan Dayton: No.
Neal Stewart: OK. As I understand it, at first:
* Invitation-only. Manned by 2 or 3 Lindens Liasons. Open from noon to 10PM Pacific Time.
* No communication or object-exchange possible with the main Adult grid.
* PG textures only are allowed. LL will be monitoring uploads.
* Teens are able to purchase land on the teen grid, subject to credit-card-holder's permission.
* No adults allowed, except for special occasions where the adults will be pre-screened by LL.
What do you think about those?
Ryan Dayton: Well I know it will be strict. But that's expected. I can't say I like it. I'll have to deal. The invite is only TEMP, it will be open registration within the week I heard. Not that it matters. I haven't settled things here.
Neal Stewart: Do you think LL will be able to effectively monitor uploads etc? To prevent porn?
Ryan Dayton: Nope. But they will try. I can't be sure though. I don't know how many people they have manning the uploads ... Not that it matters - I'm not there for porn =) I'm there for the mula. $_$
Neal Stewart: :)
Ryan Dayton: Hehe. I'm basically here because I like to be able to create anything I want when I want to... It's freedom. It's FUN.
Neal Stewart: Do you think that most of the underage teens currently in the adult grid will go to the teen grid when it becomes available? And leave the adult grid for good?
Ryan Dayton: Maybe. I think they will go back and forth. At least this time they have someplace to go once they are banned.
Neal Stewart: What effect do you think it would have if Linden Labs offered an amnesty to Teens in the Adult grid, ie. they agreed to consider them for the teen grid if they admitted to being in the Adult grid?
Ryan Dayton: I think it would be great..... but from knowing Linden Labs they would never do that ... They are "stuck up".
Neal Stewart: Why do you think that?
Ryan Dayton: Many reasons... I can't blame them.... but they are rude at times. I highly doubt that would happen.
Neal Stewart: Can you give me some examples of rudeness?
Ryan Dayton: Phone calls. The general ''go away...''. I think the customer service is bad. I know they don't have to be nice... I'm here against their Terms of Service... But I can still be mad about it.
Neal Stewart: What sorts of things could they do to improve customer service?
Ryan Dayton: Hmm. I just wish they would take the time to understand things more.... I hate trying to tell a Linden about a problem and then having them say "report a bug". I wish they could be more interactive... I guess ... I want to be able to explain something to a real person.
Neal Stewart: Some SL residents seem to think that the Teen Grid will, for a number of reasons, have a very bad impact on Second Life [1, 2]. That it may even indirectly cause 'the fall of SL' . Can you see that happening?
Ryan Dayton: I don't see how... How would a teen's grid cause the main grids down fall? I can't see it. Unless the main grid doesn't want to lose their traffic. I'm not to sure. My answer is No, I dont see how it could.
Neal Stewart: I think one of the most common suggestions I have heard is that something bad will eventually happen to a teen in the teen grid and the negative publicity, and/or law-suits, will have a huge impact. Something bad involving pedophiles etc
Ryan Dayton: Uhgggg... They should all be lined up and shot [pedophiles] ... Well, I'm sure Linden Labs will be smart enough to protect themselves in the TOS.... And to enforce as much as they can. What happens happens... What you just said sounds totally possible. I can't say it wont happen. But I think LL will do their best ... Another thing is, THERE is full of teens and full of adults. All in harmony. When you have something like SL... And you can upload any picture or stream any video you want. It's possible. All I can say is.. BE SMART. Don't hang with pedophiles. I understand what you mean though.
Neal Stewart: What message do you have for all the underage teens currently in the adult grid?
Ryan Dayton: Keep quite, stay out of trouble, and maybe I'll see you soon.
I really think they should move... It's no fun lying about your age and being around adults who think they can talk about adult things with you ... Me being here, let everyone else out there believe I was an adult, and I'm not... so when they say something to me that would be for adults... maybe a break-up or about their divorce... its like mehhhhhh I don't think they want to be sharing this with a teen ... I actually feel bad... I'm sure they don't want to be talking to be about things they would have with their friend... I may be a friend but I'm not a confirmed adult... And they are sharing private things I don't think they want to be sharing with a 14 year old kid posing as 20.
Neal Stewart: One more question: What do your parents think of your involvement in SL? Do they know you make hundreds of dollars here? Are they amazed?
Ryan Dayton: Yes. they are both amazed and my mom is really really sorry she made that call =)
Neal Stewart: Heh heh. What did she say to you?
Ryan Dayton: Well, the first thing she said when she got home was "How is your world?" I responded, "It isn't there anymore..."
I can tell she felt bad. I never told her about the age limit so she didn't know.
Neal Stewart: Is that what she calls it, "Your world"?
Ryan Dayton: Yes lol. She also calls it 'air'... and she calls it THERE...
Neal Stewart: Air? :) Hahah
Ryan Dayton: Yes, she says I'm making money on air... It's air it's nothing.
Neal Stewart: That is awesome :)
Ryan Dayton: They make fun of me sometimes because I'm on here non-stop. But whatever. lol. They are still amazed... Especially when I got that first check from PayPal.
Neal Stewart: When this interview gets posted at the Herald, technically you're not allowed to visit the website for another four years and will be unable to read it :) So I'll email you a copy in the mean-time :)
Ryan Dayton: Hehe. Ya, I saw that. 18+
By Neal Stewart
I'm sitting at a vacant, shiny blue conference table in a meeting room at the top floor of Dayton Technologies HQ. Through the heavily-tinted windows I can see birds flying above the swaying palm trees outside. On the floor beneath me is the freshly-built coffin of Ryan Dayton himself. It is a polished, blue coffin mounted on a mahogany plint. Well-wishers have placed roses and about seven hand-sized personal-security devices around the coffin's base. As a resident, Ryan had built and sold these devices. Now they have been edited to display descriptions like, "In memory of Ryan Dayton" and "I will miss you best friend =( " It is estimated that in the 12 months he was a Second Life resident, these devices and similar earned Ryan about $1000 USD.
But the real Ryan Dayton is very much alive. 10 days ago it was Ryan's SL avatar that was perma-banned - or 'executed' as some residents call it. This is because it was discovered that, when he joined Second Life 12 months ago, in real life Dayton was a 13 year old boy.
Last month, in a landmark decision, the United States Supreme Court abolished capital punishment for juvenile offenders, ruling that it is unconstitutional to sentence anyone to death for a crime they committed while younger than 18.
In Second Life however, being younger than 18 IS the crime.
Being an under-18 Second Life resident is a bannable offense according to the Terms of Service. This is a policy that seems to be supported by the vast majority of residents, who cherish the mature space that SL provides. Recently however, Linden Labs made a landmark announcement of their own; the controversial [1, 2] Teen Grid will now be opened. The Teen Grid is planned as an adult-free zone, separate to the Adult Grid, and restricted to teenagers between 13 and 17 years of age. There, Teens like Ryan Dayton will no longer be banned or 'executed' because of what's printed on their RL birth certificates. Instead they will have to do something serious first, like toilet-paper Old Man Lawson's front yard.
Yesterday Ryan and I spoke for several hours. While I sat at his empty conference table in Second Life, he spelt out other-worldly messages to me through a digital Ouija board called 'Yahoo Messenger'. Ryan did not approach the Herald for this interview. His story was discovered when I leveled up on Thursday night to virtual-journalist level 6 (10+5(int bonus * 2 exp)) and was able to track him down.
Beforehand we talked about the RL detention he received that morning for being late to class (he's in Grade Eight) and the Second Life funeral his friends have planned for him next week. The entry for his group 'Dayton Technologies' now lists 19 members and no officer. In this interview Ryan tells us how his secret was exposed, his thoughts on Linden Labs, Second Life and his business here. He also talks about his hope to retrieve the $600 US dollars still locked up in his banned account and his dreams of being reincarnated in the new Teen Grid.
Neal Stewart: Please tell me everything that happened on the day you got banned. Start at the beginning.
Ryan Dayton: Alright. I started my normal day. Got up, took a shower, and got ready for school. It was a normal day until I got home. I was going to log in, but it said my account was disabled, and to visit www.secondlife.com. I did so and all it said was "on hold". I didn't receive an e-mail saying why. It turns out my mom made a call to Linden Lab and told them that I was 14.
Neal Stewart: What did you think when you discovered your account was 'on hold'?
Ryan Dayton: I thought, maybe the bill wasn't paid correctly or something. I am careful online and I do not tell just anyone my real age. My mom said nothing to me about it when she picked me up from school and by the time I found out she was already out for a work appointment.
Neal Stewart: Tell me about your mother's call to Linden Labs.
Ryan Dayton: I had moved the credit card information to her card. My card didn't have the cash on it at the time [Ryan primarily uses a special cash card that is linked to his mother's credit card]. She said it was fine. What she saw was a bill from "Linden Labs" not "Second Life", so she didn't know where the charge was coming from. She called in to find out. From what I heard, she said "my son" a few times - letting them know it was OK with her that I play the game. But but they asked her how old I was and she answered truthfully, not knowing the age limit.
Neal Stewart: Did your Second Life status eventually go from 'on hold' to perma-banned? Or something like that?
Ryan Dayton: Well... It's on hold still. It will remain that way. I'm working on getting some time to log in so I can cash out and back up my valuable scripts.
Neal Stewart: I was wondering about that. Linden Labs don't always let people log in to cash out and back things up do they?
Ryan Dayton: I've already paid for this month and my land fees, so I believe they owe me the time. I have a good deal of money on there from my creations and I think they should seriously think before stealing my hard-earned money.
Neal Stewart: Will you have to try and convince Linden Labs to let you back in for a bit?
Ryan Dayton: Yes. I've already written them an e-mail and I plan to call them on Monday. They re-open then and should get my e-mails. Hopefully I'll get a response from them then.
Neal Stewart: If you had to bet, would you bet that Linden Labs would let you get back into your account for a bit just to cash out etc?
Ryan Dayton: I actually think they wouldn't do it. I really hope they at least give me an hour. I paid for all of April and I think they owe that to me. It isn't easy to start off fresh when you were leading a small business and then having yourself cut off from it.
I was pretty upset the other day. I heard that the Lindens caught a 15 year old, but gave him the privilege of staying online in the main grid till the teen grid comes out. They even said they would transfer his account for him. Yet when I come up as a teen - a scripter and mature person - they say that I will lose everything. I don't think that's fair. But I cant be sure if that's correct or not. But my source says its true.
Neal Stewart: Are you certain that your assets and belongings haven't been erased?
Ryan Dayton: I can't be certain, but I believe they keep things for a long time before they perm-delete everything. My shop and HQ are all still up, and the land is still owned by me [It appears that there is a distinction between being 'on hold' and being genuinely perma-banned].
Neal Stewart: How did you feel when you found out that you had been banned?
Ryan Dayton: Very angry.... very sad. I put a lot of work into my business and I was about to release a new version of my Dayton 9000 Arm computer. But it was gone. [This is the security device mentioned earlier].
Neal Stewart: How much money has your Second Life business made in the 12 months and 5 days you were here?
Ryan Dayton: Let's see... I think I've made a little over 1k USD.
Neal Stewart: 1000 US dollars?
Ryan Dayton: Yes.
Neal Stewart: Wow.
Ryan Dayton And there's about $600 worth of USD on the account right now. That's why I seriously hope I can get that hour, to cash out.
Neal Stewart: Where did most of the money come from?
Ryan Dayton: Most of the money comes from the Dayton 9000. It's a scripted arm-computer I made. It's very popular. It sells itself.
Neal Stewart: Can you buy it on SLExchange?
Ryan Dayton: No. You can only get it at my shop, located in Kaili 70,110.
Neal Stewart: How much does the unit go for?
Ryan Dayton: $700 L a copy (currently about $2.97 USD).
Neal Stewart: How much are you paying in tier at the moment? Or were you before?
Ryan Dayton: $25 USD a month.
Neal Stewart: So what are Dayton Tech's main products/services?
Ryan Dayton: Dayton Tech is a group of builders and scripters developing vehicles, gadgets, guns, and anything thats sparks interest. They are also my beta test group for the Dayton 9000.
[...]
Neal Stewart: Did your friend tell you he was going to make a coffin for you?
Ryan Dayton: LOL. No, I heard about it and it surprised me.
Neal Stewart: What was your reaction?
Ryan Dayton: "WOW"
Neal Stewart: How did it make you feel?
Ryan Dayton: I didn't expect this much attention. I was sad, but it made me happy to see that they cared.
Neal Stewart: People compare perma-bans in SL to a kind of dying. And you have a coffin here and the members of your group are wearing "R.I.P Ryan Dayton" group titles etc. Is it really similar to dying in a way?
Ryan Dayton: Yes I'd say it is. I can't come back. I'm over with. Finished ... That is unless LL will work with me to bend the rules a little. If my mom is able to take over the account, I would still make the move to the teen grid. Because her being the expected user of the account isn't the same person as me. So I've still died.
Neal Stewart: Tell me more about some of the things you have made in SL.
Ryan Dayton: One of the more recent things I made is a server-based vendor. It communicates with a main server to make prices changes etc. That way I don't have to jump all over the grid to make changes. I just change the server. Then the server e-mails all the vendors with the updates. Very proud of that one =)
Neal Stewart: Does it use XML-RPC or something?
Ryan Dayton: No, nothing goes out of the game, unless you count the e-mail leaving the game and coming back in. It's all done with e-mail.... whole lotta e-mail =)
Neal Stewart: Heh heh. How long did it take you to code?
Ryan Dayton: Hmm... maybe 12 hours.
Neal Stewart: How many hours have you spent on SL on average, per day, in the 12 months you have been here?
Ryan Dayton: A lot. I would spend most of my day after school online... which is bad. But it was all spent learning. I don't play that much at all anymore ... I basically spent a few months working really hard at learning the language [LSL] because I saw how much it could bring in... It's amazing... for a game.
Neal Stewart: So maybe four or five hours every day?
Ryan Dayton: Around that. Yes.
Neal Stewart: Tell me about some of the things you have learnt.
Ryan Dayton: Well. Rotations took me a while.... they are a pain. Hehe. I've learnt the basics of a programing language. 3d modeling. Functions, Events, states, constants, variables, flow control...
Neal Stewart: And you learnt all of these purely through SL?
Ryan Dayton: Yes and the LSL wiki.
Neal Stewart: Wow.
Ryan Dayton: I sound really geek. LOL. But I'm not at all. I just have fun coding =)
Neal Stewart: Do you consider yourself a normal American teenager? Or different in some ways?
Ryan Dayton: I think I am normal. I just took a lot of time to learn something and get good at it ... I have friends, I go to parties, the movies. I'm not cooped up on here all day =) It's a "hobby".
Neal Stewart: How did you first find out about SL?
Ryan Dayton: Well. I started off in TSO [The Sims Online]. I heard about THERE.com I played THERE for months, and had lots of fun. I was kinda into the HTML coding at the time because we were learning how to make websites in Tech class. Someone started talking about SL. And how you could do ANYTHING and make anything... be anything. That just sounded awesome. So I checked it out.
Neal Stewart: Were they right? :)
Ryan Dayton: yup =) I was hooked from day 1.
Neal Stewart: How did you feel about the whole under-age thing when you first joined?
Ryan Dayton: Well. I hated lying to everyone who asked. But I had to ... It didn't feel right being in the game. But I couldn't really be a good boy and go off to play THERE again. Hehe.
Neal Stewart: Heh heh. How old did you say you were, to people here?
Ryan Dayton: Well, I started as 13 [in RL]... so I said I was 19... and when my RL birthday came, I turned 14. So I became 20 in the game.
Neal Stewart: How does THERE compare to SL?
Ryan Dayton: Ummm. THERE was fun. But SL has more to offer. SL is better for me. But not for somone who isn't into a game like this.
Neal Stewart: What does SL offer that THERE can't?
Ryan Dayton: In-world 3D modeling and coding of what you make.
Neal Stewart: Would you say that's the best thing about SL?
Ryan Dayton: Making things for fun. And selling them for real life big coin ;-)
Neal Stewart: Heh heh. What would you say is the worst thing about SL?
Ryan Dayton: Age limit, bugs and LINDEN LAB! That's 3... hmm go with age limit.
Neal Stewart: Do you make money in RL in any other ways, other than SL?
Ryan Dayton: No, not really.
Neal Stewart: What sorts of things have you spent the money on, that you have made here?
Ryan Dayton: My Zen Micro MP3 player. $US 249.99.
Neal Stewart: Heh heh. What else?
Ryan Dayton: All the rest is in PayPal. And my bank.
Neal Stewart: Ah, OK. Are you saving for something?
Ryan Dayton: Pretty much. I'm sure I'll see something I want that will be a lot of $$.
Neal Stewart: So, the person who first told you about SL, they were themselves underage too?
Ryan Dayton: Yup. They were banned and moved to THERE.
Neal Stewart: What were they banned for?
Ryan Dayton: Being underage.
Neal Stewart: How were they discovered?
Ryan Dayton: Not sure.
Neal Stewart: Have you been temporarily banned or suspended from SL before, or ever given any official warnings? About anything at all?
Ryan Dayton: Never on this account. The only time I was on hold was because my card needed refilling =)
Neal Stewart: Heh heh. So, in the 12 months you've been here you have had a completely clean record? :)
Ryan Dayton: Yup.
Neal Stewart: How many people do you know of that are under-age residents of SL?
[Continued in Part II...]
by Budka Groshomme
Second Life is in many respects an alternative life, a dimension one step away from the mundane reality that marks our daily grind. In here, in this expansive, magical world, there are lions and tigers and, oh my, such wonderful things to see and do.
It occurred to me that perhaps I was not the only SF writer who might have an interest in SL. Perhaps I could find a kindred soul who, like me, longed to escape the world and be charmed by the fantasy SL offers daily.
Bud Sparhawk, kindred soul
After a careful, scientific selection process of asking twenty SF writers I know if they would be willing to be interviewed, I selected the one respondent who agreed to be interviewed: Bud Sparhawk. I asked him to try SL for a few hours before the interview.
Budka: What did you do when you finally got there? Did anything strike your fancy?
Sparhawk: Well, that’s certainly a different place. Not at all like the game world I was half expecting. I was fascinated by the variety of people moving around and the different appearances they took on. I haven’t seen so many weird get-ups since the last SF convention I attended (laughs).
Budka: Before we talk about SL why don’t you say a little about your writing? Most of your work appears in magazines, correct?
Sparhawk: Yes. I generally write “hard SF’ short fiction. Which is to say that it deals more with the scientifically plausible than the outright fantastic. I write very little about science per se, more about the characters involved, such as a future miner on Europa or a sailor on Jupiter. I also have a collection of humorous stories about a grafter named Sam Boone who gets into all sorts of scrapes with outrageous aliens. Sam would be right in his element in Second Life.
Budka: Do you think SL could be useful to you in your writing?
Sparhawk: Based on what you’ve already told me, what I’ve read in the Herald, and some of those references you gave me [yesterday], Second Life looks like it has considerable potential. I could see it being a laboratory to determine how people would react to having so much freedom.
Budka: I assume that since you are used to dealing with alien cultures, and fantastic inventions SL would be a wonderful place to visit. Isn’t it like visiting a fantasy world, a different planet?
Sparhawk: At first what I experienced was overwhelming – too much, oto soon, and too distracting. Being able to fly was pretty amazing, although I kept bumping into invisible things [Ed: Sparhawk uses a Macintosh and was experiencing lag.]
Budka: I wrote an article a while back about how SL might represent the world of the far future, when we’ve eliminated most of our material needs.
Sparhawk: Well, there’s been a lot written about the Vingean post-singularity world. That’s when the rate of acquisition curve for knowledge and power becomes infinite. It isn’t beyond the realm of possibility to believe that might happen – most of us have experienced the steadily increasing rate already. In most stories, the human race becomes something else when everyone has unlimited power and knowledge at their disposal, something we can’t imagine. Other stories concern how people would use their powers to destroy and others – utopias – where everyone turns their interests to the arts, philosophy, or sports – unleashing their creative spirits. Others are less optimistic – think of the 9/11 group with enough power to destroy the world as a real horror scenario.
Budka: Well, every SL resident I’ve run into is highly creative. I haven’t found anyone who isn’t building, constructing, or doing some sort of project. I think SL unleashes that in everyone.
Sparhawk: I think you’re still in the early days when only the creative types, the early adopters, are attracted here. If [Philip] Linden is right about having a million subscribers, how many do you think are going to be interested in creative projects and how many are going to flock to the casinos, skin shows, pornography, and other distractions?
Budka: But won’t the practices and behavior of the current residents affect the newcomers? Won’t we be the examples for others?
Sparhawk: I should point out that you have no “residents.” What you have here is a digital Las Vegas, a Disneyworld, and a gamers’ playground where everyone is a tourist. Second Life will never evolve a culture, society, or real community until it has people living and working here full time. After that it might be considered a model for something in the real world.
Budka: Any final words?
Sparhawk: I think I might get a story or two out of this. Maybe one on how this could benefit shut-ins, paraplegics, or other mobility disadvantaged people. Something with pathos, hope, and a really good cry at the end.
by Neal Stewart
OKKKAY?
One of the perks of working for the Herald, other than the sex, drugs and heavy metal music... and the power... and the riches... other than those, one of... and the fame.... other than those, one of the perks is being able to pass your forum posts off as Op/Ed's.
The number of people who regularly frequent the Second Life forums is comparable to the Herald's regular readership. However, it's probably not the same residents visiting both. I mean, my mum's not good with forums. So every now and then it pays to give a shout-out to our forum-bedraggled brethren and their dialectic mortal combat. And vice versa.
And every now and then you'll write a forum post so carefully that you'll wish you'd posted it as an Op/Ed. So you have to give a shout-out to yourself.
Also, it's a very important issue and not at all about my own personal posts. Would you buy that?
OK. So what's the context? Linden Labs are taking some heat in the forums at the moment. It is argued that LL are not adequately dealing with griefers and abuse in Second Life. That the problem is reaching epic proportions. Some of the more prominent recent examples of alleged griefing include anti-homosexual flags, KKK avatars/imagery, profanity in user-profiles and RL death-threats. The Herald has also recently covered alleged privacy invasion, Welcome Area nukes, Nazi training camps, and WTC 911 humour. And some intellectual hotshot also wrote an editorial on virtual-world free speech.
I had thought that my position on this was quite common in SL but it hasn't received as much voice in some of the threads lately as I would expect. I appreciate that the position is contrary to what the Terms of Service and Community Standards currently prescribe. Personally, I don't think a player should be banned for displaying anti-gay flags, swatikas etc. I think that residents should be allowed to identify the creators/perpetrators publicly. Then I think that residents should react individually as they see fit; Be it using the ratings/reputation system (which I think should be radically improved/overhauled), using land-bans, refusing to do business with them, etc, talking to them about it, giving them a piece of their mind, telling their friends etc. Or doing nothing at all.
That's kind of easy to say but it's tricky when you consider alts (alternate accounts). A resident can create a griefer alt for the express purpose of making anti-gay flags etc (as they appear to have done) and then avoid any of the repercussions of their actions. They can spend all their time in SL using their non-griefer account. I don't know what the solution is there. Are there any technical solutions or is it ultimately a dead end? I think that many will use that objection as another argument for bans based on resident majority-opinion. I prefer empowering individuals where possible rather than allowing majority-opinion bans. On the other hand, this alts problem only applies to griefers who build something and leave it there. Griefers who actively disrupt events could be more adequately dealt with, given the right tools, regardless of whether or not they are alts.
To clarify, I do think that people who make direct RL death-threats should be perma-banned and the proper authorities notified etc. I also appreciate it that it is a fuzzy area.
I'm not arguing here about what Linden Labs must do or are entitled to do, or what rights they have as a company and what rights we have as residents and customers. I'm just saying that personally I prefer the hands-off approach to LL governance.
I'm not addressing anyone in particular, but I think that residents should think twice before arguing that the Linden Labs response, or lack of response, to griefing is evidence of incompetence or small-cojones. It is possible that that's the case but I believe that overall they are very conscious of what they're doing and are working with a very deliberate (though sometimes slightly-inconsistent) policy in mind. Having said that, residents have told me that the response-time to abuse-reports is inadequate. But because I'm for resident-action rather than Linden-action, I probably can't say much about that :)
To be honest, I think it is improbable that my libertarian or quasi-libertarian position will ever be reflected in the TOS/CS (ie. that they will be made more lenient). So I think that the most practical solution would be to combine both view-points as it were. If LL can improve resident powers to respond to griefers etc, then libertarians can respond using their own 'weapon of choice' and residents who prefer LL abuse-reports/bans etc can choose to use that avenue. In the long-term, improving resident anti-griefing powers will also alleviate LL's workload, in terms of the resources it costs them to respond adequately to abuse reports. I think that one measure in particular that would go a long way is a more complex and thorough rating/reputation system that is integrated with access rights to land or even vendor-purchases etc. To my mind, the use of even the simplest blacklists, though problematic, might be preferrable to complete SL-bans. But that's just one option.
What technical solutions or tools could LL provide to give residents their own more-adequate anti-griefing powers, and which ones are currently insufficient? And perhaps just as importantly, what technical solutions or scripting tools can we provide ourselves with?
Forum highlights:
"Reputation system"
http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=17689
"Please have a backbone, Linden Lab"
http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=40021
"Anti-Gay Attack on My Pickerel Land : ("
http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=39976
"Why is there so much tolerance for repeated griefing/threats?"
http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=38679
The ANWR oil rig
Having now explored where only Lindens had gone before and after reading What Philip Said At the Oil Rig on Wednesday night and other SL forum threads, the Herald's editorial board feels it important that the Lindens consider preserving some of the landmark builds that made the new northern continent a compelling place when it was first unveiled a few days ago.
Though no plans have been made public to delete the builds, Philip Linden's non-committal response to the question of whether the oil rig in ANWR sim would be preserved in its present state leaves something to be desired. While LL's position that Second Life should be a place of user-created content is laudable, what passes for reality in SL is more complex than that.
The question of zoned land on the Grid is a hot one at the moment. The residents will have to decide that one for themselves. But on a more granular level, there's a different cultural question that needs to be answered.
Philip Linden ponders a protest
Linden-made roads, dams, marinas, telehubs, town hall meeting spaces and much more all exist on the Grid, to the great benefit of the population. SL's 20,000+ residents have created a shared culture that takes in not only their own builds but those things as well. The population proves its resilience by being able to incorporate all these things into their "user-created world," find a place for them in the culture, and continue to grow.
Giving us a handful of new and impressive Linden builds -- a gorgeous oil rig, an intriguing pipeline, a wrecked spaceship and a ghostly stilt city, complete with formidable temple -- only to take them away again by selling the land they're built on would be an insult to every avatar on the Grid. For weeks we've been subjected to the natterings of intrepid explorer Magellan Linden, who claimed to have been mapping a place rich in culture and history, a place from which the previous population had been wiped by forces unknown.
With the prospective sale of what little evidence remains of that population, two scenarios present themselves:
1. Linden Lab is showing alarming insensitivity to those who enjoyed Magellan's narrative of the culture that built these monuments. Now that the redskins have been driven out, LL seems to feel, it's time to burn their sweat lodges to the ground.
2. The Magellan Chronicles were bullshit in the first place, a marketing ploy only, never intended to enter the collective culture that is Second Life, and evidence of alarming insensitivity to the current population of the Grid.
Considering the many cosmetic changes that have been made as part of the 1.6 update to the world, the second scenario seems more likely. The builds can go, the logic seems to run, in favor of a growing subscriber base and more land to sell at auction.
More likely still is that the Lindens never considered that the Grid's population might enjoy these artifacts and want to preserve them as part of the virtual, natural and cultural landscape. All they had to do was ask.
Linden Lab should show the same resilience the Grid's population displays, bite the bullet and preserve the small parcels of land on which these few artifacts now stand. It's the only respectful thing to do -- respectful of the narrative LL has already created, a narrative of a culture that originally colonized the new continent, respectful of the avatars who are about to re-colonize it, and respectful of those of us who have already colonized the "old" world of Second Life, and of those to come.
by Walker Spaight
At long last, intrepid explorer Magellan Linden's intrepid explorations have borne fruit.
A new land mass has appeared in the northern reaches of the Grid we call Second Life.
The Herald's initial exploration of the new continent, which has yet to be named, stopped first at what appeared to be a drilling rig in the new ANWR sim.
Noticing the bubbles leaking from below the surface of the sea, we descended for a closer look.
But the pipeline was sealed where it makes landfall in the new Sandra sim.
Further exploration revealed what appeared to be Magellan Linden's ship (wrecked in the new Columbia sim), the ghostly stilt city described in his exploration journal, and what must have been a temple built by the city's former residents.
Ship of fools?
Village of ghosts?
Temple of futility?
The temple, located in the new Iris sim, seems not to have been grand enough to appease whatever gods wiped the population from the face of the mini-map.
The Herald's explorations will continue. We look forward to seeing what lies further on down the road.
Fernando Martinez: "A real man needs more than one thing in life, you know what I'm saying here? The heart and the loins both on fire... groaning and straining and making hot dirty passionate encounters with the secretaries, while the wife she sleeps at home..."
By Neal Stewart
I'm clearly 'a bit of a wanker'.
There's a copy of Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra and a stack of David Lynch DVD's beside my monitor.
These are akin to a Hooters magazine and a bottle of hand lotion.
At least they would be if I were to call on these items in a game review. This is according to the guys at 'UK Resistance'. Their brief article, 'New Games Journalism -- Our Seven-Point Manifesto On Why It's Shit' is a scathing laugh-out-loud attack on NGJ 'wankers' ('wanky', 'wanking', 'wanks'): “Games journalism is about saying if a game is worth £40 or not. It is not about referencing the works of Jean-Paul Satre when reviewing Need for Speed Underground 2.”
[This is the second in a two-part Op/Ed series on Games Journalism Old and New. See Part I, by Herald Editorial Director Walker Spaight]
Sure it's a tongue-in-cheek piece but, as the UKR clarifies, they are serious and, as a wanker, I have an imaginary responsibility to get all serious and researchy and have a big 2600-word wank about it.
So, the battle-lines are drawn. Apparently it's Old Games Journalism versus New Games Journalism, with the UKR's seven-point manifesto giving props to OGJ and taking a baseball bat to the New. This has got nothing to do with Space Invaders vs Freelancer or Castle Wolfenstein vs Half Life 2. The debate is about old games-journalism not old-games journalism, if that makes any sense. OGJ is the traditional, or old-skool, style of journalism and NGJ is the latest - it's where all the alleged wanking happens. So, what's the difference? Have a look at these two examples, from two different authors, writing about Jedi Knight 2:
Example of Old Games Journalism
"...With more options and tweaks than you could shake a lightsaber at, Jedi Outcast’s multiplayer component offers a fairly healthy amount of gameplay for those who have already saved the galaxy in their single-player outing. Aspiring Jedi can duke it out through seven Force-flavored modes, which range from the standard Capture the Flag and Free For All, to the more inventive Capture the Ysalamiri, in which flag bearers are immune to and incapable of Force Powers. To emphasize Star Wars’ unique appeal, there are even modes like Jedi Master, where only the one who finds and bears the lightsaber may use the Force, and Duel, a tournament-style mode in which two players go head-to-head with – what else? -- lightsabers..."
http://www.avault.com/reviews/review_temp.asp?game=jkout&page=3
Example of New Games Journalism
"...You see what this has become? It's not just a trivial game to be played in an idle moment, this is a genuine battle of good versus evil. It has nothing to do with Star Wars or Jedi Knights or any of the fluff that surrounds the game's mechanics. I played by the 'rules' and he didn't, that makes me the 'good' guy and him the 'baddie', but this is real, in the sense that there's no telling who's going to win out here. There's no script or plot to determine the eventual triumph of the good guy (that's me, five health), there's no 'natural order' of a fictional universe or any question of an apocryphal ultimate 'balance'. There's just me and him, light and dark, in a genuine contest between the two..."
http://www.alwaysblack.com/blackbox/bownigger.html
See the difference? The second piece is one of the most widely-recognized examples of NGJ. It's written by a man named Ian Shanahan and it's called 'Bow, Nigger'.
'Bow, Nigger' is a 2300-word essay on a 5-minute lightsabre duel in Jedi Knight II. The single encounter, vividly described in first-person perspective, is punctuated with insightful commentary on the game's mechanics, the Star Wars movies, the Jedi code of honour, virtual roleplay, ethics and the battle of good versus evil. As a whole, though, it amounts to a commentary on gaming and gamers in general. It is a style of commentary that the authors of the anti-NGJ Seven-Point Manifesto would like to see less of.
But why?
New Games Journalism
NGJ has been described as 'a highly subjective approach to videogame writing in which the player’s own experiences within the game environment are brought to the fore'. The NGJ term has it's origin in the openly-biased 'new journalism' of writers like Tom Wolfe and the recently-departed Hunter S Thompson. The Wikipedia entry on 'New Journalism' identifies 3 key features of the style:
1. stream of consciousness (“Stupid? Yeah ... What to do? ... Vulnerable ... Shit ... Blammo ... And SLASH. Bastard.”)
2. conversational speech (rather than quotations and statements)
3. writer's opinions, thoughts and feelings (as opposed only to corroborated facts)
Old Games Journalism
Old Games Journalism, as the UKR sees it, is really just about game reviews. According to their manifesto, the OGJ style has about 4 primary features. An OGJ article:
1. "tells you what the game's features are and 'if they're good or not"
2. "'really succeeds in telling you what this game is worth out of ten"
3. "'will help you decide whether to buy the game or not"
4. "the author can do all of the above 'without meandering off into details of his personal life [Shanahan for example mentions his mortgage and two cats in 'Bow, Nigger'] or having imaginary 15,000-word conversations with characters from the game"
A defense of New Games Journalism
New Games Journalism is often characterized by a lot of sentences that contain the word “I”. This article you're reading now opens with an “I” statement. So it should come as no surprise that, as an amateur monkey-spanker, I must crack my RSI-recovering knuckles and rise to defend New Games Journalists and their epic wanking.
Pin trash and poetry treasures
Since I'm not reviewing Need for Speed Underground 2, apparently I'm allowed to quote a philosopher: Jeremy Bentham once said that 'All things being equal, pushpin is as good as poetry'. Now, what the hell does that mean? 'Pushpin' is an Old Game played with pins. 'Poetry' is what you'd call some New Games Journalism. What Bentham is saying is that 'one man's trash is another man's treasure'. So ergo, visa-vi, concordance, OGJ can be 'as good as' NGJ. And vice versa.
NGJ is self-absorbed masturbation, you might argue, whereas OGJ is practical - it's about trying to decide whether or not you should fork out 80 bucks for a game. Ok, but then what? Is the game itself a practical item? Hell no. What is it? It's a buzz. It's a self-involved 4am jerk-off session with cramped neck, bloodshot eyes and D-pad thumb-blisters. And if you're getting your buzz from actually sitting there playing the game, would you deny the same to people who might also enjoy just writing about it? What do you care if some guy tugs his nipple and blogs pretentiously about a Katamari Damacy game while his girlfriend reads 'Being and nothingness' in his ear? Change the channel. It's not like you're out 10 bucks for the cost of a magazine. Most NGJ pieces are web-only or blog posts anyway - as UKR themselves points out.
Old Games vs The New: Disco Duck [left] and Taliban Bijou [right]
Sleeping with the enemy
Of course, the UKR weren't the first to draft a 'manifesto'. Theres' is a response to the NGJ manifesto written in March of 2004 by Kieron Gillen (although the NGJ style, nameless, has been around for some time). More recently, Gillen teamed up with other writers in a Guardian article that presented 'Ten unmissable examples of New Games Journalism'.
The UKR has it's own 10 examples of classic OGJ pieces, in their manifesto. There's a bit of a slip-up with one of the examples though. It's an X-Box review of 'Brothers in Arms' which they praise as 'classic' OGJ because, among other reasons, "At no point does he [the author] pretend to be a soldier in World War II for 15,000 words". This is true, but what's interesting is that the review opens with a decidely NGJ passage: "War is hell. We’ve heard this adage with just about every war-themed film or documentary release, but the truth is most of us will never experience the ravages first-hand, God willing." It goes on to ask, "So why would we want to relive the trying times of WWII in a videogame?" True, the author isn't pretending he's in WWII but he's clearly joined the wankers a bit there with an interesting question about what WWII should mean to gamers today. On the net you'll find other examples of OGJ that nonetheless make the same brief forays into wankerdom. This OGJ review of Vietcong walks both sides of the fence with: "There were moments when I knew what it must have felt like to be alone in the jungle, pinned down behind a rotten log with a half dozen NVA (North Vietnamese Army) circling you. Then there are other times when Vietcong feels like just another shooter, with contrived situations that undermine the realism."
In the same way, you will find OGJ elements in NGJ. And rightly so. Bow, Nigger comments briefly on JKII's sound and graphics quality, the types of lightsabre combat-moves, chat-mode, macro scripting and the Quake III engine on which the game is based. Indeed it would be impossible to present most NGJ pieces without explaining these sorts of features.
So, it's important to note that the distinction between OGJ and NGJ is not always clear-cut. It's often a sliding scale. So criticism of either genre must be appropriately ... uh... slidey.
Pussyweed, philosophy and anti-intellectualism
To be fair, I don't think the UKR manifesto is intended as a genuine attack on all NGJ - just some of the wanky quasi-LiveJournal post-modernist rantage that is undoubtedly out there at the extreme end of the scale. I mean, how many gamers can find fault with this unmissable example of NGJ - Shoot Club: Saving Private Donny? It is awesome. Read it. You would have to be an absolute pussyweed to call the author of that column a wanker.
But even if the manifesto is not a blanket attack on all NGJ, it can still be read as something of an attack on the more cerebral and intellectual aspects of game-reviews in general.
Take a look at the Half Life 2 review that was given the thumbs up from the UKR. Apparently you're allowed to mention the 'big brother' architecture and the 'Blade Runner' 'vision of the future', but it would be forbidden to talk about how the ideas of George Orwell and Philip Dick are explored or relevant to the game.
On the other hand, maybe that's fair enough. Is it absolutely necessary to mention philosophy or literature? For some games, certainly not. But others it's unavoidable. Can you seriously review Metal Gear Solid 2 without talking about narrative? If you don't, and many didn't, you're only telling half the story. Furthermore, if games reviewers shade their eyes from all the 'my brain hurts' stuff, there are games that can't really be reviewed at all. If you wanted to look at Second Life, for example, you would be well-screwed. A review of SL that made no mention of any of The Big 4 P's - Psychology, Philosophy, Politics, and uh... Phinance - would be hideously incomplete. And what would you have left after you strip those? 60% of the game's 'features' aren't even game-features at all. They're resident-features!
Part of the NGJ criticism seems to come from the "It's just a game!" crowd but they're really fighting a losing battle. Games are getting more serious. They're becoming more and more like films and more and more like real life. There are hundreds of games that themselves actually contain real full-length movies. If you have to get all pretentious and wanky and talk about Nietzsche to review 2001: A Space Odyssey, you're not going to be able to avoid it when you're reviewing interactive Space Odysseys that are 100 hours+. And what about the game censorship debate? Grand Theft Auto or Manhunt? The outcome will decide what games you can buy in stores. Try and have an opinion there without calling on philosophy.
Games are a part of the real world. And as Karl Marx once said, "Philosophy is to the real world as masturbation is to sex." It's blatantly obvious what Marx is saying here.
Masturbation and sex are both really great. Sex is exactly like philosophy.
"There aren’t many games that make you consider the duality of heroism and terrorism, raise the issue of youth combatants and, in a nod to “The Matrix,” suggest that the hero himself may be trapped within a virtual-reality game. Kojima attempts to do all this and then some, and succeeds more often than he fails..."" -- MSNBC profile on Hideo Kojima
Who is wanking behind the green curtain?
If there are wankers out there, they're not just New Games Journalists. They're the games creators as well. All the big guys wax philosophical on a regular basis and then form that wax into a candle. The candle is then expresed in code and set on fire using electrons. These are your favourite games. That's right. Metal Gear Solid's Hideo Kojima - wanker. Civilization's Sid Meier - wanker. Rockstar, LucasArts, Blizzard. All habitual wankers. And dare I say it? The Wizard of Oz himself?
Philip Linden.
Yup. Total wanker.
That's right, I went there.
I mean, look at this. NGJ! This is going on my fridge door.
Ham and eggs
The most obvious problem with the UKR manifesto however is that they have presented what wankers call a 'false dichotomy'. UKR suggests that the choice is one or the other - OGJ or NGJ. Furthermore, their definition of 'journalism', as it relates to OGJ, is 'game reviews'. A column like 'Shoot Club: Saving Private Donny' is clearly not intended as a game review. Nor is 'Bow, Nigger'. To compare them to games reviews is to compare apples and oranges. But the two styles are clearly compatible. They're ham and eggs! You know more about JKII from reading both the OGJ and the NGJ piece than you do from reading just one of them.
There are a lot of really helpful OGJ game reviews. They're great. If I want to know what the multiplayer limitations are for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, I'd look for a OGJ review or a FAQ. But I wouldn't flame someone who wrote semi-fan-fiction or a social studies blog post on gangster language-patterns in the game.
Game-feature facts aside (weapons-types, levels, frames per second), when it comes to the actual opinion part of the reviews, the OGJ and the NGJ guys are drinking at the same pub. But some of the OG Journalists will nonetheless try to avoid NGJ's tell-tale I's. The (lone) author of this great Half-Life 2 article, for example, never once says 'I'. But he says 'we' 52 times. "We're presented with a black screen," he writes.
So I picture him and his mates crammed into a single office-chair.
But seriously, behind the author with his labcoat-costume and his Royal 'we's', there's a gamer. He is a beautiful and unique snowflake that sees games in a biased, personal and subjective way. And some of us gamers do give a shit about his mortgage, his ex-girlfriend and his two cats. So maybe he could write another Half Life article that mentions those as well?
Clearly, the term 'new game journalism' is problematic. As others have argued, better than I, the idea of NGJ is now seen as 'pretentious' because it has been heralded as an elitist 'new movement' with some special status. It's also been pointed out that a more useful term would be 'literary games journalism'.
I don't know. To be honest, I don't really care what it's called.
Only wankers go on about that stuff.
“If Peter Ludlow is a journalist,
then I'm a railroad tycoon whenever I play Monopoly.”
-- Jeff Brown, Electronic Arts - Vice President for Corporate Communications
Neal Stewart comments on Eric Goldman's draft paper 'Speech Showdowns at the Virtual Corral', where under-age cyber-prostitutes, free-speech, corporate censorship - and our very own Urizenus Sklar - are the topic of the day.
So what should we do about Second Life residents who are into swastikas, cartoon child porn, sculptures of breast-feeding mothers, upskirt pictures, and calling other people naughty, naughty words in forums?
At ClickableCulture.com Tony Walsh - aka Second Life's Zero Grace - recently drew our attention to a draft paper by Eric Goldman entitled 'Speech Showdowns at the Virtual Corral'. Goldman, who is Assistant Professor of Law at Marquette University Law School, discusses in some detail The Sims Online controversy between TSO parent-company Electronic Arts and the SLHerald's very own Peter Ludlow (aka Urizenus Sklar). Goldman argues that virtual worlds are no 'different or special from a legal standpoint compared to other types of online services.' And that he therefore sees 'no reason why we need to distort First Amendment jurisprudence or create special rules to protect virtual world participants from censorship.'
What was the TSO controversy all about? The Second Life Herald is actually a refugee from Electronic Arts' MMOG The Sims Online. The newspaper - then known as 'the Alphaville Herald' - is the brainchild of Urizenus Sklar, who's Real Life avatar goes by the name of Peter Ludlow. Ludlow helps the University of Michigan with dwell traffic as a Professor in the Philosophy and Linguistics department.
The Herald didn't pull its punches back in the TSO days either. Its vivid exposés of the game's more seedier elements gained international notoriety (CNN, BBC Online, Salon.com) in December of 2003 with the publication of an interview with 'Evangeline', who claimed to be an under-age girl in real life working as a 'cyber-prostitute' in 'brothels' found on TSO. According to Evangeline, her text-based cyber-sex services earned her as much as $50 US per session in the TSO 'simoleon' currency.
Within two days of posting the story Electronic Arts terminated Urizenus' TSO account. Their claimed justification was that Urizenus had committed an obscure URL-deep-linking Terms of Service violation in his in-game profile - an 'offense' that many players claim was, and still remains, a common practice in TSO. Furthermore, the account was permanently terminated after only 11 hours into a temporary 72 hour suspension.
Professor Goldman is unsympathetic to Ludlow's case, compares it to other examples of companies firing their customers, and argues that members of online spaces like TSO (and arguably SL) are not entitled to free-speech rights. His paper is articulate and well-reasoned, and I say that in part because it is and in part because it'll make me look good in the event that I convince you to disagree with him. We would also do well, however, to remember that his paper is currently only a draft and subject to change.
Taking issue with the term 'cyber-prostitution'
One of the first points Goldman takes issue with is Urizenus' use of the term 'cyber-prostitution'. He writes, "The term "cyber-prostitution" implied that avatars were engaging in simulated sex, but nothing so lurid was taking place—indeed, the game architecture [TSO's] did not permit simulated sex." The footnote he provides as evidence however is Amy Harmon's NY Times article. In this article she states in no uncertain terms that, "Sims sex is, indeed, simulated. It consists mostly of players at a keyboard typing into a dialogue bubble displayed above the heads of their pixelated characters, perhaps while using the "slow dance" command or lying on a simulated bed." Perhaps Goldman's definition of 'simulated sex' is at odds with Amy Harmons', in that he doesn't consider there to be a 'simulation' if there are no graphics. The implicit argument here is hardly an uncontroversial one - to say that cybersex isn't the same thing as 'simulated sex' - particularly in light of the graphics argument. Are you 'simulating sex' if you click on a sex button, then a partner, and your two avatars go at it, but not simulating it when you have two people interacting within a purely text-based, shared sexual narrative?
In any case, perhaps Goldman's intent is to downplay the significance of Urizenus' claims in order to make EA's termination of the account more reasonable. It seems apparent however that Uri's use of the term 'cyber-prostitution' was a play on the term 'cyber-sex' and in that context an accurate characterization. Princeton's CogSci dictionary defines cyber-sex as 'sexual arousal involving communication on the internet'. 'Cyber-prostitution' is therefore a reasonable term to use to describe the act of providing sexual stimulation via the internet for money - be it U.S currency or Simoleons that can be bought and sold for U.S. dollars.
Peter Ludlow as cause célèbre
Another point that Goldman raises is worth addressing, although more of an observation on the issue than an argument. Goldman says that, "Not surprisingly, Ludlow’s claim received some publicity". But he later comments; "What is unusual, however, is that Peter Ludlow's story has become a cause célèbre. His termination was covered by the New York Times, the Boston Globe, CNN, the BBC and Salon, and influential professors like Jack Balkin of Yale Law School have supported his cause."
Goldman here is a bit like a plumber who's unimpressed with the Apollo 11 because it doesn't have any toilets. Perhaps the overall tone of media coverage has been in support of Ludlow (that's an empirical claim beyond the scope of this article) but Goldman, as a lawyer, seems to be ignoring some of the non-legal features of the story. As Salon reported, "Several other games have fan sites or newspapers that cover them, but experts could recall no other instance of clear-cut censorship." Although the legislative debate around corporate censorship of customers featured large in some corners, the overall debate was not over what the U.S. government should do but what EA did do. The point of interest was the way EA handled customer criticisms and bad PR; some people saw their response as legitimate and others were appalled. In the latter, this was particularly the case with parents who felt that they were entitled to know the things that children - potentially their children - were doing on TSO.
Second Life: Stormy Roentgen with her PG-sim-banned breast-feeding sculpture (nipples).
Second Life: A banned Swastika flanked by also-banned Penii of Grief.Switching costs and market failure
Goldman suggests that virtual worlds like TSO and SL are no different from other online spaces that are legally allowed to terminate member accounts for whatever reason they choose. He says, "The strongest argument I have heard to distinguish virtual worlds from other online spaces is that virtual world participants invest significantly in their online persona, and this investment creates switching costs for participants that impedes the ability of market forces to reward and punish virtual world providers appropriately. If true, these switching costs may create a market failure requiring regulatory intervention." Part of his response is that other online communities have comparable switching costs (eg. email, webhosting, blogs) and that he 'needs more persuasion that the switching costs in virtual worlds exceed these switching costs'.
However, if we visit Goldman's blog he points out:
Some virtual world participants invest significant time and money in their online characters—earning (or otherwise obtaining) virtual money or items, gaining experience/levels, creating or customizing online "property" (such as houses or widgets that are for sale in the virtual economy) and forming social networks. In some cases, participants purchase items, cash or characters with real cash either directly from the provider or in a secondary market like eBay. All of these "investments" can be lost or diminished if a virtual world provider terminates the individual’s account or otherwise changes the rules or environment of the world.
These costs do not seem comparable to switching costs for email, for example. If I move from Hotmail to Yahoo, I can notify every person in my contact list or inbox accordingly. Anyone who's written my address on the back of a cocktail napkin with lipstick is going to be out of luck though. With changing webhosts, my domain name will stay the same and the only switching costs will be the actual time taken to set up an account elsewhere and transfer all the webpages. For blogs, I may have to convert the archived posts into a format that is compatible with the new blog. This is generally do-able and in the worst case scenario the old posts can still be salvaged in a readable format. These are all tasks that are likely to take only a few hours at worst.
With Second Life, however, there's simply nowhere else to switch to (no one else is even close). And even if there was, it seems unlikely that you're going to be able to take much of your investment with you. An alternative virtual world would need to have a 3D-engine compatible with SL, such that you could somehow export all the objects/scripts you have ever purchased or crafted yourself, and import them into this new world. Even if the residents could sell off their land purchases before switching, they're not going to be able to somehow get refunds on all their vehicles, buildings, clothing, avatar-attachments and weapons. In the past 8 months residents have spent a total of $L 117,986,520.00 (currently about $US 480,216.94) on direct purchases of in-game objects alone (although to be fair you also need to look at the number of residents, where the money originally came from and where the money has gone). When a lot of these items are crafted, it's not like a MMORPG where your character gathers some wood and some paint and clicks on 'Build Piano'. In SL objects are made the same way that designers, builders and artists do it in the real world - piece by piece and usually without blueprints. You can spend hours building individual piano keys by modifying primitive building blocks, and then you can embed an audio script that you have written yourself into each one. Furthermore, SL grants the creators intellectual property rights over these creations. There is also a huge range of complex social investments involved. So, overall the switching costs do seem to be significant and may result in market failure after all.
Telephones, malls and public spaces
Putting Professor Goldman's paper to one side, the central problem of this great debate seems to be whether or not worlds like Second Life and The Sims Online are the same as real-world community spaces where residents are entitled to free-speech rights that overrule private property rights. The most common tack has been to make an analogy to telephone services or malls.
If you can say whatever you want over the telephone without fear of the phone company canceling your account, why isn't it the same in online worlds? There are clearly similarities but the features of online worlds seem to strain the analogy to breaking point. Although Linden Labs are primarily hosting-providers, technically they are also content-providers. They create all the land for example, preside over disputes, release currency and make rule-adjustments to prevent inflation. But they are also content-removers. The terrain is wide, complex and controversial; allegedly, sculptures of nipple-exposed breast-feeding mothers are deleted from PG sims, swastikas are deleted from Mature sims, residents can be banned for Nazi-based group names or taking 'upskirt pictures' of residents, cartoon child porn, or 'personal attacks and inflammatory statements' in secondlife.com forums. Both The Sims Online and Second Life also have 'any-reason' termination clauses ("Linden has the right at any time for any reason or no reason to suspend or terminate your Account..."). Check out the Community Standards and Terms of Service.
In the phone analogy - even without the censorship elements - Linden Labs' presence effectively amounts to a company employee actually participating in the phone conversation, occasionally initiating or guiding the dialogue, chipping in with rejoinders and commentary. So the mall analogy becomes more attractive.
With the mall analogy, however, free-speech takes a hit. In the U.S. there are only six states that have legislation preventing mall staff from removing you if they don't like what you say. In the others you're fair game. But in either case, who really cares? Do we actually need these public spaces? In 'Reclaiming and Remaking Public Space: Toward an Architecture for American Democracy', Kevin Mattson writes:
The relationship between public space and democracy is crucial. Democracy requires places where citizens can gather together to discuss the issues of the day and work on solving problems ... This space... facilitated the potential gathering of strangers. Only in public can citizens meet and talk with fellow members of society they do not associate with in the realms of work and family life (the two other central places in most people's lives) ... public space cements the necessary basis of democratic citizenship--the ability to associate with other citizens in a civil manner, respect other citizens, and join with them in common projects involving dialogue.
If this is the primary purpose of public spaces, why must they be limited to local areas with grass and gravel? Can't virtual spaces facilitate civic interaction more effectively than their physical counterparts, by gathering an even larger number of 'strangers' from a greater variety of locations, with an even wider range of views? Today it seems that town commons, public squares and parks are rapidly shrinking while privately-owned commercial spaces are becoming all the more pervasive. If so, do these private spaces then somehow become the new public spaces, legally assuming some of the same responsibilities and privileges? Is there a virtual world model that can simultaneously maximize profitability and free-speech, while also minimizing legal liability? Or are the three fundamentally at odds with one another? If so, what impact will this have on democratic societies?
For those of who you enjoyed SL resident Prokofy Neva's "journalistic" debut last week, in which SL architect Lordfly Digeridoo kindly submitted himself to questions from the rhapsodist of Ravenglass (and even for those who did not), we are overjoyed to present Part Two, in which our interlocutors address questions of the grid's economy. No Linden Town Hall meeting was ever as revealing.
Lordfly Digeridoo: so let's get back to this candid conversation thing. :)
Prokofy Neva: Well, you have made a proposal to the Lindens that they buy up land that you designate as public, but...with all due respect...who the hell are you?Why should the Lindens buy from you?
Lordfly Digeridoo: i didn't say I do it. I was having folks like you in mind, whole-sim buyers that develop an area, and then sell it off.
PN: but why would I sell commons to the Lindens?
LF: so you can preserve the feel of your neighborhood.
PN: well couldn't I do that myself thank you very much?
couldn't I get players to have a stake in it?
LF: no, not unless you wanted to pay tier. people move around in-world all the time.
PN: I cover the tier by renting it. or I get people to donate into it, then they get the prims but don't build on it. Think up some scheme like that, don't involve the Lindens. Who are the Lindens? Just some people with servers? Servers that don't work well sometimes. I can't get into proper worship mode on the Lindens LF, help me out on this.
LF: well, Linden-land remains there, FOREVER. residents don't stay in one place forever.
PN: and they never auction it off? well...
LF: so in 6 months your precious little Ravenglass sim will look entirely different than what it does today.
PN: I know that. it's all good. it's all interesting.
LF: so why bother planning it at all?
PN: the idea is to see what happens in nature, not in some fake zoned thing.
LF: "what happens in nature" is 99% of SL. it's supposed to be order from chaos.
PN: but who wants the administrative headache? everything you propose to the Lindens is a huge amount of work for them. they couldn't police their zoned sims as it was.
LF: i developed my plan with the knowledge that the lindens cannot police anything. did you even READ my proposal?
PN: yes
PN: over and over
PN: to see if they want to buy it as public land forever and ever, they have to make a judgement.
LF: it's either doing it by hand, or coding up a process for it, which shoudln't be that hard, seeing as the auctions are mostly automatic now.
PN: that's not the issue
LF: yes, it is the issue
PN: they would have to see a visual portfolio. they'd have to sit and make judgements. they'd have to have criteria.
LF: why?
PN: because they'd have to decide what they are willing to take a loss on forever!.
LF: i'm saying sell 100% of a sim and let the residents decide where the linden land goes.
PN: and I'm saying it would take them time to judge, to sift through hundreds of requests like that. they'd have to have rigid criteria, and all kinds of "special cases" will emerge.
LF: hundreds of requests? how many people buy up whole sims at a time?
PN: stop thinking of it as your little game with 19,999 other people. you're forgetting that people acquire whole sims over time, sometimes in groups. it's not just the fresh sims.
LF: yes, and they would be ineligible for this plan
PN: ohhhhh
PN: well but that's not FAIR
LF: life isn't fair
PN: what, I reclaim a mouldering slag heap sim and I don't get a deal like that???
LF: no, you don't. that would take linden time and effort, as you say. this is pre-emptive planned landscape design. Imagine a time when the lindens don't sculpt the land anymore, because it's coming. 50,000 residents from now, the lindens will scarcely have the time to design continents.
PN: they sure won't. they will be busy fighting of lawsuits and the g-men for taxes and RICO and all manner of things.
LF: if you make a shitty landscaping idea, you won't sell your land.
PN: but they will have to judge. Look at their idea of beauty, the market in Boardman, yuck.
LF: they want us to run our world. philip wants to lose control of the beast.
PN: But they don't step out of the way! he MADE the beast no one can jump over now!
LF: ?
PN: The inner core, those with the ratings/land/paid tier/inventions with payoffs/riches/land etc. they are a significant obstacle to growth.
LF: uh, they drive growth, last time i checked. cool content = more players. more players = more people making cool content.
PN: they want to set things in world and go offline and just collect.
LF: so you're faulting people for not being by their vendors 24/7? customer service is an IM away
PN: You have no idea. There are all kinds of situations. disputes between neighbors over builds and view, griefers and laggers, calling in Lindens, dealing with griefer viewblockers in the bay, fighting over prims. you could spend your life on it.
LF: seems like your system needs streamlining
PN: yes LF what it needs is not one sim, but four. 99 percent of the trouble tickets relate to the view corridors and lag spreading from other sims.
LF: so... what? you're trying to define what others can put on their land, on other sims? how do you define what is griefing?
PN: If they lag a sim to 37, sure. They ought to be charged for that.
LF: no, they shouldn't. scripters would riot.
PN: Let them, I will fight back.
LF: how would you charge for this? on a CPU cycle basis?
PN: You figure it out
LF: no, it's your idea, YOU figure it out. you can't just sling these random ideas without more ideas to back them up. the hundreds of scripters will rise together and say "fuck no". you would drive people like cubey terra out of business.
PN: well these are the feted inners that block progress
LF: no, you'll drive the newbies out of business too.
PN: yeah well why should MY $40 a month subsidize their fuck-you hedonism? while I sit in 27 FPS with a goddman slide show???? Fuck that shit.
LF: because you get the unconditional ability to build WHATEVER YOU WANT on YOUR LAND
PN: I pay real money for land, and some kid with a script jones is going to dick me out of FPS? somebody has to PAY, LF
PN: PAY
LF: yes, the land owners do. feted inner elite land owners like yourself.
PN: while some kid with a portable dick dances under a strobe light? On my thousands of acres? That kid can hold me and others in 3 sims hostage?
LF: then AR him? boot him from your land? orbit him?
PN: I look at their entire grid, I see that the Lindens just serve the green dots in clumps and they don't care if the clumps even out. that's what it looks like to me, and it sucks big time and their world will not grow as a result.
LF: but their world is growing.
PN: THIS is growth????
LF: 20% a month
PN: oh, they are getting TSO spillout like me and my friends
LF: i dunno, that's explosive growth to me
PN: but that will taper off because they will disappoint people. they don't have a means of fixing the lag issues. they are utterly helpless I've seen them. they can ban somebody for a few days. but they can't address it at the root.
LF: what's the root of the problem? unfettered freedom?
PN: you have to come and see the scene of your crime now LF. I will tp you lol.
LF: ok
Destination: Prokofy Neva's Lighthouse Mall
PN: See, another mall. just what the world needs. I can spy on Anshe's mall from here LOL.
LF: just like every other mall ever.
PN: I know you will greet each new enthusiastic newbie innocent initiative with the jaded feted attitude of the inner core LOL. It's always "been done". it's always 'already tired', whether a mall or a bank or whatever. "It can't be done," you say. You're like old-timers in a village. People have to move away from you to the big city. You're a brake on progress, with your "can't be dones".
LF: i say "can't be done" so hundreds of newbies don't lose all their money on a shaky savings and loan.
PN: well don't worlds need banks?
LF: not this one. you can't do it without contract enforcement.
PN: Well from time immemorial immigrants have always made their own banks without the sort of nice contract systems that you may be thinking of. not all of it is pretty. crude but effective. it's a necessary stage.
LF: effective if there's a common bond of trust, but there isn't
PN: well why don't you trust anyone in SL? what have they done to you in two years to make you so jaded?
LF: people online turn into total morons, for the most part. the griefer shooting his neighbors and saying "FUCK YOU NAZI SLUT" at the welcoming area wouldn't dare do that in the public square of his town
PN: to be sure. what's your solution?
LF: none.
PN: you were telling me yesterday about your crusades
LF: my only stopgap solution is to find like-minded people that aren't morons, and hang out with them
PN: and push out the edges from there?
LF: no, i'm not building an empire. people are stupid in real life, too, you just don't notice it because it's less likely a random person will come by and be retarded. less so in retail, unfortunately
PN: ROFL
PN: but do you think that you and a group of your like-minded inner feted friends can then band together and push out the boundaries against the fucktards?
LF: no, generally i just want to be left alone, anymore. it's fun playing the forum game, but being the center of attention isn't my thing.
PN: have you not found any of the kindred spirits you sought when you began this grand adventure?
LF: i've found a few, for sure.
PN: but you don't really seem to believe in SL as a world, as a realm
LF: i've never developed any meaningful online relationships or friendships prior to SL
PN: you say it's not even a game, not a virtual world but a "thingie". that was your expression, it's not a game, but a thingie
LF: right
PN: Could you elaborate on that?
LF: it's 3D IRC with toys for me to create with. the concept is nice, sure, i'm a big supporter of it.
PN: So it's just your sandbox. With your toys.
LF: pretty much... my toys, and my friends
PN: well but multiply that by one million, and you have a world, but a world based on "my toys and my friends"
LF: sure, i guess... same goes for RL too
PN: which is insular, and selfish, and unsocial, and even destructive
LF: well, do you see me as insular, selfish, antisocial, and destructive?
PN: Hmmm
PN: Let's say "yes" to the first 3, but "no" to the last, because you have made landmarks in the world. you build good houses and buildings, you're among the best architects. I'd like to think aesthetics does track with character, although of course it need not do that. but I'm troubled by your essentially cynical and insular view. there's no vision, nothing higher, really, except perhaps science or knowledge.
LF: well, there is, but it's not my call to do it. LF: i merely observe the economy
PN: what are your credentials for saying antying about the economy?
LF: by that token, what are my credentials for building a house? what are your credentials for being a land owner and community developer?
PN: Your credentials are just being able to work the levers of the game better than most.
LF: so perhaps my credentials at reading a virtual economy is i've participated in it the last 1.5 years
PN: Have you ever bid on the auctions?
LF: yup, twice
PN: really, until you have walked a mile in the land baron's shoes, it is hard to see the issues. On the one hand, their land isn't selling. It is devalued. On the other hand, it's selling like hotcakes. it's like chicken pox around the map. some sells, some doesn't. but we don't have INFORMATION. we are in an unfree country like a communist Romania or Russia. We don't have the most basic fact, which is this: how much first-land is bought by newbs? how much is resold when? PN: when and for how much do they buy their first used land, etc., etc. They don't release those figures, and it is no accident, comrade. They claim that they roll out new sims to adjust to the growing population but we don't get the aggregate to make informed decisions. you can't have free markets without information and feedback like this.
LF: so ask the lindens for information. they usually give it.
PN: I personally think the formula of new-land-rollout = new players to be flawed. it's a racket.
LF: not really. most of the land is owned. the lindens will increase sim rollout until land is no longer mostly owned
PN: Like many young cynical techies, you are never cynical about the Lindens themselves. Most of the land is NOT owned. look at sims: no green dots, unsold land.
LF: uh
LF: most of the land IS owned, buddy
PN: I mean to measure how much land is marked for sale and not selling, versus how much land is sold and staying sold with the owner on it.
LF: you can't define "staying sold" without a time graph
PN: you have to measure the market, the intentions
LF: you're assuming intentions
PN: my point is there is a lot of open inventory
LF: yeah, because the world constantly changes. all a map of a lot of land for sale means is that people move a lot in-world
PN: people do move, because of lag and ugly builds. they are actually conservative by nature. they'd like to stay in their cosy cabins and cosy coves. but ugly people grief them and build ugly crap around them and they cry and leave
LF: and?
PN: lather, rinse, repeat
LF: ...until the neighborhood settles down
PN: neighborhoods don't always settle down
LF: and your solution is?
PN: player-based zoning
PN: mixed with Linden zoning
LF: the lindens don't want to zone
PN: and charging for use of server resources
LF: they want us to define things
PN: ok well we'll zone without them, I'm game
PN: just make them charge for server resources and we've got a deal
PN: OR
PN: let me be lord of the sim like that guy suggested
PN: was it blaze?
PN: let him decide where the public land goes and whether the griefing clubs get booted lol
PN: it will be even more like Russia than Russia
PN: I am more confident in American-style democracy, that groups of people can get together for the common good and can govern themselves, even without Ulrika Zugzwang. they don't need a lot of trappings of socialist democracy toys, they can rely on their own consensus, draw like-minded to like. Indeed, this is what you are ALREADY doing by making something like Grignano, aren't you?
LF: well, we'll see if Grignano works. it's a dictatorship right now, benign though it may be
PN: what makes it a dictatorship for you?
LF: the fact that i own 100% of southern grignano?
PN: hard to hvae a dictatorship on 6,000 sq. m.
LF: not really
PN: I'm going to try dictatorship on 8,192, I'll get back to you LOL
LF: "i don't like you, get out"
PN: I at least tell my tenants that it's not hot to fly around with their "attachments" hanging out LOL.
LF: that's assumed in grignano, it's PG
PN: I'll try to remember LOL
LF: anyways, i'm gonna have to wrap this up
PN: me too. have to go to Valentine's party
LF: yeah, i gotta get ready for V-day myself
PN: chocolates, can't go wrong there
LF: heh, something like that :)
anyways, ciao prok
PN: thanks, that was interesting, no?
LF: sure, hehe
PN: Happy Valentine's
The Feted Inner Core: what is it? If you have to ask, that doesn't mean you're not a member. But it certainly exists -- at least according to SL resident Prokofy Neva, who coined the term way back in January, deep in this thread on the SL forums.
Since then, forum traffic indicates the term has caught on. But threads like The Feted Inner Core of Second Life, Feted Inner Core?, and Feted Inner Core - woot! give only a vague idea of just what the Core is and just how it works.
To further enlighten Herald readers, we sent self-appointed Core Monitor Prokofy Neva out into the grid to gather the thoughts of several prominent SL residents who may or may not be members of the Feted Inner Core, as well as those who may or may not belong to the even more exclusive clubs known as the Fetid Inner Core and the Feted Outer Core. [Ed. note: The Herald editorial board is not entirely certain of the membership of these groupings, but we assume that their members will figure it out for themselves once they read their names in our newspaper.]
Prok's first victim interlocutor was Lordfly Digeridoo, who kindly agreed to a long and leisurely chat atop his clock tower in Grignano.
Part One of Two:
PK: I will ask you insulting questions and you can faux get mad if you like LOL. How much have you actually earned here?
LF: Around US$1,000 since January of 2004. Not a gigantic amount, but it did help me get the rest of my classes for my associates.
PK: It's hard for me to think of someone more feted and inner than you, my friend. You epitomize for me the techie kid who is literally paying for college with his dollhouses here. I mean, sheesh, I used to sling hash to pay for college.
LF: I sling prims. You'd be surprised how little I'm connected to the various cliques in SL.
PK: How you have been so busy when you have only what, 6,000 square meters? I thought you were working on an entire city, to hear you tell it!
LF: Well, college and work cut into a lot of my time, as well as more social matters, so I don't get much time to build anymore. And I just found someone special in SL.
PK: Do you have free 4,096 land with paid-up tier? In Grignano?
LF: Yes. I was one of the last ones to snag them up before they ran out. 100% of my land is tied up in Grignano, minus the monolith in Europa.
PK: That's $25/month you save over everyone else, correct? You seem to have gotten a significant leg up over the rest of us with that 4,096.
LF: Eh, it's not that significant of a leg, really.
PK: His this free 4,096 area has given you significant visibility in the game? Or is it more likely your architectural monuments like the SL Public Library?
LF: Nah, that'd be my buildings. My free tier land was never used for much prior to Grignano.
Did Lordfly's free 4,096 give him a leg up in SL?
PK: How did you get started on your path to the inner core? Who gave you your first big break?
LF: Beryl Greenacre.
PK: She gave you a commission?
LF: She actually advanced me the money in order to finish her building. Lemme explain that. Prior to 1.2, if you rezzed a prim it cost you $L10. When I started out, I didn't have much money, so when I made her building, I only got halfway done before I was literally broke.
PK: So your point is we are all living on prim socialism now.
LF: No, we're living in a more sensible approach to server resources now.
PK: So that's why you have this quaint method of still pricing your buildings per prim?
LF: Yup, I can't find an honest price otherwise.
PK: We know that on Ravenglass the 2,048s sold with your house for $19,500. So that's significant.
LF: Yeah, that's huge. That's about 10 times more than I make on any other house.
PK: I want to ask you about those early days, when Bob Bunderfeld was going to be your tutor. But it wound up with a big sign on land you had access to, saying BOBLAND. What was THAT all about?
LF: One of the high water marks of my drama-inducing sludge in the game. Back in the day, the Slate sim was one of the most beautiful Sims in-world. When I moved in in July 2003, the sim was pristine... tree houses, log cabins (that was Bob's), wooden homes... and a railroad. Oh, and a gigantic castle with a flying pirate ship docked on it. I bought my first plot by the river, befriended my neighbors (who are still about the only folks I hang out with in-world to this day), and learned how to build. Fortunately, Olive was a sandbox sim back then, so it was a hop-skip-and-jump away to practice building (money permitting). One day as a newbie I decided I wanted to become a virtual architect, as my "profession" in SL. But, lacking any sort of street credentials, I asked the only fellow architect I knew... my neighbor, Bob Bunderfeld.
PK: How did you do that? You aren't an architect in RL?
LF: I'm a college student in RL. I've been making 3-D stuff on computers since the early Quake days. Aaaaanyways, Bob gave me a test to see if I was worthy to join his building troupe. Fortunately, he rejected me. And upon retrospect it WAS a shitty building.
PK: Ah-HAH!
LF: Regardless, I got over it and moved on. Fast forward a few months. Since then me and my fellow Slater Ezhar Fairlight had made a small garden, a walk bridge across the Slate river, and a clock tower with working gears and chimes. The sim was looking wonderful. About that time (we're in November, I think), Bob started getting grandiose plans to "control" Slate. He began buying up all vacant land and strongarmed various people out of the sim.
PK: Hmmm, control? Grandiose? Why would that be wrong? Was this a question of two feteds duking it out in a changing climate?
LF: Nah, it was a question of him taking control of the Slate Neighborhood Association. Which, sadly, I was a part of starting.
PK: So there were economic considerations here. Although whoever controls a sim merely gets to pay tier, LOL.
LF: There was no tier then. Fifteen bucks a month across the board, regardless of how much land you owned.
PK: wait.
PK: run that by me again.
PK: *THERE WAS NO TIER THEN?????*
PK: GASP
LF: There wasn't a tier. Everyone in-world paid 15 bucks a month.
PK: It's worse than I knew, then. You all had all this land and all this space and all these resources without the staggering costs we pay today. To get yourself established and feted by the Lindens
LF: No, SOME did. There were a few folks with 4-5 sims under their account. Everyone was soundly de-feted by the few.
PK: How did they get the sims? Was it an auction?
LF: No, all sims were released as public land. We had the traditional "land rush" for people to run in and snag the land in the sim.
PK: Are you saying that sims people acquired back then, that they didn't pay tier on, remain in their possesssion now?
LF: No, everyone pays tier now. Except the few that bought lifetime accounts.
PK: It's even more feted than I could have EVER dreamed. WOW.
LF: I... guess.
PK: OK so you put up your harassment BOBLAND sign...and then...moved on? and what propelled you?
LF: Well, Bob was strong-arming people, so the remaining folks left the Sim entirely. I didn't approve of it, so prior to me jetting off I bought a piece of land in Teal and erected the sign. That didn't sit well with Bob. He somehow tied it in to me being bitter over him not accepting me into his little building group. (By this time I had my own business going, quite well, for the record.)
PK: OK, so your business was swinging. You were sitting happy on your free 4,096, collecting your ratings welfare.
LF: Er, when? :P My 4,096 allotment was used in two places: 1) Tan, for Tan Tower, and 2) in Grignano. Tan was used to make a large apartment complex to make money and eventually sell it off.
PK (left) grills LD (right)
PK: How much did you make on that deal?
LF: $L25,000. A princely sum back in the day. Now I hear it's small potatoes. Back then the linden dollar was barely at US$0.80/$L250. People were speculating if the Linden would ever hit $1/$L250. Then the land speculation bubble happened, summer of 2004.
PK: Tell me what you see as being the biggest obstacles in the game. I feel that the presence in the game of classes of hardcore geeks and feted designers and so on is a real obstacle to progress and expansion of the game. Some older player makes something, charges a fortune, then doesn't want to do any customer service. There are many rackets like that, holding people hostage to their wares.
LF: Older folks are just as vulnurable to shitty business practices as newbies. The ones that make bad business decisions get hit hard on their reputation.
PK: I'd like to hear what your own main beefs are in the game. What do you find gets in your way, LF?
LF: Eh, drama becomes muted whispers, muted whispers become smear campaigns, smear campaigns become damaged reputations. What gets in my way are cliques, my annoyance with people, a lack of solid economic data. The commercialization of the game is fine by me, because if I don't want to participate in it, I don't have to.
PK: So what are your annoyances? You like the concept of people, yet people themselves annoy you, as you say on your slogan, but who the hell are YOU, Lordfly?
LF: I'm all me, baby. I'm just this guy, you know?
PK: What annoys you about people most? Do you hate malls? Clubs?
LF: It's hard to poinpoint. People take this game WAY too seriously. Clubs are wastes of time. TOTAL wastes of time.
PK: Hmm, why would they threaten a nice architect like you with cool stores with bodily harm??? Over what, exceeding your prim count???
LF: Well, that'd be the other high mark of my drama involvement in SL. In case you hadn't noticed in the forums, I hate bullies. I don't like people that belittle others for no reason. There was a certain club owner that had a space in Federal for a long time. He had recently flared up on the forums, typing truly incoherent posts. Keep in mind he's a native-born English speaker, from St. Louis. He went on to call about 2 dozen people "fags" in-world and on the forums, spouting general hate everywhere. So I got sick of it, and I went over to his club and erected a sign right in front of it: "Chairman Mao says NO to ugly club builds!"
PK: What annoys you then about the game itself? Or is it only the people?
LF: The game itself: Crashing. The people: unwillingness to change.
PK: IS there an inner core that is die-hard? Refusing to reform?
LF: No, it's everyone in SL. Everyone gets used to their little routines, their entitlements, their proceeds, and then the lindens come in and go, "Okay, well, this shit's broken, here's some new rules," and then everyone goes batshit loony.
PK: Well, can you blame them?
LF: Yes, yes I can. The entire point of SL is that it changes constantly. It's a virtual economy of course, but it CHANGES. The entire game changes. Every day thousands of builds go up and down.
PK: Tell me, why do YOU want the Lindens, Lordfly? Do you know them? Have you partied with them? Do they love you to pieces?
LF: Some of the Lindens don't like my attitude on the forums. Others tolerate me because I make good content. A few like me because I have good ideas sometimes. I really like the company, they're a good set of people.
PK: Yes, you do have good ideas and your work speaks for itself.
LF: ack. I have to run, I'm late for a social engagement.
PK: Could they have created a monster, however, in this insular community that lives on its entitlements and fear of change?
LF: I'll answer that question later, I really have to run.
PK: kk. Thanks so much.
LF: ciao.
Look for Part Two of Prok's Candid Coversation with Lordfly Digeridoo shortly in the Herald.
[UPDATE: Read part two here.]
Bedazzle's much-anticipated Unreal:SL kicked off its weekend-long opening festivities last night with a crowded dance party that had everyone in attendance kicking up their heels -- so much so that the sim crashed before the party was much more than an hour old.
Despite the sentiments expressed above, the dancing re-booted itself soon enough, and there was no shortage of residents eager to bump elbows in the streets of Unreal level Chinatown, amid the sounds of rain, the crackle of neon and the clucking of chickens that had strayed into the sim's back alleys.
For more details on the opening festivities, click here. Or just tp over to the Chinatown sim. (Mature, to be sure.)
The wet streets of Chinatown
The view from Abraxas
In development since October 2004, Unreal is Second Life's first in-world first-person shooter. With the success of past Bedazzled projects like Sim Horror and the Gravity Space Station, the game is getting more attention than perhaps any project in the grid's recent memory.
Asked how the party was going from Bedazzled's point of view, chief developer Foxy Xevious responded enthusiastically: "It rocks! We are pleased with the results. One day is all we need to feel proud of what we've accomplished."
Jimmy Thomson, Unreal's chief developer, tuckered out after all his hard work
Your correspondent at work
The Mandarin of Watermelons
(Image stolen from secondlife.com)
A new world (or at least a new sim or three) has apparently been discovered north of the SL grid.
"Veteran explorer Magellan Linden [pictured above] has been dispatched to explore the possible new landmass," as a Linden Lab press release put it earlier today.
The Herald will bring you new developments as they develop (obviously). We look forward especially to the economic ramifications such a discovery could have, given some recent forum chatter.
Now back to our regularly scheduled unbalanced news.
by Matthias Zander
Many remember the splitting of ways that the SimCast development team suffered in November of last year, and the call for an open-source gaming system that followed. This was all caused by the departure of the project's head programmer, Azelda Garcia. Like the mythical phoenix, however, the project has risen from the ashes of the old one and is seeming to be better than ever in the opinions of many.
Under the direction of Prong Thetan, the programming skills of Grim Hathor and Mystic Templar, the weapon and armor creation skills of Gurgon Grumby and Evad Yaffle, the animating of Ferran Brodsky, the designing of Osprey Therian, the building of YadNi Monde, the communication abilities of Simone Templar, the sound manipulations of Claire Engel, the enforcing muscle of Mystique Suavage, and the backing of the Herald's own Urizenus Sklar, the project has been reborn and is back with a vengence. This crack team of 12 people continues to work to improve the systems of combat, grouping, and typical game play. Beta testing is expected to begin on Saturday with an event at approximately 7 p.m. SL time, with a full release expected on or around March 1st.
From left to right: YadNi Monde, Gurgon Grumby, Evad Yaffle, Simone Templar, Claire Engel (in the fire), Prong Thetan
Not pictured: Grim Hathor, Mystic Templar, Ferran Brodsky, Osprey Therian, Mystique Suavage, Urizenus Sklar
I recently spoke with Mystique Suavage, the SimCast player who has gained the most levels during the alpha testing phase and was recently promoted to the role of enforcer. She estimates that she's spent between 80 and 100 hours actually levelling in the game over the past two weeks. Out of the current level cap of 160 (20 in each of the 8 classes), she has gained all 160 as of the early morning hours of Friday, February 4.
SimCast from afar
I also spoke with Grim Hathor, the man who took over the role of lead programmer after Azelda Garcia was fired last year. Since her code was available only to her, he had to start over to the very beginning. He said that he "recreated the basics of a gametag and combat in a few days," but has easily spent over 200 hours programming the new tags. Also according to Grim, beta will be a time of general balancing, but that it will last "for months to come." Only time will tell.
Bedford City
Another large thing that some speculate has helped with the rebirth of SimCast is the arrival of the group known as the Kao'an Exiles. Their leader, Sorshia Wishbringer, was kind enough to sit down with me to talk about their origins. Their group originated in the ActiveWorlds chat universe and includes both people who moved to SecondLife from ActiveWorlds and friends they have gained since moving here. The Kao'ans, since moving here, have been actively involved in DarkLife and now in the alpha testing of SimCast, which has generated traffic from many of their 34 members.
Sorshia Wishbringer in front of the SimCast Castle
The SimCast project consists of three sims (SimCast, Midgard, and Bedford), strung together and using the same mainframe to create a unique, immersive gaming environment. Improvements to the system are being made daily as new visitors arrive with their ideas and suggestions. The world is ever-evolving.
Bedford's floating castle
Even while in the alpha testing stage, SimCast got enough traffic to be awarded a "Dwelloper Award" for the month of January. Catherine Omega called it "A reason to quit emailing Philip to tell him how much SL sucks" during a visit on the night of Tuesday, February 1st. Philip Linden, along with many other Lindens, has visited the game. If the current traffic is any indication, the phoenix is rising and flying up, preparing to soar. Keep watching the Herald for more details on the situations developing in SimCast and information as it progresses through beta and into full release.
by Neal Stewart
Haney Linden fields an inquiry
"Wow, a Linden!", exclaims an excitable avatar in Welcome Area South 4. Haney Linden is a key officer in the Instructor, Live Help and Second Life Mentor groups. She has just teleported to the area and is greeted - like all Lindens - in much the same way that you might greet a Leprechaun cobbling elf shoes in the bottom of your garden. As reluctant as they may sometimes be to assume bodily form on the same virtual plane as us mere mortals, the Lindens are the guys running the show. The architects of our good fortune.
Supporting them is an army of volunteer Mentors, Live Helpers and the newly-spawned roles played by Concierges and Greeters. With these new roles and the recent changes to event support, the mentoring system has become a source of interest and controversy. As new residents are appearing in droves, more people need more help than ever before. With just over 100 Mentors, and nearing 20,000 SL residents, there's only 1 mentor for every 200 residents. The Second Life Herald got a chance to catch up with Haney Linden at an Amphitheatre in Brampton and discuss the whats, whys and wherefores of SL mentoring.
Neal Stewart: Maybe you could start by telling me a bit about your background and how you became a Linden.
Haney Linden: I joined SL in October of 2002 and I was the first Liaison when SL went Beta after that. I had started out working for the City of Palo Alto, working with community non-profits, then it went to film, then CD-ROM games, corporate training with video simulation, and then this.
Neal Stewart: I know that some residents are still confused about the differences and relationship between Mentors, Live Helpers and Concierges. You've recently announced a new role that will be played by Greeters. Could you please explain the differences and relationships between these three roles?
Haney Linden: The Concierge is easy, that's a staff role so that's separate from the volunteer resident things. Mentors used to offer events for new users and get L$ support. We ended that when we ended the general support for events, since the mixer events are too close to the social events that we cut support for. Live Help is made up of 30 to 40 residents at at time, who serve for three months at a time and just help by answering questions submitted through the Help menu.
Neal Stewart: And greeters?
Haney Linden: Greeters are residents who volunteer to have some info on the Web site when they are online, so new users can look through and select one of them to meet in-world. There will be two types, Mentor Greeters and Host Greeters. The MGs will be offering to help with whatever the new resident wants. The Host Greeters will offer a specifc location or experience to show off.
Neal Stewart: What do you think are some of the most common misconceptions that new arrivals have about Second Life?
Haney Linden: Well, typically they ask, How do I play? What am I supposed to do? Like Sims Online immigrants might want to know how to do the treadmill for points. Or people from MMORPGS might expect a built-in set of ways to advance.
Neal Stewart: So I guess new players today are asking the same questions that new players were asking 2 years ago?
Haney Linden: I think so. The idea of an open world without goals freaks some people out.
Neal Stewart: OK, I've got a couple of tough questions now, so if you've got any Kevlar handy.
Haney Linden: ack
Neal Stewart: Some residents have suggested on the forums that the new Concierge service has been implemented to compensate for inadequate Mentoring and Live Help. What are your thoughts on this?
Haney Linden: That's a fresh one to me. The usual complaint I hear is that Live Help is there to make up for poor staff support.
Neal Stewart: What do you think about that?
Haney Linden: We just figured that if a resident is invested in SL and trying to create at a certain level, then they should be able to get through for immediate help.
Haney Linden: Ok, so on the Live Help thing.
Haney Linden: We can't hire enough staff to keep up with the number of people who have questions. And lots of residents really want to help out. So I think it makes sense to use volunteers.
Neal Stewart: I know that some residents were concerned that people would be signing up to become mentors purely to take advantage of the education support. But I suppose that there is less likelihood of that happening now that you don't have to be a mentor to do educational events. And some mentors have claimed that since the event support changes, that they've been taking some flack from non-mentors who resent the greater elevation in status that mentors now have. Have you observed this to be the case?
Haney Linden: Not directly. We are really focused more on the content of the class that people want to teach than the teacher. And the classes that have been proposed are almost all really solid and valuable. We are trying to avoid having a group with greater status. Thats why Live Help can only be members for three months at a time.
Neal Stewart: Do you have a rough idea of how many Mentors and Concierges there are? And how many Greeters you hope to have?
Haney Linden: There are over 100 mentors. There is one Concierge, a staff person. There are about 25 teaching classes and more signing up each day. I expect there will be around 100 Greeters at first and more all the time, but that's not for another month.
Neal Stewart: Are there plans to increase the number of concierges or is one sufficient at the moment?
Haney Linden: Well, we just started that, so one seems to be it for now.
Neal Stewart: Do you get much time to provide help yourself when you're not busy running the show?
Haney Linden: Ah, no, actually. People ask and I try to direct them to a liaison.
Neal Stewart: What do you think are some of the best and worst things about being a mentor? For instance, do Mentors get hit on more than normal residents?
Haney Linden: Well, for many Mentors I think they get a real satisfaction helping someone out. Some people are like that. So the best thing for them is the fact that there are new people every day and so much to learn in SL. Do they get hit on more that other residents? I doubt it, since most people see them as being sort of helpful and businesslike. But it's possible!
Neal Stewart: And the worst thing?
Haney Linden: I think sometimes residents confuse Mentors with staff people like Liaisons and demand that they do something. But they have no special powers.
Neal Stewart: What attributes do the best mentors have?
Haney Linden: I think the attitude is more important than the knowledge. So: patience, friendliness. Lots of new arrivals come into the welcome area and it seems like everyone is busy with each other, so its important for someone to show interest in them.
Neal Stewart: What advice do you have for people who are trying to get help from a mentor? How should they conduct themselves? Is there info they need handy?
Haney Linden: Well, hopefully if they see someone in the Welcome area with the Mentor title, that Mentor will be helpful. They shouldn't have to do anything special other than basic politeness.
Neal Stewart: What advice do you have for people who are considering becoming a mentor?
Haney Linden: Well, its easy to get in. Once you are in you need to be careful about other people seeing you as an authority, so you should avoid getting into arguments while wearing the mentor title. Other residents sometimes resent that.
Neal Stewart: Do mentors need to be jacks of all trades? Or is it OK to have some areas that you have no experience in? Do you think most mentors are jack-of-all-trades or do they specialize?
Haney Linden: No, they don't need to know it all. We don't expect them to. They really need only to know the basics and help new residents get oriented. Most mentors do have some specialty. I don't think anyone, even Lindens, know everything -- the world is too complex.
Neal Stewart: Do you know roughly what percentage of mentor applicants are rejected?
Haney Linden: A very small percentage. We check to see if they've ever been suspended or have been warned in the previous 30 days.
Neal Stewart: Is it all right if residents IM you with questions about mentoring, etc.?
Haney Linden: Sure thing
Neal Stewart: Haney Linden, thank you for your time.
Haney Linden: Thank you.
by Brody MacDonald
For those who think of Montmartre as only a fascinating island of paths and sculptures and all sorts of things to see and experience, a recent visit revealed even more to the place than at first meets the eye. After a tour of the island, your correspondent and his companion happened to encounter a monkey roaming the area who introduced himself as Higbee Protagonist, Master Ranger of the SL Parks and Recreation Service.
Having already visited many places of natural beauty in SL, it had never occurred to me that the grid might need a service for the preservation of these environments, just as in RL. With all the building and commercial activity going on in SL, many residents forget that there are people looking after the green spaces too.
Higbee and the SL Parks and Recreation Service have taken on the task, and are dedicated to preserving the natural spaces within SL. To make things convenient and informative, Higbee's service also maintains the Second Life Parks & Recreation Service Registry (SLPRSR) on Kumori island. To be placed in their registry of natural spaces, the SLPRSR requires a site to have no clubs and to offer at least two recreational activities on the land, among other things.
The SLPRSR registry
Kumori Island is part of a chain of islands, including Montmartre, that forms Oceania, one of the continents of the SL grid. A map of the sites in the SLPRSR registry can be found here, with touchable prims that contain landmarks and images of the places within the registry. The registry so far contains more than 100 places and is updated regularly. (See Higbee's recent forum posts on the matter at http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=33151.)
Kumori island
Kumori makes an incredible jumping off point for the natural side of SL. From islands to city sims and a huge alphabetical list of places on the mainland, the map is an invaluable service. For more information, dial up the Second Life Parks and Recreation Service web site at http://www.gabrielguyer.com/slparksandrec/.
Higbee piloting a tour of Kumori island
A Screen Shot from an Open Source Game under Development at RIT
In a new article in Wired News, Daniel Terdiman takes up the possibility that current game development might eventually be replaced by open source wiki style projects. Of course, as evidenced by our State of Play talk, we agree! He talks to Hugh Perkins (aka Azelda Garcia, formerly of the SimCast project, but still the driving force behind the Open Source Metaverse Project) and also with Andy Phelps of the MUPPETS project at RIT. This article is also notable for the speculation that Peter Ludlow's banning from TSO was "highest-profile player ban in the history of video games." Wooot!
[update: see discussion on Terra Nova and on Variety.com].
In a provocative new paper, Richard Bartle argues that game development is constrained in large part by the need to make games newbie friendly. Does this mean that innovative games like Second Life and A Tale in the Desert will forever going to be boutique games? Can they find a way to become newbie friendly without getting watered down? Don't ask me, I'm only the reporter.
In an historic meeting at the State of Play, a group of game developers, lawyers, and conflict mediators met to discuss strategies for conflict resolution online. The headline idea emerging from the meeting was the thought that rather than impose uniform conflict resolution strategies in a top down manner, it might be more useful for open ended social platforms like Second Life to allow users to organically develop their own conflict resolution strategies in a bottom up fashion ? perhaps leading to multiple strategies. Games like SL could then become laboratories or incubators from new kinds of conflict resolution tools and structures. The question then becomes what kinds of tools can SL make available to the users to assist in this?
Some of the attendees. From the left, Daniel Terdiman (Wired Online), Philip Rosedale (Linden), Jack Balkin (Yale Law), Robin Harper (Linden), Colin Rule (eBay director of conflict resolution), and Randy Farmer (Yahoo!).
David Johnson (NY Law), Susan Crawford (Cardozo Law), and Cory Ondrejka (Linden lab).
Hey, where are the EA reps??? I guess they have it alllll figured out already.
For further discussion see Daniel Terdiman's article in Wired Online.
by Miravoir Psaltry
There is such an amalgamation of creative talent in SL... everywhere you look you can see the work of a myriad of geniuses. We have Coco Chanel, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Enzo echoed here, and we have modern day Michelangelos and Renoirs in the form of the SL skin artists... those who make our avatars look either mesmerizingly beautiful... or strange... or... down right grotesque... it of course depends on whose eye is looking at it... but the skin artists are reshaping us in their image of beauty... and what beauty it is.. This series in the Herald will be introducing to you and few of these talented artists and give you an insight into how their creative minds tick. They're a wonderful group of people, and I know you will enjoy meeting them, I did. I begin today with skin artist Chip Midnight.
A Chip Midnight produced skin.
Miravoir: Chip, what is your focus in skin art, are you going for direct photorealism, or do you paint your designs?
Chip: I originally tried to go for complete photorealism but soon discovered that what looks good in Photoshop doesn't necessarily look good on an avatar. Too much realism is jarring while too little looks muddy. My skins are made from 6-10 base photographs that are fit to the templates and layered together. From there I do a lot of overpainting. My skins end up about 50% photographic and 50% hand painted.
Miravoir: i noticed many photorealistic skins are either mottled or have seams at the arms, if you use photos, how do you overcome that?
Clean seams are a challenge when using photographs as a base. I do a lot of overpainting and selective level and color adjustments to compensate for the light and shadowing in the original photographs. I also have a few other blending and layering tricks I use to get the skins looking seamless. I could tell you what they are, but then I'd have to kill you :D
Miravoir: why did you decide to go with your style?
Chip: My style evolved over about 9 months of experimentation and ended up being defined by what I found to work well and what didn't work. Some of my original experiments in skinning would make better costumes for the next Hannibal Lektor movie than attractive SL skins. It took me a long time to find things that worked well and looked good when I got them on an avatar. The style just kind of evolved from the techniques I developed. Ultimately I try to create skins that are pleasing to my aesthetics and hope that other people like them too. So far so good :)
Miravoir: why did you decide to start making skins
Chip: My initial inspiration for trying to do skins was a dissatisfaction with the default skins. They're so oversaturated in color that they make everyone look freshly dipped in wax. I always found them annoying since the avatars themselves and the customization we can do in appearance are so great. I wanted to have skins that looked as good as the shapes they were on.
Miravoir: what is your philosophy of beauty?
My philosophy of beauty is that it's hard to improve on nature. Most of my skins are created without makeup so that people can be beautiful and natural looking. I've always though women are most beautiful without a lot of makeup or jewelry. I realize that I'm in the minority on that which is why I add makeup tatts to people's skins for them. Most people end up getting makeup added but they still have the option of wearing the skin without if they want a more casual look.
Miravoir: how much are your skins
My skins sell for $5000 including free tatt additions. I can add any tattoo as long as the owner or creator can supply a fully permissioned texture. I regularly work with several of the most popular tatt creators like Mistress Midnight, Starley Thereian, Changeling Fate, Fey Brightwillow and many others.
Miravoir: how much detail do you put into your skins
My skins are very detailed from head to toe but I try to make the overall look somewhat subtle. If you zoom into the hands of one of my skins you'll see details as small as individual veins. The detail is there if you want to look that closely. From a distance the overall effect is smooth and lovely. You forget how much detail is added by the skin until you take it off and see yourself in a default skin again. The difference is night and day.
While TSO remains all atitter over the fact that EA has introduced a new server/city (Dianastan, or Tigger Town, or Dragons Hangnail or whatever it is), Second Life had the idea that people should be able to buy their own servers in the SL grid (avatars can actually move between servers freely in SL) and be given the tools to terraform the land as they please. I recently bought my own simulator since I?ve joined the simcast project as a business partner and game dev. We now have two servers/simulators (with more projected) on which we are building a medieval themed, PvP game with D&D quest elements in them. In other words, we are building a scalable MMORPG *inside* of Second Life. My server was lit up a couple days ago and initially the land was as flat as a billiard table. I thought you all might like to see what a couple days of terraforming can do. We will keep you posted on this project as it develops. Question is, what happens to Uri when *he* becomes a game god??? (First rule of my TOS: No EA employees!)
My first visitors. And they are Vikings! Not good.
Current plan is for the simulators off of SimCast to be campaign specific. My simulator -- Bedford -- is rougly based on the plot and time period of the Old English epic Beowulf (yes, complete with Grendel and his mom). In the distance you can see the Mead Hall, where several thanes bite it.
A look inside the Mead Hall. So far it's a half-assed attempt at historical accuracy (7th century Saxony). Time constraints prevent me from unleashing my anal retentiveness in all its glory.
There are a couple of paths through the Bedford mountain range into SimCast territory. In the fullness of time, brave thanes will uses these passes to cross into SimCast and kick the asses of those historically indifferent pimply moma's boys (and grrrrls). They do have a nice dragon infested volcano though.
Linden trees are always a nice touch.
Version 1.5 of SL allows selecting textures of the land itself in addition to terraforming. I went with a nice geographic granite texture in the mountains.
The mountains offer nice vantage points for observing the enemy. Here Uri looks down at the SimCast castle built by Grim Hathor. This castle is where the SimCast pussies will cower in fear and swap their proto-post-pubescent phantasies about Britney Spears' little sister.
Uff Da! The viking invaders from mountain view.
The SimCast volcano again. That is where SimCast geeks teleport in and buy their lame-ass weapons, and where they go to lick their wounds when they get their pimply butts kicked.
Up high in the Bedford mountains you just might find the altar. Dagnabit! I hate it when they don't clean up after a human sacrifice! Some manners please?
But the best thing about Second Life is that after a hard day of terraforming (or kicking the butts of SimCast pussies) you can always chill in the Mead Hall with an Elite Dancer like Miravoir Psaltry...
Kudos to Hamlet Linden over on New World Notes, for his two part story on the legendary SL scripter, Francis Chung, who not only has made the best guns in SL (the Seburo Compact-Exploder) but now has made the best hugging animation too! Erm, as you all know, I?m not down with hugging, but I?ve included some pics of the gun. Of special interest in Hamlet?s story is the integration of thus gun into a PvP system.
Seburo Compact-Exploder
Uri is strapped!
some of the detail
I took an hour off from war reporting yesterday to drop in on a course being taught by Ancient Earth (AE) member Archaegeo Platini, and while I was AFK and up to my neck in IMs for much of it, I have to say that for the first time ever I had the impression that online instruction actually made sense. In this case Archaegeo was teaching a course on 3D space, introducing the notion of vectors and rotation. Not only did he have streaming video of his notes and graphics to boot, but the basic structure of SL made it ideal for a ?virtual hands on? medium for playing with vector values to see what happens. Students can even rez representations of the XYZ axes themselves and make their objects rotate through them, for example. Really a brilliant idea. I could have done without the new age music being piped in though. Some snaps follow.
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