Oh ho ho it’s magic, you know, never believe it’s not so, was a suitable introduction to my post looking at the work of master Wizard Zachh Barkley during the wonderful Fantasy Faire 2013 and it’s a suitable introduction for this post too because Draxtor Despres’ latest edition of The Drax Files features Zachh Barkely. Zachh is the owner of the Second Life store The Arcanum. I’ll embed the video at the end in traditional style, along with a bonus song!
The episode opens with Zachh, who is much younger than I realised, in his room. Behind him a sign reads “Wizards Only Beyond This Point“. Zachh told me he’d been participating in Fantasy Faire since 2009, which was the first Fantasy Faire. He admits to have been pretty young when he entered Second Life as an apprentice wizard.
The episode features action of The Wizard in action, casting spells, flying … on a broomstick, might be a question mark over lore there! Zachh claims that his brand is the biggest producer of magic in Second Life and if you don’t agree with this you may find yourself under a spell until you do agree … ok I made the part about the spell up!
Zachh explains his early exposure to game development, how he collaborates with other users in Second Life to bring his ideas to life and he also uses the LSL Portal, which is a much under promoted resource when it comes to Second Life scripting. Seriously, the LSL portal is choc full of goodies for people who want to script.
The beauty of this episode lies in the fact that this is a young guy who loves nature and the outdoors, dates, has a real life friends network and still sees the beauty of a virtual world. The magnificent potential of sandboxes, virtual worlds and user generated content is all covered here, but so is the importance of balance between virtual and real worlds.
Zachh talks of how Second Life is a blank canvas and to many that’s its beauty. However people like Zachh provide content and fun for people who don’t want a blank canvas, they want something to do and for virtual worlds to thrive, both parties are needed.
Yet again Draxtor reaches the parts other beers cannot reach in highlighting another excellent use case of Second Life and therefore virtual worlds in general. These are the sort of use cases the mainstream media shy away from and I’m not really sure why because virtual worlds are going to grow and grow. However these sort of use cases don’t hit the stereotypical button for the mainstream media and Draxtor continues to do a fine job of not only challenging, but positively dismissing those sterotypes.
The only thing missing from this episode is Orcs, really, I want The Orcs to have their voices heard!
SLURL To Arcanum Store & Village: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Arcanum/128/122/22