wu-had

Cyberland Comes Up for Air

2007-01-19T01:58:00.000-05:00

well, well, well...

Our buddies at cyberland have finally issued a press release and it is a pretty exciting one (once you get past the extended apology and explanation of the lack of communication and action). After over half a year of working in secret, they are reporting that they have everything lined up for opening their own grid.

I was once a director of Cyberland and helped draft the original proposal for the off grid community. After my departure i always wondered what transpired of that idea. Despite being in the dark, I held on to my shares based on my faith in Shaun Altman and Buck Spinaker, the acting directors of the company.

I'm just very excited to see something happening at this company. It's secondlife's first publically traded company. Watch out for this one, people... it's success is going to turn some heads.

Archinect'ed

2007-01-10T19:18:00.000-05:00

found an interesting article on Second Life on an architecture site.

Architecture's Second Life

a good quote about second life's potential from the article that resonates with me:

"Well, virtual platforms, as such, are not breaking down any conventions, but they can help us to see things differently. Maybe even think differently. So it's not so much about changing things (doing the opposite), which is more like producing an image in a mirror while continuing to do the same. It is much more about changing the way things change." - Tor Lindstrand

Enjoy!

The Real Story about Open Sourcing

2007-01-09T19:34:00.000-05:00

overheard in the lunchroom

Philip Linden: Ben is quiting LL
Cory Linden: oh! We might as well embrace the inevitable

Second Life Population Myth

2006-12-13T23:02:00.000-05:00

The Linden Lab figure on the website has always pissed me off. I'm a big fan of SL and a big fan of LL, but I’m not a big fan of dishonesty, especially about something I'm so passionate about.

In answering a blog entry on Corante - "Second Life: What are the real numbers?", I offer the following economic statistic as the best clue:

Monthly Spending by Amount (2006 November)
Transaction Size Residents
1 - 500 L$ 51,940
501 - 2,000 L$ 19,158
2001 - 5,000 L$ 14,744
5,001 - 10,000 L$ 10,556
10,001 - 50,000 L$ 18,130
50,001 - 100,000 L$ 3,604
100,001 - 500,000 L$ 2,697
500,001 - 1,000,000 L$ 277
Total Customers Spending Money In-World 121,332

Its high time LL stopped posting such a ridiculous statistic as 1.9 M as the figure for Population. As Clay Shirky points out, SL seems to have become a "Try Me" Virus due to the explosive hype from the adoption of the environment by high profile corporations, media agencies, and news agencies. It's reached some kind of "tipping point" this fall and now all of a sudden people in my RL who drew blank faces and glazed over when I spoke about Second Life, now excitedy tell me they logged in once or twice but were dismayed that all they could find were strip clubs and couldn't figure out what else to do.

Amongst the dozen RL friends and associates of mine that have tried SL, you would find none of them would call themselves Residents. Yet LL believes that their two or three dissappointing incursions into SL are worth noting and that their voyeurism is sufficient to label them a resident. I would contend that a resident must reside. Metaphorically speaking, one could say I reside in SL. I log in almost daily for extended periods of time. SL is my part-time place of work. Two or three logins just doesn't cut it for me.

insert coin

2006-12-03T15:07:00.000-05:00

after four work weeks, my account was finally reinstated in world. my account is still banned from the forum. i haven't received an official statement from LL's "review commitee" or anything, but it had been suggested to me that the hold on my account was in fact a suspension.

for one month, i was locked out from my (part-time) place of work. what was my crime? raising questions on the SL forums about some of the social practices that take place in the game. ironically while LL's only commercial product is a revolutionary communicative medium, the company run forum and blogs are carefully censored.

i'm not sure what to do now that i'm back in sl. i've lost a little bit of confidence in SL as a platform for the short term. i know its definitely on it's way to becoming one. however right now, while LL still has to play the dual role of developer and administrator of the metaverse, it's going to lean heavily towards game. i'm starting to hear the words "open source" more and more lately so perhaps the platform days are not so far.

work visa revoked?

2006-11-14T19:35:00.000-05:00

ever had a business meeting with an important client in another country but you missed it because you were held up at the border? a lesson from me: if you work in a foreign country, don't break it's laws. you might think chewing bubble gum is not a big deal but in singapore it will land you in jail. we take freedom of speech for granted in the west, but in the backward kingdom of secondlife, people disappear just for asking the wrong question.

mood: sl is a game.

a second life extinguished?

2006-11-12T03:07:00.000-05:00

it's starting to look like my second life is over. my controversial postings have resulted in my account being banned from the forum and being put on hold in sl. a forum ban is probably for the best, but the prok clause might be setting a really unfortunate precedent. is it time to find a new hobby?

immersion

2006-06-30T17:18:00.000-04:00

builders manifesto

in the virtual world, the fundemental architecture is the platform itself, its network, and how we are allowed to navigate it. the image of architecture in 3d is merely a suggestion in comparision. however it is still a very power as a guiding force. the architecture of the virtual world sets the tone for the activities it encapsulates, it creates a mood, it compels fantasy. virtual architecture shares with real architecture it's evocative presence.

architecture is paramount in fulfilling the escapist ambition of secondlife. virtual worlds are a form of tourism. they allow us to escape the reality of our everyday and venture into the unknown of cyberspace. more obliging than any real vacation, secondlife is available after dinner every night! that tourism however requires immersion. it requires one to feel that one has just stepped out of their home office and into a whole new world. the environment must be compelling. it must be fulfilling.

for many reasons, some of them discussed in the second life forums
what we find in secondlife is merely pockets of immersion. there are little spots along the grid and on islands where skilled and visionary building teams have descended on the mesh and put together moments of transcendence where for an instance i forget that i am sitting at my computer and actual begin to fly through the ruins of af a dystopic future of explore the secret pirates lair. how quickly it ends as i turn the corner into a see of flicker and seams. and so i push my immerssion agenda on anyone willing to hear my thoughts.

immersion requires seamlessness and attention to detail. architecture in secondlife, like the surface of the av, should be scrutinized down to the very last pixel. the best fashion designers wrap their avs with textures with acute attention to details. some of the details may go unnoticed to our concious eye, but the subconcious eye is much more discerning. any discrepency will break immersion. so it is true for architecture.

an immersive building is more than floors, walls and roofs. our eye is trained in rl and is accustomed to seeing structure, decoration, decay, trims, materials, light and shadow. our eye rejects the virtual world without these elements. there is a reason why the virtual world is built in the image of the real world. it communicates quickly and comfortably to us. it helps us move past the virtual world as an image constructed on our screen to a shared world to inhabit. part of that comfort is from light and shadow that helps us see forms and depth. part of it is from structure that gives weight to the virtual architecture. part of it is water stains, moss, or grass growing between flagstones. it gives the illusion of history and permanence, that the virtual world is not just a space but a place.

immersion requires depth. it's not sufficient for one enclosed space to be finely constructed. it requires that the next space be so as well. and the space after that. immersion works better when the surface of one space frames the next. it reinforces the notion of world.

what does immersion look like? immersion doesn't look like anything. immersion is an experience.

appendix A: personal examples

here are some experiences that impacted me immensely:

Makaio Stygian's Pirate Grotto.

this was one of the first immersive moments i experienced exploring second life. it was full with finely modelled and richly textured pirate treasures. there were many carefully scripted events with sound effects throughout the cavern including the entrance, barrels bobbing by the pier and a cannon. the whole cavern was dimly lit with a couple of crack in the ceiling allowing in slivers of light.

Yadni Monde's village on stilts

Nobody knows the value of immersion like the Goreans. There strict roleplaying lifestyle requires the highest order of immersion. To this end they don't cut any corners. This particular build was a simple village on stilts consisting of nicely rendered huts connected by walkways. The attention details to such as tilting columns, hanging rope railings, and meandering aquatic fauna were really essential to giving a soulfulness to this place. (there was some strange contraption under the water that someone had left behind that was a bit jarring)

Cory Edo's Neualtenburg House

i first visited this house when it was still under construction in mavericks and was immediately floored by the attention to detail. cory had baked lighting and aging details directly into the textures. each surface of the building was thoroughly deliberated. what made this even more fulfilling was it's placement in the neualtenburg sim where it became part of one of the more accomplished landscapes in secondlife's short history.

Neil Protagonist's Nakama

opening this weekend, Nakama is, in my opinion, the most immersive experience created to date in secondlife, and the inspiration for me to revisit this entry after such a long absence. it is rich with high quality content as well as having a strong narrative. the sim is composed of four regions which bleed into one another, telling not one story but several interwoven stories of a fantasy world inspired by japanese manga and anime. the thresholds of these regions create transitional spaces of their own right.

i began my journey in the dystopic future city with its piranesian labrynth of buildings stacked and woven in a 3 dimensional space. as i walked towads the modern residential suburb in the distance, the character of the landscape moved with me. the transition was so seamless i could not pinpoint wthe moment i went from being a dissident of all encompassing tyranical corporation to a young college student fumbling with bashful teenage girls in sailor suits. this ambiguity repeated it self through the historic neighbourhood, where i barely ducked out of clash with a ninja clan, and right into the complete fantasy world which i can describe only as pokemon on acid.

details, Nakama has in spades! light posts, road signs, electrical wires, rivets, rust, fluttering curtains, chirping birds and bullfrogs, reflective pool, the list goes on and on. i even noticed details such as the lightening or darkening of the very edge of a few textures in the historic neighbour hood to better define the form of builds. there really isn't a single stone left unturned by neil. he has created worlds within our world that will take hours for visitors to soak in. the open spaces of Nakama could very easily become the meeting ground for secondlife's growing anime fandom.

projects like these aren't realized overnight. nakama, for example, has been in production for approximately 6 months! however they are for striving for.

An open letter to Ben Linden

2006-03-23T23:31:00.000-05:00

Dear Ben Linden,

First and foremost, I would like to thank Linden Lab and yourself on behalf of myself and my collaborator, Nicola Escher, for the opportunity to build our vision for the German Orientation area. We enjoyed working on the project immensely and learned a lot in taking on a project of such a large scale. As per your request, I am writing to provide feedback on our experience of the entire process. Here is a brief of some of the thoughts we had while working on our reinterpretation of Chateau Ulrichsburg.

1. The Request for Proposals

As opposed to other Linden RFPs, we found that with this particular project LL was beginning to take the best approach to the process of selecting a designer. Previous and subsequent RFPs posted on the forum have generally been managed as competitions that offer paltry compensation for work rendered sometimes with unlimited licenses for as little as 5000 L$ (20 USD). This project was promising in that in the proposal, the design team could specify the expected compensation for the project.

Where this process fell short of its promise was that the schedule initially gave several weeks for the proposal and a week for execution. The RFP was framed such that design teams were implicitly expected to provide spec work in their proposal to be able to meet the deadline. This is an unacceptable risk for any artist or designer to commit 80% of the work without any assurance of compensation. While we were very excited to participate in this project, it is for this reason we did not enter a bid in the initial round. This setup benefited us personally as we submitted a very schematic proposal that I put together in an afternoon and worked on the project for weeks open winning the bid. However it did not benefit LL as the RFP failed to gain the interest of other professionals.

2. Building

There are many problems that currently plague large scale projects in SL. While the local and reference plane have been very helpful, there are still many things that are lacking.

Limitations on Camera distances. – This can be a very immersive feature that reinforces the avatar as the anchor for our virtual experience, but can be very frustrating when building projects on a quarter region scale.

Limitations on selection distance – This feature, which also reinforces the avatar as anchor by recognizing its sphere of influence compounds the problem of the camera limits. To select a large grouping of prims one consequently has to physically move the avatar to a closer location.

Camera resets when avatar moves – As soon as the avatar is moved, the camera resets to the default position behind the avatar, losing the required view for building. But more importantly –

Objects deselected when camera resets – This means that one can not physically move the avatar to a new location to select distant objects. To do so requires a scripted propulsion system. Perhaps new systems will use HUD displays and sophisticated telemetry to make this intuitive. However, the most intuitive solution would be to allow greater camera distances and selection distances for builders.

Small objects disappear at a distance – This is a great feature to limit fps lag on the client, but for a builder this can be a drag. It should be a feature that can be toggled on and off in a clear documented manner.

3. Texturing

This is definitely one of the most tiring aspects of building complex builds in SL, particularly a ruined castle that we were attempting. The texture controls constantly require manual input for properties which can be quite time consuming when attempting textures on one prim to the next. The arrow buttons make very imprecise jumps. A good solution would be a radial chose to select the precision of the change the arrows administer.

Texturing would be made much simpler if it too became graphically interfaced as building is. What I suggest is way to stretch and move texture tile on the surface of the prim directly with the pointer, dragging corners, sides on the surface as if it were a 2d workspace as in illustrator or indesign.

4. Blocks

SL needs blocks, clones, or what have you. If a builder were able to identify an object or a group of linked objects as a block that could be updated automatically across the build by redefining the block it would immensely increase productivity and offer the opportunity to spend more time in designing and experimenting and less time in menial production tasks.

5. Layers

If a player could tag a series of objects to client side defined layers, this would give the user the ability to turn on and off objects in his or her own view. While SL builds have not necessarily reached the complexity to require something like this, I feel it is worth considering how this kind of functionality could be added in the future.

6. Terrain Editing

Overall the terrain tools were adequate for this project. It would help immensely to have the ability to save different terrain settings to a list that can be accessed by the client. It would also be beneficial to allow faster rates of change to the terrain tool.

7. Divergent Explorations

It is the norm amongst designers to take multiple stabs at the same problem, each iteration offering different possibilities. The platform is quite capable of accommodating this at a small scale, but when large scale projects are attempted, players hit upon a major snag. It is very inconvenient to package up a build into ones inventory and to then rez it in an identical condition later. It is an imprecise and time consuming endeavour which interrupts the creative process. I think it would be very helpful to allow players to save instances of the sim. These instances could either be downloaded or if that is a concern, saved into ones inventory. If the instance item was dragged onto the estate tools somewhere, it could allow players to reload that sim state. It would be really amazing if these states could be saved into the estate tools for quick changes from one to the other. This would allow developers to work on multiple strains of a project or several entirely different projects without the need to purchase multiple sims. One region would be all any developer needs to work on a multitude of projects.

In closing I’d like to emphasize the positive aspects of our experience. Your approach as a client was very easy to work with. Firstly, you provided us with a clear idea of the theme you envisioned yet it was open-ended enough to allow for us to really have a sense of ownership in fleshing it out. Secondly, you were very responsive to our needs, whether it was managing the estate tools, offering us technical information on the rendering client to determine our texture strategy, or offering suggestions and alternatives from your intimate knowledge of the platform.

(waterfall by fallingwater :)

We look forward to seeing the opening of the German Orientation Area and the neighbouring Welcoming area. We also look forward to future opportunities to work with Linden Lab in creating memorable institutions for our shared virtual world.

Sincerely,

Jauani Wu

note: this letter is a copy of the post-mortem requested by Ben Linden and published here with his consent.

teledud land

2005-12-10T22:38:00.000-05:00

(file under unedited rant)

for what feels like two years, LL collected obscene amounts of money for telehub land. land around telehubs has ranged from 10 L$ to +40L$ per m2. the telehub sims consistently netted linden lab thousands of dollars more than other sims. players payed from their pocket for priviliged a privileged position.

with the return of p2p, LL has been left with worthless land. worthless says j-wu. why? because when all land is equal on the network, and the privilege is in topogrphy, not geography, the land locked telehub land is not the most desirable real estate.

to replace telehubs, LL is placing some player project called infonet. i don't know too much about it. i really don't care actually. what i know is this: Second Hell Tourbus: worst places in SL according to Infonet

ben linden make's a very compelling arguement for the return of p2p on his blog: Mo Money, Mo Problems?. nobody can argue that p2p is not the right move. however in regards to robin linden's proposal to turn telehubs into public spaces, made in this post, to ease the pain for land owners, i firmly believe that putting a lame information thing at every old telehub is a very unconvincing public space.

with p2p, distances are only relevant where flight time is shorter than teleport time. the virtual geography of the grid has now folded infinitely upon itself. all known locations are now adjacent. we only need one infonet terminal. beyond that, it is free advertising for a squagmire's pet project. is this info terminal going to build traffic on these sights? not really. what it will do is the inverse. it will benefit from traffic of it's neighbours.

if i owned old hub land i would feel really slighted that LL flipped the switch and gave me infospam for my cash. i think LL owes land owners a lot more then that. and LL owes the community a lot more than that.

my suggestion is that LL hold regular competitions to take in bids to redevelop these sights. the builds should be different, thus worth visiting. sites that impress, inspire, educate. infonet is a good example - FOR ONE HUB. here are some easy ideas for other things:

how about hosting GNU or other freebie junkyards?
how about the prim library in noyo. purchase it's content and disperse it around a few old hubs?
how about a script library?
how about instructional builds for scripting or texturing or animating?
how about an attractive public space focused around a few public chess boards or that prim game?
how about holding contests for amazing builds. offer 500-1000 USD to contestants as prize money. entice amazing builders like starax s., neil p., or eddie e. to enter contests with payouts that would grab their attention.

i think LL needs to take the time and make a serious list of potential people magnets. then they need to put out a Request For Proposals for these things. they need to publicize their budget for each of the items (and i'm not thinking 5k L$ for "high quality houses") or to request cost estimates with the proposals. they need to dip into some of that overflow collected from 2k-3k USD telehub sims they sold and pass that on to contractors to create real value for this land.

wu-drawal

2005-11-30T01:33:00.000-05:00

i know in just this short time many of you are already feeling withdrawal. i apologize for the delay. i've been playing a lot of RL lately. my analog self has a job. while freelancing has been lucrative and flexible, i'm looking forward to this new challenge.

right now, in the works, are my views on what defines professional quality content and immersion in SL. i don't know if i can put it into words yet. maybe it will just be a visual blog.

from levittown to blumfield

2005-11-18T15:50:00.000-05:00

levittown is a controversial town from north american history. it is at once a fine example of mass production and and 5% down mortgages being brought together to provide affordable housing to the working class of north america and the worst example of free expression and individuality. i could write for pages about my disdain for levittown, suburban sprawl, and institutionally engendered erosion of democracy in north america but this blog is about second life, a medium where we can leave behind the mundanity and anonymity of our every day existence. second life is my world. my imagination. i can be an astronaut, a millionaire playboy, or a cute little bunny.

to help new players along the way to realize the freedom of expression the second life allows, to get their first taste of fantasy, Linden Lab created a wonderful community for noobies, a first land oppurtunity that comes with a house. a wonderful gesture and an inspiration to us all! welcome to blumfield, also known as linden town.

if this is a boardman inspired project, it missed all the important feautures. instead of homes that evoke bourgeois modern living, these are the working class homes of factory and office drones, nostalgic of simple and boring times. instead of a few winding streets for residents to wander in, it is an relentless and uncaring grid that informs players that they are just as much a number in SL as they are in RL. finally, rather than using high quality prefabs as advertised in the bidding process, what we see is mediocrity and less then mediocrity.

i mean no slight to the builders, who offered way more value than one would be expected to risk for a shot at a 5000 L$ reward (one of them quite impressively was only a month old and when he entered his winning entry). LL got quite a deal. im sure that the inworld market would have given some of these designers much better returns for their work over time from sales that are now less likely as noobies will be getting these houses for free from LL.

unless the nature of this pilot project is to impress new residents with flicker full, camera colliding low ceilings, awkwardly small doorways, and poor texturing (most houses did not have all deficiencies though each had at least one glaring one) LL really missed the boat with setting up conditions for high quality submissions. the train station competition, which had much simpler requirements, had double the pay off. my personal view is that the best way to retain players is by impressing them with amazing content. if LL wants to unload some of that content creation work on the community that is an excellent and welcomed oppurtunity for the player community. but LL must recognize, and very much like their own staff, at the end of the day quality costs money, and many of the represented builders cut their work short because of the risk to reward ratio, while countless others didn't even submit an entry.

“The long straight streets and avenues of a gridiron city do not permit the buildings to cluster like sheep and protect one against the sense of space. They are not sober little walks closed in between houses, but national highways. The moment you set foot on one of them, you understand it must go on.”

Jean-Paul Sartres on Manhattan, 1811

how immersed will a players from another virtual worlds feel as they step out from their homes on to an oppressive grid? a grid does not end. in the abstract conception of our minds it continues forever. a grid is not only easy to build, but easy to scale. layered geometrically on the SL grid, it can be extended infinitely to accomodate the explosive growth that second life is experiencing. if this pilot project succeeds, tens of thousands of new players in the coming year could be beginning their second life in a vast unrelenting grid of poorly fabricated dwellings as LL attempts to technocratically manage the population by throwing them into these noobie ghettos.

lordfly digerdoo made a post today identifying 3 popular reasons why people log into sl: sex, money and socializing.

A mature sim kinda helps those along. Nothing says "howdy neighbor!" like a BDSM torture rack.

Lordfly Digeridoo, SL forums

As we discussed the mature angle Lordfly brought while standing on the front stoop of one of the houses, Crystalshard Foo decided to test if SL Sprawl could really support SL "socializing" .

CrystalShard Foo: Lets run a quick experiment.
(Crystalshard walks across the street to the front door of the opposing house)
CrystalShard Foo: Kyrah, can you read me?
Kyrah Abattoir: yus
CrystalShard Foo: I've rest my case.
Jauani Wu: hehe
Jauani Wu: what is the range?
Jauani Wu: 20m?
CrystalShard Foo: Yes

the positive aspect to this is that LL has realized they need to actively address influx of new players. many players need a place to tie themselves to to immerse themselves into a new game world. my confusion is why LL didn't pursue the very succesful (200 L$/m2 kind of succesful) boardman sim to emulate. infact, why not hire skilled craftsman like ingrid or barnesworth or others who made boardman such a desirable location as consultants or work for hire? why instead emulate a technocratic dystopia like levittown? if this model is indeed intended to be scaled up, wouldn't it be more fruitful to invest the necessary resources to make it as compelling and immersive as possible? finally, wouldn't it be more fruitful for noobies to more easily acclimatize into their second life if they weren't segregated into dehumanizing ghetto? was the old method of mixing noobie plots unsuccesful or was it discarded to downsize the LL side land management in the full sim sales? will this kind of sim, if found to be succesful, be mixed in with the regular grid or will the be extended infinitely as their morphology suggests?

my concern is that unlike communist china or post ww2 north america, players do have a real choice when faced with institutionalized forces that homogenize and compartmentalize human lives. they don't have to remain indentured to this ghetto. they can leave lindentown and build there own dreams elsewhere in the gridsverse. but they can also log off.

the sustainability of an SL architecture practice

2005-11-12T05:53:00.000-05:00

(file under long and boring)

last week lordfly digeridoo raised the topic of players charging real life wages for second life work in the second life forum (link). this was a few days after i privately gave him some friendly advice to not cut off his own nose by publically undervaluing his abilities when the market is ready to support more (link). he asked how much he should charge and whether this was fair. while many supported the idea, there were also many that thought it was a ridiculous proprosition. the truth in this matter is that real life wages for virtual world work has been a part of SL since 1.2. however, architects, a content creation industry to which lordfly belongs, just happen to be as incredibly undervalued in second life as they are in everyday life. moreso.

players do indeed make real life wages from SL if they are not architects, fashion designers like nephilain protagonist, skin texturers like munchlower zauis, land traders such as anshe chung, and certainly vehicle and weapon makers like francis chung, make tremendous returns for the time spent tinkering in a game. these players invest a lot of time and energy into their SL products and services and often at risk, to provide 3rd party content and services to the player community. surprisingly though, in a 3d virtual world, those that arbiter the environment of SL with the 3d virtual architecture are unacclaimed as succesful content creators.

1. the avatar is just a packet of pixels

one reason for this is that in everyday life our physical bodies make shelter a necessity while in second life architecture is but a mere stage set. while north americans by and large live in uninspiring shoe box apartments and carbon copied tract housing and mcmansions, work in just as ininspiring office towers, shop at warehouses like costco and walmart, and fine dine at lovely chain restaurants like denny's and pizza hut in the sea of parking lots due to some unexplicable cultural aversion to good architecture and urban planning, physical necessity requires the services of the professionals that oversee the development of our built environment. in secondlife, a consequenceless game slash visual chatroom that it still is, our avatar has no such needs. shelter is so unnecessary to the enjoyment of sl that the majority of players do not even own any land to build on.

2. i need new clothes to go to the club

a second reason for the virtual architects marginalization in SL is its relatively small market. for a player that does choose to have a home or a store, like in everyday life this player needs but a single instance which can provide a wonderful stage set for quite some time. so house shopping is not a frequent activity amongst players. meanwhile, avatar accessories, such as clothing and hairstlye, dynamic content such as vehicles and weapons, and emotive content such as cuddling couches and sex beds are the kind of things that relate directly to the activities that are the essence of SL, those being communicative and interrelative in nature. av accessories in particular, are much more useful in personal expression in SL as they are directly upon the avatar. a house is an indirect expression that is only in play when players playing upon that stage.

due to frequent per capita purchases, fashion designers in sl are able to leverage the mass market to support their income, while architects are not. for this reason it is no surprise that there are dozens of professional quality avatar accessory makers while arguably not yet a single professional quality prefab designer to my knowledge (except perhaps one - neil protagonist -who makes single room sky boxes which just barely qualify as architecture by insightfully recognizing the stage set role of virtual space in SL at the moment).

another thing to consider in the comparision of fashion and accessory design with architectural design is that owing to the av mesh and skeleton, all avs are essentially equal, while housing size demands also vary with the players teir.

3. building is fun and therapeutic

a third aspect of SL that i believe prevents skilled builders from finding success is that unlike scripting or texturing, at the beginners level, building is by far the easiest and most accessible. manipulating the basic geomotries is relatively easy, and there is no need for outside support. scripting, meanwhile, for those without any exposure to programming, is like learning a new language. that's great for the kids on the teen grid, but at age 30, unless you can sign me up for a structured course, i'll pass. texturing in photoshop not only has a similarly steep learning curve, there is a 600$ price tag on photoshop to contend with. when a player has to chose between dressing like a noob and living in a nice prefab or having a sexy av and living in the self made baby blue box with seams and with nice cylindrical stone textured tower with a cone on the top in the corner, they will choose the later. not only will they choose it, they will be over joyed with their creation and the feeling of satisfaction, as their childhood imagination takes hold and that baby blue castle is the same one prince charming lived in in cinderella.

after having recieved dozens of tours in the last few years of baby blue light prim castles, shiney retexture gnu sloped roof siggy romulus freebies (you know what i'm talking about, you all lived in it once), and sprawling flickerful three story peach coloured mansions from proud and jubilant builders nobody could ever convince them to give up their fun and sense of accomplishment in exchange for a technically superior prefab, nor should anyone ever want to.

4. zomg i won't pay a lot of money for something fake

and the final reason i believe that virtual architects are undervalued in secondlife is because it's still a world of hobbiests. custom 3d design is a time consuming process and if it is a custom project it is consequently very expensive. given the choice of buying a mediocre 3000 L$ prefab, building it themselves, or hiring someone with actual 3d skills at a rate of 3000 L$/hr right up to 10-15 thousand L$/hr, a player will choose the former two options. this drives builders on the lower end of skill level to work for pittances to enjoy their hobby, and higher end builders to refuse commissions. it's like the internet in 1992. who was hiring professional web designers then for their website?

what does this mean for frank llyod avatar?

is all lost for virtual architects then? will sl simply be unable to support a vibrant market for architecture? i certainly don't feel that is the case. i think the market still hasn't been tested with high quality and critical architectural design geared for SL. we have not yet seen the architectural equivalent to the dominus shadow. we are waiting for someone to spend weeks or months on a line of houses that will just blow our minds with their beautiful textures and mindnumbing primiliciousness.

in the mean time, the handfull of top end builders interested in working in SL quitely organize themselves for the next Wells Fargo or some more hand offs of welcome and orientation areas from the chronically understaffed LL art department.

what is j-wu up to?

2005-11-04T07:17:00.000-05:00

to speak of my interest in Second Life, i have many. i have come to enjoy the instant socialization SL presents, and have made many friends, associates, and even a few entertaining rivalries. early on SL provided an amazing model in helping me digest a lot of the readings i was doing on technology, specifically information technology, questions of public space and the challenge of the spaceless network upon spatially bound architecture, the cyborg and post human metaphor, and other topics dealing with politics and agency in the information age. along the way this game economy became a USD economy, and i found my self become fascinated and involved in it, learning a lot about business and entrepreneurialism along the way from my own experiences and those of my friends in SL. and finally, i am one of those that believe SL is a precursor to the 3D interface to the internet, much like HTML provides the basis of 2D support. i feel like the current community of players fiddling around with the SL toolset scripting cars and planes, modelling houses and furniture, or baking avatar clothing for fun to create their fantasy hobby world are tomorrows 3D developers making large sums of money making sims for offline businesses, big and small (very much like the recent Wells Fargo project, which i wasn't at all surprised to learn about).

my favorite example that i give my friends when i show them this hobby of mine is my diverse car collection in SL. the inworld economy for selling these things is great but as this kind of game evolves into a platform or protocol, i ask them to imagine a much more sophisticated model of a fully customizable Ford Mustang in a virtual showroom, with a sales rep logged in world to provide any support you need. you click your colour, your engine, your accessories and you see it in 3D, quite possible with polarized goggles or some gadget for the full effect. you might even take your virtual car for a test drive in a smartly programmed virtual environment before authorizing payment through your paypal account to have the physical analog delivered to you in 5-6 days.

another is of branding cyberspace. this is already happening on the internet at large, and is not recent revelation in virtual worlds either. in my brief time exploring the VWs such as the Sims Online and There i very quickly encountered prominent brands such as McDonald's and Nike. There is no reason why the shopping malls of SL could not one day be selling or giving away these brands for virtual consumption and similarly to my automobile example, also using SL as a venue to sell physical products.

i feel like SL is the at that cutting edge. and as a recent architecture school grad, i can see even more immediately practical applications of this environment that i've experienced first hand. the SL toolset is incredibly primitive in relation to the modelling and drafting programs i'm accustomed to, but it has some advantages as well. the first is the immersive experience the avatar provides for which i am still trying to articulate why it is so compelling and the second is the shared space SL provides.

although the architects contemporary practice is a virtual one, one of conceiving of a vision, and then providing images to communicate it to others, and not of actually building, CAD software is bringing architects closer and closer to reasserting control over every minute detail of a project, much like the master builders of a former age. sl provides a different twist, not yet capable of the kind of detail other toolsets provide. the avatar becomes a human reference to the design, constantly walking, climbing, falling, jumping, and bumping in, out, through, over, under, and around the interventions we place in the virtual world. whether this immersion is providing a step away from virtuality and towards the embodied, or if it is a deeper layer of virtuality is something i am still reflecting on and trying to get a grip on. i wonder whther this sense of embodiment serve as something generative of degenerative to a critical design process. i plan to make a serious RL linked experiment with this idea with the firt possible opportunity to explore this idea further.

the sharedness of the SL environment is also very liberating to me relative to other CAD mediums. when i make a physical model or drawing, my colleagues can simply manipulate the same model with me or draw right on top of my drawing. in CAD it is the struggle of who is in control of the pointer and keyboard. it is a very awkward situation. in SL, the sharedness returns. a colleague can log in and start manipulating the same object or adding to it. they can tear away a copy immediately to make a divergent iteration. at this point, the SL toolset is probably too primitive to truly be able to draw the ideas of major architecture projects beyond the most early conceptual ones, but nevertheless, that possiblity is apparent to me, as i have experienced it in the back and forths between many of my SL friends while we build, and particularly on a recent project i completed with nicola escher.

this is what i see in SL. these are the reasons i'm so passionate about this game. this should give an idea of the kinds of discussions i want to engender with this blog :)

wu-had is upon you

2005-11-04T03:01:00.000-05:00

the day many secondlifers feared is here. j-wu has a blog. what can we look forward to?

the return of negratings
the end of LL and alt-barons' conspiracy to deflate the L$
less seams, less flicker
more blingers - more money - more gun talk
an increase in literacy on a global scale
sparing use of capitals

j-wu.