Well, the publicity is working. It looks more and more like a snowball going down a hill every day. The music acts are moving in with their labels. The clothing manufacturers are setting up shop. And it now appears that GM is going to follow Toyota into Second Life, according to their press release (Link). There are some interesting differences in how they intend to garner attention, and those methods are getting some SL residents upset it seems; especially the real estate people. From the press release:

Pontiac is getting into real estate – but not in the way most would expect. It’s joining a small group of trendsetting companies buying virtual real estate in Second Life, an online, 3-D world entirely built and owned by the residents that inhabit it. Pontiac’s Second Life presence will launch with a six-region land mass called Motorati Island. But, Pontiac’s arrival will come with a twist: an offer of free “land” for Second Lifers to create a vibrant car culture within the community.

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When I first read over on Raph Koster’s blog (Link) about Terra Novan and virtual world economics-meister Edward Castranova’s effort to create a virtual world based on Shakespeare’s work, something seemed… odd. I caught a few other stories on the topic; the original C|Net article (Link) to which Koster linked, mention of it on a few blogs, and now an update on Reuters (Link). It took a bit of thinking to realize something: if Castronova is using Multiverse – a virtual world kit, if you will – to build his world, and if Multiverse’s licensing fees are based on each particular world’s real world income, and if this is an academic effort that I assume will not generate any income (either from advertising or subscriptions), then why does it require a grant of $240,000 for the year? Why does he need three or four employees at all? He already expects plenty of volunteers. Shouldn’t this be an open source effort free of any and all financial ties such that the world is properly framed for whatever social and economic experiments he wishes to conduct? As someone who is against secondary markets for virtual worlds/videogames, isn’t he creating the very first link to real world money by merely accepting a grant that he arguably doesn’t really need?

I don’t know. Maybe I’m asking too much. As someone working on a virtual property, I certainly understand the costs and the effort, but it still just seems to me as if this project and this person – more than anyone – would want to use Multiverse in the same way modders use videogames: all volunteer with no real money entanglements of any kind.

Via a post on Terra Nova (Link) comes word of Nick Yee‘s relatively recent talk at Stanford titled “The Blurring Boundaries of Play: Labor, Genocide, and Addiction” (Link to audio and video). It’s an excellent lecture and well worth the time to watch it. His point that many people play MMO’s because they like the structured environment might explain why so many people are turned off by an open-ended virtual world like Second Life. I may not understand the mindset, but it sounds like an opportunity to me.

Earlier this year I believe I mentioned a CG competition over on the CG Architect site. I also believe I said I’d keep tabs on it. I didn’t. Instead I’ve just now surfed through and have been looking at some of the final entries (Link to rankings page) including an animation that caught my attention (Link) – not because it’s the winner, but because one of the cg characters in the piece reminded me of Half-Life 2 and I got to thinking that some sections of it could very well have been done in a game engine. You might recall the Fallingwater animation/game level I’d mentioned previously (reLink), so of course I found this interesting. Anyway, you can check out that animation and a few others on the Japan Nature Dome webpage (Link). Out of curiousity I’m looking for more plans and elevations and it at least shows a cross-section of the dome and site plan. No luck on the rest so far.

By the way, entrants had to submit three images for approval to qualify for entry. Those submissions are in a longish thread which makes for a nice reference source (Link) with some interesting ideas on display.

{Image Copyright © 2006 Sean De Boer}

Plenty of media stuff on Second Life is still being spat out and I haven’t read much that’s of real interest. If anything, it’s now the people writing about Second Life that catches my attention. In the meantime, however, I did read one relatively minor comment that is worth mentioning here. From C|Net’s inworld interview of Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale (Link):

One thing that will help is when attacks on “Second Life” are properly treated and prosecuted as cybercrimes, and we are working a lot on that.

Did he say “when”?

For those of you who recall, I was one of the few who took some early assurances that griefers and gridbusters were being pursued by authorities for their attacks with a very large grain of salt (reLink 1, reLink 2) after some initial assurances seemed to be mostly hot air. It appears that my suspicians of Linden Lab’s impotence in dealing with the issue are being verified. To be fair, it’s not their fault. But they should, imo, be more straightforward about the difficulties they’re apparently encountering. Personally, I suspect the problem won’t be resolved any time soon and no one should expect it to be.