It’s no secret that Second Life marks ten years of being open to the world on June 23rd, and to celebrate, the global community of Second Life users is coming together in a week-long celebration across the twenty-two regions of the Second Life 10th Birthday Community Celebration.
The SL10BCC Auditorim
The sims have already been laid out, and across all of them, people are busily putting together their exhibits, while across the rest of Second Life, entertainers are readying themselves to participate in a 24/7 round of entertainment which will run across the regions of the celebration for the entire week of festivities.
The gates to the celebration will open to the public on June 16th, when the celebrations will commence which will culminate on June 23rd in a spectacular fashion.
What mysteries await the intrepid reporters who sign-up….?
However, if you are a member of the virtual worlds’ press or are a virtual worlds blogger, then we’re extending an invitation for you to come see the regions, photograph the builds and enjoy preview access to the celebrations on our special Press Day ahead of the regions opening to all.
To apply to be an official SL10B Community Celebration press contact or blogger, simply fill-out and submit our Press Pass application form.
Linden Lab have launched their official celebration of Second Life’s 10th anniversary with a special blog post on the topic and offering everyone a special gift.
The blog post opens:
This month marks ten years since Second Life first opened to the public in June of 2003! We’re incredibly proud of Second Life’s success and longevity and we hope that all of you are too – it’s thanks to everyone who has made Second Life part of their lives over the past decade that we’ve reached this major milestone.
The gift takes the form of a special commemorative bear – but not just any bear, or even any Linden Bear.
This is a bear avatar, and it has been commissioned and made specifically with the new SL materials processing capability in mind. The bear can be obtained directly from the SL Marketplace, where the accompanying text reads:
The past ten years have seen Bears play an important part of the Second Life experience. To pay homage and celebrate the history of this noble animal, we have created a limited edition SL10B Bear avatar that comes ready to have a good time!
As well as the celebratory bear avatar, the blog post also announces the start of a special photo contest:
We’re also kicking off an SL10B Snapshot Contest! Start snapping your celebratory images and get ready to share. Top prize is free use of a homestead for four months, and second and third prizes are free use of a homestead for two months. Check out the rules and submit your entries here.
So, if you fancy trying-out a Homestead for a few months, get snapping!
Second Life is ahead of its generation, but very traditional in the fact that it enables creativity, and I believe that that is the most powerful form of entertainment.
So speaks Rod Humble in the seventh segment of The Drax Files. which aired on Monday June 3rd.
The plan had been to keep the guest a surprise for as long as possible (I was sworn to secrecy back before the segment had even been filmed), but word started leaking out after Rod made several in-world appearances using both his primary account and some of his alts.
Through his alter-ego, Rodvik Linden, Rod Humble contemplates echoes of the future
Featuring footage shot both in-world and at the Lab’s main offices in Battery Street, San Francisco, the segment is a rapid-fire overview of Second Life, its impact on the world and how senior management at the Lab view what is happening to the platform and how they think it is fairing. As such, it is possible that some of Rod Humble’s comments may come across as superficial and be critiqued as such. However, this is only a five-minute piece, and the established format of the show isn’t suited to any in-depth analysis or reporter-led interrogative, and to expect it to be so would be unfair.
What does emerge from the segment is a picture of a man who has both the responsibility for ensuring Second Life maintains a comfortable level of success which at the same time and who – contrary to popular belief in some quarters – does actually “get” Second life in many fundamental ways, even if he may not have a complete understanding of its appeal.
There is admittedly a juxtaposition here; on the one hand, Rod Humble has spent more than two years of hard grind at the helm of Linden Lab, and has steered the company into new waters of unknown depth while at the same time pushing for very real investment in their flagship product and driving forward a range of new technical initiatives for Second Life. All of this does speak of someone who has an eye on the future for the platform and who recognises its many technical weaknesses.
Yet, on the other hand, he talks with disarming honesty about the bemusement he feels towards SL’s continued success and longevity and the fact that why it is successful remains something of a mystery – and something which appears to be completely missed by the tech industry and media as a whole.
Avatar identity and pseudonymity (and the individuals’ right to the latter) are matters of import to Rod Humble (images courtesy of Draxtor Despres)
There are some familiar themes in the piece which anyone who is reasonably familiar with Rod Humble and his past commentaries is likely to instantly recognise. His comments on matters of privacy and anonymity, for example, are pretty much echo what he said at the last of the Second Life Community Conventions in 2011. Similarly, the numbers quoted are pretty much the same as we’ve been hearing for the last couple of years. But repetition alone doesn’t invalidate what is being said.
Things like avatar identity and pseudonymity / personas are matters which concern many SL users, so the fact that Rod Humble hasn’t shifted his stance of the matter in the course of his tenure at the helm of Linden Research should be taken as a positive sign.
Similarly, while many of us within SL would like to see more visible moves towards getting more of the 400,000 monthly sign-ups to stick, we also need to remember that this video isn’t about dissecting Second Life this way or that: it is about presenting the world with a better understanding of the platform and why people enjoy it so much – and hopefully encourage people to come and give things a try. As such, Rod’s message is very much on topic and in keeping with past segments of the show.
Rod Humble roams SL in one of his many alts (image courtesy of Draxtor Despres)
Another aspect of the anonymity element in the segment is the way in which it serves as a reminder that just because we don’t people moving around and through Second Life wearing “Linden” tags doesn’t mean actually mean Lab don’t spend time in-world and among users. As Rod comments:
I love flying around with my alts. Sometimes I’m dressed as a Greek philosopher, sometimes I’m a spaceship, sometimes I’m dressed as an animal! I mean, it’s great! And [in] each one of those personas you can fully engage in a way community in a way that you can’t when everybody knows it’s Rod Humble.
Obviously, this doesn’t mean Lab staff are in-world every minute of the day – but it is a comment which should be born in mind when critiquing the Lab with claims that staff are “never” in-world.
“we have the Oculus Rift working within Second Life, and we are working to make it a triple-A experience, particularly around the user interface…”
As noted at the top of this piece, the show also demonstrates that Rod Humble still intuitively “gets” the power of Second Life, even if he doesn’t by his own admission fully understand why the appeal is the way it is (something I think true of a lot people, even if we each have our own ideas and theories). Not only does he “get” it, he is actually leading the charge to make SL a better, more enjoyable experience for all of us, old and new.
The fact that LL have invested considerable time and effort into SL over the course of the last year or more should stand as a reminder that the company still believes the platform is viable – and that is good news for the platform and its future, even if the projects concerned aren’t that visible or what people might view as being “sexy” (which has been used at times as a reason to bash this work and the Lab). While such efforts may not solve all of SL’s woes, they do at least demonstrate that the Lab’s commitment to the platform is still there.
And as we approach SL’s 10th birthday celebrations, that really is worth while remembering.
This summary is published every Monday and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:
It is based on my Viewer Round-up Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware) and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy
By its nature, this summary will always be in arrears
The Viewer Round-up Page is updated as soon as I’m aware of any releases / changes to viewers & clients, and should be referred to for more up-to-date information
The Viewer Round-up Page also includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog.
Two of my favourite builds in Second Life were Alpha Point and Omega Point. Developed by Masoon Ringo and Sweetlemon Jewell, these two regions were fabulous and intricate places to visit, offering stunning sci-fi and fantasy oriented builds both on the ground and in the sky overhead.
Nor were they static; Masoon and Sweetlemon periodically re-worked both Alpha Point and Omega Point in order to keep them fresh, interesting and well worth repeated visits.
Alpha Point and Omega Point, circa 2011
Now it seems both have gone from Second Life.
I was first alerted to their disappearance earlier in the week by Ayesha Askham-Ezvalt, who pinged me in-world to see if I knew what had happened. On checking the map, I discovered that both Alpha and Omega Points were coming up as “Not Found”. Remembering what had happened to the International Space Museum a couple of years ago, when both regions slipped off the map as a result of a payment mix-up on the part of the region holders, I dropped Sweetlemon a line to find out what had happened – but I’ve yet to receive a reply.
Today, I received an offline IM from another in-world friend, who had apparently heard the news that not only have the regions gone, but Masoon Ringo has departed SL. If this is true, then it may well mean that both Alpha Point and Omega Point have gone for good, which is a great shame because the regions were so well known to, and enjoyed by, a lot of people in Second Life.
Alpha Point and Omega Point circa 2012
Assuming both regions have now permanently passed into the annals of SL history, here’s a slide show of my last visit to them in 2012. It’s a little lengthy, I know, but as I said, both regions packed-in a lot to see.
The other day I was pondering on my wanderings, and how effective / readable they are (or indeed, how “samey” they might be to one to another); thank you, by the way, to everyone who responded to positively to my questions. All the replies were most welcome.
At the time, I mentioned I might try mixing things up a little and adding things like urban developments in SL to my list of places to visit. Well, as it happens, I have a list of role-play regions and estates (some of which I started to visit last year, but still haven’t actually got around to writing-up), and places people have suggested to me from time-to-time, or which I’ve stumbled upon when poking at the Destination Guide. One of the latter is the Forgotten City. As “city” and “urban” go together (as a rule), I decided to pop over and take a look.
Forgotten City is the brainchild of Jenne Dibou and Mandy Marseille, and it is immediately intriguing. The main build is a blend of several styles (possibly best described as Steampunk, Wasteland and Art Nouveau) which present a wonderful, multi-level city with a degree of industrial development and with little pockets of rural scenes tucked into it here and there. The arrival point will present you with a notecard which offer a number of places to visit via direct teleport, but I really recommend that you ignore it to start with and take time to explore on foot.
This is a place where the residents were once served by miraculous automatons, which took care of the city and saw to the needs of the people. But now it seems the people have gone, leaving the city behind, still watched-over by the faithful automatons. some of which can be interacted with when encountered.
The attention to detail is wonderful. I’ve often said when reviewing various places in SL that you need to keep a sharp eye out to see everything, and with Forgotten City this is certainly true. Whether you are simply out exploring or looking for something to do, Forgotten City has a lot going for it.
From the upper levels, with the museum and dance hall, you can travel down to the ground level and explore the streets of the Citadel of the Forgotten, the Marketplace and past the Abandoned Villas to the lighthouse and windmill. If walking isn’t to your liking, you can catch an airship tour of the city, but walking is good for you, and the exercise is, as I’ve mentioned, worth it.
The original inhabitants of the city may well have long-since departed, but part of the intrigue of this build is discovering what they have left behind. Who were the city’s royalty? What purpose did the Time Wolves serve? A simple member’s club, or something more?
One point I should make about exploring is that while much of the city is open to people to discover, please do keep in mind that some of the houses and apartments are private residences. Most of these are clearly denoted as such, and visitors are requested to observe the privacy of those occupying them.
For those who are seeking things to do, then the city is certainly worth a visit. There’s the airship tour, offering a view of the city from overhead, our you can grab a row-boat and explore the canals on your own. For the adventurous there is a steamboat which periodically stops at the row-boat station and which will take you “out” of the city to the post office and back…
Those seeking more active pursuits in the city can try the teleport destinations in the notecard. Theres a simple oval race track and vintage racing cars, the toy factory, and a winter park, complete with a ski jump for the really athletic. You can even take part in a couple of shoot-’em-ups or play (SL-legal) poker – and don’t forget the 8:00 SLT daily circus!
Those looking for an unusual venue for photographs would also do well to pay the city a visit; not only does the region windlight suit the place, it is ideal for tweaking and playing with other viewer-side windlight options.
All-in-all, it’s a great build to explore, and I’m actually keen to see whether Jenne and Mandy enhance it now that materials has all-but-arrived; the use of normal maps in particular could very well make this even more of a stand-out region.
Again, well recommended when you have the time! In fact, so good is this build that it has been one of the locations in which the Lab has been testing Oculus Rift!
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 