by Idoru Wellman, Herald Education Desk

On January 28, in what may be the first instance of a university course held inside Facebook, Northwestern University Philosophy Professor Peter Ludlow (known to Herald readers as Urizenus Sklar) recently attempted to hold his class, Conceptual Issues in Virtual Worlds, inside the Island Life application on Facebook.  The results were mixed.

Island Life is a fantasy farming game inside Facebook that is somewhat similar to Farmville.  The twist is that that Island Life (currently in beta) is the creation of game developer legend Raph Koster (Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies) and it allows people to visit each other and chat on their “islands”.  The game is a bit of a throwback to 2D graphical social platforms like The Sims Online and Habbo Hotel.

Koster’s most recent project had been Metaplace, an attempt to bring virtual world creation to the masses by providing a platform in which people could develop flash based virtual worlds.  The project recently closed down but the bulk of the development team moved with Koster to his Island Life project.

Reached for comment, Ludlow explained that his course is a freshman seminar designed to encourage writing skills, but as Ludlow explains “I couldn’t just assign papers to them; they need to become literate in new communications technologies. Hence, they will be called on to develop projects in virtual worlds, record those projects with machinima, blog about their experiences, give power point presentations about their projects, and write traditional papers.”

According to Ludlow, this particular class session on Island Life was principally used for resolving technical issues such as testing whether his island in Island Life could take the load of 13 students, to get students familiar with Ventrilo (the voice communications program they are using) and to determine whether meaningful conversations are possible in Island Life (in its current form).  In this instance, the topic of conversation was the comparative advantages of Second Life and Island Life with respect to the classroom experience.  Students used a combination of in game chat and Ventrilo voice communication.

Students discuss the advantages of Island Life over Second Life.

Students saw different advantages for Island Life and Second Life (where they had previously held some classes).  On the one hand, Island Life was less “laggy” and less distracting.  On the other hand,  students found the chat program in Island Life to be primitive. 

One problem was that the chat bubbles tended to occlude each other.  Freshman Hanna Golanka, however, saw an advantage to this: “Although the blocking-each-other-out thing wasn't the greatest, the short lifespan of each text bubble meant that in order to pay attention to class, you had to really pay attention every second. I'll be honest – in Second Life there were times I wasn't reading the chat at all, and then would scroll back up and read anything that sounded important.” 

Chat bubble trouble

Golanka also noted that there was a problem of overstimulation in Second Life – particularly in Ludlow’s classroom, which is a mushroom cave under his castle.  She felt that a traditional classroom architecture might be more apt.  “I think the actual atmosphere of Island Life was a better setting. Our characters sat on the logs while in Second Life they danced on mushrooms or built things. In this case, it's actually a negative that Second Life has so many more… options. It would probably be more effective to have class in an empty room or something like a classroom setting, but still, there are just so many possibilities in Second Life that it's hard to sit still (I guess that's what real classes would be like if we weren't taught that we were supposed to stay in our seats).”

Getting distracted in their Second Life "classroom"

While Golanka found Second Life to be the superior platform overall, she chalked up much of this to the fact that Island Life is in early beta.  Indeed according to developer Raph Koster, his development team is just scratching the surface of what can be done with Island Life from a technical point of view. 

According to Ludlow, the interesting feature of Island Life lies in its potential to usher in a new generation of virtual world users. “Island Life, by taking advantage of the Facebook platform, may well be the application that brings robust custom virtual worlds to the masses.  It is flash based and is thus “of the web” and not a foreign body like Second Life, which requires a large client download.  It also piggybacks on the Facebook so it can rapidly acquire users via social networking rather than traditional advertising methods.”

For Ludlow, the real potential of virtual worlds is not really in the classroom experience, but in providing new ways of communicating ideas by immersing people inside of stories and virtual places.  In the future, virtual worlds will be used to communicate messages in a more experiential way.  His goal is to get students started on learning to develop these online experiences to communicate their ideas.  Facebook is important in this equation because it can bring these experiential messages closer to the typical internet user.

And not for nothing, Ludlow notes that having class inside Facebook brings the classroom closer to the students.  “My students are on Facebook during class anyway.  I might as well move the class into Facebook. If you can’t beat them, join them.”

Some people are never satisfied

by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk

Raph Koster: "We're not talking about overall plans yet… first we learn"

Game god survivors of the Metaplace world's apocalyptic loss of traction – Raph Koster and Tami Baribeau (Cuppycake) – did not perish when the Metaplace world ended January 1st. After the shipwreck of the standalone Metaplace user generated virtual world dream, the MP game gods washed up on the beach in Facebook where they hope to feed themselves by selling cabbage and farming supplies to the 35 million FB players, despite the ever-present threat of avataricide. IslandLife is Raph's new Facebook-embedded game in beta test – but will it be redonkulous?

Hoping to locate the pink spaghetti strap top I bought in the final hours of Metaplace, I joined IslandLife and began farming.

Farming consists of picking the appropriate tool or crop seed, clicking on the ground and waiting to harvest the crops. It felt more like a waste of time anything else, but I'm willing to put up with a certain amount of grind to get the right clothes for my avatar. Perhaps Raph will add the old Metaplace New You clothes store soon?

the pink spaghetti strap tank top I lost when Metaplace closed January 1

Of course the name of the meta-game on Facebook is viral growth, so IslandLife encourages you to invite friends to "fertilize" your crops by clicking on the ground. You can even visit your IslandLife Facebook e-friend's farms and chat with them in-world, if chatting with friends via the FB chat system was not enough.

This all seems a bit less than totally redonkulous so far, but apparently IslandLife is growing faster than the Raph expected. Everyone got 1000 free coins after growing pains resulted in missing crops and livestock Friday. I imagine this is the sort of problem Linden Lab would like to have, so perhaps the Metaplace move to FB was wise.

While FB farming isn't really doing much for me intellectually, my FB news is constantly updated with e-friend's achievements in other FB embedded games, so there are plenty of people who seem to like this sort of thing. Will the FB  spam from MafiaWars, FarmVille, FishVille, and CopycatVille ever end?

Besides similarities to various Facebook and other flash-based virtual farming games, former Metaplace players will recognize the beer barrels and other artwork. Some Metaplace veterans predicted that IslandLife would end up in Facebook even before the Metaplace world closed, after watching The Metaplace staff working on IslandLife during the final days of standalone Metaplace.

Will many of the 16 million Happy Farming Game players will take up real life farming – or IslandLife?

How well will the former game gods fare when they are forced to live in the Facebook MMO – a world with corrupt gods of it's own?

The sort of sudden game-changing 180 degree turns for which Linden Lab is infamous are also far too common on Facebook. For instance, Mark Zuckerberg recently changed thefundamental rules of FB privacy because he was struck with the divine inspiration that nobody cares about privacy anymore. Driven by an insatiable need for growth, Facebook will do whatever it can get away with to monetize the experience.

Is it only a matter of time before FB embedded games are nerfed or co-opted by the imperious Zuckerberg's need to know everything about everyone? Could running a chat system independent of Facebook prove to be a problem for Metaplace if FB decides that everyone's chat needs to data mined? If Linden Lab has issues with encrypted IM now, will Facebook soon have problems with chat  run inside Metaplace? And if they do, how much leverage will the little fish in the Facebook sea have to resist?

Meanwhile, we can only hope that virtual cabbage will be lucrative enough to keep the Metaplace crew alive while they polish IslandLife and consider their next steps. More interesting than IslandLife itself is what comes next. When I caught up with Raph Koster on his IslandLife farm he was coy when I suggested two options. The first – turn out a series of Facebook embedded games and sell spacebux for the games is obvious – as is the possibility of carrying your spacebux between various Metaplace framework games.

A second approach might be more interesting – provide a Facebook game creation framework to those eager to hop on the FB craze despite the risks – but expect for developers to take a very hard look at their rights and content portability in this scenario. After being wiped out in the Metaplace apocalypse once, developers and players wouldn't want to lose their investments – and tank tops – too often.

condemned to IslandLife – click on the ground to make plants grow – over and over

Tizzers Foxchase got in the last word in Metaplace Central -  “POOLS CLOSED DUE TO AIDS” – and seconds later Raph Koster’s user generated virtual world creation service closed permanently last weekend. What went wrong – and how did the end of the virtual world affect the community?

Informed analysis has been in short supply since Koster announced the end of the virtual world. Eager to file stories and get on with the holidays, Metaplace tourists role-playing new media pundits shook their heads sadly and offered superficial analysis – Metaplace is teh fail because the avatars weren't realistic enough! 2.5 D fixed perspective is not immersive enough!!  Flash based games are everywhere – and Metaplace was too late!!! Blue Mars!!!! Farmville and YoVille on Facebook!!!!!!

Perhaps this is the best that can be expected with the less than exquisite timing of the December 21st Metaplace announcement and New Years day apocalypse. Players seriously engaged in Metaplace scrambled to establish alternate connections to preserve the community and salvage what content they could from the platform. Meanwhile, those with minimal connections to the world indulged in a bit of smug Schadenfreud.

SL fanboi and drive-by pundit Hamlet Au's Metaplace world had exactly one visitor in 7 months – Hamlet

I  joined the Metaplace closed beta in February 2009,  intent on watching an incomplete world grow, and spent a quarter of my virtual world gameplay time in Metaplace as the world morphed from a promising game-creator-centric environment dominated by creative adults, to a community struggling to assimilate a wave of 11 year olds pretending to be 14 year olds mostly interested in going on e-dates with teh hawt nu bf / gf they <3’ed based on avatar style and SMS-text speak convo.

Had Raph Koster’s company underestimated the impact of the e-party and e-dating scene?

I didn’t see much of an immersion problem for the teen crowd – and given the visual style of the world, a wave of young teens was to be expected. Once in open beta, Metaplace was apparently trying several promotion strategies and ad placements to attract players, and some were surprisingly successful at attracting girls desperately seeking e-boyfriendz. MP Central suddenly became a very social space – but not necessarily in a good way.

It is hard to believe that Metaplace was not positioning itself as an alternative to the 15 million player strong Habbo. But to get there, the company would need both content consumers and creators. The tensions between these two groups played out in Metaplace Central, the meeting space where new players entered the world and where old players compared notes and hung out with Metaplace staff.

Once Metaplace went into open beta, the e-libidos of the kids washing through Metaplace Central grew to became a powerful force – at times it seemed that the game gods had lost control of the user experience in their showcase town square. Where was the Metaverse ModSquad when you needed them? How could Metaplace afford to police MP Central 24 x 7 and continue to develop the platform?

level 101 players holds a throne sit-in at the beginning of the MP farewell celebration

By summer it was clear the Metaplace staff would need the help of volunteer moderators to keep things from getting entirely out of hand in MP Central after the game gods went home – but there was a problem. The volunteer moderators came from the ranks of the content creators who really should have been creating more compelling games and worlds to draw in a larger community to their own worlds and promoting Metaplace on their own – the sort of viral growth VC’s dream about.

With volunteer player moderators in place the swearing and chat spam was brought under control, but cries of “I’m bored – I need a boyfriend” from avatars with names like HotBabe11 or CuteGirl1998 were still all too common. The MP game gods tried appeasement with a dating game called PerfectMatch which gave the kids a way to see how compatible they were – and move them out of the center of the town square. The balance of power in MP Central was restored.

New You store drama: "what happened 2 ur girl she waz my best friend r u cheating on her?"

PerfectMatch was a fun game – by answering a fast paced series of questions your compatibility with other players was ranked. But players who wanted to earn money from their gameplay wondered why the MP game gods were creating more games for Metaplace Central instead of improving the avatar system for user-generated pixel clothes and avatar adornments to drive the virtual world economy.

Volunteers entrusted with kick and ban powers grew restless – when would they be able to monetize their work and get away from policing tweens? Where was the in-game RMT? While experience point-based “coins” could be used to purchase goods from a web page based store, Metaplace staff had promised a second in-game currency that could be converted to real money, but this was delayed by security concerns.

The original in-game XP “coins” were – for a short while – directly transferable between players, but an upgrade removed this capability with the promise that it would return later. It never did – although a player named KStarfire refused to update his Metaplace world, which then became the only place that person-to-person coin barter was possible.

I finally buy my pink spaghetti strap tank top on the day Metaplace closes

On the day Metaplace was to close, I went on a totally self-indulgent shopping spree at the New You store where game god designed clothes were sold for XP-based coins – my clothes shopping lust set free after KStarfire gave me 1 million coins. I finally bought the pink top I’d had my eye on and could be buried in style – but why weren’t there any UGC clothes for sale? From this girl’s perspective, pixel clothes should the first priority in an avatar-based world and more fashion choices are always a good thing.

Hearts, minds, and wallets of content creators

Developing for a new platform takes a leap of faith, and for those motivated by something other than platonic love of creating virtual art, money plays a role – as does hedging your bets.

Metaplace sold high concurrent access user worlds  for special events or popular games. For the company this made sense – free worlds give players a taste, but the more advanced would pay for premium service. However, without an in-game micro-payment system or real money trade there was no easy way to set out tip jars to or charge admission – so the “make real money in the virtual world” dream that Philip Linden flogged in Second Life was not an option in MP. Without tip jars to help pay for streaming audio feeds, it was difficult for most musicians and DJs to justify playing Metaplace. I enjoyed some great concerts by J9 and Raph Koster, but the economics were an issue for most of the music community.

Without a clear picture of when they might see some income, DJs, musicians, and content creators who were not true believers sat on their hands, true believers were pressed into service as game moderators, and the viral growth remained out of reach. Had the venture capitalists funding MP set too short a timeline? Was the weak real world economy to to blame – or the lack of an in-world economy with RMT?

J9 sings money makes the world go 'round – LunarRaid says money ends the world when you run out

For those who bought into the Metaplace dream, tools allowing anyone to create worlds were a compelling goal. If virtual worlds and online social spaces are the new media, democratizing the tools to create and understand the rhetoric of these spaces is a worthwhile pusuit – and necessary to allow the diversity of viewpoint that is unlikely to emerge from mega-media conglomerate dominated environments. Sadly, we will never know if the Metaplace I lived in for almost a year could have been viable, because despite the best efforts of the MP game gods, the incomplete world did not tip into viral growth fast enough.

Will the next iteration of Metaplace fare better? Freed from running their virtual world service, the Metaplace crew now head back to the drawing board, stranding players’ creations in the doomed environment. The lesson for virtual world content creators is to keep your assets mobile and beware of monopolies and centralized control – the plug could be pulled with very short notice.

I console Urizenus as he contemplates the demise of his multi-media egghead mashup world

saying goodbye to the Mary and Mary bots and shuttering the Metaplace Herald offices

by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk

Raph Koster, overwhelmed by baby dragon gifts lays on the street in Metaplace Central

The winter solstice was a dark day for those who invested time in Metaplace – on December 21 players were sent an e-mail stating "over the last few months it has become apparent that Metaplace as aconsumer UGC service is not gaining enough traction to be a viableproduct, requiring a strategic shift for our company. We’re sorry to announce today that Metaplace.com will be closing to the public at 11:59pm on January 1st, 2010."

The mood in Metaplace Central 45 minutes after the e-mail went out was chaotic – both Raph Koster and Community manager Cuppycake were present to answer questions as players wondered if there was any way to save the world – and their creations. However, little new information was available beyond what was already in the e-mail and FAQ. Raph's blog was similarly taciturn. An end of the world party is scheduled for noon PST January 1, 2010, and players were advised to save what they could and document their creations between before the party starts.

At one point Raph was almost entirely covered by baby dragon gifts from players who looked at their large hoards of experience-point-based coins and tried to burn through them while they still existed. The normally effusive Cuppycake stood facing away from the fixed perspective camera and could not be coaxed into facing forward by a player who wanted a picture. I gave Cuppycake gift fairies and Raph baby dragons for a while and watched the chat scroll by. At least I made it to level 101 before the world ended – which is a story for another day.

Raph receives <3 balloons after announcing apocalypse and end of world party

pyrocow: we need to capture the meeps. and hold them hostage.
Jamario: i think he needs to give it some more time
Feisty: well raph, if ur continuing on with the same technology, will it be possible for people to still make their own worlds under the new restructuring?
LunarRaid: I'm wondering if this even IS his decision.
Jamario: about this
freecoconuts: yh i dont think so

[Staff] Raph:  Heh….
kateskye: wat
Ladyrammie: Wynge!
DougQB: I imagine many folks discussed this decision at some length.
LunarRaid: Venture capitalism…

[Staff] Raph:  Even if you here all subscribed… it wouldn't make a difference
j9scarborough: hey all
[Staff] Raph:  No, the blame does not lie with investors
omgomg: I heard that metaplace is shutting down , Raph
kateskye: ur an azz hole raph
freecoconuts: its the moooney
Quicktexter101: why wouldn't it?
Tiggy: why is every1 harassing raph/ he hasnt got a magic wand

[Staff] Raph: The fact is that we just do not have enough traction
LunarRaid: I wasn't saying it was their FAULT
djtit: government
Azada: whats traction?
Pixeleen: not growing fast enough?
omgomg: hmm..
LunarRaid: I'm just saying venture capitalism in general
Soccer24 thinks, "Bailout?"
Jamario: who doesjust keep sending ur website out to more people
ladydorr: RAPH Y CANT WE GO IN THE NEW YOU?
LunarRaid: lady, I swear….
Ladyrammie: Ladydorr, stop it ok?
freecoconuts: forget about the newyou
sapphire: ladtdorr shut up
Quicktexter101: thats not wat we are discussing!
LunarRaid: I am on a short rope today.
ladydorr: STOP WAT?
Jordstar: traction = growth not quick enough to keep things paid and expanding
freecoconuts: talking
Legend: there is no other place like this. this was the best ive seen. your staff is very talented and i wish u all the best. thank u for the memories here
Jamario: lol
omgomg: Lunarraid, I thought u couldnt swear
Feisty: the platform never had a killer app
Azada: oh
Soccer24: I'll miss everyone
Quicktexter101: tear
Obo: Was there a lot of churn?
ladydorr: OH

[Staff] Raph: You don't have to lose touch… we set up a site with forums just so that everyone can stay in touch
omgomg cries because metaplace is gonna shut down

[Staff] Raph: We do not want to lose touch either
Azada: good
j9scarborough: yes raph, i assume almost everybody here wishes the company all the best
DougQB: http://www.metaplaceveterans.com
[Moderator] ferall: reply no-one does
Quicktexter101: thank god
Azada: but what about our worlds and building
LunarRaid: Can you at least tell us that your future plans MAY brighten our day when we can actually hear them?
Azada: all other websites are sucky sept this 1
[Moderator] ferall: wrong tell -
Quicktexter101: I know, we put a lot of time into some worlds
djtit: yya
DougQB: Probably to soon for future plans, but it would be nice to hear! :p
Jamario: i know i did
Azada: can we stil; go 2 our worlds?
[Moderator] wyngedesigns: We all believe in your vision Raph, I hope that stays with you
omgomg: Raph are we gonna use our usernames and passwords in metaplace veterans.com like we do in this site?
Azada: still
joe5: omg holy beep
j9scarborough: azada, it passes, internet is a performoing and transforming world
Jamario: took at least to daysor the hole day
Tiggy: There is nothing to discuss.. the site owners have made a descion, learn to respect it, get over it. make the most of the time your have left

[Staff] Raph: I hope so, Ray.
[Staff] Raph: it will be different
Quicktexter101: this is jank

[Staff] Raph: omgomg, no, you register separately, it's just a forum site
Ladyrammie: Aw thanks coco
joe5: holy #@&%
[Moderator] ferall: hi jan
Azada: thanks freecoconuts
omgomg: Meta place.com has been the best site ive ever gone 2
sapphire: ty
Jamario: hi
Ladyrammie: brooke!
Quicktexter101: tot this is the best place ever
Truffle is still just shocked
Azada: but will our worlds b lost?
Jamario: well i never seen this many people at metaplace
chooseareality wow haven't been this sad in a while
[Moderator] chooseareality: Raph… wow!
joe5: holy #@#!
j9scarborough: thank you wynge
LunarRaid: Hi Brooke…
omgomg shares a teleporter to "omgomgs_World"
HoneybeeRose: Hey, Brooke
[Moderator] ferall: ty
[Moderator] ferall: hi brooke
omgomg: I invite everyone to this place
Jamario: bye omgomg lol
Jamario: no we r good lol
DougQB: heya Brooke!
omgomg: k
j9scarborough: i hope people will recall them and i will make fotos when i come back from paris
Quicktexter101: tear
DougQB: hiya HoneybeeRose! :p
LunarRaid: Don't even know if there is a point in saving stuff, frankly.
Jamario: raph r u there
Truffle: never gonna hit 1000 eggs
[Moderator] chooseareality: well I suppose this answers the unity question
(BALLOON GIFT) freecoconuts just gave you a bundle of Metaplace balloons!
j9scarborough: huggs ferall
Azada says THIS IS NOT FAIR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LunarRaid: My scripts are worthless outside of MP
Quicktexter101: tot
[Moderator] ferall: hugz back
Truffle hugs Wyngedesigns
Azada: WE LOOOOOOVE THIS PLACE ):
omgomg: j9 I never got to meet u
LunarRaid: Brooke, we gotta hook up about this Unity thing
joe5: this place is !@!&in full
sapphire: it gonna crash in here
DougQB: I suppose that depends on where Metaplace goes from here.
ladydorr: wow alot of people on one side
[Moderator] Logikal: Might be worth saving stuff in case some future iteration of Metaplace happens someday
Bray: azada
HoneybeeRose: Hey, Doug
Jamario: we should vote about this lol
joe5: bye ppl
Azada: YES
djtit: never seen so many people
[Moderator] wyngedesigns: lol – yes – I vote it stays up!
Ladyrammie: Doh everyone does..
Azada: HOW DO WE SAVE OUR WORLDS RAPH?
Pixeleen: Raph can you say anything about what is next for you and Metaplace – anything about the new direction?
Jamario: lol me too
omgomg cries
Bray: this is a lot of people
Bray: y
[Moderator] chooseareality: wish the team was here.. I want to say good bye… Raph will they still be dropping in this next week?
Azada: METAPLACE IS CLOSING
Azada: FOREVER!
Bray: why
omgomg: NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Staff] Raph: I hope lots f folks show up for the party
Azada: NOT ENOUGH PPL
j9scarborough: hugs omg
Pixeleen: I will
Jamario: well raph u shold make another website lyk this
omgomg: what can we do to save this place????!!

[Staff] Raph: we don't want everyone to be sad the whole time
Jamario: and send it out
djtit: whens the party
Azada: WE WILL
(COMPANION GIFT) You gave Raph a baby dragon.

[Staff] Raph: I would much rather people celebrate the awesome than just be sad
Quicktexter101: hmmf

Amethyst announces the after-show party

Nervously waiting backstage, I watch two channels of chat scrolling up the screen: the public announcements to the audience, and the private instructions to the models. They've taken away spotlight we had at rehearsal (it made the clothes look too washed out); we're supposed to click the pumpkin when we walk off stage.

Click the pumpkin? What on Earth? Oh, ok, it's so Cuppycake can teleport us off the catwalk.

Cuppycake on the catwalk

They're playing a French remix station over the speakers; wall to wall ToToM. A Britney Spears impersonater complains they're not playing enough of "her" hits. A few of the European models are drinking black coffee to stay awake; this show is in the middle of the night, their time.

Trash under the spotlight in fashion show rehearsal

And then it's my turn to be on stage. With a whoosh, I'm teleported behind the curtain. I can't see a thing: the curtain keeps the audience from seeing us changing, but it also stops us seeing what we're doing. It's just as well we've practiced this. I change out of my street clothes and into a red evening dress, silently praying that I've not suffered some wardrobe malfunction in the dark.

With a deep breath, I step out into the light. Maybe it's just my nerves, but this is the first time all evening I've felt any lag. Not very much, but just enough to feel slow and heavy as I dance down the catwalk. I fervently hope it's not going to make me lose my balance and fall off. (Is that even possible? Now would not be a good time to find out).

I turn and wave to the fashion press in the audience (Hi Pixeleen!), then down to the end of the catwalk, and back behind the safety of the curtain. Blundering about in the dark, I hope I don't bump into some abandoned lighting control gear. Now, where is that stupid pumpkin? Another woosh, and I'm teleported back with the rest of the models.

Finally, it's all over and we can wind down at the after-show party, dancing to more ToToM.

dancing at the after-show party

Susan wore: red mid length dress, available at The New You for 25,000 metacredits

by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk

While I was visiting Soviet Woodbury Saturday, the resident communists took time away from building their new workers’ paradise to rez a brightly colored dance floor and an impromptu worker’s dance party took place to an audio stream from http://www.maxxhitsbootlegs.com – a French mashup site that seems to be  on the way to becoming the metaverse soundtrack of choice for both Second Life and Metaplace. At the Metaplace Fashion Show event on Friday we were also dancing to a stream from the site, and I can confirm maxxhitsbootlegs is an in-theme choice for user-generated content worlds in either 2.5D or 3D.

I've begun to wonder if audio mashups are the aural equivalent of the W-Hat goons' and Woodbury /b/tard's builds – unexpected juxtapositions of diverse elements to create a new and typically ironic work – sometimes for fun and sometimes as social commentary. A mashup like Black Butterfly Busters combining Smashing Pumpkins – Bullet with Butterfly Wings + Ram Jam – Black Betty + Ray Parker Jr. – Ghostbusters seems to be saying something, but can the copyright laws and the sampled content creators keep up?

brought to you by the Copyright Bureau of Resistance?

With mashup artists like ToToM intentionally pushing the copyright envelop it is unclear how sustainable this is  – but as Larry Lessig pointed out at TED last year, balancing the rights of creators, remixers, and consumers is in everyone’s long term interest if we are to have more than a read-only consumer world.

by Suzie Skybeam

Wednesday night, a group of developers got together in a Libertarian coffee shop to discuss what to do about the Metaplace's lack of namespaces.

In Metaplace, you can attach scripts from different modules to the same object. For example, a chat system and a combat system written by different people might both be attached to the same "player" object. The problem is that "properties" (used to store the current state of an object) and "triggers" (used for communication between objects) aren't local to a module, so if two modules happen to use the same name for a property or trigger, they will interfere with each other, and probably won't work properly.

DougQB explains: "a Builder who doesn't know how to code starts putting  a bunch of modules together and then starts changing/breaking things. Then wants someone to fix it."

Many people felt that the best solution would be a change to the Metaplace version of the Lua programming language, but weren't optimistic that would happen any time soon.

chooseareality: "a private declaration would be great.. sigh"
KStarfire: "Exposed Triggers is the best solution altho even that  i dont think it would completely fix it"
LunarRaid: "It's a pity triggers aren't prefixed with the script name by default."

In the short term, the problem can be worked around by making the names of properties and triggers start with a prefix that ensures they don't accidentally clash with someone else's. AthSkytower suggested having a registry of the prefixes that people are using, but another proposal was to just use the module id as a prefix: modules are already assigned unique ids.

That takes care of the properties and triggers that are only intended to be used within a module, but there are also some that are intended for use as interfaces between modules. AthSkytower suggested creating a Wiki page where these "public" triggers are registered and their method of use is documented.

There was some discussion of whether it was good coding style to use properties for communication between modules. The consensus seemed to be to allow people to register these too, even if not everybody approves of the practise.

AthSkytower: "I think maybe we should include them, at least at first, just because they are used and I suspect the notion will get less popular if we try and enforce coding style. "
jme: "Probably good to keep religion out of this."

Finally, there were also security issues. What if someone deliberately uses the name of another module's trigger, in order to gain some advantage? The default avatars module, for example, is flagged as "closed source" so that other modules can't get at its internal state … at least, in theory they can't.

If prefixes are registered, or determined by the module id, then an attacker can figure out what the prefix is, but the rest of the name of the trigger can still be a secret.

AthSkytower: "Knowing that my functions all start with ath_ doesn't help anyone know to call ath_monkeyfishhats if the script's closed."

Unfortunately – as Obo pointed out after the meeting had finished – the reflection API lets you find out the names of a module's triggers, even if it's closed source, so this doesn't work as a security mechanism.

By the end of the meeting, we'd heard some good suggestions on how to stop modules breaking accidentally – but the security problem was still unsolved.

A full transcript of the discussion has been posted to the "scripting" forum on the Metaplace web site here.

by Suzie Skybeam

Metaplace's new avatar implementation still doesn't let userscreate their own clothing, but with Tachevert's "Naturist Avatars"module they can take it all off – assuming they have 5500 coins to purchase the module.

The Naturist Avatars module description says, "This behavior allows you to add scripts that let avatars and playersindulge in their Barbie-and-Ken-doll 'naturist' existence. Includessample objects to enable and disable this mode… This module allows players to shuck their inhibitions — and avatar clothing.  Censor bars keep everything PG-13-friendly!"

The black bars (seen in the photos) do protect the avatar's modesty, and conceal the male avatar's lack of a dick.

Herald writer sunbathing at the beach in Metaplace Central

Another Perfect World – a documentary investigating the quest to construct digital utopias – premiers in the United States Thursday September 10 at noon PDT in Metaplace at The Stage. For our readers' convenience, the Metaplace space for The Stage is embedded below.

showtime: Thursday Sept 10, 12 noon PDT

The film includes interviews with the real life typists for sexbedentrepreneur Stroker Serpentine, Metaplace founder RaphKoster, Second Life founder Philip Linden. and the cat-attracting Alphaville Herald/Secondlife Herald founder Urizenus Sklar, along with many others.

Recommended.

by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk

A bit of unintentional irony was my reward for attending an early-morning cross world Second Life/Metaplace live stream of President Obama’s speech in Ghana today, as incongruous advertisements streamed along with the USTREAM feed rebroadcasting the Voice of America coverage of the speech.

Was I the only one who thought it odd that Obama's speech was being streamed with advertisements for paternity testing for immigrants? Another classic and distracting mashup was the “ObamaBudget Cut Medicare” ad in the picture above – apparently a solicitation from a political action committee with concerns about the administration's proposed budget. Perhaps Google's constant juxtaposing of conflicting ads will make this seem normal in time – unfortunate product positioning is the price we pay for "free" streaming media.

Coverage leading up to the Obama in Ghana event had seemed aimed at promoting the image of a wired up administration using SMS and Twitter – does online life get any better than a White House Twitter feed?  But Second Life and Metaplace were not willing to be left out and joined together to be part of the show.

Raph Koster scored some coverage at CBS in a story that suggested that deeper and more active engagement beyond 140 character tweets might be possible in virtual worlds. But deep engagement may come at a cost as Charles Cooper's story went on to remind everyone that the signature moment for social engagement in Second Life came several years ago with a flying penis attack on Anshe Chung during a press conference. 

we go to great lengths to be together and watch video… I kinda love that – Grace McDunnough

In response to the SL griefer menace, Linden Lab CEO Mark Kindon assured CBS that global support teams had been alerted in advance to head off any trouble. This may account for the reports of a locked down venue in Second Life. Apparently gaining access to the event in SL required asking for an invitation and joining a group before access to the secure sim was granted. One visitor to the Metaplace venue was surprised that in Metaplace event access was simply visiting a web page and logging in – but Metaplace does not have the strong tradition of event disruption enjoyed by Second Life, and seems to have been designed to largely avoid those sorts of issues.

one pundit falls asleep while another looks cloudy

After the president's speech, a panel of pundits were streamed between Second Life and Metaplace to respond to questions posed in Second Life and Metaplace chat. Metaplace players a seemed to enjoy watching the what were certainly very ornate yet stubbornly unresolved cloud avatars being streamed from Second Life.

Second Life video stream shows smoke avatars in the audience

As for the speech itself, there were some strange resonances for those contemplating governance in the virtual realm when Obama said, "No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives wayto the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that istyranny, and now is the time for it to end. In the 21st century, capable, reliable and transparent institutionsare the key to success _ strong parliaments and honest police forces;independent judges and journalists; a vibrant private sector and civilsociety. Those are the things that give life to democracy, because thatis what matters in peoples’ lives."

Was the Linden Lab governance team listening?