Terra Nova

The Sexual Implications of Going Hands Free in Second Life

Earlier this month, Linden Lab released a demo of a hands-free interface for movement within Second Life.  While they were careful to explain that this project is still in the early stages of development, the interface as it stands would allow players to walk and fly through the world using only the positions of their bodies.  Apparently inspired by the controls on Segway scooters, a 3D camera would capture players' movements as they stand a number of feet in front of their computer screens--or, as in the case of the demo, conveniently ginormos televisions.  Linden also claims that the technology in development can sense facial movement and expressions.

While other bloggers are seeing a potentially ground-breaking new way to interact in a world whose current user interface is a giant pain in the butt, I'm wondering: what will going hands free do for sex in Second Life?

Judging worlds

Both Alice and Cory happen to have noted the "review" of social worlds over at Second Life Games, so Onder is getting quite a lot of play over his view of significant social worlds. Leaving aside the odd choice of worlds that he chooses to discuss, I am weirded out by his criteria of assessment:

"Since these are entirely formed from my little brain, we’ll call them “Onder’s Big Three”. They are:

1. Cash transactions must be easy and readily accommodated flowing both into and out from the system.
2. Users must be able to create unique content and retain some form of ownership over it.
3. The fabric of the world itself must be possible to affect. IE: land ownership, room decoration, or some other content that remains viable even when the player who created it is logged off. (”Pervasive” is the word I’m groping for here…)"

Miss Norway found at U of M

I was dozing on the train this morning when someone on a podcast read the news headline “College Student Loses First & Second Life On The Same Day”. I snapped awake pretty quick at that. I knew SL could make you rich but not kill ye’ ass.

Thoughts on Virtual Laguna Beach

As many of you may have heard by now, Makena Technologies has been working with MTV Networks along with several other partners and advisors on a “brand” new 3D social virtual world based on the television show Laguna Beach.  Virtual Laguna Beach launched in beta yesterday.

Chatting

Just saw a truly wonderful talk by Karrie Karahalios from UIUC about the relatively-understudied role of audio in social computing. She makes a compelling case for using social computing methods for visualizing and incorporating audio within the various social software systems that people are building.

Which was interesting because last night I was playing WoW in the same room as some of my guildies and also the leader of another guild. The most remarkable thing, for me, was the amount of Teamspeak voice chatter that the other guild engaged in. Our guild only ever uses Teamspeak for instances and raids, and so to hear the other guild just chatting was intriguing.

AAAS Conference

Greetings from St. Louis, where I had the opportunity yesterday to give a presentation about virtual worlds with fellow Terra Novans Cory Ondrejka, Josh Fairfield and Mike Sellers, at the annual conference for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).  Unfortunately I missed Cory’s presentation, which was moved to the morning session. Josh, Mike and I covered the afternoon session and it was quite a range of topics.

Unlived life

I recently had a character powerleveled, for some research that I'm doing. This morning I logged on to that account for the first time to have a look at the results. I have to say that I came away disoriented, and vaguely disturbed.

No thank you

Just to let all the spammers out there know - here at the TerraNova global media HQ, well at least in my palatial penthouse office suite, we are full to over flowing with prescription meds, genital extension / expansion  / engorgement aids, cheap mobile phones, low rate mortgage packages, offers to help out relatives of ex-high up people in far flung countries that just happen to have millions of dollars that they would love to entrust  to us (for a small admin fee of course). And personally I don’t have the time to meet potential brides from Russia, what with all the WoW playing and eBay’ing I need to do to pay for the hookers and crack.

So to this end - you, good readers, might notice that the comment section on threads mysteriously closes for no good reason. This is NOT because we have grown bored of the topic or think that the commentary we are getting is just not up to standard or an attempt to shut down on anyone's rights to yell at us.  It’s simply because certain threads seem to attract spam engines and get filled up with junk, junk that some might find offensive, so when this happens we will try to clear it out and then probably close comments. When this starts happening to a current thread one of us will try to trim out the spam so we can keep things going. 

Tombstone Hold 'Em

This is only related to virtual worlds in the most tangential of ways, but some things just need to be blogged. This afternoon I got my first taste of alternate reality gaming, 4orty 2wo's "Last Call Poker." More specifically, I spent the afternoon at the Italian Cemetery playing "Tombstone Hold 'Em," a surprisingly fun poker variant that -- you guessed it -- can only be played at a cemetery. Full rules are here. It was a blast. Other than forgetting that Aces were high despite being mundane gravestones -- my team kept building King-high straights and flushes and getting pasted by danah's Ace-high straights and flushes -- it was a great way to spend an afternoon. In addition, as part of the game, various Last Call clues were dispensed and I'm sure the ARG community will be buzzing tonight.

Read on for more . . .

Advice for the lovelorn

Dear Avvy

I'm sick with sadness and I need your advice. I don't think my player cares about me any more. After we first met I thought that the relationship would be wonderful. He spent lots of time with me, sending me mail, taking me to interesting places in Ironforge--the auctionhouse, the postbox just inside the commons, the bank. We even once went to the Great Forge (though I think he might have been lost). He was always showering me with gifts: first was 20 bales of wool, then a magic belt, 6 linen bags, and some gnoll spittle. I thought "this is the real thing!!!11!!"

But since then things have deteriorated. We never go anywhere except the bank, the auctionhouse, the postbox, then the auctionhouse, and back to the postbox. But even worse than this, I think that he has another avatar on the side. He makes me wire money to her, money that I've earned in the auctionhouse through my own hard efforts. I think that he's just using me.

I don't want to give him up, but I can't go on like this. I'd like to take the relationship to the next level, but I wait and wait, and never hear a "ding".

What can I do?

Yours in desperation

Mule (lvl 1)