Many people celebrated Second Life’s official tenth birthday during 2013, but three Second Life related publications also turned 10 during 2013, New World Notes, The Alphaville Herald and SLUniverse.
Love them or loathe them, all three are important archives of virtual world history, discussion, debate, controversy and hope.
On 22nd April 2003, Hamlet Au, AKA Wagner James Au, introduced himself to the Second Life population :
Here’s the thing: ordinarily, I cover computer games for magazines like Salon and Wired. But for the next few months, Linden Lab has invited me to set aside my journalist cap, and instead, don the digital beanie of their in-house virtual correspondent. I’ll be writing about the creation of Second Life, their upcoming massively multiplayer online game, as it goes from Beta test to official launch, with frequent posts in this space.
Because what is happening now in the Beta test of Second Life is very much a social experiment in the making. Literally, “making”: thousands of volunteers are already in there now, buzzing around in Linden Lab’s servers, shaping their world out of thin air. From a default canvas of wide oceans and rolling hills, they’re cramming the place with coffee tables, exotic swords, sunglasses, ride-able rockets, electric guitars, readable books, soaring Japanese pagodas– pretty much anything you might imagine, and a lot more you wouldn’t dream of– to create a playspace as vast and varied as creativity and enthusiasm allows.
Back in those days New World Notes was officially aligned with Second Life. Hamlet was a Linden, hired by Linden Lab to write New World Notes. Hamlet has been gathering up old archived posts and adding them to his current blog, as exemplified by his 2003 interview with Philip Rosedale – The Price Of A New World : An Interview With Philip Linden.
New World Notes was an official Second Life publication until February 2006 and then of course, went its own way and is still going strong today covering Second Life and more.
The Alphaville Herald launched in October 2003, with Peter Ludlow, Glenn Given and Candace Bolter listed as authours. Pixeleen Mistral would arrive later. One of their first posts spoke of the potential power of virtual worlds and MMO’s :
In a recent study, Edward Castronova at California State Fullerton calculated that if the MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game) Norrath were “real” place, the per capita gross domestic product of Norrath would make it the 79th richest country in the world (per capita), just behind Russia, but ahead of Bulgaria.
This remarkable conclusion was based upon the sale of currency and virtual goods of Norrath on ebay and other online locations. Other recent work has pointed not just to the development of virtual economies, but to emerging governance structures, laws, and other institutions within virtual communities. If this is right, then virtual communities in general and MMORPGs in particular are not just games, and not just chat rooms, but are also real places that are developing real social institutions and real economies.
Originally titled The Alphaville Herald the publication renamed itself as The Second Life Herald as the team moved to Second Life from The Sims Online, this was aided by Urizenus Sklar being banned from The Sims after a series of controversial stories about the platform. The controversy would continue as The Herald covered stories that others were afraid to touch.
The name Alphaville Herald returned in the wake of the Second Life branding rules which barred the use of Second Life due to trademark issues. Today it’s nowhere near as busy as it once was, indeed I don’t think they’ve posted this year yet!
SLUniverse launched in November 2003 with Cristiano Midnight the man behind the site. Second Life was a different beast back then and the early forum reflected that. Hot topics included questions regarding whether Linden Lab would still pay users for hosting events, How the one time $9.95 fee worked, How the 1024M land grant worked and whether you could buy Linden Dollars with real money.
Well over a million posts later the forum is still going strong and has been visited by Linden Lab CEO’s as well as users. The site has been no stranger to controversy over the years but the controversies are far outweighed by the useful resources and shared information of users.
All three sites remain an important record of virtual world history, mainly Second Life but other virtual worlds have been covered too as well as political and technological advances.