Second Life

by Curious Rousselot, metaverse numerologist

As many of us are no doubt aware; Linden Lab publishes statistics about Second Life. Conveniently they also make the historical data available in Excell and OpenOffice, and Google Docs format. This gives us here at the Herald a chance to see how the economy of Second Life is doing and to comment on it. More importantly, it gives us the chance to make pretty graphs of the information too. So, I thought it might be nice to put some of my amazing spreadsheet skills to use and see what we could get.

Obtained by dividing the total L$ by the total US$ of LindeX transactions

As we can see, after a serious drop in value of the L$ in September of 2006 the L$ has been holding pretty steady between L$260 to L$270 per US$. Admittedly I’m no economist but considering the relative size of the economy this is pretty impressive stability over the last several months.

We can see a slow and steady increase in L$ balances held by residents with almost flat supplies and sinks of L$. What is far more interesting is the significant spike in User-to-User transactions. It looks like we really enjoy our shopping in SL.

It looks like the number of premium accounts is rising quickly. Linden Lab seams to have made the right decision when they got rid of New Land. This surprised me somewhat since I had been thinking of signing up for a premium account and picking up some new land right around the time that they canceled the program. So, I still don’t have one because I don’t see the point.

Obtained by dividing the “total hours online by the number of residents”

This last graph will probably help all those who think the boast of having over 5 million residents is a bit misleading. It appears that between 2003 and 2005 the early adopters of Second Life were spending an average of 45.2 hours a month in the game. 2005 itself saw a small drop with an average of 38.1 hours per month.

2006 and so far in 2007 the average is a significant drop with 14.3 and a pathetic 4.9 so far in 2007. As has been said this is probably largely due to the significant increase in one-time-use account. If we assume that the usage patterns of regular users hasn’t dropped significantly we can start to make some real analysis. First we will notice (just from the numbers) that the first significant change in usage appears to start in September 2005 when hours per-user drops significantly from 40.2 to 34.7. Taking the average from before that point (44.3 hours/month) and applying it to the March 2007 number of 3,177,434 total hours spent in SL, we come up with approximately 346,044 active residents with an estimated error of around 5%. This assumes that the active residents are still spending an average of 44.3 hours per month in Second Life.

This may be a far cry from the millions of us advertised but it is a significant increase over the 28,801 figure from July 2005 (prior to the availability of free accounts).

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AN repulses attack - Herald reporter wounded

by Omega Groshomme, war correspondent

The Alliance Navy was attacked on Wednsday morning 1:00am SLT by members of several opposing factions. Members of Titan industries rolled into “The Woofer”, the Alliance Navy sim, using small arms fire and phantom rounds engaging in a small fire fight from the NW side of the sim. Attempts to advance toward the AN HQ were quickly withdrawn as members of the AN held back opposition with heavy machine gun fire and Talon aircraft. Attacks carried on to 1:35 SLT when another attack was reported by security forces at “tethys”, the AN sub HQ.

Members of SOCOM advanced over the draw bridge into a security post where they were met with mild resistance for a short time. After a quick briefing AN Cadets were sent in to clear out hostile forces and to secure the HQ, at which they were quickly engaged by SOCOM forces using high powered rifles and sniper fire. AN troops made haste pushing SOCOM back over the bridge to the front gate where snipers were taking up positions to fire into the AN base. The snipers were later killed by AN marines sent to hold the bridge.

The engagement at “the woofer” however carried on passed 2:20am SLT when Titan forces withdrew and SL commandos, as well SOCOM continued their attempted assault. AN troops dug in,deploying light machine guns and automatic rifles holding back the attack, when this writer (Omega Groshomme) was hit by enemy fire after identifying myself as a reporter when trying to move in for a closer photo. AN cadets fired, neutralizing the hostile forces and pulling me to safety.

covering fire

While getting medical treatment from 2 rounds; 1 to my arm, 1 to my torso, I tried to carry on snapping pictures of the fight when a sniper round clips my camera leaving only 1 photo left to salvage - that of a AN Marine fighting on to hold back his enemy. The amount of gunfire slowly died down at 3:10am SLT, but sporadic shots, as well sniper fire still continued until 3:40am SLT when are hostile forces were neutralized by officers of the AN using Talon aircraft. strafing the hillside with cannon fire and light bombs.

AN forces held their ground today against a determined enemy, proving their abilities to negotiate tactics as well saving the life of a reporter. Low casualties were reported for the AN, but none were able to be interviewed until the mess is cleaned up and proper intel is received. I am making a full recovery and will be back on the battlefield in no time to let the public know of AN’s progress in the on going war.

Omega Groshomme reporting from The Woofer med bay.

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The Orignal Nissan Build has Become a Famous SL Marketing Flub. Is the New Project Any Better?

Readers may recall our criticism of the Nissan build last October. It was our view that the build failed to take advantage of the social nature of online worlds and also failed to show any sort of imagination — a giant vending machine dispensed scale models of Nissan Sentras in a world of flying saucers, dragons, and yiffing little furries.

Now Nissan has teamed up with the Electric Sheep Company with a project that raises new questions. According to an April 25 press release from Nissan North America (NNA), their Altima Island will contain lots of strange new builds. Quoting our friend Giff:

“The new Altima Island is an automotive amusement park for all types of avatars,” says Giff Constable, founder of The Electric Sheep Company. “Each contraption was purposely built to transport avatars into a mesmerizing world that perfectly balances pseudo- and real-world features.”

More specifically, there will be a number of virtual contraptions designed and scripted by Kage Seraph, Kanker Greenacre, and Calum Clifton. The kicker is that NNA is open-sourcing the scripts:

“Nissan wanted to provide the Second Life community with a unique, hands- on experience,” says Steve Kerho, director of interactive marketing & media, NNA. “By sharing these open-source codes with everyone, we’ve given them the opportunity to learn and interact more in Second Life and ultimately, within Altima Island.”

Editorializing now, I think this is definitely a step in the right direction, in that it addresses the creativity issue. The problem is it only highlights the creativity of the Electric Sheep. What I want to know is what the *Nissan* engineers would come up with if unconstrained by the laws of physics etc. There are also worries about the social reach of this project. I wonder exactly how many people they think they are going to touch by open sourcing some advanced scripts. This smells a little bit like Nissan went to the Sheep, and said we don’t want another disaster like the Sentra thing. That thought fell down the hole of the group techie-think at ESC, and out popped this idea: “We like to script so *everyone* must like to. Or anyway, the important people and non-idiots like to.” On the other hand, maybe the new builds will be fun. And we are all learning here. Baby steps.

The NNA press release (which is way way over the top by the way — “Nissan Pioneers the Second Life Universe with Unique Innovations” WTF???) is below the fold. (Hat tip to Dustin Dwyer at Michigan Radio.)

Nissan Pioneers the Second Life Universe with Unique Innovations

All-New 2007 Nissan Altima Launches in Second Life Using Hands-On Technology to Fully Engage Consumers

NASHVILLE, Tenn., April 25 /PRNewswire/ — Today, Nissan North America, Inc. (NNA) announced a ground-breaking collaboration with its partner The Electric Sheep Company, the leading creator of 3-D virtual world content and solutions. Through their novel efforts, Nissan will be the first automotive company to provide Second Life residents access to the open-source codes used on the Altima Island contraptions.

The Altima “Scriptyard” and contraptions were created by master builders Kage Seraph, Kanker Greenacre, and Calum Clifton; three renowned Second Life scriptors, one of whom was recently nominated at Linden’s Extraordinary Avatar Exposition for the “2006 Metaverse Notable Avatar” award. Designed to engage and entertain both expert and novice gamers, Nissan will be sharing the secrets to their extremely sophisticated codes so all levels of gamers can learn from the best scriptors in the field and in turn, build their own designs.

“Nissan wanted to provide the Second Life community with a unique, hands- on experience,” says Steve Kerho, director of interactive marketing & media, NNA. “By sharing these open-source codes with everyone, we’ve given them the opportunity to learn and interact more in Second Life and ultimately, within Altima Island.”

Visitors to the Altima Island are first greeted with an impressive 20- story monolith, crowned by a flying Nissan Altima. Encircling the monolith are six clever contraptions based on the 2007 Nissan Altima’s unique features. For example, Second Life gamers can experiment with the Xtronic CVT(TM) Avasphere — a smooth-peddling, all-terrain hamster ball inspired by Altima’s virtually gearless Xtronic CVT(TM) (Continuously Variable Transmission). They also can drive a replica of the Altima above the island on a special gravity- defying Nissan Sky Track.

“The new Altima Island is an automotive amusement park for all types of avatars,” says Giff Constable, founder of The Electric Sheep Company. “Each contraption was purposely built to transport avatars into a mesmerizing world that perfectly balances pseudo- and real-world features.”

Nissan Altima Island arrives as a follow-up to Nissan’s successful launch of the popular Sentra Island — known for its vending machine, loop-de-loop and driving simulators — where over 20,000 virtual Nissan Sentras have been obtained to-date.

About the Next Generation Nissan Altima

The Next Generation Nissan Altima offers Nissan’s advanced Xtronic CVT ™ (Continuously Variable Transmission), a choice of the award-winning VQ- series 3.5-liter V6 or powerful 2.5-liter inline 4-cylinder engines, and a long list of technology and comfort features — including standard Intelligent Key with Push Button Ignition, available Bluetooth(R) Hands-Free Phone System, Bose(R)-developed audio system with nine speakers, dual-zone automatic temperature control, RearView Monitor and a voice activated touch-screen navigation system with real time traffic updates.

About Nissan North America

In North America, Nissan’s operations include automotive design, engineering, consumer and corporate financing, sales and marketing, distribution and manufacturing. More information on Nissan in North America and the complete line of Nissan and Infiniti vehicles can be found online at http://www.nissannews.com/.

Source: Nissan North America

CONTACT: Scott Vazin of Nissan, +1-615-725-5238,
scott.vazin@nissan-usa.com; Melissa Trivino of Edelman, +1-323-202-1894,
melissa.trivino@edelman.com; or Jeremy Miller of TBWA Worldwide,
+1-212-804-1162, jeremy.miller@tbwaworld.com

Web site: http://www.nissannews.com/

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By Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Community Affairs

The Herald has been deluged lately with indignant complaints about weird goon goings-on in what is supposed to be an educational sim, Woodbury University. As usually with all the Eddie Haskelling and word-salad alibi-Ike sort of stuff involved, it’s hard to get at the truth — and as Uri always says, we’ll have to hope it emerges in the comments.

If you blinked, you missed it, but on April 12, the Lindens’ police blotter had this note:

Date: Thursday, April 12, 2007
Violation: Community Standards: Harassment, Soliciting Abuse
Region: Woodbury University
Description: Organizing abusive attacks on regions.
Action taken: Suspended 3 days.

In fact, oddly, googling the terms “Woodbury University” and “Second Life” gives you that police blotter item first, then somebody’s blog about visiting the island campus, and little else. This lack of hard information about the strange edu sim has spawned a persisent rumour that the U.S. government has funded this RL university, located in…Burbank, California (nee-noo, nee-noo, LL is in California!) to create a fake griefer group and launch simulated terror attacks on the unsuspecting SL population to study responses.

Our stringer, Aging Hippie Random Unsung, the Eternal Student, went out to Woodbury last night and came up with a different diagnosis. After being challenged by notorious Patriotic Nigras griefer Mudlips, on security detail but unable to boot anyone, Random concluded: “I figure the professor who bought this sim is on leave, and the Trustifarians have taken over,” he said.

When he arrived at the sim, it was being rebuilt, evidently after a griefer trashed it and caused what one source says was close to $1000 US worth of damage (?).

A hodge-podge collection of kids in motley uniforms and costumes of different genres greeted him, and despite the title “Woodland Security,” didn’t have the ability to eject Unsung on sight.

A frequent flyer griefer of the Ravenglass sims was seen in mufti sporting the faux “security” title, and it was either that the inmates had taken over the asylum, Unsung concluded, or the manager, one Tizzers Foxchange, described as “Woodbury Admin,” figured that the best way to guard a sim from griefers like the Patriotic Nigras in Second Life, was to hire the PNs as your security goons. Great concept!

Tizzers seemed very eager, while the others were word-salading and free-associating and clanging, to show that she has an exemplary record with LL, and does not engage in, or condone griefing. But we’ve seen it all in SL, and we know that one of the first things griefers do is make all these plausible-deniability groups like “Concerned Griefers of America” or go and donate to the cause of fighting cancer via the American Cancer Society to try to cleanse their tarnished image.

An avatar named MC Fizgig is described as the “Woodbury Professor” but there is almost no activity showing on his avatar, i.e. no picture, comments, First Life info, groups except “Woodbury” itself. So he may be AFK, and not realizing what’s happening, and not at all have a gig with the Dept. of Homeland Security — or he could have invented the PNs to test stuff. Who knows?

The Lindens used to have strict rules for any researchers coming into SL to study people, but with the corporate invasion and marketing explosion, all of that’s been thrown overboard, in part due to the bitching of the Herald about oppression of academic freedom. So it’s not known if there is anything remotely like this experiment claimed, or if LL knows anything about it. It is likely that Woodbury got the usual educational non-profit discount, however, of $150 for the sim instead of $195 (or a discount off the new tier of $295).

The rag-tag ranks of security at Woodbury consisted of one avatar running around crying “Sieg Heil!”, goose-stepping, and making “Heil Hitler” type of salutes in her Nazi regalia; another strange cat semi-dressed with a fez covering his private parts, and various other “hello kitty” sorts of avatars. If anybody interested in researching this chaos further, contact me for the chat logs.

By her own admission, Tizzers regularly reads 4chan’s site, which she described neutrally as a site for “Japanese image preservation” or some such nonsense, though everyone knows that it is Griefer Central for some of the worst marauders of SL. I’m not going to have to prove this in just a minute; watch the comments fill up with the worst kind of crap. Tizzers is also in some of the classic /b/tard groups like “Gay 4 Philip”.

Somebody needs to write Woodbury’s Board of Trustees or President and complain about these goose-stepping griefers who have indeed caused a lot of damage and lost business and down-time in SL for a number of sims — though the facts there aren’t confirmed, either, and it is hard to know who’s snowing whom on all this. The Lindens prove curiously unable to stop this, though rumour has it that they cull the PN alts every once in awhile and also infiltrate their groups to see what they’re doing.

I might add that if Homeland Security or for that matter any other government or university agency wishes to study simulated terrorism in SL, they don’t need to buy an island or have a special campus. Just come fly around the mainland with us on Governor Linden’s Estate : )

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SL military groups continue negotiations
by Omega Groshomme, war correspondent

treaty negotiations continue

April 19th at 20:06 SL time an organization of military groups gathered in conference to discuss a new more improved treaty in answer to the Merczateer proposed MOSCOW: Military Organization Standard for Conventional Operations and Warfare. The conference organized by the Alliance Navy was set forth to improve the SLSALT (Second Life Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) - by not only rewriting it, but by starting from scratch involving the entire military community. Groups being represented at this first of many meetings were SPARTA, Grand Federation USC, AN, SLSN, Corsairs and CDR.

Until now,the war between AN and Merczateers has merely been personal, but as the Merczateers’ attempt on an answer to the SLSALT with MOSCOW, and now the AN beginning a new involving all possible — it is clear this conflict has gone political. I had a chance to catch up with Alenzia Epsilon who is keeping record and overseeing with others on the development of STABLE. The proposed areas of debate and regulation:

Weaponry and Ammunition (allowable rate of fire, ammo types, etc.)
Leadership and Personnel Behavior (attacking base under non-group tags, avatar flight, etc.)
Vehicles and Aircraft (possibility of depleting fuel for vehicles, weapons systems by vehicle type, etc.)
Equipment Source and Content (minimizing laggy scripts, protection of intellectual property, etc.)
Land and Territory Regulations (Estate banning, setting land to safe, invalid homepoints, etc. )
Enforcement and Regulation (inter-group regulation enforcement, appropriate actions for infractions, regulatory body made up of all member groups, etc. )

To learn more, I spoke with Alenzia Epsilon - one of the participants in the STABLE talks.

Omega Groshomme: STABLE? What does this new treaty name stand for?
Alenzia Epsilon: STABLE stands for Standards Treatise on Armaments, Behavior and Limited Engagement.
Omega Groshomme: What is the goal for STABLE? And why not the recently proposed MOSCOW?
Alenzia Epsilon: The goal is to offer the combat community a chance to create their own treaty in the steps first put forth in SLSALT - it was a good start, but now we need to let the voices of all be heard.
Alenzia Epsilon: As I mentioned, MOSCOW (previously ANSUCKS) was formed on the basis of exclusion, and is being basically dictated to the group, not really using an open forum, or encouraging people to bring their ideas to the table.

bringing ideas to the table

Alenzia Epsilon: MOSCOW -is- the same treaty as ANSUCKS. That speaks volumes - a treaty first created with such an obvious agenda is not going to be neutral or unbiased. We are trying to be. That’s why we invited the Mercz to send their people, though they unfortunately declined.
Alenzia Epsilon: This is not a treaty run by the AN - this is run by the community.
Omega Groshomme: Most people see the Merczateer proposed MOSCOW is a way of isolation and is seen as communist,what is your take on this?
Alenzia Epsilon: Well, as they’ve not really included us in the creation, I’ve not been able to look over the drafts completely, though from what I have heard, it sounded like an attempt to force conformity where there could be innovation.
Alenzia Epsilon: I feel MOSCOW was an attempt to exile people the mercz didn’t like, and an attempt to defame and spread lies to the combat community - it was an obvious targeted negative PR campaign at the start - as for now, I’ve been too busy with STABLE to really keep up with the alleged changes.
Alenzia Epsilon: The Mercz aren’t bad people, I just feel they are taking a direction by dictating the terms of their treaty that many people are wary about - people are more comfortable following rules if they had a chance to see the process behind forming them.
Alenzia Epsilon: That’s our theory.
Omega Groshomme: As a participant of STABLE,what may i contribute to the creation of this treaty and would i be heard?
Alenzia Epsilon: Each combat group is allowed a maximum of 4 delegates, and they may offer their thoughts, and opinions during the debate phase. Each combat group is allowed one vote - this ensures no matter the group’s size, they are represented fairly, and come time for drafting, all groups will have an equal voice in deciding policy through a simple majority.
Alenzia Epsilon: Basically, we move topic to topic within our larger topic areas that I passed, until we’ve exhausted the debate, then will move to the next large topic.

debating topics to exhaustion

Alenzia Epsilon: Observers are allowed, but to keep things neat, all speaking is to be done through the delegates.
Omega Groshomme: You had mentioned earlier the Merczateers declined your invitation. Any certain reason?
Alenzia Epsilon: I really shouldn’t speculate, but like I’d mentioned earlier - they don’t see a reason to explore any other treaties, as they do not see a flaw with their treaty. That’s my best guess.
Omega Groshomme: Is this meeting just the base,will there be more in the future?
Alenzia Epsilon: Oh, this is only the beginning. We plan to meet again, and are very hopeful that more groups will contribute to the talks - we want to be sure that we come up with a good idea of what everyone wants before we convene to draft this. We’ve even discussed putting together a permanent review board to oversee the implementation and regulation of the treaty when it is completed.
Alenzia Epsilon: We expect the talks to span over several days, as we are keeping the actual meetings nice and short - we want to make sure people have time to enjoy SL - not eat up all their time.

Talks between these groups on this treaty will continue and all involved welcome more groups who see eye to eye. Development of this new treaty “STABLE” will give all groups involved a opportunity to help create it and bring it into effect. The AN and Corsairs STABLE might just be the one agreement the military in SL has been looking for as well an improvement over the isolated doctrine brought on by the Merczateers. These meetings will continue to be reported to let the public know of its progress in the future.

War correspondent Omega Groshomme reporting from STABLE conference room.

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By Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Community Affairs

A resident named Honey Wendt visited the Dell island today to make an environmental protest and got threatened with the virtual boot by Boliver Oddfellow, CEO of Infinite Vision Media. She challenged Dell’s concept of how to help the environment in RL and began saucily debating Oddfellow, whose company built the Dell sim — and was turfed out.

Hope then posted her chat log at the Silicon Valley Sleuth, a website that ran a critical article of Dell’s effort to get in the green spirit today by handing out virtual trees in Second Life.

Writes Silicon Valley Sleuth:

You can argue that handing out free virtual trees helps with Dell’s image, just like handing out free T-shirts at a trade show makes for very happy goody hunters.

But labeling this marketing stunt as environmentally friendly is utter nonsense, if not just plain deceptive. It has nothing to do with planning a real tree. The Second Life trees don’t offer any benefit to the environment. In fact, they increase the demand on Second Life’s servers, thereby increasing their power consumption and growing the carbon footprint of this virtual world.

Hope’s questioning of virtual worlds’ claim to help the environment, like Tony Walsh’s “Open Letter to the SL Environmental Council” on Clickable Culture, got started from an article quoting Nicholas Carr. And following the mind-memes that have virally spread around this one rather lightly- researched concept, is a fascinating study in how progressive causes and the Internet feed into each other — but ultimately simply aren’t persuasive to people who also use that same Internet to try to get answers.

Neither Silicon Valley or Hope asked the question of whether people staying home and online chatting in a virtual world in fact are saving a lot of energy expenditure by not driving around in cars and burning fossil fuels.

Clearly, this debate is shaping up to the virtual equivalent of the disposable versus cloth diaper battles that incessantly rage among new parents. Yes, the one kind fills up landfills and despoils the land, but yes, the other kind causes laundry delivery trucks to have to drive around. Blah blah blah.

As a founding officer of the SL Public Land Preserve, which has parks and wilderness and even one of those Friend of the Forest $20 US trees that supposedly helps plant trees in RL, I simply opted not to organize Earth Day events today. Why? Because, well, Earth Day is for the *earth*. You know, that brown and green stuff where our feet walk? I went outdoors today to see what the kids in the neighbourhood were putting on with various Earth Day activities and planted a real-life flower.

Can virtual worlds help build more awareness about that carbon-based stuff we leave behind when we immerse? Um, I think so, but I’m not really sure there’s a really helpful model for this yet.

While Bolliver’s response may have been unnecessarily harsh, he’s operating in a climate where all kinds of annoying fucktards constantly grief and constantly try to make their case on your sim, for free, instead of buying their own sim and running their causes there.

Dell at least was trying to do something positive in trying to connect a virtual and real tree concept and make people think. Of course, it was for crass commercial motives, but then…how crass and commercial are you really when you’ve signed on for this really risky and crashy adventure called “Second Life”?

Ultimately, I view a lot of environmental campaigns to be a turf war. They are, writ large, a war about who gets to control resources, and how they are expended. They are a war about the economic ideology you use to run a society. The environmental meme is merely used to shame this or that company or government that espouses an economic ideology or concept that someone doesn’t like. It’s a stand-in for the real issues of economic control — because frankly, most of the things that the emo Westerners and Northerners do to get all greeny make little impact, waste more energy than they save at times, and while laudable given how much these wealthier countries consume, don’t begin to touch the energy expenditure and pollution of the global South and East. It’s a lot more complicated than it looks.

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By Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Community Affairs

In a week of horror and sad cruelty with the massacre at Virginia Tech, comes a separate piece of sad news of a young man cut down at his most promising. The typist of the avatar Jesse Malthus, a 17-year-old Kentucky youth named Jesse Higginbotham, was killed in a car accident on his way to school with 3 other teenagers. He struggled to live for a day but then succumbed to his injuries.

In Second Life for not quite a year, Jesse made an impact on all who came into touch with him. He was an active member of IRC, libsecondlife, the open-source group, #joiito; a regular at the Sutherland Dam, Free Culture, and other SL discussions. Few knew that this creative, outspoken, and productive young man was only 17. Always ready with an intelligent comment, Jesse projected the presence in our virtual world of someone much older.

Lexington Herald-Leader

Jesse was an avid user of Twitter, which he called “social narcissism.” In a comment posted April 17, Jesse wrote, “@spin Yes! Web2.0 is about social media, and guess what people like to be social about? Themselves. Social Narcissism.” On the Twitter page, Jesse chose to post not a picture of an avatar or RL photo, but a snapshot evidently of his busy work table, cluttered with the wires and pop bottles of the quintessential geek.

In SL in recent months, Jesse was actively testing the Voice Beta. The last words on his profile were, “I’m hanging over at the Voice Beta a lot lately, so you probably can find me there.”

I asked the Lindens if Jesse’s name could be included posthumously in the list of avatars in “About Second Life” for the Voice edition when it comes out, given his important contribution, and was assured by Joe Miller that he will be included.

“Believe it or not, when I wished upon a star, it came down close and sat on my arm,” wrote Jesse on April 16 on Twitter. He was a gifted author and editor of his school yearbook.

On online memory book for his family can be signed here.

So tragic to lose a young man so promising and talented, and a reminder to all of us how little we know of the people behind the voices online and how much everybody counts.

Click here to advertise on thousands of blogs including mine

By Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Community Affairs

Available at amazon.com

While we wearily wait for Uri’s and Walker’s book to come out (when, Uri, oh, when?!), and while we save up $22.04 US for the expenso Hamlet’s et. al Official Guide to Second Life, we now have the Unofficial Tourists’ Guide to Second Life by the unknown Paul Carr & Graham Pond for only $9.95 US — so you could buy that instead of that first-land account where oops, there’s no more subsidized first land anymore and the stipend in it is only L$300 now!

But is it a good buy? No. I’m amazed that Boing Boing’s Mark Frauenfelder could write such a preposterous blurb like this: “This book is the only guide you’ll need to get past the Second Life hype and find out what all the buzz is about” — when the book makes no effort whatsoever to dig through any hype, especially the subscription numbers controversy, as you can see from the “millions” reference on the jacket. Instead, it’s FIC and facile and corporate and filled with gaffes and errors of the sort that happen when publishers make that unseemly rush to get a paperback like this out to capitalize on the apparently never-ending wave of media hype and corporate greed to be “first” and “best” in Second Life.

No, you’d be better off sitting with your Google reader and following links on planet.worldofsl.com and reading some of the basic Business Week, Information Week, Wired, Time, New York Times, etc. articles on SL — for free of the Internet — to get a basic guide to SL. Unless, of course, you’re one of those people that can never handle a new gadget unless you have a book in your left hand as you mouse-click your way through the menus — in that case, spend more to get the Official Guide.

I had expected so much more because the publisher, St. Martin’s Griffin, does serious and thoughtful books on history and society and politics, and I figured, unlike publishers of more mass-market popular books, they’d give this particular topic a good treatment. But already I’ve had to endure a little lecture from the editor about going easy on this one, because it’s supposed to be a book for newbies (think of the children!) and it’s well known just how snarky those oldbies get when they feel somebody’s poaching on their long-established turf.

Trust me, oldbie dog-in-the-mangerism is not the problem. I don’t know whether the two authors (Montag Alacrity and Sweetsweet Mincemeat are their avatar names)– were steered by LL or the metaversal sherpas (if so, none of them bothered to proof the ms.) or whether they just happened to naturally gravitate to the one or two well-worn grooves of studying SL, but it shows. They’ve flattered the Herald by calling it “the oldest (and arguably still the best” of publications in SL, but they must not have ever read it for any sustained period of time.

In the celebrities chapter, they mention Anshe Chung — sure, fine — but then single out only Fizik Baskerville (well, they’re British), Adam Reuters, and Hamlet Linden and then Warren Ellis and his Army of Filth (well, they’re British) as the only SLebrities. Huh? The book contains almost no quotations from any residents interviewed. In a section called “Political People,” they don’t mention Neualtenberg/Neufreistadt at all (it later appears briefly as merely a tourist build to visit), or any other of the numerous political groups related to RL or SL.

Instead, the authors focus on this lame and discredited Second Life Liberation Army which we’ve completely exposed in the story below. Imagine, to have 2 pages on SL politics and take it up with that kind of dreck — and never mention your faithful correspondent hehe! But truly, I don’t judge books by whether they mention the Infamous Antagonist, though Hamlet et. al. thought to mention me and my salon in the Sutherland Dam. Of course from a facile book like this we’d expect a that hardy staple of FIC hagiography, the Prim Tax Revolt, but we’d expect the authors not to skip *entirely* over the years from 2003-2006 with…nothing, and not mention the telehub removal and buyback, and not mention W-hat. The only griefers they mention are something called the SL Alliance I’ve never heard of (have you?!), though the Herald is quoted about it (is this what become the Naval Alliance? Clue me in here).

Where you really have to roll your eyes, however is in the coverage of Copybot. It’s history written by the victors (libsecondlife) but a hilarious mash-up; the authors claim erroneously that the Lindens called in the FBI over Copybot (!), mixing up what had happened a year before the Copybot saga with grid-crashing by Plastic Duck and others, where the Lindens did claim they had contacted the authorities. Get your grid menace facts right, guys!

Continuing in FIC mode, the authors gushingly give Aimee Weber not only a chapter about herself and her studio but one about Midnight City, but then speak repeatedly about “The Big Three”. Now, I’m not an authority on sherpas, but aren’t they called the Big Six usually, so as to capture not only ESC, MOU, and RRR but also IVM and some of the others actually getting in the news a lot, like Keystone Bouchard’s Clear Ink which did the build of Capitol Hill?

These three get absolutely supine fanboy-type obsequenience, with absolutely not a hint of any of the controversy surrounding the topic of the corporate invasion of SL, and with way too much ink describing these empty fairgrounds that we all know have traffic in the low double digits much of the time. That’s just not Second Life.

Where I really, really take exception with this book, however, is the utterly facile, casual, and ignorant portrayal of SL history as merely a short run from the Prim Tax Revolt (Boston Tea Party) to the Gilded Age of IBM and Sony actually skipping over the entire world as it was once made by indigenous residents. I will definitely not be alone in absolutely goggling my eyes out at this eradication of the world of Second Life created by all the thousands of developers as well as ordinary people who not only populated it first, but populated it tenth and one hundred and first and one thousandth and first for 3 years. Here’s a sample passage of the awful glibness with which these two 20-something kewl kids from the UK can do to something like Second Life (pp. 134-135):

Replacing the tax system was a new land model, which basically allowed Residents to pay monthly rent in US dollars on virtual land. This enabled Residents, and real-world companies and corporations, to hold entire islands in Second Life.

In a nutshell, living and building in Second Life became much more economically viable.

The consequences of this were of course immense, with what can be described as a great scramble for land kicking off in December 2003. Indeed Wired magazine equated the rush with the concept of Manifest Destiny within American history, that is, the voracious appetite for expansionism that has so defined America’s ideology since the term was coined midway through the nineteenth century.

Within Second Life, then a period of industry hitherto unknown was embarked upon. Sticking with the American history analogy, we have now moved into the Gilded Age. This culminated in a huge influx of well-established Real Life businesses setting up shop in Second Life. At the time of this writing, IBM, MTV, Microsoft, the BBC, Reuters, Coca Cola, and many, many more have established a presence in Second Life.

The authors go on to give a nod to the “great deal of frustration that corporations have wandered in with sole intention fo exploiting Second Life as a marketing tool for their products. Many residents are of the opinion that the commercialization of Second Life is ruining it…That’s capitalism for you.”

Well, I guess this pair never sat in a town hall or community meeting or office hours with our beloved hippie socialist dope-smoking utopian Lindens and their pets…

Or maybe they have! Because their list of places to visit is the usual predictable roster of your Ivory Towers and Svargas — that’s to be expected - but also some totally unjustified picks of places with zilch traffic like ill-named “Democracy Island”. Some major landmarks are missing, but it almost doesn’t matter, since no SLURLs or coordinates are given for how you can find these items in world (yes, it’s an oldfashioned dead-tree book, but still…)

God knows why these books and articles today mention ‘teledildonics’. Other than qdot Linden, there’s nobody actually *using* the teledildonic thingies…are there? Tell me there’s nobody actually *using* the teledildonics thingies!

If you grabbed this book to try to have imaginary sex online in living, streaming 3-D, you’re going to get very frustrated. The authors don’t give you the list of the most popular sex joints, or even explain that Popular Places contains all the clubs like Barbies and Bad Girls where you can find the…ah…escorts. It tells you about a place called Nymphos, not one of the better-known ones, but doesn’t cover any of the most actually visited free sex beaches. There is absolutely nothing about gay life, and I think in this day and age, in a book purporting to be “unofficial,” that’s simply inexusable.

In the very superficial chapter on Groups, the Thinkers aren’t mentioned, nor any of the other very large groups, like Capture Roleplay. Not one but three Christian groups are mentioned that I can’t be sure even function anymore, other religious groups and then…Duran Duran is singled out, with no mention of the Waiting-for-Godot effect this band has inspired in SL…well, they’re British.

In short a hasty, quickie, facile and superficial book that really doesn’t live up to the expectations fostered by its title. It was really unfortunate for these two authors to have undertaken anything resembling a “history” of SL that would, even accounting for the small space available, so get it wackily wrong and skewed.

As for Key Places to Visit, I’ll invite the reader to think of whether this sums up your second life (keeping in mind that the Shelter was curiously put under “nightlife”):

Amsterdam
Nexus Prime
Svarga
Virtual Dublin
Camp Darfur
Neufreistadt
Pomponion Volcano
Nakama
Jesse
Wengen
Lost Gardens of Apollo
Luskwood
Virtual Hallucinations
Roma
Vampire Empire
Transylvania
Gor
Dark Life
Intimate Moments

To make it even more confusing, this hastily-put-together book interrupts the “key places to visit” with another odd history chapter on the war in Jesse, which I’m going to leave to experts on that war to parse — I don’t think they’ll find it unbiased.

In case you were wondering how a FIC-oriented book could leave out Abbott’s Aerodrome — don’t. It’s just that it got stuck in a later chapter called “Sport, Leisure, and Games” where you can also find Numbakulla and Hollywood and Hearts Enchanted (NeoRealms Fishing). Yes, they explain that “SL is not a game”…

Just to make sure nobody thinks my review here is sectarian, I won’t mention the sheer hash the authors made of the land sales and rental business, making only cursory mention of Anshe as a millionairess, not describing Dreamland, never mentioning Azure Islands, or d’Alliez estates or any other major business (the Independent State of Caledon” is put in the “curios” section), but singling out as “popular rental spots in SL” Legacy Gardens II, Lance Lasalle, Surf Island, and the Lofts at Mill Pond, all nice beach rentals which will now be absolutely inundated with would-be tenants they won’t be able to cope with lol. Oops, I did mention it…

Of course, I need not start in on the book’s secondary title, “The Essential Guide to an Amazing Virtual World–with Millions of Users.” There aren’t any millions of users, as poor St. Martin’s Press is about to find out. Some 200,000 soaking wet spent at least…a Linden dollar last month.

Will this book help usher in the next million? No. Far too many pages are devoted to gushing encomiums to metaversal agencies and their fabulous builds, and on the pages that are supposed to help you, the newbie, you’ll find stuff like “Your first stop after Orientation Island should be the equally-well-named Help Island” (thanks for that pro-tip, guys!) and “click the ‘fly button’ and off you go” (gosh, who knew?). Most people need a lot more hand-holding than that, and need to get some really basic boot-camp stuff like “why can’t I get this box of stuff open” or “why is my hair falling off every time I teleport” or “how do I find stuff”. A basic description of all the SEARCH functions and tips on getting them to work for you is missing.

I don’t know about other midbies like me, or even oldbies who go back to the heady days of Lindenor (when the Lindens still posted your “firsts,” announced events to you inworld, and paid you just for holding a meeting on your property about art), but I think even newbies will feel something hollow inside about entire pages in chapters devoted to things like “Dell” or “Pontiac Island” or “Aloft” or “Duran Duran”. Sure, all those things exist…but to make a *book* about them? And call it the “unofficial guide”? And purport to support tourists?

I’ll be utterly fascinated to see how the hype cycle moves now on this book — how all the paid-for blogs and metaversal sherpas and touts and evangelists promote it. Ultimately, one cannot complain about a book like this. One can only go out and write a better one. So somebody, please do!

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The Large Popular Souk Holds Its Promises

[As the French presidential race continues, candidates reach for ever more creative ways to get their names in front of potential voters and onlookers in “our world, our imagination”. This report from Julien Corompt is being made available in simultaneous translation courtesy of Bablefish - because any excuse to get more french reggae to our readers is a good excuse. Enjoy! - the Editrix]

by Julien Corompt

>>>>

“C’est quoi cette scène ?”, “Y’a une fête?”, “C’est quand ?”…. C’est vrai que cela faisait une dizaine de jours que les visiteurs de l’Arche de Bové, sur la plate-forme virtuelle Second Life, se demandaient ce que faisait cette immense scène hi-tech dans le cadre champêtre et calme qui fait habituellement la renommée du lieu. Puis Davys Miles, créateur du lieu, nous avait annoncé que se tiendrait le 15 avril un grand souk populaire virtuel, en même temps que les différents souks populaires organisés un peu partout en France à l’initiative des comités de soutien à José Bové.

“It is what this scene?”, “Y’ has a festival?”, “It is when?”…. It is true that that made ten days that visitors of the Arch of Bové, on the virtual platform Second Life, wondered what made this immense scene hi-tech within the pastoral framework and calms which makes usually the fame of the place. Then Davys Miles, creator of the place, had announced to us that on April 15 a large virtual popular souk would be held, at the same time as the various popular souks organized a little everywhere in France on the initiative of the committees of support for.

On nous avait promis un espace de dialogue, de convivialité et de fête, et manifestement les dizaines de personnes encore présentes sur le site à une heure très tardive dans la nuit de dimanche à lundi montrent à quel point cette manifestation citoyenne et militante fut un immense succès.

One had promised to us a space of dialogue, user-friendliness and festival, and obviously tens of people still present on the site at one hour very late in the night of Sunday to Monday show at which point this demonstration citizen and militant was an immense success.

Après les nombreux débats ayant agrémenté l’après-midi, on eu pourtant un peu peur que ce Grand Souk Populaire ne soit victime de son succès, une plate-forme remplie à son maximum et presque autant de candidats à la fête dans l’impossibilité de rejoindre le site faute de place… le tout saupoudré de quelques problèmes techniques pour faire arriver le son dans de bonnes conditions. Heureusement, tout fut rapidement remis en place pour pouvoir profiter de la prestation du guitariste allemand Andy Glasgow dont les envolées à mi-chemin entre Steve Vai et Joe Satriani ont vite fait monter la température…

After the many debates having decorated the afternoon, one be however a little afraid that this Large Popular Souk is not victim of its success, a platform filled with its maximum and almost as many candidates to the festival in impossibility of joining the site for lack of place… the whole powdered with some technical problems to make arrive the sound under good conditions. Fortunately, all was quickly positioned back to be able to benefit from the service of the German guitarist Andy Glasgow whose flights halfway between Steve Vai and Joe Satriani quickly raised the temperature…

Puis ce fut le tour de Kim Siefert, chanteuse américaine, qui avait fait le déplacement avec une bonne partie de son fan-club. Arborant fièrement un tee-shirt aux couleurs de José Bové, son fantastique accent américain lorsqu’elle lance des “JOSAYYY BOVAYYY” restera un grand moment de la soirée.

Then it was the turn of Kim Siefert, singer American, who had made displacement with a good part of her fan-club. Proudly raising a tee-shirt with the colors of, its fantastic American accent when it launches “JOSAYYY BOVAYYY” will remain a great moment of the evening.

Puis vint le tour de Naphtali Hawks, rastafari qui donna des airs de Jamaïque à ce petit coin de Larzac virtuel… et ce jusqu’à beaucoup, beaucoup… beaucoup plus tard que prévu…

Then the turn came from Naphtali Hawks, rastafari which gave airs of Jamaica to this small virtual corner of Larzac… and this until much… much later than envisaged much…

Mission accomplie donc pour les pensionnaires du QG virtuel de José Bové qui espèrent bien continuer sur cette dynamique positive en organisant de nombreux débats tout au long de la semaine…

Thus accomplished mission for the boarders of the virtual HQ of whom hope well to continue on this positive dynamics by organizing many debates throughout the week…

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