Stroker Serpentine today confirmed rumours about his departure from Second Life, releasing his Sexgen V5 base as a full perms model for free in the process, you can pick the package up from his island, get them whilst they’re hot.
Cindy Claveau shared the news over at SLUniverse with a copy of a post to the Eros group inworld:
“It’s true I am leaving Second Life. I have made many friends here and I hope that we’ll all be together in the Third Life. I am placing the SexGen base full perm to any who would like to use it in their builds. I’ll be closing the groups and returning my sim soon, so come and get it quick. Feel free to share it. It’s been a grand adventure and I wish you all the naughty fun you can have with it. Until then, be good to each other. ”
I personally didn’t know Stroker Serpentine, I know of him but I can’t say I’ve ever had any real dealings with him. However when I arrived in Second Life Sexgen was a big thing, which was reflected in news articles and documentaries over the years. There were controversial elements to the Stroker Serpentine Story, a dispute with Corsi Mousehold of furnation, a lawsuit with a copybotter and more recently a dispute with Linden Lab which has since been resolved. However love him or loathe him Stroker Serpentine generated a lot of publicity for Second Life.
The publicity was of course related to adult content, the plumber turned virtual world entrepreneur was an uncomfortable role model for some people who felt the adult content side of Second Life undermined the platform, I disagree with that viewpoint, first of all because sex sells and secondly, because it got tongues wagging (no pun intended).
During the boom days of Second Life, Stroker made it to Businessweek on a virtual world rich list, where they reported he was selling forty to fifty items a day for USD$20 – USD$40 each item, I don’t think that’s likely these days, but back in 2007 it was happening.
Stroker was interviewed by Wired in 2007 too, where he talks about his business. There was also talk of Stroker selling his Amsterdam Sim for USD$50,000 on Ebay, did this actually go through in the end? I seem to recall hearing the deal fell through but I don’t know if it was revived, but this does tell us how big a boom Second Life was going through in 2007 and how big a name Stroker was.
Stroker was also interviewed for a documentary entitled Another Perfect World, directed by Femke Wolting & Jorien van Nes, I watched this documentary on Channel 4 when it was released back in 2009 and enjoyed it very much, it covered more than just Stroker Serpentine and Second Life, talking of Eve-Online, World of Warcraft and Lineage too. There’s a thirty one minute trailer of this available on YouTube, which you can see here. Stroker appears around the five minute mark, the eighteen minute mark and the thirty minute mark, with adult themes as you’d expect. However the trailer also features Philip Rosedale, The Alphaville Herald’s Peter Ludlow and very briefly Second Life piano maker Persephone Milk.
When I arrived in Second Life there were two big adult brands that stood out, Xcite and Sexgen, indeed Sexgen was such a big brand that I didn’t realise it was a brand, I just thought sex beds were called Sexgen, then of course there was the copybot lawsuit issue which sorted that out.
There is of course an element of controversy to Stroker’s departure, releasing his item full perms will cause arguments but that’s his choice and people should really respect that choice, people have released items full perms before and will do so in the future, if you do look at the full perms items see if you can get creative with them, selling them as is, is of course perfectly feasible but with a bit of creativity this can be a good thing.
Stroker Serpentine has played a very large role in the Second life story, he should be credited for the part he played, he now moves on to new things and I wish him all the best, for now his “From pliers to pixels” phase has come to an end, but hopefully he has a prosperous future.