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I am occasionally asked by reporters interested in the Second Life Herald (where I’ve been an editor for two years now) what the appeal of doing journalism in virtual worlds is. In an attempt to locate a pithy soundbite for them, I sometimes say it’s like being a foreign correspondent without having to leave your desk (though this is not, in fact, the whole story; read on). So I was interested to spot this post by Ethan Zuckerman (via the Business Communicators of SL blog), which contains some thoughts on similar topics, inspired by a conversation with Pitchfork’s Chris Dahlen for Dahlen’s latest column. Dahlen wonders whether the Internet is up to the challenge of providing information about places like Africa, since it looks like you can find a lot more detail on the Web about Buffy than about the Somalian Union of Islamic Courts, for instance. Which touches off a thought on Zuckerman’s part: “I find it deeply odd that journalism is expanding into these illusory spaces while it’s shrinking in the real world. I think the answer may be that these new spaces — whether SecondLife, World of Warcraft, the culture of fanfiction or machinima — are far more coverable than many events in the real world.” While both those statements are true, to an extent, I’d argue that there isn’t the causal link between them that Zuckerman sees, or at least that that link is not as strong, and that there are more important factors at work. (more…)

Now that the Official Guide to Second Life is out (with yours truly as one of the authors, don’tcha know), it seems Wiley has more SL books in the works. Coming up this summer is The Official Guide to Advanced Content Creation for Second Life, by SL residents Aimee Weber and Catherine Omega (aka Catherine Winters outside of SL). My feeling is that Wiley is making a pretty substantial bet on the continued success of Second Life. But it’s also a bet that itself contributes to the viability of the platform, by providing some important documentation that will make it more accessible to a broader user base. More good reading on the way. [Via podcaster and architect Lordfly Digeridoo.]

My latest guest post for Terra Nova deals with the excellent massively multiplayer online game NationStates, which was created by Australian author Max Barry, loosely based on his book, Jennifer Government (which I read last night; good read). Check out the post (and the game) for more details about how it all works, but the point is that the game incorporates some interesting mechanics of player governance. Of course, the game is all about governance, so that’s not surprising, but the point is that I think there are lessons there that could be applied to 3D online environments as well. (more…)

Total hours per month spent in Second Life

Reader Darren Herman has generated a really nice-looking set of charts based on the recent statistical release of user and economic data from the virtual world of Second Life. It’s slightly unfortunate that these are in a PDF (which makes them much harder to share on the Web), but they’re very pretty to look at. More importantly, because of how our minds work, and the fact that they do pattern-recognition better than computers, there are often important things to be gleaned from the visual display of quantitative information. (Can someone buy me a copy of that, please?) Take a look at the Second Life gender demographics after the jump, for example, and you’ll see what I mean. (more…)

Two new applications out recently — Yahoo! Pipes and IBM’s QEDWiki — contain much promise for the 3pointD world. They’re basically mashupmakers (mashuppers? mashers?), GUI-based systems that let you create your own mashups without having to get too deep into code. They’re still a bit beyond my ability to really check out without spending a whole day on them, but they definitely make mashupping (I’m going with “mashupping” for the moment) available to a broader set of users. What does this mean for the 3pointD generation? More mashups, of course. But more importantly, it means greater, more widespread power to make the virtual world a more useful place. (more…)

Who knew the American Forces Network (which I believe is an agency of the U.S. Department of Defense) had a weekly podcast called Virtual World News? It’s just a few minutes, and it’s really just games-related news, not specific to virtual worlds, but it was a surprising find. On reflection, of course, it’s not surprising at all. It’s not hard to imagine the members of our armed forces in Europe hankering after some good old-fashioned gaming news. This is not a phrase that would normally cross my lips, but: Go DoD!

Linden Lab has released a new set of statistics covering the virtual world of Second Life that are slightly more granular than the information that’s been available before. Information about land mass, population and L$ transactions and trading, as well as other bits and bobs are available in an Excell spreadsheet from the official Linden blog. Still, the release is disappointing on a couple of levels. Methodology is one. The source for each stat needs to be spelled out much more rigorously than it is here. On the “L$ Supply” tab, for instance, things like “Sinks to LL” and “Other sources (sinks)” need a more complete definition than they receive here or on the economics Web pages. In addition, the new release does almost nothing to move the debate over usage forward. While new figures finally describe “unique” users that have actually logged in separately from “residents” that may be alts or may not ever have logged in (around 2 million vs. 3 million), there is no additional information about usage other than an aggregate number of hours used per month. The blog post accompanying the release notes that “Approximately 10% of unique users have logged in for 40 hours or more,” but that’s all we get. The Lindens could do better here, and at this point have no excuse for not coming up with a metric they like, even if it’s one that not everyone will be satisfied with. Because what they’re giving us now is something that almost no one who is looking closely will find sufficient. That said, the post does note that this is a preliminary report and that more information will be incorporated as things move forward. We look forward to seeing a good, deep report get designed, one that’s released on a regular schedule. Hopefully, we won’t have too long to wait.

Reuters’ Second Life correspondent, Adam Pasick, reports that Comverse has developed a version of the virtual world of Second Life that runs on a mobile phone. It sounds like the technology is imperfect at the moment (as is SL itself) and requires a PC to be running Second Life at an intermediary position, but it’s an interesting and potentially exciting step toward opening Second Life up to yet more uses. A full Second Life client on a cell phone might be overkill, but a streamlined client would be a great extension of the communication functions of Second Life. It also sounds like Comverse has SMS and Instant Message add-ons in the works that will allow those interactions with SL, though exactly how those fit in isn’t yet clear. Comverse has also developed a version of SL to run on IPTV platforms. Wow, they’ve been busy, and Pasick reports that this was all done in advance of the open-source SL client. Much of this technology will be demonstrated at next week’s 3GSM Conference in Barcelona, Pasick reports. Wish I could be there.

Word from the Terra Novans is that Ted Castronova’s second Ludium conference (following a first outing that was rocked by a very tongue-in-cheek scandal) will be held June 22-23 at Indiana University — and that it may even feature a demo of the Multiverse-based experimental Shakespearean MMO known as Arden that Ted is building there (and for which he’s won a Macarthur grant). The Ludium is a brilliant concept of Ted’s: a conference on games that’s run like a game. This year’s Ludium covers games and public policy, and so will take the form of a political convention that will elect a spokesperson for a set of agreed “Principles for Sensible Video Game Policy.” Should be fun.

The Guardian Gamesblog has a post today about a machinima contest held recently by EA that awarded the best short film made in The Sims 2. The winning entry is actually being screened at cinemas in the UK. (It looks like the contest was UK-centric. Was there an earlier one in the US?) What with CBS airing a machinima promo ahead of the SuperBowl and Fox Atomic’s upcoming machinima contest, it certainly looks like the form is getting a lot more attention these days. Passing fancy, or emergence of a new medium? If the latter, it’s about time.

MIT’s Henry Jenkins has a great interview with our Muckraker-in-Chief over at the Second Life Herald, Peter Ludlow (aka SL’s Urizenus Sklar). In fact, it’s the first part of a two-part interview, the second part of which should be coming tomorrow. [UPDATE: Read part two.] There’s great stuff here on the importance of “local” or “community” journalism to virtual worlds. Tomorrow we’ll hear from Peter on the current debate that’s raging over Second Life, and more on governance in virtual worlds. Recommended reading.

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I’ve been messing about with Upcoming.org today after being reminded of it by IBM’s Roo Reynolds, and have finally created my own Upcoming page. (Friend me!) While poking around over there, I stumbled on a small event called Web Trek, which says it is “Exploring Space & Time — 4 Known Dimensions.” Cool. It’s a free event in San Francisco with just three speakers of an evening (March 28), but it sounds like there will be some interesing ideas knocking around there. The speakers are first Kent Brewster, Technology Evangelist at the Yahoo! Developer Network, who will be talking on “How to Integrate Where 2.0 Technology in Web Space,” and then Tyler Kovacs and Mike Geary, Chief Architect & Co-founder, and Senior Engineer, respectively, at Zvents.com, who will be talking about “How to Integrate Time in Web Space.” (Slightly more information can be found here.) Now, it sounds like this is the “time” of “event scheduling” and similar concepts. But even that could be interesting. And why not go further? Why not a 3D Web or world (or just region) that incorporates time on a more meaningful level. Why not (technological constraints aside) be able to scroll back and forth through historical time at a certain virtual spot? Of course, Hiro Pendragon’s 3D wiki for the virtual world of Second Life allows you to do much the same thing. Are there other ways to accomplish this? Are there even more interesting things that could be done if we were able to push the 3D metaverse out into the fourth dimension? Whew, this kind of futuring makes my brain hurt. But I love the idea.

Csven over at reBang has the interesting news that French firm IMAGTP (which seems to be an architectural consultancy that relies heavily on 3D visualization tools) has “licensed the CryENGINE 2 game engine for use as an architectural and urban planning tool.” The CryEngine, of course, is the game engine made by Crytek, which powers their FarCry and Crysis games — which are known as having among the best graphics of any FPS. Oddly, though, Crytek’s games are known more for their expansive outdoor vistas than for their architectural wonder. Still, it’s nice to see more evidence that such tools of 3D connectivity are useful for more than just play. Game technology: Not just for games anymore.

Here’s the weirdest thing to hit my in-box in a while: A design-your-own-coffin contest in the virtual world of Second Life. Held by Dutch funeral company Uitvaart and coffin-makerer Bogra, the contest starts February 6, when free modifiable virtual coffins will be available at the Bogra office in SL’s »Tathlina« region. Residents then have until March 1 to trick out their personalized coffin and return them to SL resident Gwendolyn Kronsage. “The finished coffin needs to be accompanied by a notecard describing the design, as we would like to know why residents decorated the coffin the way they did and what materials they used,” according to a press release. Rather hilariously, the rules of the contest stipulate that “only biodegradable materials can be used in the design process” — though this is apparently “to guarantee the feasability of the Real Life production of the winning coffin.” (more…)

A virtual picnic at the Second Life Relay for Life

The Second Life Relay For Life that’s held each year in association with the American Cancer Society is about to get under way again, with an event on February 17 that kicks off the fund-raising season. The relay itself isn’t until July 28, according to Jade Lily, who has been the force behind the event for three or four years now. That means you have more than five months to help beat last year’s total of more than US$40,000 (!) that was raised through Second Life events, auctions and sales. The relay event, which is always a good party, sounds like it will cover as many as 30 sims this time (again: !). Last year, I auctioned a profile in the Second Life Herald, which raised about $40 and was great fun. (Go read it.) I’m thinking about doing the same this year, or maybe trying to find something more interesting to do, either at the Herald or at 3pointD. Any ideas? For more information or to get involved, send an instant message to Fayandria Foley in Second Life.

This just in: Mazda’s latest concept car, the Mazda Hakaze, will soon be zoom-zooming around the virtual world of Second Life, according to a press release from the company. While the release (which contains precious few details) doesn’t mention whether it will be available to residents or only on display somehow (concept cars are generally just that: demonstrations of future design possibilities and not available to customers), I think it’s a cool idea, using a virtual world to show off something like a concept car, which is basically just an idea machined into reality. Of course, “just an idea” hardly does justice to how much work goes into these things. Mazda’s presence is being built out on »Nagare Island«, although the island was still closed when I tried to teleport in just now. The island is named for the concept of “flow” that is behind Mazda’s new designs — which may well make them perfect for showing off in Second Life, judging by the work of some. The Hakaze is Mazda’s third concept car of the season. It will be interesting to see just what they do with it in SL.

Scott Carlson has written a really outstanding article about lifelogging in the February 9 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. Not only does he go around wearing recording equipment around his neck like a lifelogging freak (3pointD’s favorite kind of freak, to be sure; see pic at left), but he also talks to people with a variety of different views on lifelogging, investigates its historical roots, and takes the time to illustrate the things that would be lost in the lifelogging age. This is possibly the best single take on lifelogging I’ve yet encountered. Highly recommended reading as we move into increasingly connected days.

Interactive online community site Fox Atomic is launching a machinima and photography contest in the virtual world of Second Life, with an eight-day trip to Costa Rica for two as the grand prize. Yes, that’s the real Costa Rica, not the virtual version. The news comes from a blog entry from Millions of Us, which built out Fox Atomic’s in-world presence on »Fox Atomic island« (billed as “the first movie studio in Second Life”). Your machinima entry can be filmed anywhere in Second Life, a long as it uses at least one of the free Fox Atomic avatars that are being given out on the island. You can also get machinima assistance there, and on the Web site. There’s not a lot of real information available yet. The rules, for instance, have yet to be posted to the contest Web site, and there’s no deadline given in the blog post, for instance, nor does it say what the clips might be used for by Fox. But if you’re interested in heading down to Costa Rica, start shooting. There are a few great machinimists in Second Life, but beyond that top tier the competition drops off pretty swiftly, so if you can cut together even a brief piece of entertainment, you just might stand a chance.

Watch out, Second Life, there’s no doubt an invasion on the way. That’s the only conclusion to come to after reading the latest Reuters column by graphic novel author Warren Ellis, who investigates Second Life’s weaponry scene today, and find nerve gas on the Grid, among other things. “Is there a case to be made for Second Life as the lawless digital Wild West, where sometimes a man has to slap leather to defend his person and his homestead from the badmen and the road agents?” Ellis asks. There sure is: I made it almost two years ago in the Second Life Herald. Ellis’s column today is recommended reading. But leave your push guns at the door.

It’s fashion week in New York this week, season of hot designers and tent shows at Bryant Park. And, thanks to iVillage, it’s fashion week in the virtual world of Second Life as well. Three of SL’s top deigners — Callie Cline, Simone Stern and Paper Couture — will be featured in an iVillage fashion show this evening at 6pm SL time (9pm Eastern) at the iVillage Loft on »Sheep Island«. (That’s the Electric Sheep, of course, sponsors of this blog.) NBC Universal, which owns iVillage, rather optimistically announces in their press release that “Unlike New York Fashion Week, where tickets are as unattainable as the dress code, anyone can have a front row seat at the show in Second Life.” In fact, you can probably get more people into a Bryant Park tent show (I’ve been to a couple) than you can into a Second Life sim. Still, it should be a cool event. Second Life residents have deep experience putting together virtual fashion shows, and while I’m not sure whether it’s the Sheep or someone else producing it, this seems like just the type of event that should be able to leverage the enhanced reality of the virtual world quite well. Just try not to trip, girls, while you’re headed down the runway.

Vodafone’s island in the virtual world of Second Life has now opened to the public, according to Justin Bovington, head of Rivers Run Red, the virtual-world services company that produced the mobile phone company’s in-world presence. The »Vodafone« region seem similar to AOL’s presence in terms of the density of activities provided there, if not programming. There’s ice-skating to be had, high-board diving, butterfly rides and more, and users can upload their own pics that are shown on displays around the skating rink, which is a nice feature. See the YouTube clip above for a quick tour of the island. Vodafone is also giving away “water coolers” that are updated periodically with new free toys. I don’t think the voice services they’ve talked about are in place yet, but they’ve at least bandied about the idea that they’ll provide some back-end voice support for Second Life. Linden Lab, however, is very near to providing native voice support, we hear.

I missed it, unfortunately, but I’m told CBS just aired a promo spot for its Monday-night comedy Two And A Half Men during the SuperBowl pre-game show. What’s special about that? The spot was a machinima promo, shot in the virtual world of Second Life (as far as I know), and produced by the Electric Sheep Company (sponsors of this blog), who CBS president and CEO Les Moonves gave a big shout-out to at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. I’m interested because pre-game exposure during the SuperBowl megacast (it’s the most watched sporting event of the year) is nothing to sniff at, and pushes virtual worlds that much further into mainstream America’s consciousness. SuperBowl commercials are the most expensive airtime on television, and are closely scrutinized each year for new trends in marketing and promotions. It’s basically the TV advertising agencies’ equivalent of Sweeps Week, when networks trot out the best of their new material. So having a machinima spot run even during the pre-game show is pretty hot stuff. A quick search on YouTube didn’t turn up anything about it yet, unfortunately.

Most 3pointD readers will be familiar with Terra Nova, which is probably the best blog out there for deep thinking about massively multiplayer online games, and one of the best on non-game virtual worlds. (I have to maintain my own-horn-tooting of 3pointD as the topper, of course.) So I was quite pleased recently (pretty excited, to tell you the truth) to be invited to be a guest author there for the month off February. My posts there will likely be more game-focused than the usual fare here (though I may do a VW post there as well), so there shouldn’t be a lack of news flowing through 3pointD. In fact, since I’ll link my TN posts here, you might get an extra tidbit or three this month. My first outing looks at the many game guilds that have sprung up around members of the Something Awful forums, and the interesting ways in which they bring Goon culture to the virtual worlds they inhabit. Fun!

AOL’s sticky wall at AOL Pointe

The AOL Pointe project, AOL’s presence in the virtual world of Second Life (which we published a sneak peek at on Friday), has its official opening today, and the early notices are very favorable. Hiro Pendragon weighs in on the variety of activities available there, while the Second Life Insider has a great pictorial tour. I’ve taken the liberty of borrowing their shot (see above) of AOL’s “sticky wall,” which seems to be everyone’s favorite feature. Credit here goes to the Electric Sheep Company (sponsors of this blog), who seem to have done quite a job of dreaming up diversions for Second Life residents new and old. There are also quite a few events listed on this months AOL Pointe calendar. (more…)

This isn’t specifically Second Life-related, but it’s a project that a Second Life resident is helping to run and it’s very cool, so I thought I’d mention it here. SL resident Jeremy Neumann helped bring excerpts from the seminal metaversal novel Snow Crash to Second Life last August. Now, in the guise of his real-world avatar Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher at Pengiun Books UK, he’s created and launched a very interesting collaborative novel that’s being written by many people at once on a wiki. Anyone can contribute, and anyone can edit anyone else’s writing. The novel has been seeded with contributions from a team of MA students, but over the next six weeks anyone will be able to contribute, after which, it sounds like, pages will be locked and the novel “published,” at least in Web-based digital form. The progress will be chronicled on the Penguin blog. Already the wiki site has proved so popular that high volumes of traffic are forcing Penguin to switch in some heavier-hitting servers. No one at Penguin is making any claims for the quality of the finished product — they just want to see what will happen, and explore the results of crowdsourcing an artisitic work like a novel. I’m all for it. I’d love to see this kind of thing in Second Life, as well, whether it’s something made from words or prims. How can we make that happen?

Speaking of conventions, I’ve just got the news from Second Life resident ZATZAi Asturias that a Second Convention will be held in Second Life, March 1-3. It looks like a well thought-out couple of days providing mostly entertainment and some showcasing of interesting stuff from the virtual world. The forum posting announcing the convention doesn’t say whether you have to register before you show up or how the organizers will handle an embarrassment of avatars, should they show, but hopefully things will work out. [UPDATE: The convention will be held in the »Artificial Isle« region of SL.] A couple of people have mentioned to me that they’d like to hold larger conventions in Second Life to mirror the kinds of conventions you find in the real world, but this is the first one I’ve heard about. Sounds like fun.

It’s conference season, and 3pointD is hitting the road to flap our gums (or mine, anyway, if I could get out of the third person) at a handful of cool upcoming events. First up is the ScreenBurn festival at South by Southwest Interactive. I did a presentation at ScreenBurn last year, along with Peter Ludlow, on our brilliant work over at the Second Life Herald. At that point, ScreenBurn, which covers the gaming industry, was crammed into one corner of a huge empty hall with a few dozen chairs set around a makeshift podium. This year it graduates to the big leagues, taking place upstairs alongside SXSWi. On March 12 I’ll be running a panel on Gamer’s Games: Microcontent and User Creation, which should hopefully cover everything from making skirts in There.com and Second Life on up to building worlds in Multiverse and Areae. Chatting with me will be There’s Betsy Book, Reuben Steiger of virtual world services firm Millions of Us, Multiverse’s Corey Bridges, and Raph Koster, who by then will be able to give more details on just what his new shop, Areae, is working on. This should be a really fun panel, as pretty much all of us know each other already, so I’m hoping for something more chatty and interactive than the usual fare. (more…)

An experimental three-way conversation about the future of virtual worlds is taking place among Clay Shirky, Henry Jenkins and Beth Coleman, the first round of which is now complete with Beth’s recent post. I find myself reluctant to even blog about this, as most of the conversation leading up to this point (kicked off by some tendentious posts by Shirky over at ValleyWag) has been counter-productive for those who actually want to make some kind of even-handed inquiry into what’s happening with 3D online technologies. But the present round of blog posts from Shirky, Jenkins and Coleman seems more balanced, including Shirky’s. Unfortunately, the result is that not all that much is being said that’s really new, at least, not to my eye. Shirky is right to question Second Life’s adoption numbers (when he can put aside the vitriol he’s directed against the press; that’s a separate issue), but they’ve been questioned many times before. Jenkins’s post is interesting for putting virtual worlds in the broader context of participatory culture. I think Beth Coleman’s, though, does the most to push the conversation forward. Instead of arguing over which part of the elephant is the right one to examine, she pushes some ideas out to us for adoption and/or consideration, including the need for a standard measurement of usage, whether such world will be created in our image, and the need for interoperability and stronger communications between virtual worlds and the other technologies through which we communicate and manipulate information. This last section even includes a line that sums up my own view about virtual worlds and about what I’m doing here on 3pointD: “What virtual worlds promise is an augmentation of human-to-human communication.” Win.

Pirate Daniel James’s Three Rings, responsible for the hugely popular multiplayer Puzzle Pirates gamespace, is developing a game-making platform to support Flash and Java games within a larger virtual world, according to a session description from O’Reilly’s Emerging Technology Conference at the end of March. That’s news to me, though I’m not entirely sure it hasn’t been mentioned elsewhere. It sounds like the session features Three Rings co-founder Michael Bayne rolling out the toolkit for attendees to use in making a game during the session: “Three Rings is developing a platform for building multiplayer online games in Flash and Java that operate as part of a larger virtual world where people do things like talk about their cats, decorate their virtual living room, and most importantly, play games. With an aim toward fostering user creativity, we’re opening up all of the tools for creating the world and the games in it. In this workshop we’ll have people collaborating in small groups to think up a game and build it. . . . We’ll provide the toolkit and useful advice.” (more…)

It must be South by Southwest season. How do I know? Because there are Roombas in the air. Second Life resident Mooba Sienkiewicz (aka Greg, the myRoomBud crew’s dad) sends along news that he’s created a virtual Roomba for use in Second Life: “My kids have a business that sells costume covers for the Roomba and they have been pretty successful at it over the last year. So that they don’t have all the fun, I have been hacking and programming the Roomba in RL and recently built a SL Roomba.”

While it doesn’t actually clean anything, you can catch a video of the virtual Roomba in action on the myRoomBud SL page. Now all Mooba needs to do is make it as hackable as the real thing is, and we’re in business. Just remember, as Tyler, Niles, Isabelle and Griffin of The myRoomBud crew warn, “If you don’t dress up your Roomba, it’s just a naked vacuum.” Words to live by. (Although interestingly, dad’s SL Roomba doesn’t have any clothes on. Have a word with this guy, kids.) (more…)

Add Sweden’s to the growing list of governments considering taxing monetary transfers from virtual worlds, if not the in-world earnings themselves. According to an AFP story, Swedish authorities are “planning a clapdown.” Said one Swedish taxman, “Most people play and keep their money on their game account, but if they move it out of the virtual world into the real world, then we’re interested in them.” Any move is at least two to three years away. The U.S. Congress seems to be moving more slowly on looking into the issue, but is headed in the same direction. In a way, this is an encouraging sign, in that with taxation most often comes some compensatory protection of rights. If my activities in a virtual world can be considered, in some way, to be work or investment, they should be due similar protections to other forms of work or investment. Note that the Swedish taxman is not contemplating exactly that, but is looking only at transfers of cash from virtual worlds into the real world. Still, it pushes virtual activities closer to the status of the real. Good thing? [Via SL Insider.]