Tiny Pirate

Had an idea for a web ring inside second life for games. And so I made it! It’s called GameRing and the SL Games Blog has a better description for it than I’ve come up with so far:

“Pirate Cotton, one of the devs behind DarkLife, is just getting started with a new gamer’s resource called GameRing. Similar to a webring, this is a listing of games that is accessed inworld. The idea is that each game in the ring hosts a GameRing information stand. Maybe you are at a place that needs teams and you are alone – by scrolling through the kiosk you find a game suitable for one player and think, “Hmmm… I never heard of that one – think I’ll give it a try.””

Hi there. I know it’s been a while (ok, 2 years or so), but DarkLife version 2 is up! YES! At last! The first Second Life MMORPG is back on its feet!

You can go and play on Istaria Prime and enjoy a small version of the content we’re preparing for you on Navora, which is now locked and closed down while we completely remodel the place. We’re very excited to show you the new game and I think you’ll all enjoy it. It’s had significant work on the code, and includes new features like:

Sadly, the Game SLave Wiki has died, and this time it’s not likely to come back. Johan tells me that the database has crashed and he’s been unable to repair it, and worse, the backups had been failing as well. It seems unlikely we’ll see it back. Meanwhile, you can try and keep up to date with games content in SL by reading the useful SL Games blog Onder Skall, Osprey Therian and Seeker Gray publish. It’s a good read!

Second Life is an interesting, challenging, unique environment. At least, that’s what I try and tell my friends, game-devs and some journalists I know. But what do they actually see in-world? Porn, shops, fetishists and casinos. Where’s all the potential of an alternate universe? Where’s the joy of creative human creativity unleashed and without limits? And I’m not talking collars, chains and whips!

Frankly, I find the casinos, clubs and porn of Second Life tedious and dull and I know there’s better content out there, if only I could find it! But the simple fact is that finding anything interesting, stimulating or challenging in Second Life is very, very hard. Hell, just searching for something ‘funny’ can produce some fairly odd results. Click the picture to the left to see an example from Second Life of the search results for the ‘funny’ search. Note, ‘mature content’ is not ticked! I have had to censor the picture to make it moderately safe for work!

I was checking the blog stats and discovered something interesting. I’m convinced Google thinks I’m a very strange, twisted, if not sick individual. Next to ‘tiny EVE’, the top result to produce a click-through to my blog was ‘group masturbation’! You can see the full list of searches that resulted in click-throughs to my blog below: Read the rest of this entry »

Onder Skall has a great blog on games in Second Life. He has lots of excellent reviews and overviews of content and games built in Second Life and highlights some of the more creative and interesting aspects of the world.

The good news is that Linden Lab has started to investigate the theft and hacking attempted by our little crook. Meanwhile, the event got some coverage on the Second Life Herald (with some interesting debate in the comments) and the legal angle was debated on the blog Virtually Blind.  As it stands now we wish Linden Lab the best of luck in their investigations and we hope the thief wasn’t as smart as he’d like to think he is!

Today I logged in to DarkLife to see a disturbing message from the coder, Bram (aka. Mark Busch in game). The post describes how we’ve had $400us stolen from our main ‘account’ holding our cash in Second Life for the DarkLife game. Read the rest of this entry »

I feel there’s an echo in here! Again, we’re pushing to get DarkLife updated to the next version, with a complete rebuild of the sim in Second Life. This time we might be able to do it though, Bram has his code about right and Crash and Logan seem keen on getting things squared away. We have most of the art ready, and we have what looks to be a good contractor available should we need someone to do some emergency building or texturing.

Phew! Fingers crossed we’ll have something more to report, as well as the new web page, in the next couple of weeks.

DarkLife is currently looking for artists and builders to rebuild around 3/4 of the sim for the next version of DarkLife. I wrote up a post about our request for tenders and I hope we get a few quality submissions! I think the chance to get paid for the work and the great publicty it presents artists should be a good draw. DarkLife gets a lot of coverage out there in the world so the boost to ones portfolio should not be underestimated!

Crash Prefect, one of the Collaborators on DarkLife recently got back from the Second Life fan convention thingumy. He said he had a lot of questions and interest in DarkLife, which is pretty exciting! I wasn’t aware of how widely the game is still followed and updates are waited on. Looks like I might have to dive back in and help push DarkLife up to version 2 and all the exciting goodness that will bring. Good on Crash for encouraging us to keep this thing going! And congratulations to him for securing full time paid employment working as a content creator in Second Life for Rivers Run Red, a marketing, promotion and design firm with a leg in Second Life.

The Second Life games wiki I host is currently down. I’m going to have to repair it some how and I’m not sure how long that will take. I’ll try and get it back up soon. Meanwhile, does Linden Labs want to take it over? Wikis suit Second Life perfectly, and slotting in the games one shouldn’t be too hard and all sorts of clever mapping to launch people straight into Second Life. Hmm, good ideas huh?

Update: The wiki remains down, despite my efforts to update it. I’ll give it another go, but I don’t think I have much chance. If you are good at these sorts of things, please let me know and I’ll give you a shot at fixing it! The records are still there, just the config and setup side of things is broke. If I can’t get it fixed it will simply have to stay down.

A month or two ago I wrote an article on the silly side of Second Life, the ‘sky boxes’ where players go to have cyber sex. It was all in good fun and I forgot to link it from my blog, so here it is, go read!

The editor had this to say about the entry!

Veteran builder and gamer Pirate Cotton sets sail on a quest for sexy treasures in this review of five skyboxes. Casting his one good remaining eye over a bevy of designs and textures and, despite his wooden-leg, Pirate manages to road-test a variety of sexballs. With him is the First Mate, Neal Stewart, slinging comments from the starboard bow and insisting that he knows a dead parrot when he sees one. Will they find some very special skybox places? Spiritually, ecumenically and grammatically?

Torley Torgeson, well known Second Life personality has released all of her music (in real life she composed all kinds of techno) for free. Download 230 tracks of music and read her storyhere.

Torley, it turns out, was struck down with hyperacusis, which has caused deafness (I think) which means she can no longer properly continue with her composing dream. Deciding to look forward and not to her past she’s opened up her considerable archive to anyone who wants to listen.

I’ve thought for a little bit that it’s quite hard in Second Life to find someone to play a game of chess against, or some ice hockey or bowling or any other of the fun multiplayer games in SL. So, to resolve this, I have created a new, open group in Second Life. ‘Second Life Game Players’ is a group for people who like playing games and want to find team mates, or opponents! Anyone can join and I encourage people on the group to ask for people to join them in playing SL games.

The success of Tringo should be a wake-up call for content developers in Second Life. Tringo has shown everyone that if you make good content then not only will players come, but so will real world publishers (be they games, book or clothes!). What does this mean for the lowly Second Life developer? Well, a few things:

• Name your content carefully. It would suck to see your content get big and real-life, only to see it re-named because of some copyright or trademark issue. At least do a search of Google before settling on your name. The United States Patent and Trademark Office is a good place to start your check.


• Make sure you own the rights to ALL the content in your project. That is, don’t use distinctively copyrighted material as part of your content. For example, Star Wars Bingo has no chance of breaking into the real world as it would probably be using images and icons already copyrighted.


• Make sure the team who worked on the content is clearly defined or you will get people upset. If you worked on content with some help from a friend and you end up making the big bucks, your friend might feel that they’ve been used. If you have received help from a friend on your project either reward them spontaneously or offer them the chance to join your project officially. If you don’t think about this issue what happens when your friend, now aggrieved, asks for payment for the items he helped you with? Not a fun scenario to work through.

Pierce Portocarrero is creating a documentary following a year in the life of Nephilaine Protagonist and her PixelDolls fashion label. There’s will also be some interviews and comments from luminaries and so on. Go have a look at the early footage, it’s great stuff!

Linden Lab invited people to join them at GDC if they were able. Not having anything better to do I decided to go. If you look at my flickr stream (see ‘flickr’ link, top right) you can see all my pictures from the events. I will produce a fuller write-up shortly.

Tringo is an addictive cross between bingo and tetris that has been all the rage in Second Life the past few months. In fees it has earned the creator more than $4,000 (converting his game earnings to real-life earnings) and now it’s set to hit the real world. In a deal reported on the Wall Street Journal it’s been announced that Kermitt, the creator, has licensed his game to a mobile games developer. What’s amazing about this is the idea that content players create in-game has commercial potential.

This makes one wonder who will be the first fashion designer to see their work on a real catwalk, and who will be the first interior designer to see their furniture in the shop. Second Life contains so many exciting possibilities!

For a while now there has been discussion about government in SL, mostly from the Neualtenburg group, who have a town formed high on the sides of a mountain in Second Life. This was recently reprized in the excellent Second Life Herald, and got me thinking.

While discussions have wandered back and forth about the purpose and role of a government in Second Life, there’s one point I’ve never seen adequately answered, and that is, why bother?

In the real world the government is essentially a force for compelling us to do things, whether that be follow rules, pay taxes, drive on the left (or right!) and whathaveyou. Government also handles our relations with other states, nominally, to further our own interests (thus, if you drive a big car and are against war for oil, then in my books, you’re a hypocrite).

But in Second Life a player government will have no power of compulsion and its citizens live such transient lives that rulings would be nigh-impossible to enforce. How would a government be able to govern without power or a populace?

In the real world government, essentially, solves problems for us that we are unable to solve ourselves. When government is working well, this is what it is doing, in my book. Government ensures we don’t crash into each other too much through enforcing certain rules. It makes sure we have a variety of services and that the weakest are never left to rot. It tries to ensure that other people can’t come and take our stuff, and that other nations can’t come and take our land.

And none of these or related useful functions government in Second Life will ever be able to do under any conceivable scenario.

So why bother? Well, I think there are useful roles for central leadership in Second Life, but it’s not through some circle-jerk of player government where wannabe politicos and revolutionaries can practice for the day they work in the lofty heights of local government, or dream of their utopias. Instead, those forming an SL government should focus on what they can do to make SL resident’s lives better. And I think there are a couple of options.

Having a bonded sellers program would be a start. What if a central body or government signed up retailers to a program where the retailers agreed to stick to a code of practice and dispute resolution process in return for being able to display the ‘bonded retailer’ logo on their stalls? The retailer would pay L$500 or-so as a bond, in case they failed to uphold a dispute resolution against them. This would be one really useful way SL government could solve problems related to trusting retailers and consumers getting value for money.

Another way might be to lend government ‘district planning officials’ to groups wanting to agree on rules for residential areas or suburbs. The officials could have a stock of standard agreements between players and again, perhaps hold a bond centrally in case of dispute. The official would also impartially hear disputes in a tribunal of some kind, thus helping players who are part of a controlled residence feel confident it won’t just fall apart.

However, there’s one problem with this kind of thinking. The problem is it’s just not sexy enough for many people interested in SL government. It is however, eminently useful, modest and practical. What’s more, it’s also doable and an inclusive way to involve more people in the bigger idea.

In the end, if SL government focuses on how it can solve problems it will be successful. If it spends its time talking about charters, organization, a constitution and bill of rights then really, it’s just a waste of time as it’s only purpose will be to inflate the egos of those involved. None of these sorts of discussions actually help players and they’re just not necessary for government to work, despite what certain educational backgrounds might imply.

Fix problems. And over time the government will grow, maybe even into something meaningful. Flying in government, fully formed, as if from outer space, will never interest or be of use to anyone.