In the Grid

"In The Grid" has shut down, but "Fabb" continues

2008-03-23T21:55:24Z

I guess I should've put up a formal notice awhile ago, but wanted to let everyone officially know that as of spring 2007, this blog stopped actively publishing. Unfortunately it had nothing to do with the popularity of ITG itself -- at its height, after all, it was one of the top-15 Second Life blogs on the planet, according to Technorati.com -- simply that the game client for Second Life grew too big and complicated for my puny little Mac Mini here in Chicago, and as the owner of a new small business (The Chicago Center for Literature and Photography) I can't justify buying a brand-new computer just to play a videogame. It's a real shame, but I do at least want to thank all of those who followed along regularly with In The Grid, attended the group's events (both in-game and real-world), and consented to interesting long-form interviews. And in that spirit, rest assured that ITG's archives will remain up for some long time to come, for all you interview subjects who wish to continue linking to the articles about you, as well as those of you coming in through Google searches at later dates.

Now, that said, I do now have 1,536 square meters of virtual land in the grid, as well as plans to try to make some pocket money from a micro-business there; and that's why I still continue to actively make plans for my Second Life prefabricated housing company "Fabb." (This image above, for example, is a nighttime shot from the aerie inside "Asimov," one of Fabb's first three prefab starter homes to go on sale to the public in a few weeks.) It's just that I've set up a new blog for that, so as not to confuse it with the old ITG journalism publication; the dedicated Fabb blog, featuring regular how-to articles on building as well as the latest with the company, can now be found at fabbhomes.blogspot.com.

I want to thank all of you regular gridhoppers again for coming by during this publication's "salad year" (spring 2006 to spring 2007), when interest in MMOs and virtual worlds seemed limitless and the amount of investment money available seemingly unstoppable. I hope in that year I was able to record some honest stories about what life in one of these virtual worlds was like, what was legitimately cool, what was essentially BS, how various corporate structures and underground artists were able to take advantage of these situations, and what came of them. Here's hoping that the couple hundred essays I wrote on the subject in that year will help people in the future understand the first big explosion of public interest in MMOs in those years. And don't forget that I'm still writing about MMO and virtual-world subjects at the CCLaP website; just that I focus exclusively now on interesting cutting-edge artists doing experimental projects within the grid itself, not any other types of residents. All new essays on the subject (post-2007, that is) can be found there under the usual "Gridhopping" search term.

Gridhopping: Kala Pixie's 'Particlarium' show

2007-03-13T20:40:43Z

Okay, yes, it's true; after two weeks of being completely offline against my will, then another week of playing catch-up, I'm finally starting to get out to other Second Life activities again, so as to actually have stuff to write about at this blog! As always, your tips and suggestions are most welcome, and can be sent to inthegrid [at] gmail.com; for example, the other evening I heard from friend and former advertiser Samantha Poindexter, who has apparently been attending an event regularly that she thought I would dig.

And dig it I did! It turned out to be a regular exhibition that's given by a visual artist in SL named Kala Pixie; she specializes in particle effects, of all things, but takes a very different approach to it than the way we usually think of the subject. See, for those who don't know, objects in Second Life can not only be static objects, but can also contain scripts that will trigger different animations and the like; a popular example is a prim that will exude a series of glowy abstract Photoshop images in a repeated pattern, as if you were literally looking at a hallucinatory rainbow or something, or a 3D version of the screensaver you had back in the late 1980s.

Most of the time in the grid, such particle effects are put to annoying use in jewelry for young people; bracelets, for example, that will drown a danceclub in pulsating neon light every 60 seconds, or fill a room with little transparent hearts that slowly burst while you watch. (Such jewelry is so prevalent among young people, in fact, that it's unofficially known as "bling" and is banned from a lot of the more popular clubs.) Ah, but that's not how Kala uses particle effects; she instead marries them to an open outdoor pavilion, a viewing platform of sorts where a whole group of people can gather at once, then orchestrates what amounts to a cross between a fireworks show and a Laserium one, the effects themselves manually controlled by her throughout the course of the show.

Oh yeah, that's right, you can already imagine the possibilities; picture the most kickass stoner-rock laser show one could ever put on, with the effects literally happening around your body at eye level, but also with the chance to suddenly pull your view back 100 meters and watch the whole thing at a wide angle. It's cool, I tells ya! In fact, as I was mentioning to Kala that night, she might just have stumbled across the elusive "holy grail" of Second Life, that for three years everyone has been seeking but no one has yet found; she might just have discovered the very first type of live event in the grid that people would pay a cover charge to attend.

See, this has been a huge problem in the grid among artistic entrepreneurs, the ones who are paying the thousands of dollars to manage live-event islands in the first place; that although people will flock to such things as musical performances there, very few of them are willing to pay any kind of decent money to do such a thing (besides perhaps an American dollar or two as a tip). And this is to be expected, of course, in the digital age in which we live; in a world with YouTube, RSS, streaming radio and the like, it's becoming more and more difficult to get people to voluntarily pay for digital content, and more and more complex schemes are having to be invented as a result. In a way this is great, of course, especially for the end user; but someone's gotta pay for that theatre or club where you're all gathering, and oftentimes the owner can't afford to foot the entire thing simply as a fun hobby.

Kala's show, though, is something else entirely; it's an experience you literally cannot get in any other medium besides a live 3D online environment. That's part of the problem, of course, with trying to make money there from live shows, stripper clubs, movie nights and the like; in all those cases, ultimately you're just recreating something that can be naturally done better in the real world, with your customers reminded of it every moment they're there. The "Particlarium," though (as I call it, anyway -- "Particle Laserium," get it?), is not an exact recreation from real life; it's kinda like a fireworks show, sure, and kinda like a laser show, but with an extra element that one usually doesn't get at either. As I was saying to Kala that evening, if she were to package this together with musical themes (an all-Radiohead show, for example), and offer it to the general public every Saturday night (which, let's face it, is when a whole lot of bored stoned people are on SL), I could easily see lots of people willing to pay 5 American bucks for a 90-minute show. If you sell out a show (approximately 50 tickets), that's $250 in hard real cash you're making every Saturday night, just for putting on a freakin' laser show for a bunch of cartoon characters. Ah, if we could all have such a life!

Anyway, Kala is not anywhere near doing such a thing yet, but she does right now take private appointments all during the week; ~~she has no official price for such a thing, but simply encourages you to tip her afterwards whatever you feel the experience was worth~~. (UPDATE: Kala actually does have a fixed rate for a one-hour show; it's L$750, or about 3 American dollars.) To schedule a show (and especially to schedule a group show, hint hint), simply IM "Kala Pixie" while in the grid. Thanks to both her and Samantha for the thoroughly entertaining experience the other evening!

Fabb: A tour of "Ion," my first mature starter home

2007-03-12T18:13:44Z

So okay, I admit it -- that for the last four or five days, ever since my internet connection here at home got turned back on, instead of doing the things I should've been doing with my time (like this blog, getting caught up on email, etc), I've been spending obsessive hours in the Second Life sandboxes instead, finalizing the styles and designing the first houses for my new prefabricated building business, Fabb. For those who don't know, by the way, the reason I'm so anxious to get some houses finished and for sale is because this is an actual working experiment as well; an experiment to see how fast it will take me to generate 700 American dollars in revenue through Fabb, thus letting me finally afford a new Windows gaming-optimized mid-level computer, thus making my SL experience so much better and letting me cover popular events, participate in arcade-style activities, etc etc etc. It's no secret that I'm unemployed in RL right now, and just couldn't possibly justify taking what little money I have and spending it on a new computer, just to make my SL experience a better one; if I generate the money through SL activities, though, that's just enough of a justification.

So anyway, I'm happy to say that my first mature starter home, one designed specifically for 512-square-meter plots, is currently rezzed at the ITG headquarters [Yongdong 185/279/21] and is just a few steps from completion, for anyone who'd like to stop by and check it out. And by "mature," I of course mean that I actually designed and built an entire starter home before that one as well, but then unfortunately got it rezzed on my land and realized that I didn't like it very much, so have decided to abandon it. That's it that you're seeing in the above photos; as you can kinda tell from the 2D images, the design looked fine in its original paper form, but then turned out to be just too convoluted a space when actually erected in the metaverse. Plus, as much as I like that particular design, I was realizing that it's simply too fantastical and space-age; that for a prefab home to really be a winner, and especially for it to fly off the shelves, it also has to invoke a strong emotional sense of reality to a potential customer almost from the start.

Examining the mistakes I made with the first prototype in more detail, I realized that an even smaller footprint was needed for the house to give it breathing room on such a tiny parcel; I eventually knocked it down, in fact, to 280 square meters (20 x 14), from the 288 m2 of the first prototype (24 x 12). This then knocks down the first-floor living space to a convenient 10 x 10, which saves enormously on prims (since that's the maximum size a single prim can be stretched); but as you can guess, this also forces you into a situation where you basically only have one room per floor, for a grand total of maybe three rooms altogether if you count the rooftop patio. Which, hey, is just the reality of starter plots, with nothing that can be done about it; but believe me, it's a special challenge that lies in front of the virtual architect, of how to design an intriguing, functional, aesthetic, unique, fantastical yet realistic living environment with so many limits attached.

I figured that the best way to work with such a space would be to create as large an open-air atrium inside the house as possible; this in turn would give residents a lot more breathing room with their cameras while inside, instead of that cramped, claustrophobic feeling one gets while inside a room with low ceilings. And this of course brought me to the Mid-Century Modernist style of architecture, for obvious reasons: because they too dealt with small houses and large interior atriums; that their real-life houses look surprisingly like most creations within Second Life, because of the stark Euclidean nature of both; because they were the architects of note when the term "space age" was originally created, and most associated with the interesting of cool, sleek housing; and because such designs allow me to slap a whole variety of appropriate textures onto them, thus keeping in line with my vision of Fabb's style selection. And so armed with this new vision, I sat down at a public sandbox one day, and eight hours later (give or take a few breaks) had my first house that I'm really happy with -- you're seeing it above there, and it's called "Ion," named after yet another small entity that packs a big punch.

Now, there's basically one question I'm obsessively asking myself throughout this process, whenever it comes time to design another house: "What are the most fun things about being a homeowner in Second Life, and what are the crap things that a lot of people don't mind paying someone else to do for them?" For example, I think one of the most fun things about being a homeowner is the chance for customization: to be able to put down whatever kind of furniture you want, wherever you want it, add such home improvements as fireplaces and pools, even tack on entire extra walls, rooms or wings. What I did when designing Ion, then, was to keep this in mind, and to design my limited set of rooms with an eye towards what they'll most likely be popularly used for. Here above, for example, you're seeing the one-room first floor; I imagine that most people will furnish it much like a loft-style living room (couches, rug, recliner, etc), which is why I designed those windows the way I did, to give a particularly dramatic view when sitting inside at chair level.

As soon as I add the appropriate scripts, by the way, both those glass walls and the front door will have the ability to slide when touched, from a closed position to an open one and back again. Instead of the usual handles, I decided to come up with some coolio space-age ones on my own in Photoshop, which you're seeing above; technically, of course, you'll be able to click anywhere on the door or windows to get them to slide, but I just enjoy the panel-like way these icons came out. Then another script that will be embedded in all windows is a controllable tint function; that yin-yang button you see above is my self-made tint control for the house, which the owner will be able to click on repeatedly to cycle from completely transparent windows to completely opaque ones.

And then here's the second floor, which people get to via an elevator I haven't built yet. It's even smaller than the first floor, as you can see; I'm envisioning people putting not much more than a modernist bed up here, for example, or perhaps a dining table and chairs. As with the first floor, this room also has glass panels the size of walls, that will eventually slide from a closed to open position when touched; this floor also has its own window tint control, with both it and the first-floor one controlling every window in the house simultaneously.

And then here we are making our way to the roof, via an outdoor set of fantastical stone steps so that I wouldn't have to devour precious indoor space. This is a cheat of sorts that I think all starter homes would do good to include: a way to create a "third floor" of living and partying space, while only needing enough prims for a solid floor and railing. This, I'm imagining, is where those with an interest would set up a personal dancefloor; that's why I left it nice and blank, so that a large number of people can gather in a clutter-free environment.

And then finally, here are some shots of Ion fully furnished, a model home of sorts to give you ideas of what you too could do with your own. Now, please note the following: 1) I did not design any of the furniture you see above (for those who are curious, a lot of it came from the excellent, excellent Maximum Minimum); and 2) On a 512-m2 plot, you would not have enough prims to erect every piece of furniture you see here simultaneously (although you would, for example, if you erected this on a 1,532-m2 plot). I also included a few "glamour" shots of the house at sunset, basically shots you'd see in a brochure or on a kiosk as a way of selling the place to potential customers. Man, just look how sharp that place is, daddio! I feel like listening to some Dave Brubeck, attending a beat poetry show, and invading Korea!

So what do you think? Is L$1,200 (5 American dollars, 3 pounds, 4 euros) too outrageous a sum to ask for this? Not according to my research, anyway; most other prefabs are selling either a comparably complex house for a lot more, or a comparably cheap house but ugly and with no amenities. I think if I could get a total of three or four such starter designs done, and get each of them released under all seven of Fabb's styles (Forest, Beach, Sky, Snow, Water, Urban, Noir), I have a feeling that I'd soon be racking up regular $5 Paypal transactions, and be on my way to a new computer before I even know it. Hmm? Comments and suggestions gladly accepted; you can email them to inthegrid [at] gmail.com if you don't feel like sharing them with the public.

For those who are super curious, by the way, here above is a sneak preview of the next house I'm working on, which I'm calling "Crescent" and is about three times the size of the Ion starter home (that is, a 900-m2 footprint [30 x 30], versus the 280 m2 [20 x 14] of the starter home), designed ideally as a private home for a 2,000-m2 plot owner, or perhaps as a retail store for a fashion boutique. But as always, more on this project another day. I'm still looking for people, by the way, who would like free copies of these houses, in exchange for letting future customers come by and check the house out as it exists on their land; if interested, just contact me via email at the above address.

Twelve days without the internet -- that's a long time!

2007-03-07T17:00:58Z

Hello, dear gridhoppers! And my apologies for no one hearing from me in so long, either here at the blog or via email; for the last twelve days, in fact, my home broadband internet connection has been down, and it finally didn't click back on again until late into the evening yesterday. (See, it's actually one of my freelance clients who provides my home internet access; but they've been having some technical glitches recently, which is what caused the forced vacation.) Believe me, I missed the internet more than you missed me; I hadn't realized, in fact, how dependent I had become on instant access to weather, TV listings, news feeds and the like, until it was suddenly gone and with no idea when I was going to get it back (but see my personal blog for more on that). Anyway, I'm happy to report that the connection is now firmly back on, which means daily forays once again for me into the grid, and daily entries here at the blog about what I've found.

While I had all that offline time on my hands last week, by the way, I ended up doing just a whole messload of paper sketches regarding my new prefabricated housing business "Fabb," and the various buildings I'd like to include in the first wave of the company's catalog; I also finally taught myself Google Sketchup, the company's 3D drawing program for Google Earth, so that I could do some multi-dimensional views of my paper drawings while offline, and see whether the drawings were making inherent spatial sense when fully realized. (From above, respectively, for those who are interested: "Jalapeno," my first starter home [specifically for 512 m2 plots]; "Crescent," my first small mansion or store/club [for plots between 2,000 and 4,000 m2]; and "Crabb," my first large mansion or commercial building [for plots between 4,000 and 8,000 m2]. The eventual price of these will respectively be L$1,200 [around US$5]; L$3,600 [around US$15]; and L$6,000 [around US$25].)

(UPDATE: And here are the downloadable 3D files themselves, for fellow Sketchup users who'd like to play with them: [jalapeno.skp]; [crescent.skp]; [crabb.skp]. You'll quickly notice, by the way, that some of these files are much better than others; I'm basically teaching myself Sketchup through random discovery, which of course makes the learning curve quite unstable.)

Of course, it's bitter irony that on the exact day I get my internet access back, I catch the flu and can barely move; but I suppose that's my fault and one I don't entirely mind, in that two days ago I also finally gave up cigarettes after a 19-year habit. And you fellow former heavy smokers know what I'm going through, of course; I'm going through nicotine withdrawal this week, a very real and verifiable thing, which in the case of heavy smokers like me manifests itself the same way as a mild flu bug (fever, achy muscles, sore throat, extra phlegm, sleep problems, etc), for about four days altogether. I bring all this up, of course, because I know I'm going to be extra snarky with just about everyone over the next couple of weeks (although I'll admit that the nicotine patches I'm using for the first time help immensely with those "I'll kill you all in your sleep" moments); I just wanted to mention it, and please beg you all to show extra patience with me over the next month both here, in the grid and via email. Your understanding is appreciated!

Fabb: My first house starts coming together

2007-02-23T21:44:52Z

So as mentioned earlier this week, I've been thinking recently about starting up a new business venture in SL, to replace the new adult blog -avatar- that I've now decided not to open after all; I'm thinking of opening a new "prefab" store, actually, to borrow an architectural term, one I'll call "Fabb" if I end up going through with it. Prefab, for those who don't know, is short for "prefabricated housing," and is a subject the real-life architectural industry has already been dealing with for a century or longer; but as you can imagine, the term takes on an entirely different relevance within the grid, which after all is a place where one can literally stick an entire medieval castle into a cardboard shoebox, then simply yank it back out when one is ready to live in it. Combine this with the fact that duplication and distribution of goods in SL is free, and you can see that virtual architecture is atually a pretty good business when it comes to labor versus profit -- once the complicated work of the prototype itself is done, infinite copies of that house can be sold into perpetuity with no extra effort, leaving the architect free to develop a bigger and bigger "long tail" of dwellings for sale in the first place.

My idea with Fabb is to construct modernist, space-agish houses that are nonetheless highly livable, taking just a bit of an advantage of the fantastical elements available in the grid (like waterfalls that can travel through rooms, decks that don't require load-bearing pillars, etc), to create something that at once seems from the future but also that one could actually buy in real life today (if one was rich enough, that is). The plan, then, is to create a series of dwellings with different footprints (20 x 10 meters, 30 x 30, 40 x 20, etc), each appropriate for a different kind of common land parcel out there; and then to also create a series of visual styles for Fabb, named for the types of environments in the grid where the houses would work best, and to create a version of each style for each different footprint I design. That way I get three or four sellable houses for each prototype I work on, vastly improving my work-versus-money ratio; plus customers get two different ways to shop, either deciding on a style first and then finding the size that's right for them, or vice-versa.

I'm in the middle of designing my first dwelling as we speak, actually, a three-story beach house with a total footprint of 30 x 20 meters. (That's 600 square meters total, for those playing along at home; in other words, a dominating structure if placed on a 1,024-m2 plot, not so much if placed on 1,536-m2 or more.) For this first house, in fact, I'm keeping detailed notes on just how long each step of the creative process is taking me; this is going to help me determine just what kind of labor/pay ratio I can expect in the future, as I get better and better at each step, which of course will help me determine whether or not to open Fabb in the first place. Anyway, I've now put a total of seven man-hours into the project (or should that be av-hours?), and believe it or not am actually getting dangerously close to having a completed house on my hands; for all of you like me who have always been curious about the planning and construction process in SL, I thought today I'd share some of my building notes with you.

Hour 1. My first hour on the project, before I did anything else, was spent in a cafe in my neighborhood here in Chicago, merely doodling out some of the ideas I had; I'm old-skool, after all (i.e. got my art degree in the '80s, before the introduction of computer graphics), which means that I was trained to think visually literally by holding pen and paper in hand. As you can see in the above images, how I started was to basically draw out the boundaries of the footprint itself, then start throwing down 2D rectangles until I was aesthetically pleased with how they interacted; I then extrapolated those into 3D boxes and did a series of perspective drawings (both from the front and back), just to make sure it wasn't totally a waste of my time to go with this particular scheme.

Hour 2. My next step, then, was to actually go into the grid and rez up a 3D version of my sketches, moving as quickly as possible using only a series of featureless transparent cubes; working out details on paper first is good and all, don't get me wrong, but ultimately sorta defeats the purpose of working within SL to begin with. This step was done for one reason and one reason only, so that my avatar could actually walk around within my "3D blueprint" and make sure I hadn't made any glaring mistakes in my planning; and as you can see if you compare these images to the original drawings, there were indeed a whole series of small mistaken assumptions I made in my pen-and-ink plans, which thankfully can be quickly corrected in SL merely by pulling a bit on the side of a prim. As a newbie architect, I'm glad I went through this step; as I get better and better at building, though, I have a feeling that I'll eventually be able to drop this step altogether, which is why I was curious how long this particular step would take me.

Hours 3 and 4. Okay, so then I was ready for the step that so far has turned out to be the longest individual one; the construction of the actual house frame, or in other words just the walls, floors and ceilings. And again, this is a step that I'm envisioning will take less and less time, the more experienced I get at building and the more grunt work I put in; that's the beauty of building in SL, after all, is that each time you perfect another basic building block (say, for example, a 10 x 2 x 2 rounded pillar that's been sheared into quarters and textured with tan stucco), that's one less piece you have to create for future houses, and instead can just plop down and shift-copy to your heart's content. This is also the step, by the way, where you can first start seeing the stylistic details that will be featured in all of Fabb's dwellings, as a way of setting it apart from all the other prefab companies out there (and there's a lot of them); the rounded corners, the elongated decks, the narrow horizontal windows, the complex interplay of indoor and outdoor space, etc. That's the hope, anyway; that eventually, a person will be able to randomly spot one of my houses in the wild and immediately think to themselves, "Why, that's a Fabb house!"

Now, that said, this step is also fraught with complexities, which I'm sure I'll be getting into in more detail in future entries; in particular I'm finding the process of matching up stretched textures to be a bit of a f*****g nightmare, for example all those mismatched wood planks you see on the floor in the above photos, a situation which comes about by having prims of different sizes but with the same texture next to each other. (In a nutshell, the way one corrects for this is by changing the texture dimensions on one of the prims; to have it repeat a little more or a little less, stretched a little more or a little less, offset a little more or a little less, until the pictures on both prims are in perfect alignment with each other. Can you see why this might be a bit of a nightmare when you have two different-sized prims next to each other?) Anyway, I'm already discovering a series of tricks that can help ease this process, as well as such other maddening details as getting prims to exactly line up; like I said, I will undoubtedly be sharing these tips in future entries.

Hour 5. Okay, so now that I had the framework together, it was time to take a much more detailed look at the house so far, and to start tweaking the various elements that I thought could be done better. For example, one of the big things I did during this step was to deepen the floor/ceiling between each story, from basically a flat panel to a slab a meter thick; this, it turned out, not only helped greatly with meshing the stories together afterwards, but also gave me an aesthetic white strip along the exterior of the house in intriguing locations and patterns. Also, I decided that having the entirety of the decks be white was just a little too modernist; that's why I changed the center of each to now appear like wooden slats, just like the flooring on the inside of the house. Also, this was the step where I first put in the fantastical waterfall I had envisioned for this house from the start; one that starts on the second floor as a pool, then pours through a glass wall in order to form an outdoor waterfall, as well as inside the house where the pool spills over the second-floor balcony. (Sorry, by the way, for the waterfall looking less than spectacular in the above photos; I happened to be having problems with the rendering engine right when these images were taken.)

Hour 6 (which was actually an hour and a half). All right, we're finally starting to get a house on our hands! Now that the basics of the frame were becoming more and more finalized, in fact, it was time to get into the structure and start adding the details that will eventually sell the thing; the means of moving about within the home, that is, the hallways and staircases and other elements that avatars directly deal with when moving around. Let's face facts, after all; with the building process in SL being as easy as it is, it takes neither an exceptional amount of smarts nor training if all one wants to do is assemble four walls and a ceiling there. Where the crucial difference lays, then, in all the competing prefab businesses out there, is the one element that does take smarts and training to master, which is the flow of the house; of how easy or intuitive it is to move from one part of the dwelling to another, of how the different parts of the dwelling interact with each other not only functionally but aesthetically. This is just my opinion, of course; but when all is said and done, I do believe such details to be the fundamental thing separating the merely decent builders in SL from the truly great ones, no matter if it's homes or clothing or vehicles you're talking about.

Hour 7 (which was actually a half-hour). And then here's the latest work I've done on the house, just a couple of hours before writing this report, which as you can see mostly involved finer and finer details; the stairway between the second and third stories, railings for each story and the like. By the way, in these shots you're seeing the glass walls as they'll appear in the "open" position; these will in fact be giant sliding doors by the time this whole process is over, which the homeowner will be able to open and close simply by clicking on them. For those who are curious, the windows will also have multiple tints that a homeowner will able to change by clicking on a button; for those who don't know, among other things you can even embed interactive scripts within prims in SL, which is what powers both of the features mentioned, as well as such things as lockable doors.

Okay, so that's it for now; and as you can see, I don't think it's going to be much longer at all before I have a fully finished house on my hands. And what's after that? Why, find me some testers, of course! And this is where you potentially come into play, dear reader; to be precise, I'm looking for five to ten people who would enjoy receiving a free copy of this house when it's finished, in return for filling out a questionnaire on what they think of it, as well as letting me come by and take photos of it rezzed on their land. Remember, you will need a plot of land at least 1,024 square meters in size in order to use this house, and ideally 1,500 square meters or more; if you do own such a plot, though, and would be interested in being a Fabb tester, do be sure to drop me a line at inthegrid [at] gmail.com and let me know.

By the way, these days mark the first time I've ever gone seriously shopping in the grid for textures; and ooh, man, have you ever tried such a thing yourself? It's a nightmare, frankly, and a perfect example of how SL is not actually the best option for every online activity out there; textures are cheap, after all, meaning that the only way to make money from them is to have thousands of them, which when selling in SL means that you need thousands of prims on display as well, each of them with a different texture rezzed on its side. Now compare this, for example, to how one would do this through a website; how you could simply have the different textures displayed as JPEGS on various pages, taking almost no time at all to load, and with a search engine as well so that one could simply skip directly to what one is looking for.

This always makes me laugh, to tell you the truth, when some new SL fanatic starts talking about all the various things that could be done in that environment, that don't actually make any sense to do there; like that executive from Amazon.com, for example, who was recently talking in public about how cool it'd be for Amazon to build a superstore in SL, and how much better the shopping experience would be because customers "could browse and ask for help just like a retail bookstore." Well, excuse me for saying this, but wasn't the whole reason Amazon became popular in the first place was that it wasn't like a retail bookstore? That's what makes Amazon so great, after all; that you can simply type in what you're looking for and have the book instantly delivered to your hands, out of a total catalog of titles that would literally take dozens of miles to cover, if one were to ever build a retail bookstore for all of them.

That's what Amazon would be if they ever came into Second Life: they'd be a 100-mile-long bookstore, and to browse the shelves with any expediency they would literally have to provide motorcycles to their customers. Jeez, I can barely stand going to the mall to begin with; could you even imagine what a nightmare it'd be to shop a virtual Amazon in such a fashion? Face it, people -- there's a reason certain things have become a lot more popular on the web than they are in the physical world, and just because you can fly and teleport in SL doesn't necessarily change this. There are certain activities that are simply better and easier to do on the web, and will always be better and easier, no matter how cool an environment SL is. I wish more texture vendors would take this lesson to heart!

Question: Do you know of any work/pay private sims?

2007-02-21T21:26:24Z

I've got a question for all you smart gridhopping readers out there; has anyone come across a private sim yet that's funded through a work/pay system, by which part of the bills are individually covered by residents and part of it generated through group labor? I had this intriguing idea the other day for such a community, and am curious now if a group out there is already trying such a thing; read on for the admittedly nerdy details...

For convenience I'll call my sim concept "Walden Three," based on it being partly inspired by psychologist BF Skinner's 1948 utopian novel Walden Two. (And before you get your panties in a bunch, let me mention that I don't buy many of Skinner's theories about behaviorism and the like; I am, however, a fan of that particular book.) Basically, you start by zoning the sim into two equally sized areas:

--Private land: Ten estates, 3,276 square meters apiece, each belonging to one of the ten residents of Walden Three who exist at any given time. Residents are allowed to do anything with their private estate they want, given that it meets with Walden Three's aesthetic covenant. Since only half the costs of the sim are covered individually by residents, this makes each person's monthly "tier fee" (or virtual property tax) half the usual cost -- US$12, that is (or 6 pounds, or 9 euros), versus the $25 per month elsewhere for that amount of land. (The initial $1,675 cost of the land, by the way, would be split equally among the ten founding residents; that is, it'll cost a person $167 in advance to "buy in" to Walden, $12 a month thereafter, with of course a chance to sell that land for a profit later.)

--Community land: The other half of the sim's total area, then, or 32,768 square meters, would be public land to support the Walden Three community; a mall, a central gathering space, a live-event venue and more, along with lots and lots of undeveloped terrain for such things as parks and nature walks. The monthly tier fee for this half comes to $125; this would be generated (hopefully) through the group commercial activities of the sim, such as the goods sold in the mall, tips at live events, etc. If less than $125 is generated in a given month, residents have to equally make up the difference; if more, then residents get an equally-distributed break on their own tier fee that month.

In return for the reduced rates, then, residents of Walden Three are required to perform three types of work for the sim each month, all of which help maintain the public half of the island and generate a profit:

1) Creative work -- a certain amount of time each month working on individual creative projects, that once finished are donated to Walden for group profit. This would include goods made for the sim's stores, the producing and hosting of live events, marketing and publicity work, and the re-landscaping periodically of small areas of public land, in order to keep the environment a constantly evolving one that people will want to visit repeatedly.

2) Labor -- a certain amount of time each month helping with the day-to-day chores of the sim. This would include working the mall, manning the information center, doing technical work at live events, contributing to the sim's group blog, etc.

3) Civic duties -- a certain amount of time each month maintaining the sim's administration. This would include regular "Planner" meetings (to use a term borrowed from Skinner), where the ten residents of Walden decide parliamentary-style on the overall vision and strategy of the sim; and also time spent each week as a "Manager," someone with a detailed knowledge over one specific area of operations, and who assigns the specific duties that other members perform in that area as part of their labor.

It occurred to me the other day that this might be a really great way to run a sim; so that not only is one's personal bills cut in half, but an air of cooperation and collaboration permanently established as well, so as to make the public half of the sim as profitable as possible. So, know of anyone who's actually doing this already in the grid? If so, make sure to mention it in the comments along with their location, or you can email me directly at inthegrid [at] gmail.com. Your tips are greatly appreciated!

Photos from a winter boat ride; plus more on SL as a 3D social network

2007-02-21T19:14:07Z

So as I mentioned yesterday, as part of the changing editorial focus here at ITG I've decided to start doing more tours of large areas of the grid, and filing multimedia reports about what I found. This is one of the things I can still easily do in the grid these days, after all, is explore large areas on my own during times of low lag, versus the popular live events I mentioned yesterday that I'm having a harder and harder time even getting connected to anymore. For today's trip, then, I decided to make a boat ride down the entire length of the main "winter river" in SL; that is, the river that runs through the section of the grid that's perpetually covered in snow and ice.

I admit that I'm kinda fascinated with the winter section of SL, mostly because I don't know anything about it; how it came about, when it came about, why Linden Lab decided to create this but not any other specialized types of terraforming on the mainland. Plus, I've noticed a strange kind of unified quiet in the winter section of the grid as well, that you don't normally see from other sections of the mainland; whether on purpose or on accident, the area just seems to have a lot more tasteful residences and a lot less glaring big-box stores than one randomly finds elsewhere. And of course I just find the winter section of SL to be aesthetically pleasing to begin with; and how can you turn down the prospect of full-speed boating in winter without ever getting chilly or catching cold?

And thus it is that I recently spent three hours successfully making the trip, stopping numerous times to check out an untold amount of random crap, snapping copious amounts of photos along the way. And as you can see in these images, there's something about the now greatly expanded grid that's still amazingly true, despite the doomsayers predicting that the mainstream would be the creative death of SL; that when you provide people with the means to create almost anything they can imagine, people will use those tools to create an astonishingly diverse amount of stuff. I mean, sure, you're also seeing a lot more copies of popular prefabs on the mainland these days too, although even that's a bit misleading; most owners of prefabs, after all, end up doing at least some amount of customization, and of course with landscaping also being a free public tool, no two estates ever end up looking exactly the same.

Spending all that time in a row the other night looking at homes got me to thinking again as well, concerning one of the many definitions people use to try to describe this unique environment; how in many ways, SL is not much more than a highly powerful social network with a 3D interface, kinda like MySpace on steroids. When you break it all down, after all, SL at its core does a remarkably similar thing as MySpace and all the other web-based social networks out there: all of them provide a system of tools to the general public, that allow people to easily express their personality online, at which point other people can find and interact with them based on shared interests. That's pretty much it when it comes to social networks, whether you're talking about a 800-pound gorilla like MySpace or a highly specialized one like LibraryThing (a social network specifically for nerdy book lovers).

In fact, when you look at SL from the standpoint of traditional online features, the grid actually combines two different popular online models into one intriguingly unique environment:

--Like MySpace and other social networks, SL gives landowners a series of tools in which to express their personality: the ability to share photos, audio and video, the ability to change the look and behavior of their "profile" (a web page with MySpace, actual land in SL), etc. Like MySpace, SL landowners get their own "address," which people can use to directly visit their space; or, a visitor can discover one's space tangentially, perhaps through a neighbor/friend or maybe by searching on a particular topic at a centralized database.

--At the same time though, SL also functions as a large-scale chat community, much like logging into ICQ or AIM on a busy Saturday night. Much like AIM, SL provides a plethora of smaller group spaces (land in the grid, "rooms" in a chat environment), where smaller clusters of people can get together away from the larger crowd and speak on their own. Like AIM, a variety of controls can be placed on these group spaces; they can be public or private, advertised or unlisted, dedicated to a specific subject, etc. And much like AIM, the system can also be used for private one-on-one communication, as well as "mail" designed to be read at a later date.

So yeah, already a pretty intriguing environment when you look at it that way; kinda like if you slipped Spanish Fly one night to both Friendster and Yahoo Chat, I suppose, locked them in a cheap motel room, then nine months later took custody of their bastard child. (NOTE: I hereby officially apologize for that horrifically strained metaphor.) Ah, but then you add the killer aspect of SL, the one thing missing from all these other online services, which is the persistent 3D environment where all interaction happens -- a place that's slightly different every time you visit, a place that changes when you're not even there, a place with a permanent geography and shared public roads and even its own persistent laws of physics (albeit sometimes fantastical laws like flying and teleportation; my point is that such laws are consistent across the entire grid). It's this virtual-reality aspect of SL that's made it as infamous as it is, and also contributes heavily to the main irony about the grid -- that it is almost impossible to adequately describe, but something one immediately understands by actually experiencing.

And really, when you think about it, the persistent universe of the grid is not just some gimmick when it comes to online tools, but actually enhances all the traditional services that SL provides in different ways:

--When it comes to group discussion, for example, the persistent universe of SL provides something most chat environments can only dream of, which is a way of adding non-verbal communication to enhance understanding. Note, for example, how easy it is to add body language to one's speech in the grid; how one can wink or nod while chatting, fold one's arms across one's chest, shift one's weight to one leg, all of which contribute to overall communication between humans in a way AIM will never be able to duplicate. Note how if one wants to get into a smaller discussion in a SL "chat room," all one does is physically move to an empty corner of that room; such physical distances are impossible to convey in the usual text-window interface of most traditional chat software. And note as well that "chat rooms" in SL go way beyond having a funny name at the top of that text window; they involve the creation of a literal physical room, one that can be specifically tweaked to enhance whatever discussion is taking place. When used the right way, the 3D interface of SL can be a profoundly unique tool for online communication, an option that one literally cannot get from a single other piece of software on the planet.

--And then of course is the social-network enhancements such a 3D environment provides; and jeez, where do we even start with that one? Imagine your MySpace profile not as a web page but as a three-dimensional house -- one that you build yourself from the ground up, with absolutely no regulations at all over how it looks or what you do with it. Imagine a place like a community-held private island, where instead of using a search engine to find like-minded individuals you simply walk around and check out your neighbors. (Even better, imagine if Linden hadn't taken their now famous unregulated approach to mainland zoning; imagine if they had instead cordoned off zoned "neighborhoods" for specific interests, for example an entire continent just for musicians.) Imagine an online account where every single pixel of your profile says something about you; not just the text you enter into provided fields, but even the white space between words and paragraphs, with visitors able to actually crawl around on that page and zoom in on any particular pixel they want. In this light, the 3D environment of SL becomes not only a gimmicky selling point but also the ultimate tool of user empowerment; a place where customers are literally given a blank page, as large or as small as they want and can afford, that instead of reading one literally walks on and physically explores.

Although I have no hard facts to support this, when all is said and done I do believe that this is what the majority of landowners in SL are using their land for; not to construct giant clubs and stores, the activity which garners the lion's share of SL press, but instead to construct intricate personal expressions of their personality, and to have fun with their friends because of it just like any other social network. When looked at this way, the ever-growing popularity of SL land ownership makes a lot more sense, and I think provides a refreshingly honest alternative to the "everyone in SL is trying to turn a profit" tone of most articles about virtual land. If every landowner in SL was there to open a business, SL wouldn't work and no one would want to visit; it's the fact that most landowners aren't trying to open a business that makes the environment so diverse and fascinating, and the stores that do exist stand out even more.

Anyway, I guess that's enough philosophizing for now; hope you enjoyed this tour, and like I said, expect to see more of them in the coming months. By the way, know of a particular section of the grid that you think is worth exploring? By all means, do make sure to mention it in the comments; and don't forget the SLurl!

The latest with ITG

2007-02-20T17:34:08Z

There's been some changes to ITG over the last month, so I thought I'd sit down and finally get them written up for the blog...

--First, it's my sad duty to bid a fond farewell to Steven Cann, the designer of the print (PDF) version of ITG; happily for him, things there in Australia with his band are going better than expected, which unfortunately for us means that he no longer has time for the magazine. Anyway, I wish him the best of luck with all his future projects, and am hoping that we'll still see him at future ITG events.

--And speaking of which, with Steven's departure I've decided to just make things official, and shut down the monthly PDF version of ITG altogether. I'm still a believer in electronic documents, and will undoubtedly be doing other SL publishing projects in the future; it's just that the monthly PDF version of this blog is such a labor-intensive exercise (easily 30 to 40 manhours per issue), versus the tiny minority of ITG's readers who keep up via the PDF versus the blog. Anyway, I know that some of you will miss the monthly version of this magazine, and in some ways I will as well; that's the breaks, I suppose, of micro-funded publications, is that sometimes you simply don't have the resources to do all the things you want.

--This decision, then, is also changing the nature of ITG's features; instead of having a new theme monthly, like I've done it in the past, with a larger amount of articles related to the theme (typically five to ten), I'm now going to focus on themes more intermittently, and limit coverage to typically three to five articles. Anyway, so that's now going to let me cover some subjects as features that maybe weren't of large-enough interest before; if you have ideas and suggestions for such features, as always you can drop me a line at inthegrid [at] gmail.com and let me know.

--And speaking of editorial policies, the entire nature of ITG's is slowly being changed these days, mostly because of the technical problems regarding the grid that I've ranted about here before in groan-enducing detail; to be blunt, I'm having a harder and harder time anymore attending popular live events with my crappy little Mac Mini at home, meaning that I cannot dedicate much space anymore at this blog to covering such popular live events. And it's a shame, too, because such events are one of many "crucial experiences" one can have while in the grid (if I may pull a phrase out of my a**), one that I think any resident is missing out on when they can't access.

So instead of shutting this blog down (like I was briefly thinking of doing), I've decided to gently massage its focus, in order to start concentrating more on the things that I can readily accomplish in the grid from a technical standpoint; things like tours and photo essays of great builds, boating and other transit adventures, and of course the in-depth interviews with SL's most interesting creatives, like I've been doing since ITG started. It's a compromise for now, I know, one I'm not entirely happy with -- I wish instead that I just had the money to go buy a new mid-level Windows computer, so I could be going to those popular live events in the first place. (Of course, as long as we're wishing, what I really wish is that I could simply pick up some more freelance work; here's my LinkedIn profile, hint hint, for any dear readers in the tech industry who would like to add me and help spread the word, hint hint.)

--And then finally, as some of you may have guessed already, all these technical problems with the grid have put a kibosh for now on the new adults-only SL blog I was going to start up, one I was going to call -avatar-; and that's because the bulk of -avatar-'s content was going to focus on all the adults-oriented clubs around the grid (both community and commercial), and I simply don't own a computer that can handle the high lags and flashy graphics that come with most such clubs. And that's a shame, too, I know! Believe me, I was looking as forward to this new publication as you were as well.

But never fear, intrepid gridhopper; for yes, I have yet another scheme in the works as we speak, to replace the new blog that apparently was not to be. You see, one of the other ideas regarding SL that I've been tinkering with almost since joining, besides opening up a blog about the environment, was to become a more serious architect as well and to establish my own prefab building business. And with things in the grid being as they are these days -- that is, with me standing around alone in a low-lag environment being the easiest thing I can do these days -- I decided to take that as the sign it is, and to finally start getting more serious about my building skills. There above, for example, is just the roughest start on my first-ever prefab design; it will eventually be a three-story bungalow for beach environments, with a 20 x 30 meter footprint (that is, for use with 1,024 m2 plots or larger), hopefully all cool and modern and with several fantastical elements intuitively baked in (like a waterfall floor and wall system, for example, much like the ITG headquarters has).

As you can tell, I'm not nearly even at the first stages yet of making this a mature prefab; but I'm poring through the advanced tutorials as we speak, seeking recommendations for great classes in the grid, and hopefully by this time a month or so from now will finally be ready to start selling my first creations. As always, I'll keep all of you updated on the process here at the blog; and I'll also make a point of posting some tutorials and tips as well, based on what I'm learning about the building process at the same time. So anyway, that's the latest from around here at ITG: and as always, I appreciate you sticking around and being a regular visitor.

The latest look at the ITG fleet

2007-02-19T21:28:14Z

As regular readers know, ever since I did a feature here on water-based activities last fall, I've become a real fan of boating in Second Life; and among other things, this means that I've been regularly collecting various types of boating devices this entire time, and in fact have built up quite the little private fleet by now. I've decided recently to start doing more boating again in the grid as well, because of the problems I've been having trying to attend popular live events (but more on this tomorrow); so as part of that, I thought it'd be fun to detail the various ships that are now part of the ITG armada, and what I particularly like and don't like about each.

Now, as regular readers also know, I'm primarily a bit of a sailboat nut in Second Life, and I have two mid-sized ones now that I'm very happy with and use on a regular basis. Here above is the first one, which it can't be denied is simply the prettier of the two; the one with better textures, a sleeker shape, a more stylized sail, and even with artificial lights embedded for an intriguing nighttime experience. On the other hand, though, this is also the buggier of the two sailboats I regularly use -- the one that's harder to control, the one with less features and realistic feedback. In other words, this one is better for aimless tooling on low-lag days, in a large body of water where lots of other people will see me.

Here, then, is the other sailboat I use regularly; the Esperanta, it's called, powered off the popular and lifelike Flying Tako scripting engine. And it's hard to go wrong, I admit, with any boat based off the Flying Tako system; between the onscreen weather info, the manual control over sail and sheet position, and even the animated flag in the back, such boats (I'm told by professional sailors) are about as close as one is going to get in a virtual world to actually steering a mid-sized sailboat. Now if someone would just make one that's a little slicker!

And speaking of slick, here above is what I have to admit is my secret pride and joy; my full-throttle cigarette powerboat, which can actually be cranked up to a speed about ten times as fast as my home computer can render! Yikes, that's a fast boat! Ah, but it can be set to a barely-moving setting as well, just perfect for my stupid little Mac Mini here in RL Chicago; and when it's moving as slow as this, it's actually quite easy to steer as well. Plus, hey, just look how sharp that thing is; by all rights, I should be peddling coke in Miami or something to be able to afford a boat like this.

Of course, this being Second Life, it's not just the realistic and popular boats out there that are for sale; if you do enough looking around, you'll eventually come across just about every type of floating object out there that exists, as well as lots of objects that don't exist in the real world. Check out above, for example, a cool semi-fantastical catamaran that I own; as the photo shows, this is a perfect option for getting into the smallest and most shallow bodies of water that exist in the grid. And hey, it even comes with an oar that will automatically rez in your hands as soon as you sit down, and which will even animate your avatar to make it look like you're rowing.

And then here is yet another type of specialty boat that I own; a Venetian gondola! Pretty cool, I have to admit, especially since it too comes with a long pole that will animate your av while afloat, and something perfect for such tiny bodies of water as an estate pond or large pool. The only problem, in fact, is that the steering controls are way off; they're obviously designed for a high-end Windows gaming computer, one with precise movements and a beefy 3D-graphics card, with it being extremely difficult for me on my low-end Mac to keep the thing under control.

And it's not just boats that you find for sale around the grid; here, for example, is one of those 'sailboards' or whatever they're called, with jet skis also being a highly popular form of solo water transportation. Such tiny vehicles, in fact, can hold a lot more thrills and fun than a large ship, depending on what kind of water-based experience you want to have, and how complex an environment your home computer can handle.

And finally, here above is not only my newest purchase, but also as of this moment my favorite ship of the whole fleet; a little three-person canoe job, but one specifically designed for elf avatars and other fantastical creatures. Just look at the thing, man; whoever designed this went to a whole lot of trouble, something I really appreciate when it comes time to being a customer. And it's made by the same people who make the catamaran as well, which means that it too has artificial lights baked in, which as you can see makes for just some very dramatic effects while boating in the middle of the night.

By the way, on my latest shopping trip I came across yet another one of those "super-sized yachts" that have me all fascinated right now; you know, one of those g**d**n floating mansions that in real life can usually only be afforded by Middle East royalty. I find the whole concept just really interesting, of living full-time in the grid on a super-sized yacht instead of a house, I suppose because so few of us actually have that option in real life; and let's face it, many of these mansion-sized ships are just a marvel of engineering, full of hidden rooms and unexpected luxury amenities.

Anyway, so like I said, I'll be getting up an entry tomorrow that explains this shift in ITG's editorial direction in a little more detail; and I'll also be getting up a report from my latest boating trip tomorrow as well, a three-hour cruise down the length of the winter section's largest river, along with a ton of photos and some more thoughts from me on the concept of SL as a 3D social network. Hope you'll get a chance to come back then!

P.S. My apologies, by the way, for forgetting the companies who made these ships, as well as their stores' locations. If you know the information yourself, do make sure to add it to the comments, and I'll make sure to update the entry.

Gridhopping: Luxor Temple of Art

2007-02-19T16:12:01Z

I ended up in the grid last Saturday evening with not a lot to do, so thought I'd take my chances at the ol' events-calendar roulette wheel. And here's one of the events I ended up at because of it -- the opening of the new Luxor Temple of Art [Jade 189/198/35], or at least the opening of a new show by visual artist Eshi Otawara (I wasn't quite sure, or perhaps it was both). Turns out that Otawara is Croatian in real life, one who lived through the civil war there as a teen, then moved to the US and ended up getting a degree in fine arts; her work's pretty great, to tell you the truth, and something I recommend stopping by and checking out. The opening was a lot of fun, too, with just a ton of people in attendance all dressed to the nines, live musicians being piped in via audio stream and more. Anyway, I don't have a lot to say about the event itself; I just mostly wanted to run some of the photos I took while there, as well as encourage you to stop by yourself. Thanks for the fun event, Eshi!

How to build a mythology: An interview with Artropolis' Esch Snoats

2007-02-16T21:43:44Z

So last week I received an invitation to check out a new arts colony in Second Life, an entire sim called Artropolis [Artropolis 23/122/22] that just recently had its grand opening. And wow, check out what I found when I got there; not only a luxuriously complex build like something straight out of the jungles of South America, but even with an entertaining mythological backstory behind the origins of the space. (It turns out, you see, that Artropolis was actually an entire civilization of enlightened artists at one time; much like Atlantis, their society mysteriously disappeared thousands of years ago, with only the first bits and pieces of it now being rediscovered in the modern era.)

After the tour, I had the pleasant experience of chatting with lead builder Esch Snoats, who explained all kinds of things to me -- from how the look and backstory of Artropolis came about, to the unique challenges concerning a group of people developing a sim collaboratively. The transcript is below, interspersed with photos from my walking tour; I warmly thank Esch for taking the time to talk with me.

In The Grid: So let's start with my admission that I don't know that much about Artropolis yet; you first came to my attention simply through an email I received a couple of weeks ago. How long have you been open now, and where the idea germinate from?

Esch Snoats: Artropolis actually just had its grand opening this past Sunday, Feb 11th, but it's been around really for a month [longer than that]. The idea really came from a combination of people. Filthy Fluno, another artist and sim manager of Artropolis, was involved in what was considered the first artist colony [in Second Life] several months ago, but the place closed down and we were both looking for a new home, essentially. He talked to a friend he knew, Maxim Deharo, who owned a sim and was looking for something to do with it. Filthy sold him on the idea to turn it into an artist colony like no other, and they hired me to build it. So I got to build it as well as have a studio there to show my own art. The one thing we noticed that was missing in a lot of places claiming to be artist colonies is that it didn't support all the arts. Before we even built one prim, we sat down and had the game plan from the very beginning with what we wanted to do with the sim and how to do it.

ITG: So it was one person who owned the sim, another who came up with the idea, and a third person -- you -- who designed it?

ES: Well the initial idea was by Filthy, yeah, but he and I really ironed it out together. He came up with the idea of this ancient artist society that mysteriously disappeared. My spin on it was that modern society has started to creep back into the land. That's why you have modern buildings on one side [of the sim], over the ruins of the other culture, etc. But the further into the sim you get, the more ancient it looks and [with] no modern stuff. But once we ironed out the backstory for the sim, it was myself who did the layout of it all. Now there's a fourth person involved too, Xtasy Veil; she actually is the one who did the landscaping and terraforming. So once the ball was rolling, she was the first on the scene and knew what we wanted to do, and made the land what you see. I then moved in behind her and started building, based on how she did her part.

ITG: I have to admit, I found something you just mentioned to be a really fun part of Artropolis that you don't see at many other arts organizations; you all have invented your own fantastical mythology, explaining the origins of your space.

ES: Yeah, we wanted the sim to be more immersive than you see in other sims. By having the backstory, it really does make everything around you make sense. And I think that's the key to why it looks good and has been raved about by many people, is because we didn't build it willy-nilly; we had a plan and used the backstory as a guide on how it should be built. So it makes it more, what's the word, tangible?

ITG: I definitely want to get more into the details of the actual build, but let's first talk just a bit about your background. Are you an artist yourself? In real life as well?

ES: Yes and yes [laughter]. I've been an artist for around 27 years now, and I've pretty much covered every medium you can stick your fingers in. Right now I'm concentrating on digital art as well as photography. I have a studio at Artropolis on the back side of the temple, and sell limited-edition and one-of-a-kind art. I have a website where I just started to sell my artwork that you see in SL. I don't have a full gallery up yet, but pretty much if I'm selling it in SL I'm also selling it in RL too. I've had a lot of requests for it, otherwise I probably wouldn't have done it [laughter]. I've been playing SL since May 2006.

ITG: And had you ever taken on such a large building project before? Was this your first entire-sim commission?

ES: This is the first time I've been hired to build an entire sim. I own a prefab store that I've been doing since probably June 2006 or so, so I have a lot of experience in building. I think what landed me the gig for this building project is that at the old artist colony Filthy and I were at, I was allowed to build my own studio as long as I donated it to the sim [afterwards]. Filthy saw the final product and loved it so much, he had me on top of the list of builders for Artropolis.

ITG: So before we get into the more technical aspects of the build, first let's discuss the difference between terraforming and manmade structures, like what you did with the prefabs. Was that enough of an education in building to make the terraforming for the sim go smoothly, or were there new and unexpected challenges?

ES: Well, with prefabs, I obviously have no control over the land the person is setting it on, so I cross my fingers and hope they know what they're doing. But with Artropolis, my main goal was to make it look natural in the environment. That's why I wanted Xtasy to terraform first and me build second; because I wanted it to look like the land had been there longer, and that this society had come in and built into the land, not the other way around. I've found too many places on the grid where the opposite happens, and it sticks out like a sore thumb. But as far as the education part of it is concerned -- yes, building prefabs definitely gave me in-depth, first-hand knowledge of the building tools, and how prims function with each other and whatnot. But more important than the actual building is the textures used. You can have the best build ever, but if you use textures that don't compliment each other, then it's ruined.

ITG: Actually, this brings us to another question I wanted to ask, which is about the collaborative process of a group of people developing a sim together. You mentioned, for example, that your team worked out almost all the details in advance; what kinds of details were those? What does a group of developers have to think about ahead of time, to make the process itself go as well as possible?

ES: Well, the first rule of building a sim is [asking], "What is this sim going to be used for?" Once you nail that down, then you can get into more detailed specifics. In this case, we already knew it was an artist colony, but we needed to work out details like how best to support all the arts SL has to offer and things like that. Artropolis is the first sim I've found that supports not just art and music, but theater and poetry and other stuff as well. So once you work out the sim's function, then things fall into place and it really then comes down to designing the look of the sim. I think a lot of places do this out of order; they'll build first, then say, "Okay, what can we use this for?" And to me that's sloppy, at least when it comes to an entire sim under one theme is concerned. Once you have your plan first, then everything else really does fall into place.

ITG: And especially interesting, I think, is the additional challenge of building in a sense of history, like you all did. You mentioned, for example, making the buildings look like they were naturally added to the terraforming that already existed. Were there other tricks like that you found that helped add a sense of time and history to Artropolis?

ES: Hmm. I don't know if there were other 'tricks,' really. We just knew that "there once was a great society here, but now it's gone;" so I strategically laid out the studios around the sim, and [the location of] the studio would dictate if I used stone textures or wood. There's only one type of stone texture I use, besides the temple, which has two or three; because my thoughts were that they gathered the stone from the same quarry. And if the studio is built up on a hill or into a cliffside, obviously they can't get stone up there, so we'll use wood. I put a lot of real life logic into this, which I think is why people love the sim so much. Everything just clicks together, it makes sense.

ITG: Well, as an example of another 'trick' -- I love that giant statue of your mythological founder, that sits at the top of the sim's highest mountain. And I love even more that you've explained it all in your text history that's given out as a notecard there. It's not only a nice unifying design element, but also makes it feel there like ancients have left grand things behind.

ES: Yeah, exactly; but in the case of the Statue of David, I didn't build that. That was something Filthy bought from a fantastic SL-based sculptor. But we put it there for that exact reason, to blend it into the history. Also something that was my doing, that tied into modern society creeping back in, is that I wanted those elements to be touristy in nature. [As if] Artropolis sat there for hundreds or thousands of years unknown, then someone found it and said, "Hey, let's turn this into a tourist location." So that's why you have things like the boat ride with a half-sunk boat, and a hiking trail, and a modern bar and grill, and signs pointing you to attractions and stuff.

ITG: And let's talk a moment about another intriguing design element of the sim; the almost hidden passages that connect studio spaces, that are yet just clear enough so that they're obvious to newcomers. It's a great way to simultaneously give each artist an autonomous space, and to connect them together in a natural way. How challenging was it to build such convoluted, narrow spaces?

ES: One of my philosophies about building Artropolis was that we needed little "easter eggs" around the sim. We need to give people reasons to explore. So things like hidden overgrown trails that connect studios and the like, was stuff that I did before the landscaping phase took place. So people who want to explore will get something out of it, and it makes them feel like they've accomplished something other than just walking around and looking at things. I think a lot of the credit with how the studios are laid out goes to Xtasy, because I really did go off of her original terraforming. I would fly up and see how close studios were in relation to one another, and tweak spots here and there. That way you have some hidden, but others right next to each other, etc.

ITG: Was having this virtual space an integral part of the collaborative process? Could you only build such a thing, like you said, by literally being able to all be there together, flying over the space, tweaking things here and there in real time, etc? Or do you think such a sim could reasonably get built the traditional way; exchanging 2D documents, having audio conference calls, etc?

ES: Yeah definitely, after I would finish each section I would bring Filthy in and hear his opinion of what I did. Sometimes he would point out something I didn't think about, and would then either move the studio entirely or tweak it so that it worked better. I'm sure it could have been done in traditional methods, me sending an email to Filth saying "hey check this out" and he goes then emails me back, etc; so it's very nice being able to be there at the same time, looking at the same build, and brainstorming if something doesn't work as expected. But really, you throw traditional methods out the door, just because of the nature of SL. You wouldn't be doing this for any other application, really; and if you were making a game or something, then everyone would probably be in the same [physical] building anyway.

ITG: I have to imagine, by the way, that in some senses this must've felt like the times of the old aristocracy; that the owner of this sim is the 'baron,' so to speak, and you all the team hired to build him a new court. Is this a viable way of looking at professional opportunities in SL?

ES: I can see that connection, yeah, especially since it's the sim owner paying me to build the sim. We had the added luxury that Max trusted our judgement with things, and really was a silent partner in it all. He would come around and say "hey cool" and stuff, but he never really had a hands-on approach to what we did. Not that that's a good or bad thing, but he trusted myself and Filthy [to the point] where he could concentrate on other stuff, while we did our thing.

ITG: Right; from how you've talked about it, it seems that Max's main interest is in owning the sim, doing something interesting with it, and recouping his costs at the end of it all. And he's simply given the artists a budget and left them alone, just like the old royals used to do in the aristocracy. I'm comparing this, for example, to the modern era of Hollywood executives and the like, who feel the obligation to step in and screw with the creative process in the middle of it. Was it nice to have a guy like Max "signing the checks," so to speak?

ES: Absolutely. Not that I wouldn't have taken in his input and suggestions; but having one less person making decisions always keeps things moving along faster. Now in the case of SL, I think there's never really an [ultimate] decision-by-committee with sim-building, because for the most part the sim owner is the one calling the [final] shots.

ITG: How did you end up tackling the multimedia question, by the way? How does Artropolis present things like theatre and film events?

ES: Well, from our standpoint, we're providing a [centralized] venue for those events to take place. Shockingly, there is a thriving live-theater scene inside SL; it's weird to think that these people are acting with their avatars, but using their real voices to provide the dialogue and stuff. It's amazing what people have done with SL. So by providing the venues for all that, we're doing something most [artist colonies] don't. Plus the same venue for the theater can be used for other things as well, so we're not shooting ourselves in the foot really since it's more flexible.

ITG: So how did the official opening on the 11th go? I tried to attend, actually, but my low-end computer kept me from doing so.

ES: All I can say is wow. The event was five hours long, and we maxxed out the sim the entire time. Max had to raise the number of people allowed to enter the sim; even he couldn't get in, because it was packed nonstop. We had three musicians who played during the event, and Filthy gave a presentation about the art scene in SL and whatnot. At one point we crashed the sim because of how busy the place was [laughter].

ITG: And what's the current situation with vacancies? How much does a studio cost, and how does one apply for one?

ES: Well, another thing that we also worked out early on, before the sim was even built, was how to handle the artist studios. We only have 15 artist studios in the sim, and it's by invite only to set up shop there. Both Filthy and I have seen too many times where just having a rental box in a place doesn't necessarily bring in the best artists, so we wanted absolute control over it. We have an interview process we do with someone who is interested; that way we can feel them out, see their work, etc. This way Artropolis only shows the best of the best, and we control the quality of what is shown there. Now as far as how much the rent is, that's info I don't have -- you'd need to talk to Filthy. I can tell you that we give ultimate freedom to the artists who are there, though. They get a lot of prims for the rent, and can add on to what is already there. And that's the cool thing, is I built this sim but now that artists have moved in, they've built on top of what I did and made it their own.

ITG: Thus adding even more to the history of the sim.

ES: Exactly! So if someone wants to add on, they can get the textures I used or use something that compliments what's there, and build on top of what I did. We also have standards for that as well. We don't want them to make it look out of theme, so we get final say on what they do. So that's also a plus with Artropolis, is that we let the artists actually develop their space the way they need to.

ITG: So are you accepting applications right now? Or are all 15 spots already filled?

ES: Last I checked we're about half-filled; so yeah, definitely, if anyone wants to set up shop there, contact Filthy Fluno.

ITG: And just to finish things up, because I know we need to get going soon; what are the upcoming plans for Artropolis? I know you'll be spending most of your time merely getting settled, and getting occupancy up to 100 percent; but will you be starting up a regular event schedule, for example, or other such projects?

ES: To be honest, now that the place is open, my level of involvement is lowered down. I'm currently working on a website for the sim; but other than that, I'm not really dealing with upcoming events and stuff. I guess I should give an open invitation to any musician or performance-artist or what-have-you; if you want to come check the place out and play there, by all means contact Filthy.

ITG: And what's next for you personally? Will you be concentrating on your fine-art work for awhile, or are you now itching to take on another big virtual building project?

ES: Well, after Artropolis was complete Filthy told me, "Dude, if you don't get other building gigs from this I'll be shocked." I hope to use this as resume material -- [proof] that I can handle big-scale builds and use that to my advantage. Right now my main focus is getting my own website finished, so that people can start buying my artwork for RL purposes. I've had a lot of requests to buy my work in RL, so that fueled me into getting this site up to do it; but I put it on the side because of Artropolis.

ITG: And finally, just because I ask everyone this, what are your chances of attending this year's community convention? It's in Chicago, after all, and you're not that far from there in real life.

ES: It's only because it's near me that I'll be going. I'm a stay-at-home dad, so I don't get many chances to travel because of it. Now that it's only four hours away, I've convinced the wife to let me go for the weekend [laughter]. So now it's a matter of saving up for it, and I'm good.

ITG: Will we maybe see an Artropolis-sponsored mixed-reality event there? Hmm?

ES: Filthy and I are actually talking about promoting Artropolis hard there, but we literally just started talking about it last night. I want to talk to others who've went to past conventions on how things are done, so we can get something ready for it. Of course I'll be pushing my own art as well, so I'll be juggling it seems [laughter].

Artropolis can be found on the web at artropolitans.com, and in the grid at [Artropolis 23/122/22]; Esch's personal site can be found at strikingsolid.com. To learn more about Artropolis studio prices, and to start the application process, IM Filthy Fluno in the grid. The public is welcome to stop by the sim at any time.

Architect of the Diamond Age: An interview with Ordinal Malaprop

2007-02-15T19:51:55Z

In Second Life, there are not only those people who everyone seems to know, but also those residents who all the cool people seem to know; and it is these people who tend to be infinitely more interesting, in that they are creating the things that leave even the cutting-edge leaders in the grid impressed. Such is the case, for example, with Ordinal Malaprop, the steampunk extraordinaire who has had a hand in everything from public transit systems to customized SLurl creation on the web. Between such public projects and her popular retail outlet [Caledon 100/59/23], where she offers a slew of jarringly unique Victorian-era science-fiction objects, Ordinal has become a poster-child for many as to what can be done on the outer fantastical edges of Second Life. And to add even further to the mystery, no one knows who Ordinal actually is in real life; the most she will admit to in public is that she's a London-based daytime computer programmer, preferring to keep the rest of the details firmly separated from her virtual persona.

After many months of intermittent contact, I finally had the chance this week to sit down with Ordinal, over at her store in the Victorian community of Caledon; it was a lengthy and informative interview, one that I think any fan of Ordinal's will enjoy, which is why I've published the extra-long unedited transcript below. Needless to say, I thank Ordinal immensely for taking the time out of her schedule to talk.

In The Grid: Okay, so let's start with this subject, because it will influence the interview; that the real life of Ordinal Malaprop is a mysterious one. In my research in your archives, in fact, the only RL info I ever came across was that you make a living programming.

Ordinal Malaprop: That is very much by design, I must say. The two things that I reveal are for practical purposes; that I live in London, and that I am a programmer by trade. This has been a little hard to disguise in any case.

ITG: Are you ever tempted to step forward, in order to get some real-life recognition for your much-admired scripting work here? Or is the anonymity more important for you?

OM: Well, part of the reason that I am here is to get away from Other World affairs, to a great extent. In my early days I was a little more forthcoming, but not an awful lot. It isn't something that really interests me -- I have a fairly extensive Aethernet presence in other guises, though you would not have heard of me, I don't flatter myself to think.

ITG: Ah, so the scripting here is not going on the RL resume, then?

OM: No. Well. Perhaps, at some later stage. I have thought about it as a profession of sorts, but am in two minds about whether it would ruin my own enjoyment. Here, one can say no to things, after all. And one gets a little tired of being seen primarily as a programmer.

ITG: So if I can be a little presumptuous, is part of the anonymity so as to better inhabit Ordinal the Steampunk? For those who don't know, you roleplay 24 hours a day here, within a sorta retro-futuristic society that adheres to Victorian ideals.

OM: Oh quite. I wouldn't want my Other Worldly character to take over from my real existence after all; that would be seen as dysfunctional by alienists. By the way, I have criticised some people in the past for accusing me of "roleplaying," as if some sort of music-hall player [laughter].

ITG: Yeah, how would you best describe it? What is life for Ordinal in the grid?

OM: I try at all times to remain very adaptable and take events on in the Grid as they come, as outlandish as they may be, but reinterpret them in my own context. I have written before that this is a very...robust strategy for a society, and it is one that is epitomised in Caledon I think. All comers are welcome -- Goreans, Ruths, Ents, purple monsters -- and none of them can damage our society, without drastic and physically disruptive action. So really I am not playing a role, just being myself, I feel.

ITG: So not roleplaying so much, but more an entire life for Ordinal that's different from the flesh-covered entity in London controlling her? Not a game, that is, as much a chance to construct a better society, in your eyes.

OM: Less perhaps about the society and its benefits, though it is always pleasant to be in the company of others of a similar bent -- I love the Grid and all of its peculiarities. I find it a little tricky to define my precise position in relation to myself outside of Second Life sometimes, to be frank. Trying to do so and speculating on it I find fascinating as well, so perhaps I am just creating work for myself deliberately [laughter]. There is also the point of view that says it is better to live and experience something as it comes rather than plan things out beforehand.

ITG: What led you to steampunk and the Victorian era to begin with? Are you more a fan of the postmodern literature, or of the original images and styles that come with the age?

OM: Well, in my youth I was something of a "cyberpunk." Or to be more accurate, a nearly-ex-cyberpunk. As I said, it was in my youth, but since then I have become a lot more cynical.

ITG: Waning on the genre, were you? But this was 2005 when you first joined SL, right, when a lot of people started waning off cyberpunk.

OM: In many ways the primary point of the cyberpunk movement has been assimilated into the mainstream, I feel; speculation on the social effects of everyday technology is the stuff of mainstream journalism now. Something that is left, though, is speculation based on alternative starting points, alternative histories. Taking a step back.

ITG: Would you have a guess why this particular speculation has caught on so much? Why not entire societies devoted to, say, the Nazis winning WWII?

OM: Well, there is the aspect that, at least on the surface, Victoriana provides a model of a polite and stable society, perhaps. One would have to refer to The Diamond Age here [Ed: a Victoriana sci-fi novel by Neal Stephenson]. I was also briefly involved in retrotechnology of a slightly later age, 1920s to '50s.

ITG: And one grappling with the societal effects of large, fast technology, too. Something we in the modern age can definitely emthasize with.

OM: Quite. Rapid social change, in many cases based on technology. It's a sympathetic situation. The 1920s was another one, and the '50s, hence I suppose my previous sentence. It being in the past may give it the distance to make it more bearable and allow a more objective view.

ITG: And yet, you as a moderner also deal with the darker aspects of the time; like the notion of "Empire" and the "White Man's Burden" in the case of Victoriana.

OM: I do. While I am not really active at the moment, I have a definite political position, and regard the whole British Empire and the history of the period with a distinctly jaundiced eye. There's an element of irony in all of this for me, the references to gunboat diplomacy and so on.

ITG: You're a Socialist, right? Or at least Ordinal is, here in the grid. And that too fits into Victoriana; not just the empire defenders, but those at the time who were critical of it.

OM: In both worlds [I'm a Socialist]. I can say that even if I were not, to consider the period without also considering a very important political movement relating to industrialism would be remiss for anyone.

ITG: And in your retro work in the '20s to '50s, do you explore Socialism as well? Virtual Orwell, perhaps? Would you ever build a virtual 1984 for SL?

OM: I haven't really extensively built in that period; but if I were to, I certainly would. An idealised Communist society would be an interesting one, just like an idealised Victorian one. And just, of course, as ripe for irony.

ITG: So let me just jump to another random question I've been wondering for awhile; who exactly buys retro-future Victorian weapons? Do you have fans in the traditional gaming community, or is it mostly steampunks who want something that will go boom?

OM: I have two main groups of purchasers for my weapons, as I see it. The first group are historically-led, including some who are not roleplayers but have an interest in historical firearms. The replicas that I produce, particularly the Webley, sell well to them, as I am shall we say persnickety about detail. The second group are interested in the unusual effects of the more peculiar steampunk weapons that I build -- I do try to make them spectacular. This includes quite a few people who have no steampunk connection at all. Obviously there isn't much point in researching the exact details of a beehive launcher. Rather fruitless, I would think.

ITG: Right. Or a three-barrel snowball machine gun.

OM: The two groups tend to blur at the boundaries as well, just as the product range does. Clockwork blunderbusses don't exist but are not terribly outre, as with the revolving flare pistol.

ITG: And of course, you do a lot more here as well; entire structures, your famous lighthouse, etc.

OM: Well, I like to provide entertainment just for the casual visitor, make places worth looking at and exploring. For myself I love to explore areas and love them even more if they provide hidden secrets or interactive parts. The cyberpunk sim of Chaos is a good example there.

ITG: And this of course also brings us to the public transit system here at the Caledon complex. How did that come about? If I understand it right, it was collaborative; you did the scripting and others built the trains and tracks.

OM: One of the first serious projects that I embarked upon, when I was still living on the mainland, was a tour balloon. It still exists -- it hovers just to the west [of my store], and takes people on a ride around Caledon. I mentioned this when I was getting involved with the steampunk groups, and when it came to the infrastructure of Caledon, it was one of the things that Desmond was interested in. I built the script from the ground upwards, and it went through many iterations. The tram itself was built by Reitsuki Kojima and Shaunathan Sprocket. I'm still rather proud of it, and feel very proprietorial. I also used a related script for the Monorail at the third-year anniversary celebrations.

ITG: And it's cool when it works, as I can attest; but as you've mentioned at your blog, it can get quite buggy too, right? Is it still just a tiny bit ahead of the curve too much as far as SL tech?

OM: While I'm sure the script itself could be improved, the main issue is with the world, I fear. I live in some hope that Mono will make this a bit easier to cope with, but a lot of it comes down to the simple issue of moving prims around an area. There is only so far that one can go to change how that works. One can realise the peculiarities of the world and try to adjust for them -- for instance, the speed of the trams is tailored to try to ensure that they don't disappear on sim crossings, or explode, heaven forfend. But there is a point at which one has to say "there's no way of doing this now, I will have to wait for a fix to the universe." I've considered having shrines to the Lindens on board the trams, which automatically make sacrifices to propitiate the Grid Deities at sim crossings [laughter].

ITG: And sociologically speaking, do you find it changes the way people interact at Caledon? Most travel in the grid, after all, is through direct teleportation, which I think has a real effect on how people interact at their destinations.

OM: This sim, Caledon I, is now less busy than it used to be, but when it was starting, it was a definite influence. Actually, there was an issue to begin with, since people tended to stand around at the telehub and chat, and of course the tram goes right through there. There were good-natured protests at the fact that people were being run over.

ITG: So let's get into some technical issues, as long as we're here. For example, is there a key or series of keys to going from a good designer to a great one? One who can attract high-end customers, like you've now been able to?

OM: If there is one thing which one needs, it is a portfolio. The advantage of work in SL is that it is very immediate, when it is actually instantiated. Having potential clients who can directly experience things that one has built is much better than simply having a CV of some sort; or "resume" as I believe you [Americans] call them. I would advise any aspiring scripter or builder to become involved in some sort of fairly stable project and do work for that, perhaps for free.

ITG: And how about from the building process itself? What's one or two things, for example, about texturing that you've learned now, that's really come in handy?

OM: Well, I consider myself a merely adequate builder, but two things about texturing: 1. be aware of the differences between stretching textures and not doing so when one modifies an object, and how this doesn't always work; 2. become familiar with the mathematics of texture repeating and offsets, because this is essential to having textures line up across multiple prims, and otherwise picky people such as myself will turn up their noses [laughter]. I don't approach the texturing skills of any real architect, though. Oh! And a third one: Never, never, never have "texture flash," which is when you have two surfaces occupying the same space, and the texture flips between them arbitrarily. It stands out a mile.

ITG: And how about from the scripting side? In relative terms to other languages, how difficult is it to get up to speed on LSL? If I know HTML and some Javascript, am I still going to be hopelessly lost? In other words, is it only daytime programmers who will have a shot of doing really cool scripted things here?

OM: In general, no, it's not that hard to get used to the basic principles of LSL. The challenge is (a) being aware of a few tricks, such as using simultaneous scripts powered by link messages, and the much more difficult (b) which involves being aware of the peculiarities of how functions work in practice, and in different environments, and with different other loads on the sim, as opposed to how they should work. I don't know a scripter who has mastered (b) and none ever will while the environment keeps changing. Once you have done that you can proceed to (c), which is actually understanding how quaternions work [laughter].

ITG: So thorough usability testing is important here?

OM: It is essential. I maintain properties in different areas specifically for that purpose. If one builds something and only tests it on private islands, one's mainland customers may find it unusable. Sometimes this means removing features or compromising on them, but better that than it doesn't work properly and looks shoddy.

ITG: So okay, Ordinal, later this year you celebrate your second anniversary of being here. What's in the future for you? Are you still finding the grid as "worth it" as you have before?

OM: Hmm. Later this year, well, it will be quite a bit later really...I certainly don't regret anything. In some ways the Grid is less amenable than it was before, but there have always been issues with sim crossings and so on. Periods when things are simply impossible have increased in frequency, but all that one can do is pray, there, really. I am certainly not in the position of giving up, though I do get annoyed at times. I know that Lindens do as well, and they do take the issue very seriously.

ITG: So will it be more steampunk items from you? Or do you think you'll start delving more into the other periods that interest you?

OM: I think that barring some drastic event, I shall remain in my current form and with similar areas of interest, though I am always amenable to other topics. Some of my projects have no genre at all, such as the sim maps. I am always open to suggestions.

ITG: And will we see you at this year's community convention? I just found out it's in Chicago this year, where I live in real life. Or would that break too much the layer of anonymity you maintain here?

OM: I think that it would break my bank account, to start with. I have met a few people in person, but in general I prefer to meet them here on the Grid. I would hope that the convention will have a significant element in-world.

ITG: And then finally, maybe off the top of your head you'll recommend a couple of oustanding places here at the Caledon complex for people to visit? Or even, just where's a good place to start? It's so big, it can be intimidating at times.

OM: Oh goodness. Erm. The dog kennels here are very impressive from a scripting point of view, in Caledon I -- not just for scripters either, they are some of the most sophisticated pets that one can find. Otherwise I would just invite people to take a tour around, I think. Perhaps on a balloon [laughter]. Promenading is a terrific way to meet people as well -- do feel free to bid people a good day and so on. Some of the most interesting conversations I have had have just been from wandering Caledon and speaking to those doing the same.

Ordinal Enterprises can be found at [Caledon 100/59/23]; the public is invited to stop by 24 hours a day.

New video! A tour of our new headquarters, hosted by yours truly

2007-02-14T23:07:17Z

No, I haven't bought new land and moved this blog's virtual headquarters (not yet, anyway); I did, though, recently spend a couple of days completely overhauling the existing headquarters [Yongdong 185/179/21], using what I now know about building to construct a much more prim-efficient edifice. And I'm pretty happy with the results, too; not only does the new building have roughly 150 percent more floor space than the old one, but also while using 30 less prims than the original construction as well, freeing up those prims now for such amenities as a danceball, more furniture and more landscaping. (Curious how I did it? Well, mostly by getting smarter about slicing and hollowing three-dimensional cubes, versus using a separate prim for each wall like I had been doing it before.) For those who are curious, by the way, the new HQ now covers roughly two-thirds of my 512-square-meter plot of land; that's a minimal plot in relative terms there, and one that I'm always arguing one can do some cool things with, if only one is smart about the design process.

Anyway, I thought I'd take the opportunity of the new building to create my second-ever "machinima," or a video that's shot entirely within a videogame environment; it's a real-time tour of the new headquarters, to be specific, one I've added real-time audio to as well, to hopefully make you feel like you really are there with me in that virtual environment (or at least that a film crew really is with me). By concentrating the entire video on this small space, I thankfully avoid the main problem I faced with my first machinima, which was an attempt to showcase the public transit system at the Caledon steampunk community; namely, my low-end computer wasn't able to render things as quickly as the train was moving, leaving me with footage mostly of endless gray buildings and trees. I figured something like a building tour would be more up my alley this time, as far as the tech limitations on the gear I currently own; and indeed, the video comes out much more smoothly and fully rendered in this one, albeit my amateur editing skills still leave something to be desired.

Anyway, those reading this on a machine with Flash Player (desktop, laptop or mobile) should be seeing a version of the video above right now, which you can simply click on to watch and listen to; or you can click through to the YouTube page, or download the standalone MP4 and save on your hard drive or iPod. (Caution: 48 megs!) Do be sure to leave your comments about the video at the end of this entry, if you want; and especially let me know if you have an idea for a future video like this, but maybe set somewhere else. Hope you enjoy!

Jeez Louise, that's a lot of new land!

2007-02-11T21:46:47Z

Okay, so in a time period where I'm mostly reporting doom and gloom from Second Life, I wanted to make sure to report some good news as well...

Regular residents already know that the grid has been experiencing something of a land boom these days; and that's mostly because Linden Lab, the company that owns Second Life, is severely understaffed these days, and have been so busy dealing with the tech issues that come with all these millions of recent new residents, that they haven't had time to create new land for these millions of recent new residents. In effect, it's been much like if you suddenly doubled the population of Manhattan in a three-month period, without changing the city limits; a whole lot of people, with very little land available, and with prices reaching the outrageous for what little land people were willing to give up. (Want a good example? As of a week or so ago, I could've sold the little 512-square-meter waterfront parcel I own for the ITG headquarters for over 100 American dollars, versus the 20 dollars I originally paid for it.)

Ah, but I'm glad to report that Linden has finally made the time recently to start miraculously creating new land in the grid, and in a big way too -- over 40 brand-new sims in just the last week, or effectively 2.6 million square meters of new land for residents to buy and use, situated on the west side of the "mainland's" south continent, seen in the yellow circle above. And what's more, as you can see in that red circle above, this leaves a rather glaring large hole in the south continent, which Linden is swearing that they're going to fill in over the next couple of weeks; that could potentially add up to another 80 new sims of land to the metaverse, making for over 8 million square meters of new blank land added to the grid over the period of a month. These new additions, by the way, finally bring the south continent on par with the other areas of the mainland (which I call the north continent and "Linden Lakes"), in terms of total land area; yeah, not bad for a continent which didn't even exist a year ago at this point.

Eight million square meters -- that's a lot of land! And just what the grid needed, too, at least in my opinion, although I'm sure there are economic theorists out there who would disagree with me. The sudden influx of such a profound amount of new land has already had a noticable effect on the market, even just a week after it happened; any random shopping trip through the metaverse now will show lower prices for the land that's already available, in some cases down 25 percent or more from just a week ago. Yes, this recent new land glut is bad news for those trying to make serious money from virtual real estate; but it's good news for you and me and all the other regular players of SL out there, who are mostly searching simply for a mid-sized estate in which to host personal events.

So what exactly is going on over at all those new sims right now, a week after they first appeared? I wondered that myself, so yesterday spent an afternoon looking around the area, and taking random photos for this blog. And surprisingly enough, the answer for the most part is not a whole hell of a lot; which yeah, I think definitely says something about Second Life and the speed at which things happen there, that it would be surprising for a piece of land to exist for seven whole days without it being entirely developed already. I admit, it was kind of weird to go walking around a huge area of land again that had nothing on it; I haven't regularly experienced such a thing since I first joined last year, when the tips of the metaverse were always abandoned, which was great for homeless players because you could just teleport out there anytime you wanted to be alone. It's something I hadn't really thought about before; of how industrialized the grid has become in the last six months, to the point that I don't even think about it anymore.

Of course, this is not always the case with the new land on the south continent; here's an area about halfway down the coast, for example, that's already been developed to within an inch of its life. It's unbelievable, I think, how fast such enormous structures can go up there, especially when they're created in advance so that they can simply be plunked down on a new piece of land.

Oh, and speaking of which, look what else I stumbled across while over there (specifically, at Cajeiri 94/232/24); an almost exact replica of the Burj Al Arab luxury hotel in Dubai, with multiple floors and a working helipad on the roof, a copy of which can be bought by any high-end commercial or residential developer out there, with it even being designed with a small footprint to save on land costs. Legal? Probably not; I doubt these ingenious designers have anything officially to do with the actual Burj Al Arab hotel. But cool? Oh, you bet!

Next door to the hotel, by the way, is another example is something I find fascinating in the grid; of those who choose to live on luxury yachts while there instead of land-based houses, either owning underwater land on which to park the boat or renting a slip at a larger pier. In some ways, after all, it combines the best of both worlds; even a yacht affords a resident a lot of room for customization and interior design (the photo above, for example, is just of the master bedroom, which takes up only one-third of one of the yacht's multiple levels), while still giving the owner spectacular access to the water, and in some cases even with the ability to crank that boat up as a vehicle and go sailing away. As the owner of underwater land myself, it's something I definitely think about on a regular basis.

Of course, it's not just commercial developments that are popping up on this new land this week; here, for example, is a sorta nature sanctuary I came across as well, apparently owned by a small group of private individuals, and featuring a cool Eisengard-type mossy tower in the middle of the parcel. Such things are the saving grace of the mainland these days, and the one thing that prevents it from becoming a full-blown type of virtual MySpace; that there are still plenty of people there dedicated to prettying up their surroundings, or to building estates that simply show off their design skills instead of trying to sell something. As long as there are smart, creative people on the mainland, as far as I'm concerned, there will always be reasons to visit the mainland.

While I was looking around at the big map yesterday, by the way, I came across something pretty intriguing; as far as I know, it's the first large-scale area of "deep" (i.e. reddish) desert in the grid, a dramatic form of terraforming which I personally think is quite beautiful. And the funny thing is that it's not an official creation of Linden at all; instead, it's the newest themed area to arise at Azure Islands, a sort of "super structure" of connected private islands that are all owned by a small group of private individuals. It's interesting, I think, that the first largish area of a new terraforming type I've seen since first joining would come from a private group of entrepreneurs, not Linden themselves; it makes me wonder what kinds of similar new ventures we'll be seeing once the entire open-source transition of the grid has been made.

The more I stuck around Azure, in fact, the more intrigued I became; in actuality it is just a mammoth-sized organization, with over 170 private sims now chained together as a unified whole, for a whopping 11 million square meters of usable land. And even more interesting, over the course of development Azure has dedicated many of these sims to larger, more unified terraforming experiments, like ten-sim volcanoes for example that have sandy beaches ringing its perimeter. Pictured above, for example, is yet another intriguing new development at their overall space; a densely-forested region that's starting to spring up as well, only six sims large at this point but with a look that says there's a lot more to come.

Ultimately, I think, when you sit down and really talk with semi-serious players of Second Life, the above photos are ultimately what most of them are shooting for, when it comes time to have a mature personal estate; something that's been designed beforehand with residential space in mind, that's controlled by a central body that regulates what exactly can and cannot be built. Places like Azure can be a jarring contrast sometimes to various areas of the mainland one comes across; it makes me wonder if there's a way to add some of this regulation to the mainland as a whole, to put together even the basic steps towards guaranteeing an area of mainland dedicated to residential buildings integrated with the existing natural surroundings.

So anyway, there's my look at what's happening at these new sims right now; and of course I'll make sure to bop back down there again soon, if Linden ends up filling in that 80-sim hole soon that's currently there. If you come across your own things worth noting on the south continent these days, do make sure to mention them in the commenting section; and as always, I appreciate you being patient with the delays this blog continuously seems to face right now.

The irony of Second Life: as it gets bigger, my opportunities shrink

2007-02-07T22:22:16Z

Image courtesy The Electric Sheep Company.

I was excited; after a couple of weeks out of regular contact with the grid, I had decided to start getting back in again daily and getting some new articles done, and the first one I was going to write was to be about a fashion show being sponsored by an organization called iVillage. This is a pretty interesting group, in fact, when it comes to Second Life, and one I've wanted to profile here for awhile; an online division of NBC that caters specifically to middle-class women, instead of building their own virtual space iVillage instead leads tours and sponsors events featuring the things that independent women are doing there. In effect it's a great way for a corporate entity to integrate itself within the existing SL culture, something that a lot of corporate entities seem to have an impossible time doing; not by building something flashy and throwing a lot of money around, but by simply respecting the event-organizers and fashion designers who already exist, and acknowledging that their corporate in-house marketing department would never be able to whip up stuff in SL on their free time that could match what these individuals who do it full-time are creating.

But alas, I ended up facing the same problem at the fashion show that I have at all the other iVillage events: simply too many people, too much data, too much information for my puny little Mac Mini here in my Chicago apartment to handle decently. Here above, for example, is the only shot of the event I myself was able to get, after my computer literally freezing and crashing three times previous; and right after this shot, in fact, my computer crashed for a fourth time, inspiring me to not make a fifth attempt.

Now, I want to make it clear that this wasn't iVillage's fault, because I saw plenty of other people having a great time while I was there, and have seen plenty of glowing blog entries since; no, this is clearly the fault of me no longer having a computer that can handle the grid's toughest environments. And the funny thing is that this used to not be the case; here above, for example, is a live event sponsored by Creative Commons I attended only nine months ago, using the same computer equipment and featuring the same number of attendees; and it worked just fine then, even to the point that I was able to render live streaming video as well. So if my setup hasn't changed and neither has my internet connection, and if iVillage isn't doing anything different than past people have done, obviously there can be only one culprit for the slowdown -- it's something on the end of Linden Lab, the company that owns Second Life, something I assume is a combination of an evermore complex backend and an evermore complex client.

It all leads to two simple truths about a place like Second Life, and all the other 3D persistent online universes out there that exist, which I never realized before starting to play myself: that you simply cannot have the same experience you see in all those cool little machinima videos and television commercials, without spending an exorbitant amount of money on a high-end system; and even when you do have a system that can handle the rendering needed, the speed at which that system becomes obsolete is staggering. And then these two admissions of course lead to the biggest criticism I get here as a Second Life columnist, from veteran "gamers" who follow along: that I have to be a moron to not have understood these two things before starting to play Second Life, and that I have no one to blame but myself for not getting these things sooner.

But hey, I don't think I'm a complete moron! I've been involved with other aspects of the computer industry for decades now, after all, including the web when it was first starting out, FORTRAN and assembly code in high school, mobile programming and all kinds of other interesting subjects. It's just that, you know, I don't play videogames, so have never understood the complex relationship between the hardware involved and the details of rendering; the only graphics-heavy stuff I've had to do over the years are photo cleanups and video editing, and I've always assumed that a computer's processor either "works" or "doesn't"...never realizing that there were a whole series of video cards and patches and other customizations for making all the high-end stuff I had never used actually work well.

I understand that technology moves ever forward, and I also understand that a computer application needs to either grow or die; but man, I wish it didn't have to go so fast, to the point that a computer I bought brand-new less than a year ago now won't render Second Life well enough for it to be enjoyable for me anymore. I mean, that's fast, right? For a $600 computer to go from adequate to obsolete in less than a year is fast, and is something I now desperately wish I had known about before buying the computer in the first place. And with me now being unemployed in real life, and with much more pressing demands in my life than simply "having a better SL experience," I'm afraid I'm stuck with what I have and with the generally unsatisfying experience I'm having in the grid these days. And this unfortunately is having more and more of an effect on the publishing plans I've had regarding Second Life; enough, for example, that I've delayed the opening of my new adult magazine -avatar-, because I'm now no longer sure if I have the tech needed to actually maintain such a magazine.

It's a shame, I think, and also an example of one of the bitter ironies of Second Life; that as it gets bigger and bigger, and able to handle more and more, it leaves the players with the dilemma of either regular expensive upgrades or literally having less and less to do. And again, I wouldn't complain nearly as much about this if it were, say, World of Warcraft that I had been trying to play; that game is thoroughly a part of "gamer culture," and it's simply assumed that you know certain basic things about persistent 3D online universes before getting involved. What really steams me sometimes, though, is that this is not how Linden approaches Second Life at all; as is famously known by now, their goal is to break out into the mainstream, and to get a wide variety of people using Second Life who normally would never enter a 3D online environment (people like, say, me). I applaud that goal, and of course is the main reason I started ITG in the first place; but Linden can't have it both ways, with members of the general public simply signing up in droves but while never addressing any of the tech issues those members of the public have.

If things keep up like this, pretty soon I too am unfortunately going to be one of those avatars that drops to inactive status; and every time I have a frustrating night like I did on Monday, I think of that whopping 90 percent of Second Life residents who sign up, try it out once and never come back. I mean, that's a pretty dismal adoption rate, right? It's not just me? I keep thinking of all the things Linden could be doing right now to make that 90-percent dropout rate shrink in size -- like, be more upfront about the tech required for optimal gameplay, and provide more help to schmucks like me whose idea of "videogame innovation" still remains the spin wheel on the original "Tempest." If Linden really wants to embrace the mainstream more through Second Life, as they keep claiming through both speech and deed, I'd love to see the executives involved get out of the "gaming mindset" that pervades so much of the rest of that industry: that players will either understand what they need on their end to make the whole complicated thing work, or will learn it on their own, or will go away, and screw them if they go away 'cause we didn't need them anyway. That's the attitude all the other videogame companies have, which is a big reason why I haven't played a videogame with regularity since "Tempest;" I thought Linden was striving to be different than all that.

Just so the night wasn't completely wasted, by the way, I ended up stopping by one of my favorite clothing stores, the cyberpunk-geisha-anime themed BareRose Tokyo [Bare Rose 153/11/30], because I saw at a SL fashion blog recently that they had put out a new outfit I really dug. This is thankfully one of the things I can still do fairly well in Second Life, is travel by myself to permanent locations that are open 24/7, exploring them slowly on my own throughout an afternoon; and this is something I also find fun, on top of the big events, and is something I guess I'll be doing more regularly as part of this blog, as well as small more intimate events that aren't so laggy. (Got some small, intimate events for me to attend, by the way? Vampire balls or DJ showcases or sex-chat sessions or whatnot? You can always send me an invite via inthegrid [at] gmail.com [preferred], or through IM in the grid at 'Miller Copeland.') And yes, by the way, I did end up buying a number of new Asian-themed outfits while there the other night; because I'm a virtual-clothing whore and will probably always be, what with the absolutely amazing things that can be continually constructed there.

Anyway, so who knows what the following months will contain? Maybe I'll find a way to procure a new graphics-optimized computer; or maybe I'll be shutting down both my account and this blog; or maybe something miraculous will happen on Linden's end to make these problems suddenly disappear. As always, you'll know the latest as soon as I do; and of course I appreciate all of you hanging out and checking back here, after times when I haven't updated the site in awhile. Here's hoping I'll be getting a lot more content up here soon, and will have the new adult blog open sometime soon after that.