Second Life Herald

Daddy? Can I have your credit card?

by Sigmund Leominster

Barbie Girl Home: VIP girls get SuperB Chatâ„¢ then shop for clothes and funky new furni

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

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

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

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

by Jessica Holyoke, virtual world explorer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Jessica Holyoke, virtual world explorer

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Heavenly Duke Creating Objects†era gives way to “Dawn of Societyâ€

by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk

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

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

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

by Jessica Holyoke, virtual world explorer

heading to the space bedroom

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

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

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

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

by Jessica Holyoke, virtual world explorer

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

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

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

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

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

The Celebrity Trollop interview

by Pixeleen Mistral, fashionable reporter

IMVU fashionista

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Onder Skall

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

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

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

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

by Onder Skall, courtesy of Second Life Games

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

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

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

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

By Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Virtual Estate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Relevant portions excerpted below for your discussion:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Pat the Rat

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

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

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

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

In Newsweekly ("New England's Largest GLBT Newsletter") is running a story on an appalling new "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on the part of Blizzard Entertainment where gay- and lesbian-friendly guilds are concerned (linked from BoingBoing the other day).

Apparently, a member of a World of Warcraft guild advertising itself on the Blizzard forums as "GLBT-friendly" (though also specifying it was not GLBT-only) received a warning notice from Blizzard recently saying company admins would have banned her from the game but were feeling magnanimous that day. When the player protested that there must be some mistake, Blizzard responded that no, the mistake was hers, for inviting discrimination from Blizzard's obviously victimized player-base:

A Tale in the Desert is one of those games that chooses to tread the dangerous boards of player-run government, at least to a limited extent. The game's demi-pharaohs, of which there have been some 20 over the last three years, each have the power to exile up to seven of their countrymen, should they see fit. But, according to full-fledged pharaoh Andrew Tepper, that power has never been used. Until now.

Technical issues kept me from posting this sooner, but it wouldn't be the Herald without a bulletin on the auction market that's sprung up for stuff found in the Nintendo DS massively wifi-player game Animal Crossing. Thanks to a Faithful Reader for alerting us to NookBay.com where all things Animal Crossing can be bought and sold.

Woot! If you didn't believe it before, now you can actually feast your eyes: The Doomsday book recently penned by uber-authors Peter Ludlow and Mark Wallace in a flurry of champagne, clattering typewriter keys and cigar smoke is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com.

For those who aren't already aware, the book recounts the adventures of virtual journalist Urizenus Sklar, who founded this very newspaper in The Sims Online only to be bounced out of the game once Electronic Arts got wind of the revealing stories the Herald was publishing. Bringing the reader all the way up through the Herald's recent history, Ludlow and Wallace take a revealing look at what really goes on in the virtual world of massively multiplayer online games and environments like Second Life, and even dare to peek forward into the future.

Cooperative gameplay, Egyptian-style

Andrew Tepper, pharaoh of Egypt (or at least of the massively multiplayer online world of A Tale in the Desert) has something say, and he wants you to listen. He also wants you to get in his game, and is re-opening free trial accounts to anyone who's interested, even if you've already run through a trial in the past.

Apparently concerned about the large number of citizens who leave his virtual Egypt once they get through the early stages of the game, Tepper is holding "a significant chat" tomorrow on possible upcoming changes in the society-building VW, and he wants you to listen in.