Despite Linden Labs...

... And their appalling handling of Second Life as a paid for service; the weekend was not a total loss.

Babette and I have completed the start-up phase of the new Theme Switchable format of our beloved Love's Trinity. It was the first project which we completed back in the Ikyoto days which was driven by design and passion rather than practicality ... 'Form over Function' ... We transplanted it with great care and pride to it's new home on OneFinalDarkness and we have carefully protected it ever since.

It was a chance comment by Shelly that triggered us into finally making changes to our much loved and adored Love's Trinity Temple area ... a comment and an echo back to memories of when we regularly constructed themed sky boxes.

Shelly asked if we had considered doing some more themed event builds and perhaps using the popular 'Holodeck' technology. I am pretty sure Babette and I said much the same thing "Hmmm .... That sounds like a good idea!". In short order several things happened; I looked into the Holodeck options and had to report they would be both prohibitively expensive and far too restrictive for the scope of our typical themes and, we both realised the ideal space to use would be Love's Trinity.

After a little more research we decided to use 'Primtechnics Platform Rezzer' package which is similar to Rezz Faux but has access list control ... Perfect to allow our regular hosts to swap out the themes without having to involve either of us.

Babette launched into action and created the 'Gothic Temple' variation of the original, specifically because she had already made preliminary design decisions after a request from another good friend Masiko who wanted to hold her wedding at Love's Trinity but wanted a Goth Theme. I helped out with the design of the production and packaging work flow plus the 'Theme Switcher Panel' to allow easy presentation and selection of the themes.

With the Goth variant ready to go I helped Babette to carefully package up our original and still much loved temple area and that now resides safely in the 'Theme Switcher Panel'. With the system tried and tested Babette and I have put a 'Moroccan Courtyard' theme together and have plans for at least 4 more already with great suggestions from Shelly and some natural choices springing easily to mind.

I think if it were not for our delight at turning Love's Trinity into a wonderfully versatile and open ended themed resource the weekend would have been a fiasco to cry over. With 5000 sims offline and confidence falling to an all time low events and clubs were deserted and performers and audiences alike were annoyed and upset.

In amongst the scant acknowledgements from Linden Labs (and pitiful indeed were the updates) perhaps not surprisingly there was no suggestion of a compensation package for all the lost hours when businesses, clubs, and the multitude of other diverse established Second Life ventures were unable to even log in to the system.

Well done Linden Labs ... Score 0 out 100 for customer concern and satisfaction!!

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Second Life and Shopping ...

... Is this a perfect match?

In a lot of ways the answer to this is 'Yes - It is!'. There are few of the complications of Real Life with system level clothing being a perfect fit every time just as the designer intended.

All is not completely rosie of course once we move into the arena of sculpted and prim attachments/clothes and shoes. Once you move away from system level clothes/accessories then much of what you actually get for your Lindens is down to the skill of the designer/maker of the particular items. Without wishing to draw particular examples into comparison I think most people will be able to easily see that some prim shoes for instance are of a much superior quality to others and hence they attract a premium price.

So then back to the original question ... is Second Life a perfect match for the Shopping Experience. I think it can be, but, rather as in Real Life, you still need to either get some good recommendations or do some serious searching and wandering to find the best quality your money can buy. Designer shops/labels/sims abound in Second Life and there is a slew of fashion magazines published in Second Life to attest to the continuing popularity of 'Looking Good!'. Personally I enjoy the challenge of finding a special outfit or particular piece of clothing or some really nice shoes without having to negotiate with my bank to fund my shopping experience .... I can however see that for some it is a bewildering and un rewarding experience with some of the search results promising so much and in reality delivering some very mediocre offerings when you actually TP to them.

One way in which we can all make our shopping experience more productive, interestingly, is to invest a few lindens in one of the Fashion Magazines I alluded to earlier. The point about the articles (some sponsored) and advertsing they carry is that these represent high value in world businesses that not only believe they have a good product but are confident enough to put their money where their corporate bragging sits; they have a reputation to uphold so you can expect to get good quality items and good customer service.

There is one note of caution I would sound to all potential shopping addicts .... sometimes you might be well advised to think hard about what you are buying, because sometimes you really could make it for free!! I know we aren't all accomplished scripters or builders but occasionally it is easy to get mesmerised by all that is out there and spend your money on something which is actually very simple to construct.

One last comment before I rush off to get my latest pair of killer heels ... LoLoLoL ... take a friend with you. You won't need them to help carry anything but you may need them to help you remember where you saw that perfect bargain you wanted to go back for later!!! *S*

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Second Life mimics Real Life ...

... of 'course it does!' I hear you all cry. But there are some areas in which I really wish it didn't. I don't particularly like talking about the negative side of Second Life but occasionally there are incidents which are impossible to 'Gloss Over!'.

One such incident occurred on Saturday; two days ago as I post this. Babette had arranged a live music event with a particular Second Life musical couple. The times had been agreed and ... I am being completely truthful here ... we BOTH forgot the time!! To make matters even worse we were both distracted from Second Life by important Real Life incidents just as the musicians were turning up (earlier than we had remembered) and started to demand tags for rezzing instruments. Both Babette and I understand that we were at fault for forgetting the time, however, the attitude from the musicians was in my opinion unreasonable. The IM's were strongly worded and the phrase 'Unforgivable' was liberally splashed around.

What is the point of this blog entry?

In short it is to draw attention to the many people who appear to have forgotten that club owners, sim owners and others who run/own other Second Life assets have a Real Life as well. More importantly Real Life comes first!!!!

Let me stress that for all the Second Lifers who are trying to treat Second Life as Real Life .... IT IS NOT REAL!! It IS A GAME!!

By all means ask what has happened when arrangements break down in Second Life; that is natural and reasonable. Please, PLEASE, PLEASE, however don't expect people to be hovering on your every word at the other end of an IM session; you will be disappointed and certainly anyone expecting anything else needs to get a huge shot of 'Reality' from the nearest pharmacy and get yourself shot up with some normal perspective.

I am certain that this will be one of my less widely appreciated blog entries ... I am equally certain that the individuals who displayed such unreasonable behaviour will not see it as such and will continue to believe that Second Life is the only thing that counts in everyones life !! ... Thank all the relevant superior beings both Babette and I and many of our friends in Second Life enjoy it for what it is, a game, and make sure that we enjoy our Real Lives as well.

Enjoy the Game, Enjoy Second Life ... Remember when the phone rings or the door bell goes you have to use your legs not a TP to go answer them!! *S*

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Second Life a learning opportunity ...

... I was speaking to Mericat Ireland during one of the regular Monday night Music events she DJ's for us in The Pig & Whistle on OneFinalDarkness. I was explaining about the new Wedding packages Babette and I were developing for the Love's Trinity area of the estate; I told her about the website we are developing for the estate (Http:\\www.onefinaldarkness.com); I mentioned the machinima techniques we use to produce promotional video clips for the site and our current integration with services such as Google Calendar and Flickr.

Not long after I had got into this list of things we do Meri turned round to me and said 'You girls are just so busy trying all sorts of new things in Second Life ...'; Meri is of course right! Indeed it is one of the most appealing things about Second Life; it provides opportunities to explore new things and learn new skills. In fact it's not just about opportunities ... to some extent unless you have an endless supply of money it is essential you learn at least some of the new skills that go with trying to run/promote a sim; it is prohibitively expensive to try to pay others to do all of the work required.

Neither Babs nor I believe in solutions being exclusively homegrown ... we tend to find there are still clear advantages to using some bought in skills usually in the form of objects for specific purposes which would otherwise take months perhaps to properly script. What we have both discovered though is that many of the items/services which are for sale in and around Second Life are not really that extraordinary ... they only survive because people don't have the inclination to push back against their own limits and try out new challenges.

A good example of this last is sculpties. There are a number of software packages and inworld devices which allow anyone to begin experimenting with the sculpted objects that Second Life has in it's rich repertoire of building blocks. Although I would agree that making sculpties is not 100% straightforward it really isn't impossible to produce some of the less complex shapes like cushions for seats or seat pads for furniture ... even parts for simple weapons are not that difficult to construct. I for one would always suggest that everyone at least has a go at all of the various building disciplines and other such related tasks that abound in Second Life simply because ... you will probably surprise yourself!!

It's not even just the skills and services and tasks that I would recommend experimenting with. There are so many different types of lifestyle represented in Second Life and of course there are no long term issues or problems to be experienced as a result of choosing to experience any of them. If nothing else everyone should at least visit as many sims as they can to see and be amazed at the bewildering variety and depth of peoples imagination and patience that have led to hundreds of unique and wonderful environments.

In short I believe Second Life is probably one of the most flexible and approachable learning experiences i have come across for some considerable time and for anyone thinking they may be a little past adapting to new things and ways or working/thinking .... think again ... Second Life will fire up your brains and turbo charge your creativity!!

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Weddings and wedding packages ...

... for quite some months now Babette and I have talked about the Ballroom area at Love's Trinity being rather underused. It is a beautiful romantic area with great views and a general sense of grandeur of the Greco/Roman times. We have started to arrange some events and have the great privelege of Elvera Lerner singing live here tomorrow 9th June.

 

Babette has already begun the planning for a program of music events to follow Elvera and during those discussions we started to explore the idea of using the ballroom area as a wedding venue. It is a natural fit in many ways with it's already romantic environs and vistas so it was conceptually simple to see how the area could become a gorgeous wedding venue. Once we had this vision Babette just took the idea and went into overdrive; she has already produced a Gothic Wedding Package that can be deployed into the ballroom area and there are plans for a series of alternatives with the option for bespoke packages.

 

As of right now we are still working out a framework of costs to reflect the amount of time we have put into and would need to continue to put into this concept to make it practical ... but also we want people to come and enjoy the moment and we appreciate not everyone has lots of Lindens to throw around.

I can highly reccommend asking to see the venue and it's options if you are considering a Second Life Wedding ... we would love to see you have a wonderful day and with all the other romantic areas around the OneFinalDarkness Estate I am sure you will have a superb romantic day to remember *S*

Camping Skirmishes ....

In the early days of OneFinalDarkness when we were still on the ikyoto Sim one of the principle measures of success of any Sim was the ubiquitous 'Traffic' figures. I suspect that many Sim owners felt much the same as Babette and I did; a certain un ease with the idea of paying people to sit around or 'Pole Dance' on the Sims to bump up the 'Traffic' numbers.

Despite the un ease we fell into the accepted pattern at OneFinalDarkness and tried to make things at least interesting for the 'People!!' who camped with us. In some odd way much of the layout and attractive vista's which abound on OneFinalDarkness were born in this time as we often tested the camping ourselves and asked questions of each other like "Would you sit looking at that view for several hours??".

It was around this time that Babette and I had the good fortune to meet two people who would soon become great friends and real champions of the OneFinalDarkness Sims and our attempts to promote them. The first of these people is Shelly Macchi; we started talking, ironically, because there were issues with the early camping systems and both Babette and I felt that if people were putting the time in then they should be paid so we asked people to tell us if they had any problems receiving their camping money.

The first purely business like conversations we had soon blossomed into regular chats which led us inevitably to a friend of Shelly's who had also started on the camping; Thanatos796 McCallen. Quite an unusual name ... but many names in Second Life are ... and it turned out he is also quite a DJ. There were undoubtedly many more conversations than my ageing memory can recall before the topic arose of Than (as he is affectionately known) becoming a regular DJ for us. Once Than was doing some regular slots for us it was only a short time before Shelly joined him on a regular basis as a host for the events and quite honestly they are such a good team and have gone from strength to strength.

I have of course digressed a little there!

In addition to our newly found friendships, what Than and Shelly also gave us was an insight into what was actually happening with the camping!! It turns out that Babette and I had naively assumed that the avatars we saw camping where linked to real people on a one to one basis .... they weren't!! Shelly and Than were able to show us incidents were as many as 10 avatars were being run by the same person using what are referred to as 'Bot' programs. To say we felt used is an understatement!! The first step was to try different 'Anti-Bot' camping systems but once alerted by Shelly and Than's warnings Babette and I regularly checked for 'Bot' activity ... at almost each turn we discovered Bots taking our money!!!

We still have camping on the Main Sim today ... but it is controlled by a closed, invitation only, group and we insist that any one wishing to join is seen as being a regular visitor to the Sims and taking part in events; it's not that much to ask really as the events are often themed music events and have prize money for best in theme.

At one time we were probably paying out 15000 Lindens per month in camping fees and in reality receiving nothing in return. Some people complained when the way sim popularity, as measured by the Lindens, changed and traffic became less important as an indicator. Since then better ways of getting people to see the Sims have arisen, Earn2Life is a good example of earning opportunities within Second Life and it's companion SLBiz2Life (for the business owners wanting to invest in effective marketting campaigns); these initiatives have bought us some good, solid, genuine traffic some of which has turned into regular shop renters and indeed friends.

Overall I don't regret the camping and it's various skirmishes because of the tangible benefits in terms of friendships that have arisen as a result ... the only disappointing thing is realising that, in what should be an ideal world where everyone has a chance to excel and be the best they can, real life intrudes and the darker side of human nature shows through with some individuals choosing despicable means to further their own personal gain.

The camping will continue on OneFinalDarkness ... the difference these days is that it is more a way of saying thank you to all the regular people who help to make the Sims here what they are, full of life and fun, and as a result keep inspiring Babette and myself to keep modifying little bits and trying to make things even nicer for you all .... One last thought ... Please!!

NO Camp Fires !!! LoLoLoL

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