The Drax Files – Page 8

November 18, 2013

Dwarfins Continued Evolvement Is Good For Second Life

The Dwarfins team have been busy evolving the Dwarfin experience, back in October they announced the release of achivements to compliment the breedable experience. More achievements were announced shortly after with more in the pipeline.

Achievements add a new dimension to the Dwarfin experience, rather than just concentrating on traits you can now pick up bonuses along the way. Most of the achievements are birth related, for example if you manage to birth a Dwarfin with 7 miner traits, you wll earn the 7T miner achievement. This gives a lease of life to miner traits. However there are a couple of traits that aren’t birth related, for example if you mine up 8 special items then you earn the Dirt Master award …..

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November 1, 2013

The Drax Files Episode 13 – Creations For Parkinson’s

The Drax Files Episode 13 – Creations For Parkinson’s is a wonderful example of how many boundaries the virtual world experience can cross. I’ll embed the video at the bottom of the post. This episode touches upon how people of all ages can enjoy the virtual world experience and how experiences within the virtual world can inspire people outside of the virtual world.

Fran Serenade inworld is a blonde bombshell, or a mermaid, dancing, playing having fun. The person behind the avatar is an 86 year old lady who has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. We see Fran inside and outside of the virtual world, we see how her avatar inspires her to walk to the car because she’s determined to be able to do some of the things her avatar can do. Fran’s view of Second Life?

“Second Life might just be the fountain of youth“.

According to Drax on the youTube link for the video, Fran’s use of a virtual world is being closely studied by her personal doctor is but conclusions cannot be drawn without further study, so don’t go buying you parents, grandparents or great grandparents a Second Life subscription for Christmas in a search of the elixir of youth!

Fran’s daughter, Barbie Alhemy, runs Creations For Parkinson’s but explains that the island is not just for people with Parkinson’s or their family members and friends. People come to the island and talk in public or private about their own issues or simply to exchange ideas or get social.

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August 30, 2013

The Drax Files Episode 10 – Robin Sojourner

The Drax Files Episode 10 features Robin Sojourner, even I’ve heard of Robin Sojourner, I mean since my very early days in Second Life back in 2007. There’s a reason for this, Robin Sojourner is Robin Wood, the T-Shirt lady, who? you may think, but for those of us who have been here a while, that T-Shirt tutorial and template have been an absolutely awesome introduction to creating content in Second Life.

So when Drax tipped me off earlier in the week as to who this week’s Drax files was about, I was rather excited and the end result of the episode is one that leaves me with a warm fuzzy feeling. The inerview is superb, Robin talks of how much the Second Life world has changed, how mesh has made so many things look different but one of the best points in the video is when Robin talks about how people who have no idea that they are creative come in to Second Life and find out that they can make things, and that is such a wonderful concept and one that I can agree is true. I am, to say the least, artistically challenged and whereas my creations in Second Life are hardly going to win awards, the fact of the matter is that my creations exist in this virtual world and it’s a wonderfully empowering feeling.

I certainly agree with Robin when she mentions that we are taught that creativtiy is reserved for the creative types and that they are special, but it’s just not true. I’m not trying to undermine the creative types in Second Life, there are some wonderfully creative people, but what Second Life allows is for those of us who don’t think we are creative, to create, and although being at the top of the game does take extra skills and extra imagination, the very fact that so many of us in Second Life can create to a degree, is what makes it such a wonderful platform.

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June 28, 2013

The Drax Files Episode 8 – Madpea Games

Storytelling is an art form that I often think doesn’t realise anywhere near its potential in Second Life. However, when you stop and think a bit longer, we see lots of roleplaying, which is a form of storytelling and then we have interactive games from producers such as Madpea Games and that’s the focus of this blog post, because the lastest episode of The Drax Files involves an interview with Kiana Writer of Madpea Games. I’ll embed the interview at the end of the post, along with some trailers from Madpea Games, as long as the Shockwave Flash plugin doesn’t crash again, all should be well!

This episode has a twist, a bit like those films where cartoon characters appear, in this episode we see Kiana’s avatar but Drax in all his RL glory. However we do see some of the content creators for Madpea Games in action, including an amusing scene where one of them holds up a help sign!

Kiana starts by saying that she thinks Second Life is the perfect platform for designing games, something that I really can’t agree with. However Madpea have produced some excellent examples of storytelling and games on the Second Life platform. Kiana explains how Second Life has allowed her to bring her stories to life. That’s a really impressive point to note.

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June 3, 2013

The Drax Files Episode 7 – Rod Humble

The Drax Files contuinue to impress me and as usual I’ll embed the video at the end of the post, in this edition Draxtor talks to Rod Humble, CEO of Linden Lab and someone who appears to have been missing in action for a while, although I swear I saw that thief style avatar when I was wandering around Fantasy Faire. The only disappointing aspect of this interview is that Rod doesn’t wear an Aston Villa shirt to work, or even a Villa tie!

The interview opens with Rod Humble saying “Most People at Silicon Valley have no idea that Second Life still exists.” The interview is fascinating with Rod making some extremely encouraging comments (for me anyway) in terms of privacy. Unlike those who think we should all be using our real names everywhere we go, Rod sees the value of people having their own space in different environments.

Rod also talks of how he travels around with alts and that this gives him the chance to engage in different ways, ways that he wouldn’t be able to do if people knew he was Rod Humble. This relates to the previous point about privacy and it’s encouraging to see that Rod seems to get the importance of this.

We see Rod in walking into the Linden Lab offices and some of the staff in pose mode, some pondering, others in catalogue style poses, some typing away and pretending the camera isn’t there whilst keeping one eye on it, as you do! There’s talk of performance improvements, with Server Side Baking making an appearance and talk of improvements that will be rolled out this quarter that apparently we will really like.

We see footage of The Dwarfins cave, hurrah! Rod talks of how Second Life is a great platform for creativity and how the content is user created, which we all know of course but as hopefully people who aren’t yet Second Life users will see this, it’s important that the CEO of Linden Lab makes this point.

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