I’ve mentioned previously that Linden Lab don’t do a decent job of showcasing machinima, indeed I’ve mentioned recently that their own forums and website aren’t that clever with regards to promoting user generate content full stop. So imagine my surprise when I read that May will be the Inaugural month of Machinima. Although if I’m nitpicking, I could point out that the blog post should be being promoted within the Machinima forum on the official forums, which isn’t a forum that is designed to promote machinima…..seriously, LL, let people promote their wares on your forums!
Anyway, you have to be quick if you want to enter, entries need to be received by April 10th, no sex or violence and it can’t last longer than three minutes, so it was important to point out there’s no sex allowed as three minutes is a bit of a marathon session. However, if sex or violence are ever the theme, it will be allowed, I await to see if Linden Lab are mature enough to officially allow such submissions.
The local education authority, Linden Endownment of Arts, clearly hasn’t died with the departure of Mark Kingdon, this was something he very much encouraged but we promptly didn’t see much of. Machinima is a very good use case because, unlike a lot of other art out and about, Machinima isn’t really competing with other venues, there aren’t that many places that display machinima inworld, there are Machinima artists such as Toxic Menges who display their wares inworld, but it’s not a big scene, which is a shame because user created Machinima could be a plus point for Second Life.
I’m pleased to see Linden Lab getting off their backsides and promoting Second Life Machinima, there’s plenty of other stuff I hope to see them promoting too, and I hope to see them using their own website to promote it, including their own user groups ….well actually I noticed yesterday they started posting in the forums about user groups, which is long overdue. I also hope to see Linden Lab ease up on the forum restrictions a tad and allow people to promote events, new products and discuss without being reported, new ventures and sims.
This machinima event is a good start, let’s hope for more.