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:

Ready Player One Mix

A Ready Player One 80's Mix from Melponeme_k on 8tracks Radio.

I can't believe I didn't cross post this when I created this playlist last year on 8tracks.

Despite the tech industry totally misunderstanding the point of Ready Player One and wanting to turn us all into VR vegetables, I liked this book.  It contains a lot of touchstones from my childhood that I remember from the late 70s - early to mid 80s.  It was a great time back then and video games were considered very advanced.

I believe I received my Atari 2600 sometime in early 1982, not really sure but I did have Pac-man.  Since history websites state that Pac-Man was released for the 2600 in March 82, it had to have been around that time.  Maybe I got it for Easter that year.  Even though the price for the console had come down, it was still considered pricey at about $150 which would equal about $380 dollars now.  Not only that the price of the cartridges were about $30 ($75 today)  to $50 ($125 today) dollars a piece.

Truthfully I remember liking the games a lot.  But it never really turned into an obsession.  After the Atari craze, the game system was taken off the main TV set and attached to a rinky dinky black and white TV set in our basement rec room.  Then fell into oblivion.  My family never purchased the next latest and greatest video machine.  The next video set I owned was Playstation in the early 2000s  and subsequently Playstation 2.  I got into WOW over the consoles and never felt the need to get an extra machine.  Truthfully first person shooters never interested me.  They make me nervous.

But that time in Spring to end of 1982 was fun for a kid.  I remember hanging out with friends and fighting over who would play the next round.  I had Pac-Man, Pong, Missile Command, Asteroids, Centipede, Casino, Atlantis, Barnstorming, Demon Attack, Frogger, Night Drive, Adventure, ET (What an awful game), Raiders of the Lost Ark and of course Pitfall.  I think I had a few more titles but the ones listed are the ones I remember the most.  It is Pitfall that was the most popular.  Because we played so often, the game noises and 8 bit soundtrack became psychologically disturbing. So we would mute the sound and listen to the radio.  For the rest of my life I will always associate Duran Duran's Hungry Like the Wolf with Pitfall.   

That song is in my playlist along with other songs from late 70s to mid 80s that remind me of the early era of video games.  Most of the music listed in the book didn't resonate with me.  But on this playlist, it takes me way back, way, way back.

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

If only I could get onto the Sim!

A few years back The Season's Story hunt was all the rage in SL.  I was one of its fans.  But due to time factors and other things, the group behind this hunt disbanded and the hunt ended.  A few people from that group created a new event in the spirit of Season's Story and called it Arcade Gacha.

Arcade Gacha or more like GOTCHA!  I love and loathe Gachas in SL.  Gachas are little quasi-gambling machines where you put money and hope to get a good prize.  Mainly a rare.  Which in the picture above the rare is a beautiful little cottage for your avatar.  Lately I haven't been doing much in SL but I do try to attend this event.  And I spend too much money at it.  But how can anyone resist?  Look at another vendor offering victorian treehouses!

If home items aren't your thing, there are plenty of vendors offering fashion items, clothing and avatar skins/hair.  Pets are very popular as well.  The popular pet to collect this fall are Shibu Inus.  But if you really want to be one with the animals, there is a gacha specializing in Raccoon Avatars.

There is so much more available.  So if you have time during September try to get on the sim and buy!  See the rest of the vendor offerings HERE.

Remember when Pepperidge Farm Remembered?

When WOW was still white hot and The Guild was all the rage in MMORPG circles?



Remember the Team Zaboo vs. Team Fawkes shipping wars?  Well I do.  I seem to be drawn to shipping wars.

Truthfully I haven't been playing many games lately.  I've been pulled into the MOOCs 8th circle of hell in which I spend my time watching video lectures, debate Greek myths in class forums and write 2 to 3 paragraph essays.  All of this voluntarily, mind you.  It doesn't leave a lot of time for MMORPG busy work.

I do have time card time for WOW and I still log in from time to time.  I've been meaning to finish the new legendary quest line for LOTRO.  But...life just doesn't give enough time.  Sigh.

But I remember when...when I spent too much time in games.  It was fun and it was frustrating, I'm not sure if I would do it all again.  But it was strange and amazing time when these games were almost mainstream.

Dinkies - That Funky Feeling

I came across the Dinkies cat avatar last year at Fantasy Faire.  It was so adorable, I dropped a lot of cash collecting different breeds.  At the time, there weren't a lot of clothing and accessories for them. But at this year's faire, there were clothes galore for them.  It made me take out my avatar for a spin.



I never thought to look for videos on youtube for the avatar but they are there, quite a few.  The one I linked to on this post is fantastic.

Second Life Music Videos

It has been a long time since my last post.

What have I been doing?  Well I've gotten back into Warcraft a bit.  My thoughts on that later.  I'm still in and out of LOTRO, Rift and Elder Scrolls Online.  I've even dabbled in the Candy Crush mobile world (horrible time suck and phone power suck).  But I have to admit, I no longer have the fire, the resolve or the desire to play these games long term anymore.  They require too much from me, more than I can give now.  It just reminds me that I'm a heck of a lot older than I was when I first got into WOW and I no longer have the extra time I did when I was younger.

But I'm still regularly in Second Life.  Quite simply because the game only gives what you put into it and no more is required.  There is no grind, no leveling or other elements that turn it into a kind of half-ass job.  To me, it serves as a micro-vacation in that I can go "places" to sight see and relax.

Even though I have been in SL for so many years, it still strikes me as being extremely futuristic.  It transports players into worlds that are one of kind, made by other average Joe/Jane players.  It is sometimes unprofessional and messy but it still has fire.  Something that is missing from regular MMORPGS nowadays (although I'm holding out hope for Camelot Unchained).

NWN has linked to an SL music video recently.  It looks amazing and yes, SL can look amazing.  The old 2007 screen captures used in the media are just poor news reporting.

This is the SL, that regular SL players know and live:



Another vid with typical female SL avatar looks popular right now.

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.

Quote of the Day

Suzan Mazur: David Orban, founder and director of Singularity's Institute for Artificial Intelligence Europe, told me at a robotics conference in Bergamo a few months ago that people who don't embrace robotics in the future will not be able to survive. Do you agree?

Jaron Lanier: First of all, I think it's the stupidest institute ever. It's purely about this religious fantasy of superiority. The whole basis of it is repulsive. Yet the people there are great friends of mine. I admire them. We have fun together. And I tell them all this to their faces. I've also given talks at Singularity about how ridiculous I think it is. Here's the problem. They say people won't be able to survive if we don't have robotics. Well, how is that different from saying, "Oh, if we don't like the way people are, we'll kill them." What is the difference, ultimately? There's a way in which the new sort of vaguely Asperger-like digital technocrat is absolutely lacking in any self-awareness of ethics or morality. It astounds me, again and again. They're my friends, and we like each other, but I do think it's astonishing.

 Huffingtonpost Interview

I'm so glad that someone who is big in Tech circles is finally taking a stand against the fascist, body/tech purity elitism that is Singularity.  I hate that it has its odious claws in the tech we use and influences its development.  Talk about a concept not being user friendly, it actually hates its users.

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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It has been awhile...

I just haven't been playing games lately.  After about 2 months break for all games, I just went back to visit TERA Online.  It took some time getting used to my Popori Archer again.

I'm not a great player and the quest text boxes are like tiny walls of text.  So I mistakenly started soloing BAMs (vicious orisks and brutal orisks) and could not figure out why they were taking so long to kill.  I died a few times, finally settling on a system of just running around, dropping traps, during monster pauses shooting off a poisonous DOT and getting some more elaborate shots.  The great thing about the BAMs now is that they seemed to have nerfed the gathering requirements for them, so instead of 10 or more monster kills, you just need 3 to 5.  Because of this, they have also taken off the party needed warnings off the quests.  Which is why I started taking them on, otherwise I would have just ignored them.

Anyway, this was a video linked on the TERA forums.  I think it is a guild recruitment video.  But it is so sweet and inventive. Poporis are the best.

NOT Elins though, Elins just creep me out.

My travels in game world...

have been lackluster.  Outside life pulled me from my mmorpg hobby and now I'm wondering if I will continue with games much past next year.  The only game I play regularly now is Lord of the Rings Online. But even my time in that game has taken a hit.

Halfheartedly, I tried to get back into RIFT.  But not long after I re-subbed, they announced their Free to Play conversion.  Luckily it hasn't had a big effect on my characters.  All of them were on decent population servers and were not forced to move due to mergers.  But I've lost the incentive to level and the only thing I do when I log in, is putter about in my dimension house.  Boring, I know.

I did enjoy Tera for a bit.  That was the game I thought I was joining when I signed up for GW2 because I had them mixed up.  The graphics are beautiful and the game play is interesting.  But due to lack of time, I haven't logged back into my Popori Archer character in more than a month.

So now, I'm trying to decide if I should keep Rift and Tera for the times I feel the need to log in or just delete them to free up space.

I suppose it was nostalgia for when I was new to games that made me sign up for a few months of WOW. But I returned to find a vastly different game from just last summer.  The servers that contained my main and second most played character had gone belly up since my last log in.  I mean really died.  They were both once bustling with activity.  At first, I thought I would carry on, but going from one empty area to another was depressing.  Even the cities were desolate.  I was also disappointed in the hype surrounding the Siege of Orgrimmar update.  I thought the game would include a lot of story material for non-raiders then leave the actual boss fight to the raiders.  But NOPE, you have to raid if you want the story to progress at all.  At first I laughed but then it just further depressed me.  Even despite losing a large portion of the player base and "merging" servers (cross realms), the developers still insist on forcing everyone to play the way they think their game should be played.  It struck me as a obtusely ungenerous, more in the spirit of the appropriately named expansion Cataclysm which caused the free fall in subscribers.  Up until the Free to Play explosion and glut of games, Blizzard could get away with forcing people into certain play modes.  But now so many other options are out there plus with no subscription tag!  Blizzard no longer has the ability to throw its weight and haze its player base.  They should really change their ways since they are shrinking noticeably now.  My two high levels are now on more crowded servers.  But who knows how long they will last?

I won't even discuss the coming shut down of WAR.  The thought of it makes me so sad.  I'm holding a bit of hope for Camelot Unchained but even my short time in gaming has shown me to be skeptical of everything until I'm actually in the game.  And even then it is still questionable.

Oh Bother

Eve Online, yeah, EO.  *sighs and shakes head*

What do you think about when this game is mentioned?  Spaceships? Space? Wild scandals in which players gang up on other players in order to make them commit suicide?  More scandal in which a popular blogger (Mintchip) was hired as community manager by CCP and led to slander and pillaging of her character?  Ayn Rand idol worship?

So having only 4% of the player base claim to be female is surprising?

Although CCP claims not to worry about this minuscule number, I have a feeling that they do anyway. Why?  Because, even though most male gamers don't admit it, any game that attracts a large female player base makes money.  Lots and lots of money.  Really, what developer would turn up their nose at money?

So now CCP has a hit a wall with subscriptions and their mostly male player base holds part of the blame.  But still the majority of the blame is due to CCP's lax policing of outrageous behavior.  They don't govern against harassment, threats, cheating (in fact their own devs took part in early cheating scandals), the list goes.  The player government had that famous scandal with the Goon Squad suicide campaign.  I haven't looked into what happened to Mintchip, but I've seen the comments on her recent vlog post and they weren't nice.

I do have to say that the hiring of Mintchip is due to CCP holding out a tentative hand to female players.  Mintchip has a fun vlog and she is one of the few female gamers who is very enthusiastic about EVE Online and it's sister game DUST.  At times I have been leery about Mintchip's giggly female persona but I never thought that she wasn't serious about her gaming hobby or the games she enjoyed.  The reason for my hesitant support was not because of jealousy over a younger, pretty female gamer but because her behavior was bound to attract misogynist male gamers of every age.  It also made me angry that I even had to worry about this, because it shouldn't matter if Mintchip wanted to be flirty.  She is young and pretty and has every right to enjoy being so.  But now she is accused of sending sexy photos to someone for game money.  Is it true?  Don't know.  More likely it was embellished by jealous male gamers to get her fired.  Even it if was true, SO FUCKING WHAT!  None of us know the details except for the stories spewed on game boards and youtube comments from a bunch of men screaming like sexually frustrated, hysterical Church types.

I'll be pissed if CCP folds for these screechers.  Seriously these men need someone to get Freudian on their asses.

Anyway besides the previous story, why doesn't Eve Online attract women?

Is it because the avatars are just spaceships?  Partially, I've written about that in previous posts.  But not totally.

Is it the PvP?  There are plenty of women who enjoy PvP.  My friend who got me into games (WoW) played on a PvP server and she enjoyed it immensely.  I, myself, loved WAR to death.

You know why it doesn't attract women?  Take a look of that screenshot in the header that I've included with this post.  Look at that godawful UI.  I mean seriously.  You want another gander at it?  Look at an official screenshot of it.

Holy CRAP!  What the hell is going on in there?  It literally takes a few weeks to learn all the menu and sub-menu systems.  There has to be a better way.

How do you drive your ship?  Do you see it on that nightmare of a UI?  Nope.  

Another reason, there is no codified attempt to guide the player into missions or crafting.  After the tutorial (which is better than when I first signed up), the new players are left high and dry.  The developers figured that the rest of the training would be completed by the many player corporations in the game.  Which considering the bullying scandals, is laughable.

The questing....whatever there is of it,  is enjoyable.  However, and a BIG however, whatever questing there is in the game is spotty, ridiculously arcane and purposely obscure.  Even if a player manages to follow the quests/agent missions in the game, there is a ridiculous jump in skill levels.  Since the game does not label its levels or allows easy tracking of skills, it is possible for a player to accept a mission that they cannot complete but won't know it until they accept the mission.  That leads to the PvE faction that gave the quest to permanently ban the player from future quests.  Nice.

I won't get into the crazy that is mining/crafting.  The UI doesn't even tell you how to fly your ship much less how to mine.

Whatever.  I would say to CCP, if you want to attract female players do the following:

1 - Properly police your user base in game and out (forums), even the popular players/corporations.

2 - Clean up that UI

3 - Ban obscurity in everything.  The mechanics of every feature must be transparent.  It isn't dumbing down.  Believe me, the main features of the gameplay can stay as is without alteration.  But it is not shameful to allow the player to easily understand how, why and what.

I have a feeling though, that CCP has painted themselves into a corner.  Any change would alienate the players they have, but no change will continue to keep females out of the game.

Jaron's Internet Class critique

Jaron Lanier's book "You are Not a Gadget" was so revolutionary and clear headed in its critique of internet culture or really, lack of culture.  In fact, Lanier presented evidence that the internet was actively destroying culture.

His main argument was that cultural music, films, photos, television shows were being decontextualized from their time period, mixed and mashed into meaningless bits.  Our cultural heritage, both high art and pop, were  being ground into meaninglessness.  In turn, new ideas were being subjected to the same grindstone so that nothing new was taking hold.  The music of the 1960's and 1970's into the 1980's had a distinct sound.  But everything past the 1990's, when the internet culture took hold, is generic and rehashed.

In essence our culture has frozen in time.  We are in stasis.

Unfortunately, Lanier's amazing book did nothing to wake anyone up from their dreams.  The Internet class is still spouting off the decayed and contaminated mantra of the opensource web.  While unable to see that it destroys IT jobs and benefits only the richest few.

Now Lanier is back with a new book that carries on with what he discovered in his last.

He granted an interesting interview with Salon

http://www.salon.com/2013/05/12/jaron_lanier_the_internet_destroyed_the_middle_class/

This time Lanier digs deeper into why the internet and its no culture locust mentality is actively destroying the middle class.  His interview reveals that outlier success ventures on Youtube and other social networks are masking the damage being done to the middle class worldwide.

The interview goes into interesting views on the fall of Kodak and that internet success story of Jenna Marbles is built on a mountain of failure and ponzi scheme dynamics.

Anyway the his new book, "Who owns the Future" has my attention and I plan to get my hands on it as soon as possible.

Pandaria

Way back before the holiday mayhem started, I received a promotional from Blizzard to play the Pandaria expansion for two weeks.  I wasn't feeling any real need to go back to WoW but I heard so many good things about the latest expansion that I took them up on their offer.  Amazingly, Blizzard managed to get back a little of the magic that surrounded the game during the heady Lich King days.

What Blizzard had managed to do was keep all the great things about the Cataclysm expansion and curtail its excesses (such as too many cutscenes, phasing and vehicle quests).  The smooth sailing questing lines that I enjoyed in Cataclysm, with no back and forth to the same areas, has been introduced to Pandaria as well.  I loved the new story lines and the mysterious Pandaren continent.  As crazy as it may seem, Blizzard managed to throw off its European Middle Ages Sword fantasy shtick and totally immerse itself in Chinese Middle Ages Sword fantasy shtick.  The new expansion feels like a different game.

The artwork is absolutely fantastic.  Despite the low fi graphics, Pandaria looks lush and colorful.  Great attention was paid to creating wide open spaces as players leave the initial forest area.  The vistas are gorgeous and created with care to mimic real Chinese scenery.  The game's equivalent of The Great Wall is a true achievement.  What is even more, the new score for the expansion is just as beautiful and matches the art.

The class tree lines have been pared down to very straight and simple techniques.  On my Paladin main, this was a relief.  I mostly played as a Retribution Paladin since I mainly just solo play.  During Cataclysm my Pally was hamstrung because her hits depended on the game's casino wheel to roll triple diamonds.  This meant she either wiped NPCs with just a look or she would be forced to keep hitting for minutes on end.  It was strange and frustrating.  Thankfully that is all gone.  The wheel of big hits has been tamed and now Pallys do reliable damage.  I spent a bit of time on my other main, a warlock and she is doing rather well too.  However the warlock is nowhere near the powerhouse it used to be and was once the scourge of PvP and PvE alike.

Cross server areas....  I'm holding back my opinion on this element.  This was Blizzard's way of trying not to close empty servers.  In fact I was a little dismayed and confused when I was visiting Silvermoon to see it filled with players with hyphenated designations/server names.  There are only certain areas where the cross servers work and those areas are mostly low population.  However I've noticed that it hasn't led to happy, happy family results.  It mostly leads to people from my server snarling at cross server visitors to go back to their own servers.  It doesn't help that the players sharing my server are from Moonguard (which has a terrible reputation as being the red light district of WOW).   We'll see where this goes eventually.

I have run two dungeons so far, Stormstout Brewery and Shado-Pan Monastery.  Both times I held my breath when I signed up for LFG.  WoW still has a terrible reputation for nastiness among its players.  I have to admit I rarely experienced this in any group, even during my heyday in the game.  However I am no longer the player I used to be nor even half as good.  So I was terrified of being cut out of a dungeon run.  My fears were unfounded and the two groups I was matched with were calm and cool.  Out of the two dungeons I found Stormstout the more enjoyable.  The fights were slapstick instead of the intense atmosphere in Shado-Pan.  I especially enjoyed rolling barrels into a monkey boss who liked to throw banana peels at players.

So far I have found a lot of enjoyment in this expansion, and I was glad to purchase a few extra months to see it develop.  Does that mean I will be going back to WOW.  I'm not sure.  I'm not the motivated player I was years ago and there are times when weeks go by in which I don't play any games.  A regular subscription isn't cost effective for me at this time.  But I can say that I will probably spend 3 to to 6 months in Pandaria.  Because right now, looking out at the game scenery while standing on the Great Wall is just too enchanting.