I just finished reading The Second Life Herald: The Virtual Tabloid That Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse. It reads like two short books, one pretty good and one almost very good, that were stitched together but not integrated as well as they might have been.

The first book is about The Sims Online, and is distanced and condescending toward the people there, constantly using the term "virtual" and putting much description of the world into "irony quotes."  The second, on Second Life, is sharp, impassioned and engaged. This might have been intentional: there's a lot of front matter to bring an unfamiliar reader up to speed, and the first hundred pages of "nudge nudge wink wink" might have been a misguided attempt to bring that unfamiliar reader along. 

Literary criticism aside, though, Ludlow and Wallace raise some important issues for anyone concerned with community formation and maintenance in synthetic worlds. I don't agree with their tastes at all, do agree with most of their conclusions, and think that the issues they raise need to be addressed both at the resident level and at the corporate management level for synthetic worlds to work, let alone live up to their potential.

This just in, from Virtual Worlds News:

Second Life to Get Voice and Chat Upgrades for Real World Communication

Linden Lab is working to implement an upgrade allowing Second Life users to receive calls from the outside world, said Joe Miller, vice president, platform & technology development for Linden Lab earlier this week. When we spoke to voice provider Vivox in September, they showed off similar applications for PSTN-in/PSTN-out communication. One of the biggest problems,though, was that they hadn't found an ideal way to monetize the service without making the host foot the bill. The service should debut in the first quarter of 2008, though, so apparently Linden has some ideas. Linden will also release "voice fonts" a service for masking users' voices to let them tie their actual voice more to the identity of their avatars than their physical bodies. Finally, Miller mentioned that Linden was working on a standalone chat client to let users chat without having to sign in world. For users who work in multiple worlds or work from older computers, it'll be nice to be able to talk to the Second Lifers without having to go all the way in-world for every occasion. [via Information Week]

"Voice fonts" sounds *really* intriguing, and a sign that *finally* LL might be showing the furries, avibenders and Digital People some respect - and a standalone chat client would be *fantastic*!

While you're at it, guys, how about email-to-IM, hm?



In other synthetic worlds news, I just got this email from the folks at There:

A while back I blogged about the upcoming synthetic world, Blue Mars - it looked gorgeous, but it sounded like it might flunk the critical Bury Test for viability....

( *Bury Test - A virtual world has no chance of being satisfactory for me unless it has:

1. Cybernetic Eyes
2. Bondage Furniture )

Well, does it ever, according to this article in Massively. Apparently the creators are adamantly opposed to user creativity.  But, there'll be golfing!

*eyerolls*

And, presumably, three television channels and one political party. Apparently Avatar Reality thinks that 20th Century thinking will be alive and well on Mars in 2177.   Maybe some sort of Arnold Palmer retro-Stalinist chic?  Which, actually, sounds like a lot more fun than buying corporate-made handbags in the Martian golf pro shop....

Blue Mars not only fails the Bury test, it deserves burial in a shallow, unmourned grave.  Mars will remain a dry and lifeless world...

From Virtual World News:

Avatar Reality's Blue Mars Screen Shots

Avatar Reality, a relatively new, Honolulu-based developer, will be showing off parts of its massively multiplayer virtual world at the upcoming E for All. Blue Mars will be set on a terraformed Mars, where users can customize their avatars and live out their fantasy/sci-fi lives. One of the things that strikes me as interesting about the world is that it seems like it's targeted at least partly at gamers, but the descriptions fall much more into a social virtual world setting: "stunning graphics, realistic characters and endless social bonding."

Click through and take a look at the graphics.  If these are actual world screenshots and not movie stills, *whoa*!  The core of Avatar's team came from the Final Fantasy games, so they know their stuff....

From the Terra Nova blog:

Areae's Metaplace Announced

Mike Sellers

Yesterday Raph Koster's group Areae finally took the wraps off of Metaplace, the project they've been working on for some time (this has now been covered by Boing Boing, the BBC, and Slashdot, as Raph notes on his site).  The announcement was greeted with much applause, along with a bit of head-scratching by some (and I'm sure more than a little relief for the Areae team).

Metaplace is not just another virtual world: they're doing their best to break down the walls around  the currently walled gardens.  This is a huge development that could change how we think of virtual worlds... if they can make this cool flying machine actually take to the air.

I applied to be an alpha tester, biting my lip and supplying some more or less accurate atomic-world contact info.  I doubt I'll get chosen - they seem to be looking for programmers/game developers/experienced MMORPG players - and my programming mojo doesn't even extend to TiVos!  :P

If you do have what they're looking for - and yes, I'm looking at *you* and *you*! - maybe apply and see what there is to see there?


(oh, and, while I was reading the box on the login page about the "optional viewer download," my login failed because that "option" was actually mandatory.  And what's with cut/paste being disabled on the new TOS too?  I'm *not* impressed!)

The publisher of the teen-oriented virtual world Gaia Online announced Monday that it is bringing on celebrated economist Michael Boskin to lead its new Council of Economic Advisors.

If you're *at all* interested in this stuff - or find yourself forced to be because of its impact on your digital life - read this interview.  This might be the single most reasonable, informed, unhyped, *responsible* set of statements I've ever read from an atomic world expert commenting on the digital world.

I was about to jokingly suggest that we pass a hat to hire someone like this to advise the Lindens... but...

Why *don't* we hire a consultant/lobbyist? 

Vanni, Argent and I all commented in the post below that one of our fundamental problems is that we as Residents *don't* have basic rights and the protection of reasonable and clear laws, and Argent, London and I all responded with some degree of feelings of powerlessness.

But, in the atomic, when some group feels like it's getting a raw deal, they organize. They hire professionals to work the system on their behalf, to get changes made.

Why don't *we*?