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Okay, I admit it; between the dramatic degradation of service these last two weeks (caused by an unexpected surge in new residents, admittedly, following news service Reuters' entrance into SL), and all the "big news but nothing's happening" press releases I've been attending, and all the recent talk about "synergy" and "platforms" and "shifting the paradigm," I've been feeling a little burnt out on Second Life recently. And I guess when you boil it down, this fundamentally gets into whether you are what's called an Immersionalist player of SL, or an Augmentalist, two distinct styles of gameplayers there who exist for two very different purposes; with the second group right now quickly overwhelming the first, but the first group being the ones who primarily made SL popular to begin with.

The difference in mindset between the two groups reflects the titles they're given: Immersionialists primarily see SL as an entire virtual reality, and enjoy doing the broad range of activities there that they also enjoy in RL (including shopping, sports, relationships and sex, artistic creation, tourism, vacationing and more); while Augmentalists primarily see SL as a next-generation platform for communication, and are there primarily to enhance a particular interest they already have in RL (such as marketing, architecture, filmmaking, music, artistic distribution and more). It's entirely possible for a world to exist that pleases both these groups of people, and many argue that the current version of the grid precisely does; but it's still two fundamentally different ways of interpreting this unique environment which is constantly getting redefined, two views that are many times in direct opposition with each other.

I'm in a special position as the publisher as this blog, because I straddle both worlds, report on both, and need to be immersed in both. I admit, though, that the entire reason I got attracted to SL in the first place, in spring 2006, was primarily for Immersionalist reasons; I guess all these "big time" announcements from RL corporate conglomerates lately have been wearing me down, especially when combined with the cruddy bandwidth the grid's been giving out recently, and the lousy low-end Mac Mini I'm running the SL client on from Chicago where I live in RL.

So instead of pressing on and risking burning out altogether, I took about four days off and just got some work done on my RL journal and other non-grid projects. And then when I logged back in today (with service admittedly a lot better, finally), I decided to do something just totally Immersionalist for today's entry; and since we're in the middle of water week here at ITG, I decided that would be to finally check out the updated version of my sailboat I picked up last week, while exploring yet another intriguing public water-based landscape.

Where I initially ended up was a place called Bear's Marina [Tamsi 223/249/27], which offers this really intriguing service; they own something like 10 private, lushly terraformed sailing environments now across the grid, and for a monthly price you're added to a private group that has access to all of them. And it's only US$2 for a year of access to all of them, too, which makes it not a very risky commitment at all. Anyway, I just put in my application today, so will be doing another entry when it comes through; in the meanwhile, though, I learned that one of the piers Bear maintains is actually open to the public, so I teleported over to check it out. Turns out the the environment is owned by a different couple, Barb Carson and Montecore Babcock, and is pretty impressive indeed; a megabuild they call "Second Life New England," a combination of private estates, public shops, free sailing areas and regular live events.

For any of you, by the way, who have ever wondered how exactly one goes about actually running a legitimate small-business-level project within the grid, let's take SL New England as a good example; because what you're seeing there in the above map is a total of eight sims laced together by the couple (or a whopping half a million square meters), which cost them $10,000 to purchase to begin with, and then another $20,000 a year in land usage fees, for a total upfront commitment of $30,000 the first year, with presumably a plan for making at least $30,000 in revenue back in the first year. How one does this, then, is through a variety of direct activities -- like reselling parcels as private residences, leasing parcels for commercial use, or charging people to belong to a private access club -- supplemented by indirect activities -- like regular events and free sailing to attract more visitors, making your parcel rank higher in searches and become that much more popular. Think of success at a SL company being a combination of brick-and-mortar advice and lessons on successful website creation; you can see now why two very different schools of thought exist among residents there right now over what exactly SL "is."

Anyway, Bear's Marina at SL New England is called the Nantucket Yacht Club; the cool thing about it is that the general public can rez boats on the space and start their local sailing there. (This is opposed to many private parcels, where the owners distinctly ban people from rezzing vehicles.) It's where I started my little two-hour cruise of the eight-sim area.

So here then you see how SL New England makes most of its money back; this is a private parcel of land that's been repurchased by an individual, and turned into an ultra-wealthy estate, sort of a virtual Kennedy Compound if you want to think of it that way. And let's face it, according to their website, the parcel isn't cheap; you're looking at roughly 4,000 square meters here, with over 700 prims at your disposal, which will cost you $400 altogether your first year, $300 a year after that. "Ridiculous!" some might yell. "Pay $300 in real money a year, just to own virtual land within a videogame?" But what is nightly entertainment worth to a person, anyway? How much are you paying a year for that precious digital cable snaking into your living room -- $1,200 already? Then add your precious little TiVo, that Netflix subscription you can't do without, perhaps a console gaming machine as well, and those few nights you actually splurge and make it out to a real theatre. In relative terms, $300 a year to maintain such an admittedly breath-taking parcel such as the above, with more prims than an individual would ever need, is paltry compared to the average middle-class suburban white-collar worker's entertainment budget (and all of that just to watch television you've already seen and movies you didn't want to see in the first place -- sheesh).

Now, let's not forget the pleasure of sailing within the grid in the first place; that there is not only intelligent water but intelligent wind there, leading to both chaotic conditions sometimes and trackable weather patterns, which when combined with animated surf and realistic sound effects makes for ultra-realistic sailing, that apparently has also caught on like wildfire within the real-life community of physical sailors (during the off-season, that is). Let's not forget, after all, that Philip Rosedale (CEO of Linden Lab) was actually a physics major during college, and became entranced with virtual realities in the first place because of their ability to recreate sophisticated atmospheric conditions. It's no wonder that sailing is such a complex, lifelike thing within SL, given how much it's been a core part of the founders' vision of the place.

And then here you see yet another option for daily "living" within this virtual world; that much like RL, some choose to live full-time on houseboats they've either constructed or purchased, and then rent the land and water each month that's underneath. Those slips you're seeing there, after all, are nothing more than the 512 square meters I own of permanent land; you find those renting all over the place for, whatever, $5 or 10 a month. It's tempting!

In the background here, SL New England's club and casino, yet another way to make money; gather a lot of folks, spread the word, get listed even higher in the in-game search engine, rent more space for higher prices, attract more interest from local retail businesses, etc etc. It's a complicated equation, as mentioned before; but as you can see, this couple (and thousands more like them) are finding enough revenue from such projects to afford investing something like $20,000 to $30,000 a year there.

Most of these estates were empty at the time of my particular visit; so I ended up hopping off my boat at one and taking a look around. What you're seeing in this picture, for example, is probably around 1,000 square meters of land; and according to their website, that would cost you about $25 to first purchase from them, then another $75 a year in land usage fees. But that's even if you could get them to sell you a parcel that small; the only ones listed for sale at their website are for around 4,000 square meters apiece, or roughly three more parcels like this connected right behind (and of course for significantly more money). Also don't forget, that much like Disney's RL "Celebration" in Florida, SL New England is a "planned community;" by purchasing land from them you're agreeing to abide by their covenant, which lays out precisely what style of architecture you can use, how high your buildings can be, what they can be used for, and other such details such as no spinning or flashing objects.

The administrators of SL New England are pretty plain about it; that the entire goal is to create a persistent and immersive version of New England, that those who buy land there get that and want to be a part of it, and that anyone who doesn't has lots of other choices available to them and are welcome to them. As a result, the themed eight-sim build is simply a wonder to behold, just an endless series of fascinating nooks and crannies, half of them seemingly containing a turn-of-the-century lighthouse on top of everything else. This is a thing that I think a lot of people have a hard time understanding right now -- that the grid is both Immersionalist and Augmentalist at the same time, and the only SL businesses there doing really well right now are the ones who have caught on to this. Part of why I'd want to own land here is because it's a great deal -- a good price for some amazing land, a place where I could build a hell of an ITG headquarters or even run a full-sized small business. But part of it is for the virtual-reality aspect of it -- the beauty, the tranquility, the strict zoning laws carefully maintained, the way it would instantly wow any client you brought to the space. It's not an 'either/or' situation but an 'and.'

My new sailboat, by the way, the "Flying Tako" 3.2, works fantastically; just as smooth and beginner-friendly as the 2.1 version I had been using, but now with all these cool new bells and whistles (like a graphic wind indicator displayed as a HUD, seen in the above screenshots). This is another part of the Immersionalist argument, that a lot of Augmentalists haven't seem to have caught onto yet; that there aren't tens of thousands of people flocking to sign up to SL each day because they're excited about having yet more crappy promotional junk thrown at them. Of all the things I do in SL regularly right now, all of them, the thing I enjoy the most is what you're looking at above; an hour or so of simple and slow sailing around an interesting location, gently guiding my craft around bends and caves and whatnot, occasionally jumping off to tour an intriguing build or to do a little scuba diving.

As strange as it may sound to non-players, it's that close-to-reality experience that I find most enjoyable about SL; how a leisurely cruise there can in some ways actually be the cathartic sea experience that a RL boat trip always is. I appreciate marketers being in the grid, to be sure, and is definitely generating a lot more news to report than I thought I'd have at this point; I just wish, I guess, that those people would also take a Saturday afternoon once in awhile to go sailing in SL (or backpacking, or shopping, or dancing, or gambling, or playing shooter-style games), and understand what's so special about the place besides the opportunity to hand out a million copies of a semi-cruddy RL product recreation.

Check out, by the way, what one private individual has done with their land there; they've turned it into a turn-of-the-century coastal airport! Cool!

And here's yet another cool area of SL New England I came across; what's called the 'East End,' where landowners have access to both a snaky little river on one end and the open sea on the other. Man, I'm telling you, what a cool place! If I had several hundred dollars a year to invest in something like SL right now, I'd think seriously about getting a parcel in this area.

Here, some nimble sailing for a few minutes, while traversing a narrow channel between "real water" and "blue limbo." Blue limbo, by the way, is simply what happens when a sim (or server at the Linden headquarters) stops, and another new server has yet to be installed next to it; sailing into it will give you nothing but a screenful of blue for your troubles, and allow you to do nothing else but sail back to the sim from which you came.

Whoo, nighttime by the time I got back from my tour! That was a pleasant little bonus to the end, I have to admit; sailing back to the main island under the soft artificial glow of this quaint New England establishment.

Here I am back on the mainland, in fact, checking out yet another way the owners of SL New England make money off their investment; by leasing a certain amount of space to retail vendors, who sell such related items as seafaring clothes, vehicles, even entire New England houses and estates for new residents. Smart, so smart! It's a way many creative professionals have found steady revenue within the grid so far, in fact; by finding a niche, specializing in that niche, and selling their wares where that niche is. It's a great example of a capitalistic ideal, the "perfect environment" where wholesaler, retailer and customer all come together, and all get something positive out of it. No wonder so many people call SL the libertarian wet dream.

And then here we are, finishing the tour off where we started, at Bear's Nantucket Yacht Club, which regularly holds live events but just not on the particular night I was visiting. Great build, great environment, great attitude -- what more can I say, other than that I wasn't paid to say any of it (which I wasn't, and in fact don't even know the owners)? Go visit if you have a chance?

And of course, what's a day of sailing without a pint of two of the old black stuff afterwards, at the salty local seaside tavern? Arrgh, matey! I drink with the sailors because I am a sailor! AARrrrgh, you old tar! Hope you're enjoying water week here at ITG; and as always, if you have a water-based place you think I should check out, leave the info either here as a comment or via email to inthegird [at] gmail.com. YYaarrrgh, mateys!