The Cornfield – The Game

Cornfield In Second Life

I took a look at the new experience tools for Second Life in a recent blog post, there I explained some changes and how they make some experiences far more seamless. In this post I’m going to look at the game these tools are being demonstrated in. Now before I go any further I should point people to the blog post about experience keys by Linden Lab and highlight that to fully appreciate this game you will need to download and install the experience keys project viewer. The game will work in other viewers, but you won’t get a full appreciate of the new experience keys.

The game features The Return Of The Cornfield to Second Life, a place with a history of being a resting place for some of the more naughty virtual world residents. Created by Linden Lab and their trusty sidekicks, The Moles, it’s a hack and slash collection game where corn bucks mean prizes. I’ll let the creators set the scene :

The Cornfield:

For many years, the Cornfield was a region of mythological status, where once naughty avatars were sent to think about what they had done. Rumor had it that “The Cornfield” was a vast star-lit field of corn and was cut off from communication with the rest of the world. Over the years, rumors spread across the grid of this infamous region that everyone at one time had heard about, but hardly anyone had ever seen. It was thought to be nothing but a tale…that is until now…
Present day

A group of young explorers set out one day to explore. They teleported to the farthest reaches of the grid, when suddenly their screens went blank and their shoes went where they should never humanly ever go. All of a sudden, their screens flashed bright, and they found themselves dazed and confused inside an old creepy barn.

The barn seemed abandoned. Creaks and strange noises startled them. They could not find a way out back to humanity. They saw some baskets laying on the floor, so they picked them up, and dared to venture outside. The air was thick, and everything to be seen was enveloped in a strange, eerie mist. A huge cornfield spread out wide in front of them. The corn rustled as if something was out there…something not quite human.

As darkness approached, the strange noises grew louder, and the rustling increased. They looked at each other, faces pale in the moonlight. One of them grabbed a plank for she knew something bad was about to happen. They looked at each other once more, knowing what had to be done, and one by one, they entered the Cornfield…

Cornfield Start Here

The starting location is a barn, you will find yourself armed with a wooden plank and carrying a basket, which is for the collection of corn. This corn can be found, not surprisingly, in the cornfield outside the barn however beware The Griefers because they will send you packing, rather quickly.

Cornfield Griefers

 

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Linden Lab Should Embrace Google+

The big news of course is the change of the Second Life Terms of Service, particularly the section regarding user generated content in section 2.3 : Updates to Section 2.3 of the Terms of Service. However I already have plans for blog posts today so that’s going to have to wait!

Instead I’m going to take a look at a positive change Google+ have announced that users will now be able to use any name they like on the service .. as long as it’s a first name last name combination, isn’t full of profanity and isn’t an obvious attempt to impersonate someone else. The post states :

Over the years, as Google+ grew and its community became established, we steadily opened up this policy, from allowing +Page owners to use any name of their choosing to letting YouTube users bring their usernames into Google+. Today, we are taking the last step: there are no more restrictions on what name you can use.

This is a very sensible move, albeit a few years late but it also provides the creators of virtual worlds, such as Linden Lab, a platform on which they can advertise their wares and their users can engage with them, without fear of having their accounts deleted for running foul of a real name policy, such as Facebook have.

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The Cornfield – Looking At The Experience Angle

A recent Linden Lab blog post invited us to Check Out Experience Keys in… The Cornfield! which is tempting but before you go rushing in remember to download the Experience Keys Beta Viewer, otherwise you won’t benefit from the full experience, nor will you really experience experience keys! Once you’re armed with your beta viewer you need to head to portal park :

SLURL : http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/LR%20Portal%20Park1/127/122/24/

Portal park has been revamped and is the portal to lots of different Linden Lab games, however the one you’re looking for is of course, The Cornfield.

Cornfield Portal Park

Whilst walking down the path you may want to check out the Me menu in the beta viewer, this is where you will see one of the extremely important changes, the experiences link, but at this stage it’s going to be a pretty lonely link as you haven’t accepted any experiences yet.

Experiences Menu

Once you walk along the path and into a barn you will see a portal tempting you to walk into it, but just before you get there you will see a message on your screen asking if you want to participate in this experience. The message isn’t on screen for long but fear not, it just goes to the same place as your other notifications. In my screenshot below, if the message disappears I can get it back by clicking the notification icon, which has 2 notifications on it at this stage, one of those was from a group message.

The message is worth reading because it describes which experiences you are opting into. In this case the experience will

  • Act On Your Control Inputs
  • Animate Your Avatar
  • Attach To Your Avatar
  • Track Your Camera
  • Control Your Camera
  • Teleport You

Cornfield Experience Request

Cornfield in green writing is clickable and takes you to the profile of the experience. More on that later.

Now this is the beauty of experience keys. Generally you would be asked to grant the above permissions and the next time you went back to this place, you’d be asked all over again. Experience keys makes this is a one click choice, by clicking Yes all of the permissions for the above are granted and they will remain that way until I revoke those permissions.

Continue reading “The Cornfield – Looking At The Experience Angle”

The Town Of DeadPool – Lock Up Your Children!

Dead Pool

The town of DeadPool in Second Life has a creepy history, it’s your traditional tale of the circus coming to town and scaring the living daylights out of everyone. I mean there are clowns, there are zombies, there’s a rickety old roller coaster and there are haunting lights to provide you with many a nightmare.

Dead Pool Second Life

However the real horror comes from the tales of what happened to the children :

A traveling circus arrived at the town of Deadpool. When children started vanishing, the townspeople turned their gaze on the circus performers. They were horrified to discover sick and twisted marionettes and other unspeakable acts. It’s been said that people still hear the screams emanating from the abandoned carnival.

Whereas the abandoned carnival is eerily creepy, it feels anything but abandoned due to the shadows, the movement of light and yes, the clowns!

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Gaming, Bans And Groundhog Day

Around the 25th July 2007 parts of Second Life were rocked to their foundations when Robin Linden blogged – Wagering In Second Life: New Policy. This was pretty much the end of gambling in Second Life as we knew it, although skill games would still be allowed. The blog post stated :

While Linden Lab does not offer an online gambling service, Linden Lab and Second Life Residents must comply with state and federal laws applicable to regulated online gambling, even when both operators and players of the games reside outside of the US. And, because there are a variety of conflicting gambling regulations around the world we have chosen to restrict gambling in Second Life.

This ban did unleash some pain for Linden Lab themselves, but they took a business decision knowing that would happen. The issue for Linden Lab was user to user transactions, as explained in a blog post by Zee Linden entitled Second Life Economy Grows 15% from Q4 to Q1 :

User to User Transactions. Total user to user transactions, a measure of the gross domestic product in Second Life, grew from an annualized rate of $261 million in Q4 to just over $300 million in Q1. The economy has grown 33.6% since the low point after the gambling ban.

There’s a graph in that post that demonstrates how stark the drop was in user to user transactions. Happier times didn’t arrive until Q3 2008 when Zee again blogged, this time in a post entitled Q3 closed on a high note with an unusually strong September :

Resident-to-Resident Transactions Top $100 Million. Total Resident-to-Resident transactions, a measure of the gross domestic product in Second Life, grew 21% from the prior quarter to $102M – or just under $1.00 per user hour. The Q3 total translates to an annualized rate of $408 million. By breaking $100M for the first time since Q2 2007, the Second Life economy has now fully recovered from the restriction placed on games of chance in Second Life in mid-2007.

Personally I always felt that gambling money largely stayed in gambling circles, that’s why the rest of the Second Life economy didn’t experience great pain during this period. However Linden Lab would definitely have felt the pain. However the other issue with the gambling ban was in terms of people trying to circumvent the rules with cunning plans :

ok so u have a “free” casino, but to use the machines you have to put in special prims instead of L$, but to get these “special prims” you have to buy them, eg L$5 a peice then play with those, you either win/lose depending on the game, then if you win you can give these “special prims” to someone in exchange for some lindens – A sneaky way around the gambling ban

There were plenty of these sort of ideas around and none of them really worked because people wanted to gamble for Linden Dollars, not prims in an elaborate scheme that were likely to be deemed as against the wagering policy. The horse had bolted, although some horses kicked a lot more than others as they left.

Continue reading “Gaming, Bans And Groundhog Day”

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