So despite my vows not to go to Skin Fair 2016, I did.  Only to discover that almost no vendor creates system avatar skins anymore.  They only skin mesh heads now and mesh parts.

This awful outcome is the result of two things...market exploitation and and ideology.

Market Exploitation

I suppose most avatar creators feel that mesh parts and mesh avatars are the end all and be all.  Little does it matter that Mesh bodies and parts are unalterable by their purchasers. If you buy a mesh body, it will deform a bit in correlation to the system avatar body, but not by much.  Mesh heads cannot be changed at all.  So a customer will look like every other customer who buys the same mesh head.  If they try to alter their look, they can buy the now legion offerings from various skin creators.  But that still doesn't stop them from looking like every other person who purchased the same skin.  I can also see why creators are clamoring to skin mesh avatars and parts, it's easier.  The bodies and heads don't change.  In fact all they really need to create are the heads.  The body skin can be the same across all lines since only the head will change.

Ideology

For many years now, there have been motivated howlers, mainly creators, screeching how the average SL user creates lag.  That all of us ruin SL by making our avatars too tall and many bodies are also out of proportion.  Their opposites would point to the "your world" ethos of SL and stated that people were allowed to design their own looks.  Now I can see both sides of the argument.  Yes, out of proportion avatars can make designing items harder in SL.  However telling people they can't design their own features in VR is just as awful.  Now I see that the Mesh avatar movement has done by stealth what the vocal restriction advocates wanted for years.  It prevents people from designing their own avatars.  We have in  proportion avatars that are cookie cutter boring.

The almost total abandonment of people who do still design their own avatars is heinous.  There are people in SL who do have a sense of proportion and enjoy playing with the body controls to create their look.  Why should these people (I am one) be forced into mesh body pieces?  Not only that why should I have to suffer the fetish peccadilloes of certain creators (Big Asses, Big Lips, Big Hips, Big Boobs etc) when I buy items for my avatar?  Why is it a crime that I want my avatar to share some of my own features?

What is even more disturbing is that the few creators who do still create system avatars put absolutely no enthusiasm into these items.  Almost all the creators at this year's skin fair, the few who did create system skins, used the same skin template.  Hence every system avatar looked the same no matter what creator stall you visited.  Now that is just miserly.  Unless it's a subtle dig at mesh resistors and meant to push them into the standardized clone economy of mesh.

So now it seems that I will be locked mainly into skins created in 2015 and before.

This is what I will be prevented from doing from now on.  I can't look myself with mesh heads:





Nor can I design Portrait Avatars such as these with Mesh heads:

Priorities in Action

Drama couldn't make up crazy stories like the following example.

The richest of the rich in Silicon Valley are actually throwing money around the GOP in order to defeat Trump from receiving the nomination.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3483046/Silicon-Valley-bosses-Republican-leaders-secret-talks-stopping-Trump-s-bid-White-House.html#comments

Meanwhile their own hometown ballet company closes its doors due to lack of funding.

http://www.contracostatimes.com/breaking-news/ci_29610630/silicon-valley-ballet-shuts-down

This is the attitude of the tech elite for you in spades.  It also highlights my continual theme that these people are insane and they truly believe that they will reach the "Singularity" rapture.  They fully expect to live forever inside machines.  In fact they hate their own bodies.

So it is no surprise that an art form celebrating humanity and the beauty of human bodies would fail to thrive in their vicinity.

Here is another contrast in photos that says it all...

Techs would rather watch this...life in simulcrum

Over going to the theater to celebrate beauty like this...

These people are truly without culture and they flail around trying to create it anew.  In the process destroying everything that makes us human.  And this is all due to the fact that they hate that their own bodies.

This was cross posted at my non-tech blog

Come Smile with Noodles

So Ciaran Laval linked to a company that has a new demo showcasing an Oculus VR experience.

What does it showcase?  Nothing more or less than a nod at the latest dystopian novel that Tech heads want to make flesh..."Ready Player One".

Thanks to Digital Cybercherries, you can go back to a 1980's arcade and even listen to old tunes.  If you've never experienced said time, no matter Digital Cybercherries has recreated this sad little mess for you to experience.

An experience that ironically captures the pathos of VR itself.  A time when people stopped looking at one another and just stared into a box.  It was the natural outcome of television but so much worse.  Because now we gained an actual gateway into psychosis.

But now with this new groovy VR step, you can live the psychosis.  You can be in the 80's with the box strapped to your head, entering a black box space only to stare into a virtual black box with old arcade graphics.

Are you living?  Or are you lying down on that bed with Noodles hitting that opium only to smile like a daft idiot.

Oh in the past, everything was so much better.  Its much easier to hide there and not face the problems of today.  Easier than actually getting out to do something about inequality and loss of freedom/privacy. It's so modern, so futuristic, so like "Ready Player One".

As usual the tech heads failed to take away the one main theme of the book they idolize.  The character Halliday created his VR to hide from the world.  When he hid, he lost out on love and life because an hallucination was more attractive.  In the process he pulled his whole fictional world into that VR opium dream along with him.

Noodles likes the past, he wants to go no further.  Do you want to join him?

Long Live the New Flesh

There is a ramping up of motion capture hype in regards to Philip Rosedale's new VR Hi-Fi.

And of course, it is all another sign of what Mediabastard (another SL alumnus) calls the aptly named Media Induced Psychosis or MIPS for short.  Mediabastard was the one who really tuned me into Marshall McLuhan and the Medium is the Message theory.



Watch the video, then read the comments...also read Ciaran Laval's blog about the video here.

Now imagine if you were face to face with someone in deep conversation.  But what you saw were the "expressions" that were "captured" for the Hi-Fi avatars.  Honestly...would you accept those expressions in every day life?  Or would you deduce that there was something wrong with your conversation partner if his/her mouth continually hung open?

One of the things that Mediabastard and Jaron Lanier write about is dumbing ourselves down to accept the new media hype, the latest thing.  Lanier wrote that current AI is only acceptable because we have to take ourselves down to its level.  In a way that we would never do for another human being.  In essence, we are denying our own humanity and highly evolved senses to buy into AI/VR media hype.  Because it is cool and the idea is exciting, we are willing to accept the good enough, the very large shortcomings.  People may think, that it is only temporary but it isn't.  It changes us.  This technology is not making us better.  It is devolving our own advanced social processes.  This would not be the first time we have all degenerated because of technology.  Lanier pointed out that people now feel more comfortable typing into devices rather than having conversations.  That young people have a harder time with eye contact due to technology.  He also concluded that this is no surprise since technology is developed by a group of people who by and large have problems with the interpersonal aspects of life.

Technology people are more likely to suffer from forms of autism or have conditions on the spectrum.  They use technology to cope with a world that at times baffles them or even frightens them.  I have nothing but empathy for them.  Not being able to hold a comfortable level of eye contact nor being able to properly read facial expressions is akin to being blind on a very basic level.  Imagine all the visual information about friends, loved ones, and strangers that is lost simply because you can not see it.

These are the kind of people now involved with motion capture in VR technology.  They can't see where they are going wrong.  But they are asking people who do know, to get excited over the promise of Mocap not the shoddy way it is designed.  The great majority of it depending upon all of us dumbing ourselves down to accept a facsimile of "human expression" in VR that in real life we would rightly conclude is evidence of mental disability.

Mocap could lead to problems of a new generation not being properly able to read real facial expressions much in the way young people now cannot hold eye contact.

Where Mediabastards MIPS theory comes in, is that no one can see that they are making gargantuan amends to accept these poor simulacrums because the ideas are so alluring.  We are embracing the illusion, the psychosis over the reality.  THAT is quite frightening.

So...death to videodrome...long live the new flesh indeed.

Ready or Not Player One

Above is my current avatar standing in one of the patches of land that I rent.  At the time it was taken, this SL visit was just like any other day.  Little did I know that a few days later I, and other SL players, would discover that Second Life is basically over.  And not over by any other company than its parent company Linden Lab.  Due to a planned or unplanned leak, Linden Lab has confirmed that it is building another virtual world.

At first I was excited.  Second Life needs a great many quality of life upgrades which are mostly out of reach due to the age of the platform.  A new place with better avatar tools would be great.  But as I came down from my high, other more logical questions started to surface.

Mainly about land. The land market is now essentially dead and that is a little frightening.  Because Second Life's revenue stream is land.  Prokofy Neva wrote a great post about it from the rental business viewpoint.  This could potentially be a fiasco that could be a bigger than the Zindra shakeup a few years back.  Ebbe Linden answered a few basic questions on Sluniverse.com regarding the new world.  He mentioned that they were thinking about lowering land costs in favor of item taxation.  A concept which I thought was strange.  Does the lab think that they can make more from adding fees to creators and buyers?  Did they have an accountant look into this?  Or is this another pie in the sky idea from some insane ideology that Silicon Valley people love to worship?

How will LL plan to deal with all the landholders, including myself, who are now holding the bag for worthless land that costs a monthly fee?  Granted I only hold almost a quarter of mainland.  Not a lot compared to people like Anshe Chung, Prokofy Neva, etc.  but it is still a big investment compared to most single users in the world.  This isn't including the land I rent from themed estates that I love such as Winterfell and 1920's Berlin.  I admit I spend much more on land in Second Life than I should.  But I look at it as an entertainment expense on par with going to the movies.  When all is said and done, I would spend the same amount attending the local movie house.  But I get more joy from Second Life than I've ever received from passive film watching.

Will there even be land, as we know it, in the new place?  Already people on sluniverse are screaming for no setup fees or tier fees.  They are campaigning for bubbles (like the failed Cloud Party) that will disappear when their users are not logged into the world.  So there will be no world, no places to visit, and no homes or landscaping to admire.  That would be a deal breaker for me.  I simply would not move over but stay in old SL until the lights go out.

According to Ciaran Laval's site, he pointed out a Linden post on sluniverse that Second Life isn't on par with World of Warcraft but more like the old Everquest.  Which just flabbergasts me.  Why is an employee of the company downplaying the success of the company's core product?  What possibly good could that do in the public image?  This indicates to me that LL, as well as the rest of the VR tech community, are still beguiled by the Snowcrash/Ready Player One fantasies.  Fantasies that have been shown time and time again to be just fantasies.  WoW didn't get made with fantasies that there were about 10 million people out there waiting to play its game.  They were hoping for old Everquest success of a few hundred thousand to a million people.  That they attracted more was an outlier.  So developing the next VR with the idea that millions of people will pile on is laughable.  Especially when it has been proved that only a small number of people feel comfortable with the avatar experience and an even smaller who are capable of self directed play time.

Recently there was a news story which stated that children who don't learn their letters through penmenship (just by typing or tracing letters on a computer pad) are not forming the same neural connections as people who did learn their alphabet by writing.  Technology is literally changing the human brain.  And I'm beginning to suspect that this has a large bearing on Virtual Worlds.  Mainly because the audience for a free form virtual world that only LL offers (SL) has an audience that skews older.  The known, guaranteed audience for virtual worlds are old as in old enough to have gone through the schooling system before new technology.  This is something that must be taken into account and in fact should worry virtual world creators.  If this is the case (as it appears to be)  their audience is old and getting older with no one to replace their numbers.  I speak from experience.  I'm in middle age and getting older than that soon, I love SL but my young niece was wary of it.  All the people who grew up in new technology either gravitate to on the rail games or just hang out in Facebook like interfaces but mainly text message/twitter.  Twittering, by its very nature, doesn't encourage exploration, it doesn't encourage deep thinking.  What it does encourage is burp like exclamations about lunch and bathroom habits.  That is not the kind of thinking that takes well to virtual world experiences.

Despite warning signs, I really hope that it will be Linden Lab that creates the next popular platform.  Mainly because I'm more comfortable with the devil you know over the devil you don't idea.  Linden Lab does like doing things its own way but it also has consistently changed its direction due to public feedback.  Granted many changes were due to outcry but at least things got changed.  Worlds don't get made without protest or the ability to protest.  Unfortunately the fascistic turn that real world and the tech world are experiencing actively discourages protest.  Where will that leave us?

Right now, we are left in a holding pattern.  Land will become a lot cheaper as people dump their holdings in preparation for the new place.  But I don't see much of this land being purchased.  Who would want to buy something that will not carry over to the new place?  I'm at the max of the tier I can pay, I should probably dump what I have but I can't do it.  Not yet.  I already came to the conclusion that I will not recoup my expenditures.  Not only will the land market suffer but I see people holding back on home purchases such as housing and landscaping.  Maybe fashion will be able to hold up.  But really why spend loads of money on things that will not transfer.  This is worrying because by all accounts the new place will not even be ready for another two years.

Whatever the case someone's goose is being cooked.  Just whose it is, is not clear.

He who walks behind the Mega-Grid...

The SVVR conference is still all the news in Second Life circles.  Mostly the discussion centers around Palmer Luckey's (one of the Oculus crew) pontificating about the future of VR.

Of course, he has joined the chorus that Second Life is too old and too difficult to use.  He, like many other people in the VR biz (including SL founder Rosedale), is in a very keen display of downplaying SL's success.  SL's influence is being minimized to the point of ridiculousness. This is really underhanded and awful because if we all step back and look at reality...SECOND LIFE IS THE ONLY VR ON THE MARKET.  It is the only one successful and still standing.  I reiterate again, the other contenders failed.  They failed big time.  They failed because they didn't take into account what makes SL successful.  The reason they didn't take into account was all about ideology and an almost religious fundamentalism.

1) Ideology - Most VR bigwigs are extremely invested in Creative Commons.  Which means the little people, us, give up our intellectual property rights.  While the bigwigs get to keep theirs AND profit off of ours.

2) Religious Fundamentalism - Many in the tech biz, out of fear of death, are enthralled by the idea that they will transcend their bodies and become one with computers.  No, I'm not making this up.  They really think they will be post human.  They are so deluded by this fantasy, that they are actively coding our technology with an eye to when they will experience their IT Rapture.  The left behind (us) will have to deal with their crappy software architecture.

The main crux with their problems regarding Second Life are that people who use it fought hard for their VR rights (and we are still fighting) and we may be the only audience for VRs.  Second Life grew as much as it could and reached just about all of the people who are comfortable with the VR experience.  This is worrying for VR creators.  Because that means the dystopic fantasy VR they want will never come to pass and their dreams of enslaving everyone into VR will not be attainable.

Audience question for Palmer: You and Carmack talk about building the metaverse as a moral imperative - why? 

Palmer: "This is one of those crazy man topics", he begins, but says it comes down to this: Everyone wants to have a happy life, but "it's going to be impossible to give everyone everything they want", such as expensive consumer items. With VR, however, you can do that. It's easy for us to say, living in the great state of California, that VR is not as good as the real world, but a lot of people in the world don't have as good an experience in real life as we do here. Also, it's going to be useful for training, and education, "There's a lot of reasons that it's imperative we create a perfect virtual reality."  Ed Mason also mentions people who are bedridden can benefit from VR. 

Luckey Palmer - The Mix Agency May 19, 2014

There you go, straight from the horse's mouth at the recent SVVR.  Scary isn't it?  The moment I read that, I immediately thought of that crazy old horror film Children of the Corn.  Luckey Palmer is Issac.

Instead of using his influence and billions to fight for the rights of people in technology, Palmer wants to feed off our misery.  Tech people are all about rights for themselves and kicking the ladder out behind them rather than give a helping hand to their fellow man.  Its their mentality.  I'm not saying that they haven't created great tech for everyone, but I am saying that they are deluded enough and rich enough to make a real everlasting and horrifying effect on our lives.  As drug companies and insurance companies have turned the wheels to benefit their business over the public, as food companies have turned the wheels to make sure that the food they want to sell takes precedence, so will tech companies turn the wheels to sell that they want.  Our rights be damned.

The VR Hat trick

The hype is starting.  The VR hype.  The Snowcrash fantasy that never dies, now colored by Ready Player One fantasies.  Also a side helping of transhumanism via Singularity.

I'm not adverse to big dreams, big hopes, and big ideas.  But there comes a point where reality needs to take the main stage.  Reality has not come to the VR business, in fact most ignore it.  As in they ignore the fact that Second Life is the one and only successful VR ever.  But because it didn't fulfill some fantasy from a science fiction book, it is decried as a failure.  A failure that is losing customers, losing money, losing content and, most pointedly, it is not Snowcrash.

Is Second Life declining?  It is hard to really argue that it is not.  Like it's MMORPG sister juggernaut, WOW, it is an old warhorse platform that is starting to really show its age.  But as of yet, nothing more advanced or more attractive has taken its place.  There have been contenders, from the many opensim worlds to the more advanced Blue Mars and Cloud Party.  Blue Mars failed and was sold to Ball State University who use it as research.  Cloud Party was just as empty and sold to Yahoo as soon as it received the offer.  The Opensim worlds remain remote also rans that no one ever visits except for those who are disappointed in Second Life.  So if Second Life is the only VR left standing...why is it a failure?  Most likely because the populace turned it into their fantasy, fantasies that are more life affirming than Snowcrash.

You see the problem with the Snowcrash VR mavens and the transhumanists is that they have a dirty little secret.  They WANT the fascistic world, the outright misery of a world gone bad that forces the fictional people in their favorite books to hide inside a VR.  Inside that VR, they become the gods, the artists, the politicians and the enforcers.  They want us to dance to their tune.  They want us to experience their rights free world in which a twisted form of corporate communism reigns with an iron fist.  Our only recourse to individuality is the ability to choose a funky avatar.

Damn did they try hard to push that sop in Second Life.  Fortunately, the people in SL fought tooth and nail for "land" rights, intellectual property rights and free speech while wearing funky avatars.  We didn't eschew real world living for a fantasy prison.  We didn't "move" into a VR and make it more real than real.  Instead we made VR an extension, a playground for relaxation.  Second Life is a virtual Club Med not a dystopic altworld.  That was what got up the nose of Philip, Mitch, Corey and the rest.  We just weren't good enough, we were real and not fictional.

So like Vladimir and Estragon they all wait for Godot Snowcrash.  He is coming don't ya know!  He is just a few hours away and he promises to arrive.  If they just get more people and more technology, Godot Snowcrash will appear with his holy Oculus device.  All the while they ignore the flesh and blood reality of the only successful VR ever made.  My forecast is that the Snowcrash will never arrive.  But the second coming of a Club Med Second Life?  Almost certainly.

And hopefully, sometime in the near future, someone will take away Lucky Kurzweil's hat.

Secret!

This is an advertisement for a popular store in Second Life called The Secret Store.  I've loved all their clothing for awhile now. Unfortunately, my VR inventory is exploding and I have a serious moratorium against buying anything new.

As I've noted at New World Notes, this is the Second Life I see when I'm in world.  Its a place of sophisticated VR art and items and motivated people doing what they love.  Unfortunately that isn't the SL most people see when the read about it in the local news or on TV.  They still see SL being a backwards place with lousy graphics and sleazy people.

And if they do by chance see anything like this, the world is set up that getting started is hard to conquer.

I launched an IPO and all I got was a Lousy T-Shirt!

Welly, Well,  Well, Well

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/03/25/facebook-pays-two-billion-bucks-to-acquire-oculus-rift-company/

Facebook just purchased the current darling, Oculus Rift.  They thank the fools who invested through Kickstarter and saved them money in research and development.  Now they can pick up patents and an almost shelf ready project for peanuts.  Obviously they expect the technology will be worth more than just 2 billion in the future.

This sale goes beyond VR for the masses.  It will spell the end for Kickstarter.  Simply because the "investors" AKA Suckers will now realize that IPO investing requires more than just cheap t-shirts and early access to whatever they funded.  Especially when a company like Oculus used that goodwill money not to allow small investors company ownership via stock options, but to roll it over into a company sale.  This is an ethics free move on Oculus' part and their small investors could rightfully sue for fraud.

Kickstarter is just another get something for nothing that Silicon Valley LOVES.  They want programming for free via open source.  They want workers for free via work clubs (more like online sweatshops).  They want graphics and art for free via social networks like Flickr, Pinterest and Tumblr.  They want content for free via Creative Commons.

Is anyone seeing a pattern here?

The only reason why these companies and owners get mega millions/billions is because they are depending on free work, free content and free money from the customers.  They have no development overhead because all of us are paying for it.  The rest is just gravy.

We, the investors, need to step back and demand more for our money.  We have to make demands and get off the animal farm.  Because that is all we are now to the tech industry, slaughterhouse animals.

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Wootberry Joos!

The team behind Raglan Shire in SL has created an animation series inspired by their VR town and community.

Its adorable and I can't wait to see what else they have in store.

Hamster Lovin

Second Life was the first program that got me into massive multi-player worlds. In fact, I think I found SL so easy to learn because I was not a gamer. So the arcane UI was not a hinderance. It did however make learning WoW's UI a torturous experience. Anyway games come and go but I always find time to wander a bit around SL. A lot of people find the place daunting and unfriendly but to people willing to stick out the learning curve it becomes more like "Cheers". Fall is the best time in Second Life. People are starting to gear up for the holidays and the major shopping events and hunts begin all over the grid. Right now the place for SL hipsters to be is The Arcade Gacha Event.

The Gacha events have taken up the slack of the much missed and very much loved Seasons Hunt event. Unlike treasure hunt events, Gacha events are a bit like going to Atlantic City. You put a bit of money into a slot machine and win various different prizes. It can be addictive. Especially for popular items. The Arcade Gacha Event is set up like an old Victorian, Atlantic City pavilion. It is filled with little slot machines which contain numerous variations of prizes that consist of furniture, clothing, knick knacks and avatars. The big hit of this event is Beetlebones' Hamster.

This adorable hamster is a mesh based avatar that a player can wear. It comes in various colors. The price to play and win a coveted color is 100L (around a $1 real money). So far, I have only 4 colors.

The Arcade event is extremely crowded and I haven't been able to get back after my first visit. But I will be heading back to bet on more hamsters and other fancies.

For those interested, Second Life will be coming to Steam soon. There are some changes being made to accomodate this new partnership. Perhaps it will even out the steep learning curve. Who knows? If it does, then you too can be a hamster.



The Hamster vid is from Larcoco's Flickr stream

The launch of the good ship GW2

So it has been a little over a week since GW2's launch.  This is counting my extra days because I pre-purchased.

And I must state that I am satisfied with the game.

The problem that irked me the most, the female caster armor, looks as if it has been addressed.  The starting gear is still that atrocious bikini miniskirt lacy underwear number.  But as soon as I was able to level up the tailoring craft, the outfit turned into a harem dance girl outfit.  Still a little squicky but not as bad as the mini skirt.  Later on a quest reward gave me an even better looking shirt with fuller coverage.  The character still looks sexy but just not the stripper-in-search-of-a-venue look.  I'm hoping that as the character levels there will be a consistency in the gear.

The game has been crowded beyond imagination from the first day I logged in.  Most thought that the majority of players were the pre-purchase crowd and things would be smooth for actual launch day.  The auction house was down for the majority of the headstart.  Which most overlooked since the game had not officially launched.  So I know that I was hoping that it would be up for opening day.

It was not.

In fact I think the game developers miscalculated how popular the game would be.  They were happy with the pre-purchase numbers and most likely did not count upon fence sitters (after all you can't hope for hypothetical crowds).  But it turned out that they showed up in greater numbers due to word of mouth.  I think I've spent more time on overflow servers than I have on the server that I chose to play on.  Even though the overflow servers were created to address large crowds and forestall the need to add extra servers (which may go empty a few weeks down the line), this nice solution groaned under the weight of all the players.  I heard of tales of disconnects, crashes and groups being split up due to being sent to different overflow servers.  The auction house has not been up yet.  ArenaNet has not opened up its forums so a true account of player discontent or lack of it is unknown.  However they did bite the bullet and started to add more servers.

Personally I haven't experienced any major problems.  The AH being down is inconvenient but not game breaking.  What would concern me would be actual problems with character attacks.  But unlike SWTOR that suffered from ability delay, GW2 is blessedly free of that problem.  The attacks are just as smooth as the ones in World of Warcraft.  Which is a very genuine achievement and it is practically the only game that has come close to that gold standard.

To conclude, I'm very happy with the game.  I can see myself spending time in its world more than I planned.

Hypothetical Gaming of Reality

This eerie and frightfully prescient little short film was showcased on HuffingtonPost.com today.

Yes we can laugh at the absurdity and shudder at the thought of people sitting zombie like in empty rooms staring into a Facebook inner space.  But the reality is, is that gaming tech developer's are already trying to make this dystopia a reality.

Check out my posts previous posts about gaming reality here and here.

Glitch

A few weeks ago, I heard talk about Glitch.  A strange, sweet and open ended VR built on Flash.  It intrigued me, so I signed up for an invite.

I received the invitation a few days later but neglected to create an account until this week.  What I discovered was some kind of mix between Second Life, Eve Online, Free Realms, other traditional mmorpgs.

It is most like Second Life which means it is open ended and completely free form.  There are traditional quests but they are mostly tied to the skill learning system.  Also objects in world can randomly drop quests if you discover them.  But otherwise your character wanders this kooky, pleasant, arty little paradise with no goals except the ones you create for yourself.  There are levels but the leveling system is vestigial only.  Gaining levels only grants minimal bonuses over lower leveled characters so there is no rush to level cap.  There is no combat system and the only PvP game play available is a racing game against other characters.

The premise behind the game is a mythology of many god giants who dream together.  And player characters are living inside that dream.  Each god rules over a particular skill such as Mining, Cooking, Farming etc.  In fact most of the gameplay centers around gathering materials to create usable items for yourself and other players.  If you aren't the type of player that likes crafting, a whole lot of crafting and make busy work, then this little game is not for you.  The learning system for these skills remind me very much of Eve Online's system but a little less arcane...only a little.  Each skill level grants bonuses in that particular skill, and some quests.

The game gives a very fast tutorial on what do with the basic objects and animals such as trees, pigs, and chickens.  A new character will get rewards for petting pigs and squeezing chickens.  The rewards will be put into the skill systems to create items.  The game also has an extensive achievement system so you will be rewarded over the most mundane things and very strange ones as well.

Built on top of this F2P is a cash shop that allows you to buy credits and use those credits to collect zany clothing for your glitch.  There is a very simple housing system which will be expanded upon in the future.  If so inclined, you can subscribe to the game which will give you monthly credits for the cash shop.

So far my first week has been enjoyable.  I love the artwork in the game as well as the little word pun jokes that pop up.  Although the visuals look childish, this game is definitely not for young children.  It was created for older teens and adults which means some of the jokes are on the mature side.  The community in the game is friendly and the customer service is upbeat.  If you ever wanted to waste a little time just fooling around and doing silly things, then this game is for you.

Dionysian Bacchanalia

History is a study of circles.  We all know this and yet we travel in the same rut.  We ignore the well worn signs.

Life at the end of Weimar Berlin is now.  Just as Weimar Berlin was the same as any great culture on the verge of collapse from Greek to Roman to Ming to Mayan.  People sense the impending disorder, get nervous and mindless just like wildebeest do when sensing an approaching predator.

Leave your Troubles Outside!

So Life is Disappointing?  Forget it!

In here, life is beautiful!

The Girls are Beautiful!

Even the Orchestra is Beautiful!

At those tipping points, people find release in fantasy.  We create a spot for ourselves in that cave of wealth and death (written about by blogger Elaine Meinel Supkis).  In that cave we play with mirror societies.  Those mirror societies are decadent, they push social norms and explore new expression.  Of course, this all has to do with sexuality because the cave is sex at it's most basic and it is a death too.

In the past, these mirror societies were created by artists.  Audiences with similar desires, but with no talents, would vicariously live through the artists' work.  But at our moment in time, that has been destroyed. Our current art and performance offerings are not allowing us the release we need.  In fact, our current culture is fighting the very need for release.  But this impulse cannot be denied, it must find an outlet.

Virtual reality has allowed the previously untalented spectator to recreate the cabaret, to celebrate the Bacchanalia and push boundaries.  In VR, as the song says, life is beautiful even the girls are beautiful. In VR we explore sexuality and gender roles.  In VR, women can be men and men can be women.  What is beauty or sexy?  In the past, the artists had all the fun while we watched.  Now, in this temporary bubble of order and disorder, anyone can take part in the cabaret.

In most articles on VR, Second Life is most often pushed as the pinnacle of decadence.  But SL is not the only cabaret.  It exists even in World of Warcraft, where many have designated the Inn at Goldshire (on just about every server) as a free zone for Bacchus.

Of course, the developers have no idea what they created or why it makes people drunk.  I believe Prokofy Neva once pointed out on his blog, that the developers are largely conservative.  They are more attracted to tight-ass, fascistic movements such as Singularity.  They have no idea what to do with the "freaks" who settled in their utopia.  Far from playing masters or mistresses of ceremonies, they want to change everyone into their ideas of what VR should be, of what avatars should be or how we should play their games.

If only some enlightened developer would come along and willingly become an avatar of Dionysus.  To delineate for the revelers the sensible division between fantasy and reality.  To stop the nonsense that VR drunkards are currently telling everyone, that their drunken revelries are part of real life.

But I suppose we should be happy with what we have now.  It won't last...when the money runs out and the backlash takes back our new ground.  The merry-go-round goes on....

Viewer 3.0

Linden Lab is working on the Viewer take 2.  Unlike most, I've never really had serious problems with the official viewers.  I just muddle through the crap.  But now we will be getting Viewer 3 and the Second Life community is doing what it does best...snark galore.

The Free Week

Much has been made about the announcement a few months ago that World of Warcraft lost quite a number of subscriptions.  It was surprising to many especially since the last expansion was only just released last holiday season.  The mmorpg fanbase exploded into various chatter that exulted in Blizzard's fall from grace and worry that the game was beginning to fail.  The Blizzard forums were overwhelmed by posts calling the expansion a very real Cataclysm and begging Blizzard to start merging empty servers.  It seems the schadenfreude talking heads won the day because recently Blizzard turned it's introductory areas to unlimited free to play.  A policy that was seen before in the less than popular Warhammer Online a few years ago.  This move caused even more chatter with greedy demands that the whole game be turned free to play.

I'm included in those lost subscriptions that caused this major change.  I left the game last year due to burnout over the dungeon treadmill.  I returned during the weeks leading up to the new expansion and only stayed about two months after it released.  During that time I barely played the game at all.  I did take a look at the new Goblin and Worgen areas.  And in my post a few months back I was alternately impressed and a little dismayed by them.  But I lost the energy to keep playing to see the end game areas on my top level characters.

This past week I received an email from Blizzard offering a free week to celebrate the latest update patch.  I decided to go back to take a look.

This time I concentrated on leveling my high level character.  I took this character through Hyjal and into Deepholm.  The quest design in the end game areas match the polish shown in the new Goblin and Worgen areas.  Everything is streamlined, intuitive and packed with good story tidbits.  There is minimal to no grind at all.  A player will never have to keep returning to the same areas to collect just one more object or kill one more baddie.  I really enjoyed the pace that the quests set and I never felt as if I was stagnating on a treadmill to prolong the leveling usefulness.  However the problems in the Goblin/Worgen areas are also present in the end game areas which include too much phasing, vehicle quests and cut scenes.  All of which took control of my character away from me and again left me feeling I was sitting in a Disney World ride.  I was also a bit dismayed to discover that the whole playstyle of this character (Paladin) was changed.  In WOTLK, the character had good utility and steady damage.  Granted there were areas that could be toned down and some toned up but the class was in a good place.  But this was thrown out and the class now plays like a slot machine.  Every move I make, I cross my fingers and hope to pull triple diamonds in order to do any damage at all.  In every fight I'm not sure if the character will destroy an NPC without blinking, do balanced damage or just keep hitting the NPC with no damage at all.  I don't understand this need developers have to throw out class design every few months or years.  That isn't something I have patience for anymore in any game.

All in all despite the few niggling problems I have with the new areas, I can't say that Blizzard went totally wrong with the new expansion.  In fact many of it's elements are better than WOTLK and BC.  Therefore my explanations for the surprising subscription loss are due to the ongoing economic Depression and an over saturation in the MMORPG market.  There are only so many games for which people can pay regular subscriptions.  That leads to careful picking on which games to play.  It turns out that the people prone to play MMORPGs are already playing and the audience is probably at it's peak.  This group for the most part cut it's baby teeth in World of Warcraft, they are a bit bored with the familiar game and now are spreading out to see other games in the market.  Some would rather pay a subscription to the new Rift now than go back to the same old WoW.  Another major change in the market are the rise of the asian based Free to Plays and western games that follow the same F2P model.  The F2P games are a very real threat to the old subscription model games and as the Depression gets worse their rise will gain more momentum.  Many of the asian F2P games rival the subscription style games in graphics and play style.  Many of the F2P games now are former A listed subscription games.

But does this mean WoW is failing?  I don't think that is case.  It will be chugging along for many years to come.  But it's heyday is most likely past.

My VR Photostream

My Flickr photos in Pummelvision from Melponeme_k on Vimeo.


I discovered the link to Pummelvision on GoSpeed Racer's webpage.

Its an interesting stream of all my VR travels including a few flashes of my RL photos.  It is the RL that looks bizarre in this grouping.

Empty Universe

Linden Lab is slowly but surely working on new features in their browser. Some of them are a bit boggling (transferring profiles outside the world), amusing (body jiggle) and beautiful (shadows/Depth of Field).  The newest features (shadows/DoF) are still experimental and can only be turned on in the advanced menus or a player can download one of the sanctioned 3rd party browsers.

Anway, the above machinima showcases SL at it's best and the work of it's many players as well.

The location in the video is Japan Dream Kenjin, a quiet little sim that emulates a small Japanese fishing town in the early 60's.

Proof of Concept

I just watched a video feed of a conference from Gametech in Orlando via Metanomics in SL.

One of the issues that came up about VRs and their application to the military was regarding price.  As in how to make it all less expensive.  Particularly in regards to content portability.  There was a great concern that they (as in military companies and providers) couldn't take their toys to all ports hither and thither.  That they were stuck on proprietary platforms.  All of this kind of talk reminded me of a comment once made by Prokofy Neva.  That little Second Life was at the epicenter of enormous interest by various parties and it was trying all it could to remain autonomous.  That this was most likely one of the main reasons why the company culture was so insular.

This led me to look upon the whole issue of various groups fighting over content, control and platform direction as a battle over a very successful proof of concept venture.  Second Life is not a commercial platform.  It is an experimental proof of concept to the world that a non-game virtual environment can be done.  How well is open to personal opinion.  The company is not public it is still under the domain of private capital.  As such, it is at the mercy of the various whims and ideologies of it's investors.  The investors still look at Second Life as an experimental prototype with it's direction still open to change.

The monkey wrench in all the works are the regular users.  As far as we are concerned Second Life is done.  We erroneously thought that becoming a social entertainment VR was what Second Life was all about.  However all the jabs that Linden Lab made at becoming entertainment have been half hearted.  But once again they are trying to give themselves direction as entertainment and as a result hired Rod Humble (an exec with experience in the gaming industry) as the new CEO.  Truly everything hinges on whether or not Rod Humble is successful in turning SL into some kind of attraction like a regular mmorpg game.  Because if he isn't, I believe Second Life as we know it today will cease to exist.

The military and it's satellite company providers are now very large investors in the Second Life prototype.  Recently they purchased the Enterprise platform subdivision of SL.  And it is truly no surprise why.  Second Life is a reliable and working platform.  There would be no need for the US Military to commission it's providers to program a working alternative.  Of course since they did spend a lot of money for this variation of the platform, they are looking to cut corners off in other areas.  They want their purchase to come with benefits.  Benefits such as getting rid of proprietary content restrictions.      Its all under that cynical notion that content should be free to move.  But what it means is that the military doesn't believe in Second Life as a stand alone company with proprietary rights to it's IP.  Now why would they have that opinion?

I think about the track record of the various big names of LL, including Philip Linden, and all of them support the notion that the platform of SL should be like some kind of utility.  That it should be a jump off point for some kind of mega grid with free highways to move information.  This led me to a deeper understanding why these people hated the notion of land arbitrage and shopkeeper economy in SL.  These money making elements depend on proprietary systems.  They depend on lawful restrictions to protect property of the guinea pigs who thought Second Life was about them.  Meanwhile, we guinea pigs in SL were just an example that the grid was workable.  An example to various interested parties that many would do high grade graphic work and accept chump change for payment.

Many of the VC bigwigs of Second Life don't really care if Second Life becomes a big entertainment platform.  They just wanted to create a "Snowcrash" world and go down in the history books as the first founders of this mega grid.  They already made their billions, so SL's success as a stand alone company wasn't of utmost priority.  Now that the military is sniffing around, the same entity that funded and launched the internet itself, this group is getting excited.  I have a fear that they will happily throw Second Life users out the window,  requisitioning our content to placate the Military complex.  Especially if it means it will launch the Snowcrash.