Metaverse Clock Tower Glut Likely
by Alphaville Herald on 14/01/08 at 1:30 am
NMC to announce content free-for-all wednesday
by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk
Reliable sources report that Larry Pixel’s real life typist – Dr. Larry Johnson, the CEO of the New Media Consortium – announced in Boston this weekend that the NMC will make templates and designs for a number of its builds and clothing available free – a move likely to depress the in-world sales of virtual world academic trappings such as clock towers, lecture halls, and sleep inducing meeting spaces. The NMC has specialized in assisting with recreation of a number of RL campuses and artifacts in Second Life, but with the new year Dr. Johnson has promised his organization will create “no more clock towers” – while at the same time providing the community at large with a number of its designs – presumably including some existing clock towers.
Larry Pixel
According to our sources, the surprise announcement was made during the Boston Digital Media Summit during a panel discussion, with promises of more details Wednesday. It seems likely that while many residents of SL will welcome more free content, there may be significant negative impact on skilled virtual stone masons and clockmakers who will now have tougher competitive landscape to negotiate – unless they repackage the free content and sell it to the unwary.
With the possibility that Larry Pixel will also provide clothing templates, the Herald staff looks forward to babyfurs wearing academic regalia suck as mortarboards with tassels – or at least NMC t-shirts – before the week is out.
Me
Jan 14th, 2008
Exactly why people cannot sell goods and pay their tiers. Always someone willing to come along and give it away for free. With being educated and all, you would think they would understand just how much they hurt more than help anyone in the SL economy.
Oh thank you so much.
Kahni Poitier
Jan 14th, 2008
You really didn’t have anything to write about this week, did you?
I’m sure the hundreds of clock-tower makers will be just heartbroken.
john denver
Jan 14th, 2008
NMC is clueless … really
SqueezeOne Pow
Jan 14th, 2008
“Exactly why people cannot sell goods and pay their tiers.”
I thought it was because people a) bite off more than they can chew with ambitious sim-wide projects and/or (b) they started SL to make money and their “goods” are shitty or otherwise not creative.
While this is a lame ass article (still better than the 3 below it) I have to say it’s this type of thing that makes SL a better place.
If you want to make a living then GO GET A REAL JOB. If you want to be creative then pull up a chair!
Larry Johnson, aka Larry Pixel
Jan 15th, 2008
This story is very misleading and sadly, none of the facts were checked with anyone at NMC. What I actually said in Boston was that 2007 was a year in which campuses made their entries into Second Life in great numbers, and that as a result there is a considerable critical mass of educational institutions now existent in SL. 2008 also promises to see strong educational use of Second Life, but with a new focus. Proejcts in 2008 are much more likely to be about creating learning experiences than virtual campuses, with the result that we will likely see fewer reconstructions of real world buildings and more use of interactivity and non-traditional spaces. This is, in my view, a natural development associated with increasing skill and understanding of virtual space across the board among educators.
How that observation, made in all seriousness, led to the silly story above is anyone’s guess.
The NMC does plan an announcement Wednesday, but the story above foreshadows it very poorly. The announcement will be made at http://sl.nmc.org
Trudeethreedee
Jan 15th, 2008
A Herald article that wasn’t fact checked?
Say it ain’t so Joe!
This article is the first nominee and WINNER of the first 2008 “Prokofy Neva Golden Turd Award”.
Common Sense?
Jan 15th, 2008
I sure hope Larry has gotten permission from the objects’ artists to do this. Given Larry’s poor track record with going through one developer after the next rapidly, somehow I doubt this.
urizenus
Jan 19th, 2008
You know, Larry, I was just reading your own fucking press release (http://virtualworlds.nmc.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/press-release-nmc-virtual-worlds-2008-plans.pdf) and you say this:
“the NMC will release virtually all the content it produced in 2007 into open source — buildings, meeting facilities, educational tools, avatars, clothing, equipment, scripts, and much more. The amount of material that the NMC has licensed to release in this way numbers in the thousands of objects, and the NMC is committed to adding to it throughout the year. The repository, in which everything from shoes to amphitheaters will be available for a single Linden dollar (simply to enable tracking via counts), will also include resources donated by other developers.”
So honestly, how the fuck do you get off then saying that “this story is very misleading”?