This blog serves as a place to talk about my experiences playing new-to-me videogames and hanging out in SecondLife. It might encourage others to try playing games and spending time in virtual worlds.
I own a little piece of land all my own (not owned by the college). I build there, go there to stomp up and down when I'm aggravated, and invite people there to talk. I used to have a jungle gym like collection of platforms. Then this summer I built a cave (and didn't take pictures - what a dummy). I tore the cave down, smoothed out the land and built a cube house. I put in 2 walls of windows because the view was all open land. Here is a nitetime and daytime pic of my house, one of me sitting on the couch I made looking out the window behind me, and one of the sculptures I built there.
The view isn't all open and green like last week. I was working on the sculpture in my back yard and wham - a whole lot of vampire role play stuff appeared, including a castle, crypts, and a blood fountain. I haven't seen too many people yet, just some folks building. From their profile info they seem to be from Brazil. This could get interesting. They now own the land all around me, except for one plot right behind me, in a U shape.
I have ban lines around my property and so do they for the moment. You have to be on a list to come onto my property. I'm not sure what they're using. However in SL you can just move your calendar around to take a look so there's not much real privacy.
Here are some pics of the vampire stuff. In a couple you can see my little cube house in the distance.
I had to contact Linden Lab and have one of the islands I control for school shut down. The department didn't want to use it anymore. Makes me wish it was ok to kick administrators in the butt. But it's not...so ok...let's move on.
Here's a pic of me standing on our remaining island looking at our soon to be bridge to nowhere. The island to be shut down is in the distance. And the second picture is a close up of the bridge - built by one of our students when he was a freshman.
And here's a couple of pictures of me sitting on the construction barricades on our new bridge to nowhere. (hey - it's my blog - i can put pictures of me on it occasionally - and I think i look particularly cool in this outfit - ok?)
(just a note - I'm not stying at these events for very long - so this is not meant as any kind of detailed report. I just wanted to see how they set up their events, how many people were attending, etc.)
They hosted a video stream of a candidate forum with senate candidates from Pennsylvania. Arlen Specter was there. He talked (too long I guess - the moderator cut him off and said this wasn't the Senate so there wouldn't be any filibusters) and then people from the audience asked him difficult questions about his voting record.
I noticed more people in staff tshirts than this morning or yesterday. And someone in the audience with a tag that said security. Maybe because of the griefer earlier today, maybe not. Anyway - some more pictures.
At anther event for this conference, Howard Dean talking aout healthcare, they streamed the video from the live event into SecondLife. They had a twitter connection so people in world could send questions to be considered. Here are some pictures.
They had a griefer at the beginning. An avatar named Negro Nirvana. He ran up and down the aisles of the arena. He was smoking. He sat in a chair and spun around. He stood on the stage and spun around. He was using voice chat to cuss and make rude comments to people in the audience. He drowned out a lot of hte video audio at first. Eventually someone in charge turned off voice chat (no one else was using it because of the video) and then the avatar either left of his own accord or he was banned because he disappeared. Here are a couple of pics of the griefer avatar spinning around in front of the screen.
They have some very specific events thata are in SL and RL that could be interesting. They're streaming their opening ceremonies and a speech by former President Clinton. There's a health care forum and a leadership seminar. Not sure how much interaction will take place between SL and RL but at least they have a variety of events.
Here are some pictures of the training area they have set up for new users - very impressive way to get noobies up and running.
Here are some pictures of the trade show area - vendors area.
And here are some pics of the space for the presentations and some of the avies who were there for the opening ceremony.Once President Clinton started speaking there were about 45 avies in the arena area.
The conference had a twitter link so you could tweet messages that would show up on the screen in world and in Second Life.
Today they had someone from Cisco who's involved in education - not in terms of employee training but in terms of what do students need to learn to succeed in the future. Skills for the 21st century. He's the avatar on the right and the picture is the cover of a book that he wrote that's coming out soon.
I like the space Smarter Technology has - there's a raised stage, seats that are sloped so you can see without throwing your camera around. There's not muchin the background to be distracting. They ahve some big spaces for product demonstrations too.
Nice mix of avatars too - almost always a good size crowd. A few furries, a tiny or two. And that's Mitch Wagner the robot in the picture on the right.
I watched the SecondSkin documentary about gamers over the weekend on Hulu. It was in a limited release in New York City over the weekend too. The documentary focused mostly on World of Warcraft and Everquest2. They had interviews with lots of gamers including some couples who met playing and a couple of people seriously addicted to game playing.
Then Monday evening Smarter Technology hosted a talk with the director/writer in SecondLife (which makes a cameo appearance in the movie). Here are a couple of pictures that I took of the presentation so you can see the set up and the speakers.
I'm thinking about having the juniors in our program create a game of some kind in SL. It has 3d building; you can make animations; you can put scripts in objects to make them do things; there is an audience of people looking for things to do who know the ins and outs of SL already - in other words, you could create an interesting game. There are a variety of games - role play, arcade, board in SL already.
Some of these games use HUDs (heads up displays) to control combat. Here is info on a couple of them
2 HUDs discussed in this new world notes post - http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2007/07/weapons-of-choi.html DCS2 (Dark Combat System v2) the company handles most of the set up and runs the server with user stats, stats carry across multiple sims and so do weapons - not too customizable but very easy to get started. they keep 90% of revenues from weapons sales to make their money so the game probably won't make any money
CCS (Community Combat System) you have to do all the set up and can customize the heck out of it - you have to run the server for user stats and they don't go from sim to sim. Possible to make money since you pay a little up front nd then keep all revenues from weapons sales
Erie Isle - http://www.erie-isle.com/ - there's a very active calendar of events, groups for new players, they use the Osiris combat system, separate areas for humans and supernaturals, lots of weapons, good role play
I hadn't been in SecondLIfe except for school stuff in awhile. But the last coule of weeks I remembered all the fun to be had there.
I went to an art gallery. I viisted a Dr. Who themed area and got a cyberman avatar. I heard a folklorist reading an amazing European fairy tale. I built a cave on my little piece of land and put in a waterfall. I"ve been trying to build a sound cube floor when when you bump into hte cubes the play strange sounds and change colors - got the sounds to work and found some interesting collections fo electrical and industrial sounds, but when I added the color, it broke. Stupid LSL And I went to a discussion of space exploration and watched the NASA TV stream of the film from when man landed on the Moon. It was the 40th anniversary of the landing. That made me feel old.
And I"ve talked to vampires and tiny rabbits and a wind up doll. I've been to classes on role playing. And visited a role play island that uses a combat HUD (tho I have to figure it out and learn how to shoot weapons. I got a blindfold to see about walking thru the sound cubes in the dark (since I can't figure out how to make it dark in my cave).
I bought new hair - don't laugh. Good hair and a new skin and my avie feels like a new woman!
I'm having fun. Building, creating, and socializing. The essence of SL to me.
This semester in Critical Analysis of Games, we had about 12 or 13 games out of a class of 26. Some folks worked alone because of their schedules or because they were the only person interested in a topic. Here is a link to all the projects for this class: projects. You can see more pictures here on Flickr.
There were games about LOLcats, YouTube videos, space pirates, Dante's Inferno, Dr. Horrible's musical blog, greek mythology, dating in the 50s, retro space adventuring, trans-Canadian highway system, children's fairy tales, and bounty hunting. We had board games, trivia games, card games, and combinations. The play test session was hectic. We rotated games in and out as people finished a round. It would be better to let them play a round, have a few minutes to make notes, and then repeat. For that we need space and people - lots of people - since most of the games need 4 players.
We invited some staff and other professors to come play. They gave the students good feedback. It was a way for other people in the school to see what kinds of things students in the new game design major will do. And it's important for students to get feedback from someone other than me (or their peers). Especially if we want to think about making commercially viable games - we need to understand different markets
Having our playtest time during final exams week makes it tough to get students. Next year we're going to do the big play test the last week of classes. That will give the students more time to revise and do their write up too. This year we had candidates in doing demo classes so we were a little short of time.
I've decided to make it more of a straight card game, no board.
There are ride/exhibit cards that tell you how much whuffie (respect) you need to update, what skills you need to have to update, and how much whuffie you get each round just for controlling it.
There are skill cards - painting, animating, robotics, etc. Some rides (E ticket rides maybe) take more than one skill to update and extra whuffie because people don't want you to mess withe classic rides. It might be interesting to let people spend whuffie to buy a specific skill.
Whuffie is in the form of chips - I'm thinking each player has a different color so you could watch your respect move from player to player. You get a stash of whuffie at the beginning of the game. You get whuffie each round for the rides you control. It costs you whuffie to rehab/update a ride. Once you update a ride it might be worth more whuffie (like putting a hotel on a property in Monopoly - still thinking about that.
When you have the whuffie and skills you can update a ride that you control. You have to update a number of rides to cause the end of the game - I'm thinking one in each land of the Magic Kingdom but that might take too long. There are 6 lands - so maybe gotta rehab rides in 4 of the 6 lands.
The winner is whoever has the most whuffie wins (assuming that the more rides you update, the more whuffie you will have).
There will be unexpected event/wild cards - sometimes you lose a turn, sometimes you get to take their whuffie or take over a wide they've put out to control
downloading the character's memories for safe keeping (since you can get cloned/reborn pretty easily) - lose a turn
get shot/killed and have to be cloned - lose a turn
accident on one of your rides -you have to give up a chunk of whuffie
your best friend starts dating your significant other - lose a turn
I'm playing with the idea of cooperation - so if 2 people had the Space Mountain card, they could share ownership of it and pool their resources to rehab it (and split the whuffie that ya get for hte rehab. Cooperation would be even cooler if players were eliminated one by one - players could cooperate to gang up on another player. Not sure of the benefit of cooperation if it's a winner take all game.
Right now I think everybody will be dealt a small number of cards to start - say 5. They will get a stash of whuffie chips. They can claim a ride by laying the card down in front of them and putting up some whuffie as collateral that they will treat the ride with respect. Each round you can rehab a ride, draw a card, play a wild card, buy a skill - do one of those things. Each round you get a new stash of whuffie. If you decide to rehab a ride you have to lay down your skills and take the right amount of whuffie out of your stash and put a marker on the map of the kingdom (hmmm - forgot to mention there's a map didn't I ? Well there's a big general map with the areas marked out like frontier land and fantasy land)
Lands & Rides (in order from the main gate to the left on the map except for toontown fair which isn't part of the classic Disney Magic Kingdom that I grew up with)
Main Street USA 4- railroad, horse drawn jitney, double decker bus, parade - all A tix so easy one to start with
Adventureland 4 - treehouse - B, enchanted tiki room - E, jungle cruise - B, pirates - E
Frontierland 4 - tom sawyer island, country bear jamboree - E, splash mountain, big thunder mountain
Liberty Square 3 - hall of presidents, riverboat - D, haunted mansion - E
Fantasyland 5 - it's a small world - E, peter pan's flight - C, show white's scary adventures - C, dumbo - C, carousel - A
Tomorrowland 5 - speedway, space mountain - E, wedway people mover - D, carousel of progress, astro orbiter - D
In my freshman class this semester we're making games - analog games. That means board games, card games, dice games, dominoes...No computers, no keyboards, no programming. That comes next year.
The board game industry in this country is small. But it's there. Here's a great blog post from Jackson Pope on Boardgame News about getting your game published. He owns Reiver Games. Notice he points out the importance of clear well-written rules and having a prototype for hte publisher to test out. Be sure you've play tested the heck out of your game before sending it in.
Here's an article from Wired about the guy who created Settlers of Catan as a hobby. Board games are much more popular in Germany and the rest of Europe than they are in the States. And here's the webpage for the game.
I just read a great post from Darius Kazemi on his Tiny Subversions blog about writing your resume if you're applying for a job in game development. It has specific advice.
He recommends you work on game projects - what you learn from that is worth more to the game company than most things you learn at a part time job.
So this summer - don't just lay around - even if you are reading great literature or playing all the new games. Create games too. Find some people to work with. Get some experience worth putting on your resume. Because you want to go to the Game Developers Conference and South by Southwest interactive (SXSWi).
Two groups of students from a section of Qualitative Research last year presented their interview papers at the 2009 Communication Undergraduate Research Conference. Here's a link to the schedule - as you can see there were a wide variety of topics and many posters this year as well. One group presented about dating in SecondLife and the other about communication in world. They had to answer a lot of basic questions about SecondLife as well as about their topic. Most attendees (college students nad professors) seemed to have never heard about or gone into SecondLife. One presentor (who's paper was also about SecondLife) seemed to have never gone into SecondLife either since there were some factual errors in her presentation.
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