Virtual Worlds – Page 186

July 23, 2013

Could Linden Lab Follow Amazon’s Lead In Fan Based Creativity?

I was reading an article over at New World Notes: Attack on Titan Fan Game in Second Life Attacked by Attack on Titan Publisher? This is an old concept, Second Life creators create world or roleplay based on a known product for which they don’t appear to have rights to do so. Here’s the thing, Attack on Titan is something I’d never heard of until I read Hamlet’s article. Obviously we all can’t know about everything, but the franchise gets free publicity via usage in Second Life.

Now of course Intellectual Property rights are a very important area and publishers need to ensure they maintain their rights, so ignoring IP is not a clever thing to do, no matter how much free publicity it brings to a franchise. However I’ve long maintained that companies should consider the potential of Second Life and the realites of what Second Life creators can afford, and come to a compromise that is sensible. This isn’t an easy thing to do, but Amazon have a model that could potentially be expanded to virtual worlds.

Kindle Worlds is the Amazon model, it’s where fan fiction can be published. There is a criteria but here’s some of the blurb:

“Welcome to Kindle Worlds, a place for you to publish fan fiction inspired by popular books, shows, movies, comics, music, and games. With Kindle Worlds, you can write new stories based on featured Worlds, engage an audience of readers, and earn royalties. Amazon Publishing has secured licenses from Warner Bros. Television Group’s Alloy Entertainment for Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and The Vampire Diaries; Valiant Entertainment for Archer & Armstrong, Bloodshot, Harbinger, Shadowman, and X-O Manowar; Hugh Howey’s Silo Saga; Barry Eisler’s John Rain novels; Blake Crouch’s Wayward Pines series; and The Foreworld Saga by Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, Mark Teppo, Eric Bear, Joseph Brassey, Nicole Galland, and Cooper Moo. Licenses for more Worlds are on the way.”

Now Amazon Kindle is a completely different platform to Second Life and has less of the chaotic nature of Second Life, as once published, a story is published, but the idea, bring licensed products to a user generated content platform is something that Linden Lab should investigate.

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July 23, 2013

Blender 2.68 Now With Improved Weight Painting Tools

Gaia Clary has announced in the official forums that the latest version of Blender, 2.68, now has improved weight painting tools. I’m not familiar with these sort of tools, so I don’t know how much of an improvement they are, Gaia, who does know about these matters seems pretty impressed. Gaia also helps to develop these improvements, so deserves much credit. I’ll embed Gaia’s video explaining the improvements at the end of the post, but this video is aimed at those who already have a knowledge of weight painting.

Gaia and fellow colleagues have worked on development with Blender to make it more useful for the Second Life community, for example they have been instrumental in seeing that Collada support is maintained and their work also saw options mentioning Second Life, coming to the Blender client.

However they don’t do this alone and Gaia thanks the main devs too for their assistance, so it seems there’s a very good working relationship at play, which is positive for Second Life going forward.

Version 2.68 also has other improvements over previous versions of Blender.

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July 21, 2013

Private Sims Drop Below 20,000 Mark

Whereas at one point in time, private regions dipping below the 20,000 mark looked inevitable, when it actually came to private regions dipping below the 20,000 mark, boy did they make a fight of it.

Last week’s loss of 20 private regions left them teetering on the brink at 20,006, but signs of a fight were on the cards then and this week, they fought like mad, by Thursday they had increased by 2, standing at 20,008, a day later on Friday another 5 had been added and private regions stood at 20,013. They had a bit of a swagger about them at this stage and were ready to collect on bets made that they would sink below thr 20k mark this week.

However they were dealt a body blow yesterday when they dropped to 20K, they were against the ropes, wobbling around the ring, the referee took a good long hard look to ensure they weren’t taking too much damage and then, today, they were hit with an uppercut as the scores on the doors from Tyche Shepherd revealed a weekly net loss of 9 private regions, meaning they now stand at 19,997.

This means they stand at their lowest level since June 28th 2008. However are there any positives from this, well there might be.

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July 21, 2013

Calas Galadhon Park To Close Temporarily

With thanks to a post from Bonita Brianna over at SLUniverse, we receive the unfortunate news that The Calas Galadhon Park will be shedding some of their sims. The news, which is confirmed on the Calas Galadon Park Blog informs people:

“It is with regret that because of new rl challenges for both Truck and I, it will be necessary that we close Calas Galadhon Park sims to the general public on Monday, August 1, for a period of time. This unfortunately must include our live music program for that time as well.

To continue financially carrying the estate on our own, we will need to drop at least 4 of our 13 regions and possibly make another of the homesteads into an OpenSpace. At this time we see that the sims that will be removed are Bay of Balfalas, the new water sims of Belegaer & Sea of Nurnen and regretfully, Eryn Vorn.”

There’s more information on the Calas Galadhon blog about this, including the options they are looking at. However it’s important to note that this decision is due to RL challenges and the financial challenges of running thirteen sims in Second Life. A point oft missed in the tier debate is that of people having to deal with challenges outside of Second Life.

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July 20, 2013

Three New (To Me) Enjoyable Second Life Related Flickr Streams

First of all, new Flickr still sucks! I’m still not talking to it and I think it has been a very naughty boy. However I can use it, and I am using it. I’ve also discovered photostreams of people whom I don’t know inworld, the photostreams of the people I do know are excellent, but this post is about some new folk, two of which are a bit adult, one is very adult.

Anyway, first up is Sadbab Shan’s Flickr Stream (alternative link for lower bandwidth version). Now I am rather artisitically challenged generally but Sadbab produces images that make me go “Wow” .. I’m not sure this is a good plus point considering my knowledge of art! However the stream is very eyecatching and attracts lots of awards from other digital photography groups.

Sadbab’s images are more scene based than some, you won’t see close up portraits of avatars but you will see wonderfully constructed scenes.

Next up is Benjamin Glendale’s Flickr Stream (alternative link for lower bandwidth version). First things first, Benjamin’s stream involves some adult imagery but you should not see that if you’re not logged into Flickr and even then the adult images will not be viewable unless you’ve selected the preference to view adult content. Benjamin posts male nudes sometimes and sometimes the male nudes are a little bit, shall we say, pleased to see the camera. However if that’s not your thing, then fear not because Benjamin has a vast array of stunning photos from within Second Life, his recent images from Mad City really capture the noir feeling the creators would want to be exemplified in a stunning fashion.

Benjamin captures avatar portraits and landscapes to stunning effect and there are some superb examples of what can be achieved in Second Life by creative minds.

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