Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
The war continues, and so does the art created in Second Life, in opposition to the invasion and in solidarity with the people of Ukraine.
The Dance Queens, an in-world group that promotes and fosters dance in Second Life, held a fundraiser last weekend for several humanitarian aid organizations in support of the people of Ukraine. (Watch the program on YouTube here.) I love this picture from the event, full of life and energy and just enough chaos, shot by Angelika Schmertzin.
For more Ukraine-inspired virtual art, click here:
Here's the latest episode of Seracast, the chatty show hosted by Del and Kess, co-founders of Seraphim SL, featuring a seriously cool ice truck. Along with sassy talk of upcoming Second Life events and my recent post on SL's "achievement" e-mails, the ladies announced a contest for the ongoing Farmer's Market event (yes, that's exactly what you think it is), with three gift cards worth L$2000 each.
Effective Monday, we will be further supporting our eligible Ukrainian-based community members by granting them a temporary 30-day moratorium on recurring account fees such as Premium Membership and Land Maintenance fees. We will review this again after 30 days and assess what we can do as next steps where necessary. We invite any of our Ukraine-based community members to contact support with any specific questions they may have.
It's a good starting point, though I suspect more might be done around this situation. Epic Games and Blizzard Activision, publishers of the metaverse platform Fortnite and the MMO World of Warcraft, respectively, are now blocking sales from Russian users:
Why does Valve seem so bearish about making the metaverse when it has everything it needs to do so? Reader Martin K. proposes this pretty good analysis:
It might be useful to break down the most popular ideas of what today's metaverses are.
Partly, Newell appears to refer to the crypto bros' metaverses, which were never attractive to gamers and will only benefit a tiny percentage of their user base, i.e. sooner or later that metaverse idea will be disappointing to the vast majority of its fan base.
Then there is the Ready-Player-One-inspired idea that the metaverse is like many AAA open worlds in one game – think GTA, Red Dead Redemption, EVE Online, and many more all in one game. Developing such a metaverse is just not a solid business idea – neither with nor without VR support. (Hint: if it was a good idea, then it would be a much better idea to develop just a small part of it at much lower cost and risk.)
Somewhat related is the idea that the metaverse is not a game but a layer on top of many (AAA) games such that they become more "interoperable", which might include many things (e.g. sharing avatar skins, virtual equipment, achievements, communication across games, etc.). Of course, Valve is very interested in pushing that idea forward for games on Steam, but they probably have worked on all the low-hanging fruits already and know very well how difficult the other parts are.
Here's a good thread by veteran game designer Damion Schubert on the interoperability problem.
Martin goes on to talk about UGC platforms that Valve might be considering as competitors:
I'd estimate there's roughly 3000 active Second Life users from Ukraine. According to data from SimilarWeb, .5% of visitors to SecondLife.com are from Ukraine. And based on public data from Linden Lab and from what insiders tell me, there's roughly 600,000 active SL users. So simple math gets us to 3,000 Ukrainians, more or less — not a huge part of the international Second Life community, but quite a decent number. Many of them are content creators on the platform — here's a list of just some of them — and many are active in the virtual world in other ways.
At the moment, however, most or nearly all of them are not looking at any digital depiction of a better world on their screen, But more likely, at a bare basement like this. That was a temporary shelter for Hanna, creator of the beloved SL fashion brand Osmia, when she fled her home with her husband earlier this week, even though she is over 6 months pregnant.
I've been trying to keep in touch with Hanna on social media as much as possible. Since writing about her on Wednesday, the updates have gone from grim to worse. She is now hiding out in a city under active Russian occupation:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
“Save Ukraine” is a thoughtful and informative post from SunGlo Hijinks for her blog Gacha Goodies. She provides a link to a document listing Ukrainian designers we can support. She provides links to a free face tattoo and tells people about the Flickr group for support for Ukraine.
This really is a triumph. Playable tomorrow on ROBLOX — follow the creator’s Twitter for updates — “Tunneler” is a full-fledged, fully functional tribute to Valve’s classic game Portal, including the original’s groundbreaking physics and teleporting mechanic. (Watch above if you don’t believe me, or watch the VR version below.)
While it’s fair to say most people in the game industry tend to dismiss ROBLOX as an amateur platform, I suspect demos like Tunneler may change that bias. For one thing, I first saw it on Twitter being commented on by Chet Faliszek… who was a developer on the original Portal games.
“When people think of Roblox, they typically think of a game where a bunch of kids play with simple basic blocks,” as Tunneler’s creator puts it to me. “[But recently] more and more new and modern features from other game engines have been added onto the platform. Nowadays, the quality of the games on Roblox depend entirely on the developer.”
So the typical Roblox developer (i.e. a kid) could not make a game like Tunneler out of the box. It was created by ROBLOX user “Homemade Meal”, who in his day job, works part-time as an effects artist for a game studio.
“There's a lot of technical things beneath the surface that I had to do for Tunneler,” Mr. Meal explains, “like using tricks with physics to be able to pass through them while maintaining collisions with the rest of the environment.” (More on that below.)
As Mr. Meal already works in the game industry, he didn’t create this to make money from ROBLOX users:
“Tunneler will be 100% free upon release. I’ve always loved to see people enjoy my games and creations. People come together and create a community because they all like the same thing, and I’m very appreciative that I can be the reason such a community exists!”
But then again, Tunneler might also be a message for his game industry colleagues:
“Roblox has the potential to create amazing games, however not enough people are putting the time and effort into trying because of the negative connotations about Roblox developers,” Mr. Meal tells me. “[It] never will until more experienced developers give it a chance.”
As for how Mr. Meal made the Portal teleport effect in Roblox? Very roughly summarized, the Tunneler portals don’t actually connect to the same 3D space, but into copies of the original space. I think. But here’s his highly technical explanation I’ll just quote in full below:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Madoka Kawabata’s “Wild Mood Swings” is such fun. I love how she takes the verb and thinks of it as a noun, making an abstract idea concrete and exploring what it would look like. Browsing her stream is entertaining just for the humor of the picture titles, but when you add the fabulous pictures, well, you have a winner.
I like the faded, aged look of it all. It’s also lovely that she includes the SLurl. Madoka’s photography is mostly about her exploration of Second Life. In many photos, she has made a point of sitting on the various chairs and other objects with sit poses. This consistent theme adds a richer subtext to her pictures, unifying very different pictures in a singular obsession with sitting.
For more clever titles and beautiful pics, click here:
