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On this 232nd day marking Independence in the United States, we wanted to feature some of the patriotic videos created in MMOs. They range from quick videos showing off fireworks in platforms such as Second Life, Everquest, and World of Warcraft, to artistic videos set to Bruce Springsteen, all the way to silly safety tips from the Red vs. Blue boys. As you're planning your real life festivities this year, considering taking some time to pop into your favorite game to get in on some of the action. Happy 4th of July!

If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.

Check out more videos after the jump!

Continue reading Cinemassively: Happy 4th of July

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Dwell On It: A sudden chill

Tateru Nino — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 08:30:00 EST

Filed under: Guild Wars, Second Life, Comics, Dwell on It

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Ghetto grid: Katharine Berry slams Lab's negligence

Tateru Nino — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 07:30:00 EST

Filed under: Culture, News items, Second Life

Famous Teen Second Life user Katharine Berry has spoken out on conditions in Linden Lab's Teen Grid. While, of course, there are rules about content and conduct, they're neither well-followed, says Berry, nor well-enforced.

'Of course, these rules are completely ignored ... Once upon a time, in 2005, Linden Lab would keep track of these things. Today, in 2008, they do not,' asserts Berry, citing an example in her experience where an unauthorized adult in Teen Second Life took more than a year to be removed.

Continue reading Ghetto grid: Katharine Berry slams Lab's negligence

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Second Life daily news

Tateru Nino — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 04:30:00 EST

Filed under: Second Life

The Justice Commons.

Preview grid updated -- Rollout to follow next week. Check those sound scripts.
1.20(RC12) -- Release candidate viewer. Mostly regressions.

Continue reading Second Life daily news

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Preview grid updated to SLS1.23. Dynamic sound throttling, take two

Tateru Nino — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST

Filed under: Patches, News items, Second Life

The preview grid (Aditi) has been updated with SLS1.23, and the schedule has been set for it to roll out onto the main grid on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday next week.

This contains a second attempt at the infamous sound-throttling feature that caused widespread trouble for scripts some weeks ago. You've got several days to test to see if it breaks your content on the preview grid before it goes live on the main grid.

Continue reading Preview grid updated to SLS1.23. Dynamic sound throttling, take two

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New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC12)

Tateru Nino — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 23:30:00 EST

Filed under: Betas, Patches, News items, Second Life

Linden Lab has released the thirteenth 1.20 Second Life release candidate viewer. Release candidates start counting from zero, so the first one in the series is RC0.

We're not sure if this is the RC with the least number of changes or not, exactly. Aside from a localization fix where the viewer was still talking about First Land, the remaining three items all seem to constitute code reversions -- essentially undoing what has been done.

User-Interface skin switching isn't in this release. We're going to go out on a limb and suggest that you won't see that for a couple weeks at least.

Continue reading New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC12)

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Second Life daily news

Tateru Nino — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 04:30:00 EST

Filed under: Second Life

"Epic Conditions"

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Second Life daily news

Tateru Nino — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:30:00 EST

Filed under: Second Life

Victoria City, Caledon.

The 2008 Hippo Awards -- Make sure you nom-nom-nominate your favorite contributors.
The Orange Island 100 -- Packing in the peeps. Not a record, but a great effort.

Continue reading Second Life daily news

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2008 Hippo award nominations are open

Tateru Nino — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:30:00 EST

Filed under: News items, Second Life

The second annual 'Hippo' (aka Linden Lab Innovation Awards) are open for nominations. Candidates are contributors who have had the most impact on Second Life open source development in the last 12 months.

Got a favorite contributor, documenter, or beneficial influence whose contribution you feel was exemplary between 1 July 2007 and 30 June 2008? Nominate them for an award!

Continue reading 2008 Hippo award nominations are open

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Cinemassively: The Orange Island 100

Moo Money — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:30:00 EST

Filed under: Video, Second Life, Free-to-play, Cinemassively, Machinima

(In order to avoid confusion created by the comments below, we would like to note that there were two fan-made videos of the event, and the one we chose to feature has music created by Orb Gettarr and Spiraling Cycling.)

If you've never been to a popular Second Life event, you wouldn't have experienced the pain of a packed sim. The number of avatars in a single sim usually gets to around 70 or 80 before people start crying of lag, ruths, and missing images. However, those wacky Metaversatility kids took to Orange Island in an attempt to set a record for most avatars in a single snapshot.

Jade Lily was shooting for 100 -- and it wasn't easy. As documented by Daneel Ariantho and Natty Foggarty in pictures, and Osprey Therian in this video, people wouldn't rez properly, floated away, and lost connection. After many minutes, they were able to reach their goal, but it took about two hours without SL before this blogger's computer felt right again!

If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them. Please note that due to the high volume of Second Life submissions, we would prefer submissions from other platforms.

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Second Life daily news

Tateru Nino — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 04:30:00 EST

Filed under: Second Life

Where are this classical figure's man-nipples?

Michelangelo's famous jock -- (pictured above) Displayed in unexpected ways.
Lab to announce Xbox, PS3, iPhone support? -- Or are they just teasing?
RealXtend 0.3 -- New animations, new avatars, new features and fixes.
Disaster prevention museum -- From the land of the King of Monsters.
Creator Rights -- How can the rights of creators sensibly interact with multiple service operators? Can they at all?

Continue reading Second Life daily news

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Cocksure Lab nixes nipples

Tateru Nino — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 03:00:00 EST

Filed under: Culture, News items, Second Life

While Linden Lab's emissaries are busy scouring the Second Life fifth anniversary hunting down images of male and female people and avatars that might have a visible nipple, and insisting on the removal of such unspeakably offensive material (beware! Every mammal on the planet has at least two of these hideous markings!), one figure has the balls to remain above it all.

Michelangelo's strapping jock, David, though he might be appearing completely nipple-free, still gets to let it all hang out, having been granted the big okay by Everett Linden to stand proud, tall, and unmodified (at least from the waist down) among displays with far more severe restrictions imposed. Nipples might be out out of order, but the Lab's staff seem to have ensured a successful cock-up for the delight and wonder of one and all.

The Lab's staff may stand firm, but we're finding the whole package lacks consistency. Either the Lab needs to grasp things with both hands and tackle the issues (whichever of the available positions they may choose), or it's the users that will ultimately get the shaft in the end.

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Lab's teasing 'placeholer': Xbox, PS3, iPhone?

Tateru Nino — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 02:00:00 EST

Filed under: News items, Second Life, Rumors

Dusan Writer has spotted an HTML comment in the source for search.secondlife.com which says ""

Definitely quite the tease. Certainly, Second Life can be made to run on a PS3 (and there's at least one enterprising user who has had some success on that front); the Xbox 360 would present a much more considerable technical challenge; and as for the iPhone, well, Linden Lab has been making noises about lighter-weight clients/viewers for some months.

We're not sure quite how much credence to put to the message, however, as "real soon now" is a piece of engineer slang/sarcasm generally taken to mean "Whenever, when it's ready, maybe never". However this could neatly dovetail with Kapor's "very important announcement" coming up in seven days.

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RealXtend 0.3 released

Tateru Nino — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:30:00 EST

Filed under: Patches, News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds

The RealXtend team has released the latest version of their extended, viewer and opensim-based system code. This brings realXtend up to version 0.3.

The viewer sports new basic avatars (three), attachments direct to the avatar (rather than to a bone-based attachment point), prim sizes increased to 128 metres in any dimension, fixed assorted crash bugs and more.

The server code handles the support for these features, along with a bunch of bug-fixes, Skype support, inverse kinematics and variable avatar walk-speeds.

Continue reading RealXtend 0.3 released

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Japan to open virtual disaster prevention museum

Tateru Nino — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:00:00 EST

Filed under: News items, Second Life, Education, Virtual worlds

No, not actually for the prevention of virtual disasters. The Daily Yomiuri tells us that the Japanese government is planning a virtual museum in Second Life focusing on disaster prevention in order to promote awareness of disaster management and techniques and technologies to mitigate the impact of a wide range of disasters.

Initial exhibits will demonstrate how non-earthquake hardened buildings respond to seismic events, and the impact of tornados on urban settings. Unfortunately, we think that it's unlikely to include such disasters as Godzilla, Orga, Mothra or Rodan.

Nonetheless, the potential educational benefits of such an installation are hard to deny -- the impact and effects of natural disasters can be almost inconceivable to those who have not directly experienced such events or their aftereffects themselves.

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MMOGology: Mobile MMOGs

Marc Nottke — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:00:00 EST

Filed under: World of Warcraft, EVE Online, MapleStory, Game mechanics, Ragnarok Online, Opinion, Second Life, Free-to-play, MMOGology, Mobile

Several weeks ago at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) Steve Jobs announced the 3G iPhone. The announcement wasn't much of a shock to industry experts since other cell phones have been using 3G networks for several years. In order to remain competitive, it was only natural for Apple to hop on the 3G bandwagon.

What was, perhaps, more unexpected was the consumer friendly price point of $199.00. Of course there are a few not-so-hidden caveats involved with that sweet price point. First you have to qualify for the subsidized price, then there's the mandatory two year contract with AT&T and an increase in the price of the iPhone's data plan. Regardless, what it means to gamers is a budding mobile gaming platform. The iPhone now has its own software developer's kit (SDK), 3G network capabilities, and is priced to sell. Increased accessibility, higher data transfer speeds, and the ability for developers to conjure up new applications can only mean good things for the future of mobile MMOGs - especially on the iPhone.

Of course, maybe the future of mobile MMOGs seems so bright because its current state is so dim. As someone who has never even attempted to play an MMOG on a mobile device, I'm curious as to what exactly is out there and if anything is worth my time. If you're curious too, join me for some more info on mobile MMOGs after the break. I'll discuss the current state and limitations of the platform, some existing offerings, and take a look at what the future might hold.

Continue reading MMOGology: Mobile MMOGs

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Cinemassively: This American Hero

Krystalle Voecks — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:30:00 EST

Filed under: City of Heroes, Second Life, Cinemassively, Machinima

We're subbing in for our regular machinima blogger, Moo Money, who is AFK for the next little while. Today for Cinemassively, we're bringing you a video we stumbled across recently and really enjoyed. For those who are fans of the Chicago Public Radio show This American Life, this machinima made by SuperZuck took elements from both TAL and City of Heroes and presented (the beginning of) a day in the life of an old-school hero turned filmmaker. Tasty shades of meta.

While this is only part one of the work, we are definitely interested in seeing more machinima of this nature! Paragon City holds many heroes, each with a different story, and reasons all their own. Excellent work, SuperZuck, and congrats on your first-place win in Molotov Alva's "Your Virtual Life" machinima contest! We look forward to the rest of this "episode."

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Peering Inside: The rights of creators

Tateru Nino — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:30:00 EST

Filed under: Business models, Economy, Opinion, Second Life, Legal, Virtual worlds

On 14 November, 2003 Linden Lab caused quite a stir by announcing that users who created or published content via the Second Life service would "retain full intellectual property protection for the digital content they create, including characters, clothing, scripts, textures, objects and designs."

Essentially, the same rights that they'd have anywhere else (barring assorted terms of use/service to the contrary). It seems obvious, in many ways, but ultimately it's actually very rare. Terms of use/service which express a contradictory position are in the majority. In fact, go to the filing cabinet and pull out the contract for your current RL job. Odds are, there are a whole slew of creator rights that you've already signed away that have little or nothing to do with your job.

That, unfortunately, is the normal condition. When it comes to the new, novel, or creative -- almost everyone wants a piece of your pie, and few want to leave a slice for you, if they can avoid it. Even taking Sturgeon's (second) Law into account, competition for the remaining portion of human content and pop-culture is quite stiff.

Continue reading Peering Inside: The rights of creators

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