Tag: The Drax Files World Makers

Elie Spot is a name well-known in the fashion world of SL. The co-owner of Mon Tissu and Celoe, now both on their dedicated and stylish region of Mayfair, she’s also the subject of episode 9 of The Drax Files.

Involved in Second Life since 2006, Elie is very much an example of the way in which the physical and the virtual can blur together and complement one another. Given her father designed games and her mother is a graphics artist, it is perhaps not surprising that Elie herself is a designer in the digital domain. But to leave things here would be to miss out on the most interesting part of her story.

Having joined SL at nineteen as a means to escape a very hectic daily routine, she has not only established two successful brands in-world, she’s found the additional skills and understandings she’s gained through running those businesses have helped to enable her to take-up business opportunities in real life, such as with Cake & Whiskey, which she co-founded in Spring 2013, following-on from the creation of Offbeat and Inspired in 2012.

As one might expect from both a content creator and long-term resident of Second Life, Elie has an understanding of the nuances of the platform, and the reasons people find it so attractive and appealing. The ability to create almost anything you want, for example, or to be able to create and build a business or brand, to share with others in a myriad of ways, and the opportunities for escape and to be whomever or whatever you want.

In discussing this and Second Life, Elie touches on one of the stigmas attached to Second Life from the world at large.

“It’s just a very common misconception that if a person sits down at a computer and starts talking to other people online that they’re hiding, or that they don’t have social skills.” she says. “I mean to take a personality type and look down on it like that and to project that on an entire culture of people? It’s just a little bit strange.”

It’s what I’ve been known to refer to as the “Star Trek syndrome”: the views that people involved in Second Life and platforms like it need to somehow “get a life”. Sad to say, the attitude isn’t necessarily restricted to people on the outside looking into Second Life; there are a lot of examples of people engaged in the platform taking a stance of perceived moral  / social / intellectual superiority over others, simply based on how those others like to portray themselves within SL, even though in doing so they do not impinge upon the lifestyles or in-world activities of those looking down on them.

That people do is really a shame, because Second Life can be liberating, and allows us all to reach past barriers and inhibitions defined by circumstance and / or society, and enjoy a freedom of personal expression and freedom of interaction with others from around the globe whose interests overlap with our own. The fact that some people are unable to accept others purely on the basis of how they seek to express themselves through their in-world appearance, perhaps speaks more to the prejudices of those unable to give acceptance, and to their own limitations of imagination and creativity.

Elie’s insights aren’t restricted to the unfortunate habit of stereotyping SL users, however. She is, first and foremost a very successful businesswoman in Second Life, and as such has some very clear and practical advice to give to those wishing to start-up a business of their own, as well as touching (again) on the wealth of opportunities presented in SL for doing to and the freedoms one can experience which are in may respects unique to the platform.

This is another excellent insight into Second Life and the broad potential of the virtual medium. Elie’s narrative is both clear and direct, but also carries a warm passion for the platform which is a joy to listen to, marking this as yet another outstanding piece in what is already an outstanding series.

Continue reading “The Drax Files 9: Fashioning your world” →

“Second Life is not a game.” How often have we heard that claim? And it’s true in many respects. Second Life doesn’t by default have any of the mechanisms associated with games. There are no levels to achieve, no goals to attain, no objectives to meet, and so on. So to simply dismiss it as a “game” is to both underestimate the potential of the platform and demonstrate a lack of understanding about it, and we’re right to point out that it isn’t, of itself “a game”.

However, there are times when “Second Life is not a game” can be used as a rolling-pin with which to thwack Linden Lab because of changes they bring to the system which appear to be focused on gaming or because of initiatives the Lab takes to reach out to potential users. When I come across this latter aspect of the rallying-cry in forum threads blog comments, etc., I’m actually surprised and not a little disappointed.

True, Second Life may not itself be a game – but that doesn’t rule out the fact that it is a very legitimate platform for game play in a wide variety of forms (of which role-play is perhaps the largest, and possibly the reason why (leaving the sex aside) a good proportion of SL users keep logging into the platform. It’s also a more than capable platform for game development and offering people many and varied means of game-like entertainment.

The fact is that Second Life is a platform which allows you to log-in and say, “OK, today, I will be a pirate!” and go off and sail the high seas,” or, “Time to go dogfight over the trenches of World War 1”, or don a period costume and explore some of the history of 18th Century France where yesterday you logged-in a followed the clues to solve a mystery (and gained some nice prizes and trinkets along the way) before engaging in some combat with friends, and tomorrow you might set-out to kill a few zombies before sitting down and enjoying a few rounds of a board game.

One team of people who perhaps best exemplify the ability of Second Life as an environment which can enable and support games are MadPea Games, the subject of the eighth segment of The Drax Files.

Started five years ago by Kiana Writer (Mari Mitchell in real life), MadPea Games has become synonymous with the provision of immersive, imaginative and genre-leading games in Second Life and stands as a shining example of something Rod Humble recently pointed-out in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle: that while it may be true that “big business” initially jumping into SL and then deserting SL, this didn’t leave the platform dead. Rather, it left the way clear for “amateurs” and “specialists in it” (the platform) to establish very successful business presences in Second Life – and in some cases, extend their reach well beyond SL.

MadPea Games is an international team. With Kiana leading the operation out of Finland, other team members are based in France, Germany, The Netherlands, the UK and the USA. Over the years they have created a broad range of games in Second Life, spanning the genres of mystery, adventure, horror, cartoons, hunts, role-play – and more.

“I really don’t know why more people are not using virtual worlds like we do,” Kiana states at the start of the video. Looking at MadPea’s résumé, she makes a fair point. Not only have the team produced some of the most memorable games in Second Life, they’ve also worked on a  number of SL / real-world cross-over projects as well. In 2009 they produced The Kaaos Effect interactive adventure in collaboration with Orange. A second collaboration with Orange in 2012 resulted in Firefly, described as a “haunting love story”.

MadPea have also worked with Nature Publishing Group and MacMillan Publishers to produce Notes from the Voyage, an educational game about the travels of Charles Darwin, and with Sigma-Aldrich to create Reaction, an interactive means to learn about chemistry. All of these demonstrate the sheer power of Second Life as a immersive medium – and the value in allowing gameplay and game-like mechanisms within it.

Kiana was not herself a “gamer” but more of a storyteller, and in Second Life she immediately saw a new potential, “I came to Second Life and I was, ‘Hey! This is a great place! I could actually bring my stories to life here!'” In describing the uniqueness of the platform compared to other games, she observes, “Immersive storytelling is when you get so lost in the story that you become the hero of the story; you’re feeling the whole environment. This is why our games are working … because with a lot of console games you become a totally different person, but in Second Life, so many people identify themselves as their avatars, so they get to play as themselves, and that’s really huge.”

Of course, there are limits to what can be achieved in Second Life; as a dynamic environment where so much is open to the users themselves in terms of how they develop their avatars, there has to be a number of checks and balances to keep gameplay in line with some of the more limiting factors of the platform, as Kiana notes, “I don’t think many people actually realise how much work it is to make sure the island is smooth. Everything is so optimised that there is absolutely zero lag. And then the crowds come in, (laughs) and then they start complaining, ‘there’s a lag! there’s a lag!’, and it’s like, ‘Yeah, because you are, as an avatar, taking most of the resources of the sim!'”

Throughout their time in SL, MadPea Games have constantly pushed the boundaries and repeatedly raised the bar on what they strive to achieve. In keeping with this – and as teased during the show – their next project Unia, promises to do so again, as they work to implement an action game within SL.

Fittingly, this segment of the show is itself a rich piece of storytelling, demonstrating not only the power of creativity within Second Life, but also the way in which it can bring people from around the globe together both as colleagues engaged in collaborative efforts and as friends. It is also one which dives into the complexities of creating immersive, interactive environments not so much by what is said, but by what is shown – kudos again to Drax for bringing together an ideal mix images and scenes to perfectly underline Kiana’s words and views.

And I have to say, I really like the role-reversal!

Continue reading “The Drax Files 8: Gaming Second Life” →

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Continue reading “The Drax Files: a Humble view of the world” →

The sixth episode (webisode?) of The Drax Files come relatively close to home for me, as the focus of the segment is Edinburgh, Scotland, where Abramelin Wolfe of Abranimations fame has both his home and his base of operations.

I’d never actually really considered the amount of work which goes into creating in-world animations – or the real-world expense. Obviously, I’m aware that it involves motion-capture and digtising movement, but when hearing how Abramelin’s first motion-capture outfit cost him £14,000 ($21,300), I admit my jaw flapped somewhat.

“Body language and human motion is something that we see every day,” Abramelin says, explaining why he started creating animation in Second Life. “If we’re very rigid and not moving, it stands out like a sore thumb; it’s very unnatural, there’s lot’s of subtleties. I mean, if you say to someone ‘stand still’, they’ll probably in their head think that they are rigid and not moving. But in reality, people are actually moving a lot; a subtle shake of arms and the way that weight displaces. So I think that by having a very fluid motion which is very life-like helps people feel immersed in that universe.”

Operating their business out of Edinburgh, Abramelin and his wife focus on Second Life as their primary market, producing not only animations, but also a range of avatars and other creations, very much working as a team; he creates the animations and rigs them, she creates the avatars.

Abramelin very much regards Second Life as a frontier and those using it as pioneers.

“It’s such a world of possibilities for invention and innovation,” he says, still as enthusiastic and engaged with the platform as when he started in 2004. “Pioneers? Yeah! We want a universe we can step into and actually be there!”

Animations are something almost all of us use in SL, yet we perhaps seldom give any of the creative process which goes into them more than a passing thought; as such this segment serves as a fascinating insight into a brand which is something of an SL household name (my very first AO was from Abranimations!), and on the entire creative process involved in developing life-like animations – as well as yet another look through the eyes of others at why Second Life is so engaging.

A Conversation with Drax (part 2)

The Drax Files have taken Second Life by storm. After seeing the first segment, I took time out with Drax to find out more about the man behind the show and also about the series itself. In the first part of our conversation, we discussed what led to the creation of The Drax Files and how reaction to the series has affected him before touching on future plans – which is the starting point for continuing our chat.

Inara Pey (IP): The current series has focused very much on content creation, covering the work of some of the top content creation merchants, and the use of SL to create immersive environments such as the 1920s Berlin Project. You’ve more recently moved on to look at SL as a means of global action with the very excellent piece on Fantasy Faire and Relay for Life, and also examined music and live performance in SL.  In the past, you’ve also looked at art and design – I’m thinking here specifically about your piece from November 2011 on IDIALAB at Ball State Uni, Nov 2011. Did you opt to tackle content creation first, as you felt it was a better means of helping people grasp the potential of SL, and where might we be seeing future segments of the show going?

Draxtor Despres (DD): Oh, the Art and Design thing! That was basically a one-off thing back then. It was a great project with IDIALAB. I just called it “The Drax Files”, a play on “The X Files” and it was fun. But yeah, the initial approach with content creation was to grasp the potential of SL for an audience outside of SL.

Continue reading “The Drax Files 6: An animated Second Life” →

The fifth segment of The Drax Files moves somewhat away from the central theme of the series to date, that of content creators and their work in Second Life and shines a light on the live music scene within SL. In doing so, it again demonstrates the rich diversity of opportunity which is available within the digital world.

Engrama is a partnership of musicians in both in the real world and in SL in the form of Argentine-born Pupito Helstein and his Spanish girlfriend Lakua Arriaga. Like many musicians who have embraced Second Life, they’ve found that the platform has provided them with a unique world-wide reach that provides an added dimension to their real-world lives.

“We have no backing tracks, it’s all live,” Pipito says of their in-world performances, “We prefer to play original songs; In fact we improvise in Second Life, we sometimes create even original songs.”

“It totally depends on the mood of the crowd,” Lakua adds.

Operating from their mountain village home, Engrama have developed not only a distinctive voice, focusing on post-rock era music (which includes covers of Sigur Ros, Radiohead and others as well as their own original pieces), but also a distinctive presence. They’ve taken to building their own stage sets and instruments to better reflect their music and style. More recently, this has led the couple into wider fields of content creation, making prefab homes, furniture and clothing. Pupito has even attempted to encourage his musician friends to embrace Second life, spending time creating unique avatars for them.

“There is one magic thing in Second Life,” Lakua says as the couple distinguish between their real world and Second Life experiences, “[That’s] when people send us messages like, ‘Hey guys, I heard Engrama music at the Colorado [Grand] Canyon on a trip!'”

“People record our Second Life shows,” Pupito adds, “And then they listen to them on their iPods.”

“They share with us how our music makes them feel,” Lakua finishes.

This is not boasting in any way; the statements are made in a tone of delight and wonder which demonstrates both Lakua and Pupito are themselves awed by the impact their music can have on an audience they might otherwise never reach. “This  is real interaction,” Lakua states as the video closes, “Second Life is a parallel life, they [it and real life] can go together, and sometimes they can cross.”

And that is again the magical power contained within Second Life – not only that we can come into the digital world and free ourselves from the constraints of everyday life and business and create and play and have a lot of fun or share time with others – but that we have within this digital domain the ability to reach far beyond ourselves, to touch others and be touched by them, to share, uplift and help others, and be a part of lives, and make them a part of our own in ways which simply cannot be achieved in the physical world.

Continue reading “The Drax Files 5: Engrama make SL rock” →