Project Sansar Buzz Appears To Be Launching The Second Life Of Second Life

Relaxing With Street Art

There’s an image for Project Sansar that is appearing on many articles regarding the project. I have no idea where people are getting this image from, have Linden Lab got a top secret media kit somewhere? I’ll use images from 1920’s Berlin and Everwinter for this post, 1920’s Berlin in particular gets a lot of mentions in the media.

There’s something very interesting going on with the recent media attention Linden Lab are receiving over Project Sansar, Second Life is making the news on the back of this too and in some cases, it sounds as if the way Second Life works has only just been discovered.

There have been a number of good articles about Linden Lab recently, my favourite recent written article I covered in my last blog post, it’s the article by Eric Johnson over at Re/code. However today I’ve discovered two more articles, one on Gamasutra and one on MoviePilot. Then there is a video interview from UploadVR, which is very impressive.

Christian Nutt over at Gamasutra has posted; True virtual reality: The race to build a ‘metaverse’. The article is very brief and refers to Eric Johnson’s article. Another article comes to us from Moviepilot and this one is all about Second Life;  Second Life: How to Navigate an Online Virtual World (and Maybe Even Make Some Money) :

In 2003, Linden Lab, a San Fran-based gaming and VR company, launched Second Life. 12 years later, more than a million users around the globe play the online game – although Linden Lab insists that Second Life is not a game at all.

This is the sort of article that makes you check that it wasn’t originally published in 2008 and has now for some odd reason came back to the top of the news, but it’s not, the article was published on 5th August 2015. The article discusses creating items for sale, becoming a stripper, sex being a big part of the Second Life virtual world and also time travel.

Time Travel?

The article really does sound like Second Life is relatively new, rather than over twelve years old and the article also makes Second Life sound quite exciting :

In fact, the possibilities of this game are almost endless. You can visit “Hell’s Asylum” (a landscape of fire and brimstone), “Everwinter” (a post apocalyptic wasteland based on the Chernobyl fallout zone) or – if you prefer something more serene – there’s “Irreplaceable”, a beautiful island paradise complete with a castle, forests and an underwater cave.

The article makes for a good read and is refreshingly honest in its approach of highlighting several different aspects of Second Life.

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Second Life’s Shadow Gives Linden Lab An Edge In Virtual Reality Future

Linden Village

For a virtual world that many people comment with surprise about it still being around, Second Life seems to still cast a mighty shadow over the virtual world scene. Over at Re/code, Eric Johnson has published an excellent article about how the land lies : Welcome To The Metaverse. I heartily recommend that people read this article in full.

The article opens with commentary from Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg regarding humans creating spaces :

Some spaces are mobile, like a bus. San Francisco is a space that was created by its users. Whether you go into a pub, a bar, a classroom, a bowling alley, an office, a library … We create spaces and we have people come together in those spaces, and then we communicate and socialize within those spaces.

These spaces are of course what people have been creating in Second Life too, in many and varied forms and guises.

Remnants Of Earth Hangar

Early on in the article Eric seems to be talking of Second Life in the past tense. This needs to be taken in context, Eric is really talking about how Second Life did not become the 3D internet that some hoped it would and how in the future, VR ventures will be hoping to go mainstream, become the next big thing and really get embraced by society :

A perfect metaverse, then, is more than just a video game or an application. Like a Web browser, or an operating system, it would offer users a means to do many things, and likely pay for them in many ways. That’s the Big Idea — that VR would be as transformative to the Internet as the World Wide Web — and it’s why so many companies are testing the waters. If one or more of them can crack it, they would unlock a great deal of virtual reality’s long-term potential.

Those of us who have already embraced virtual worlds know that the potential is there, but we also know that a large number of hurdles exist too.

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Screen Play: Life In An Animated World Features Second Life Related Work

The Albright-Knox art gallery in Buffalo is currently holding an exhibition, Screen Play: Life in an Animated World. The exhibition will run until Sunday September 13th and in part describes itself as :

Screen Play: Life in an Animated World is the first exhibition devoted exclusively to examining the work of contemporary artists who use the techniques, technologies, and tropes of animation as tools in their practices. This unprecedented exhibition gathers together almost fifty captivating film, video, and immersive installations created during the past twenty-five years by more than three dozen artists from nearly twenty nations, filling the galleries of the 1905 Building and its Sculpture Court as well as the Gallery for New Media and the Auditorium.

There are many exhibitors, including at least a couple who have had a presence in Second Life. One is Chinese artist Cao Fei, whose exhibit at the exhibition is a tour of RMB City, which once had a place in Second Life. RMB City generated a hell of a lot a publicity back in the day and it seems, it still causes quite a buzz as I see it mentioned in many articles.

Hamlet Au over at New World Notes is a friend of Cao Fei (AKA China Tracy) and was an unpaid adviser on the project. Hamlet posted quite a few blog posts about RMB City, here’s one : RMB City Opens In London and Second Life: Metaverse-Based Art In An Internationally Renowned Gallery.

The New York Times also seem to like the project, here’s an article from them : Flying Avatars Admire the Artwork.

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PaleoQuest – Help Magellan Linden Save The Grid From The Evil Dr Talpa

Portal Park Entrance

PaleoQuest is Linden Lab’s latest adventure game in Portal Park and they have blogged about it – Brave Dinosaurs & Win Prizes in PaleoQuest! :

Magellan Linden put the moles to work building a theme park on the latest hunk of land discovered in Second Life… but something’s gone horribly wrong!

Uncover the mystery of a menacing plan and explore six exciting regions teeming with dinosaurs and valuable collectibles in PaleoQuest. The evil Dr. Talpa has mangled space and time – colliding past, present, and future into a single point in time – which happens to be at the PaleoQuest Theme Park. Are you the dashing hero the world needs to stop Dr. Talpa from taking over? The rewards are great – but so is the risk! Dare the treacherous obstacles that lay in waiting, and uncover a wealth of hidden tools and items that will aid you in your quest for fame and adventure. 

Please read the blog post in full for full details about the prizes and any restrictions. Inara Pey has posted a very good blog post about PaleoQuest : Experiencing PaleoQuest, the Lab’s latest adventure in Second Life.

I haven’t yet delved deep into PaleoQuest, but I have briefly visiting the opening area. Starting in Portal Park follow the sign for PaleoQuest, go down the path, accept the experiences request and you’ll soon be on your way, complete with a funky hud that has information regarding the game.

Welcome Centre

The welcome centre has a lot of useful information, including videos that are well worth watching, I’ll embed a couple in this post, starting with the trailer for the game. Which isn’t actually in the welcome centre, but more on that later.

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Magic Boxes Set To Shut Down In August Along With The Mysterious Shut Down Of XStreet

More information for Second Life Marketplace merchants, Linden Lab have blogged Magic Box and Xstreet Shut Down Dates. No, you haven’t read that incorrectly.

The launch of the Viewer Managed Marketplace has erased the last remaining reasons for Magic Boxes to exist inworld. No copy items are no longer a problem. Once everyone has been migrated, they will serve no purpose, other than taking up a prim of land. Therefore the blog post informs us :

Merchants who are still using Magic Boxes to sell their items will need to manually migrate their listings by August 17, 2015, when Magic Boxes will no longer appear on Marketplace.

Hopefully this won’t be an issue for too many merchants. August 17th is not that far away. The news about XStreet is odd. The blog post informs us :

We will leave Xstreet up until August 27, 2015, so that interested Merchants can pull their data before the site is shut down for good.

This news is odd for a few reasons. New merchants might be wondering what XStreet is. Older merchants might be surprised to learn that XStreet is still running. First let’s go back in time, to January 2009 when Linden Lab announced :

Linden Lab®, creator of the virtual worldSecond Life®, today announced a key milestone in its expansion of the Second Life platform: acquiring two Web-based marketplaces for virtual goods, Xstreet SL and OnRez. These acquisitions join several other recent strategic initiatives, including enhancements to the experience for new users, which will enable Linden Lab to reach a broader global audience for Second Life in 2009. Linden Lab is consolidating the two marketplaces on the Xstreet SL platform, offering one online shopping experience for customers and merchants. This will make it easier for Second Life Residents to find virtual goods to purchase and will provide merchants broader channels to sell their products.

XStreet and OnRez were created by Second Life residents, not Linden Lab. However in 2009 Linden Lab made both online marketplaces an offer they couldn’t refuse (No horse’s heads were involved) and they were eventually merged under the Second Life Marketplace banner.

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