Archive for 'News'
The Issue of Virtual Slave Auctions
In a situation that is currently being discussed on a Second Life message board, Linden Labs moved against a property that was advertising a sexually oriented “slave auction” on the grounds that the slavery aspects of the roleplay were offensive. (The adult theme was presumably a non-issue since 2L is adults only, unless one wants [...]
Full StoryPolie Bear: Alphaville’s Army of One
Yesterday I received the following intriguing piece of spam from Nick, ex-roomie of Van’s Free Money for Newbies, where he was Julia, and ex of the Royalty Cash scam house, where he was Sanjiro, and sometime member of the Armone mafia: xxx (4:07:18 AM): I need a new account, anybody wanna give/sell? (lost my best [...]
Full StoryDesperately Seeking Oblivious Sims
I’ve now talked to sims in both the Bay Area and the NYC area that have received some version of this letter. A slightly earlier version was also posted by Tigger on sims stratics. It appears that EA was desperately trying to locate some sims (any sims!) for some sort of televised PR exercise. No [...]
Full StoryInterview with Don Hopkins
In this interview, Don Hopkins describes his early days on the Sims development team with Will Wright (back when the project was called Dollhouse) and the difficulties the team had fighting EA’s attempts to terminate the project, and then preventing EA from gutting it of interesting content (like architecture tools). Even now, he claims that [...]
Full StoryBe anything you want, except a slave
Maxis has been moving against certain profiles in the BDSM community of late — in particular those which indicate that a particular user is a slave of another user (an example would be the relation between AVH readers/contributors Maria LaVeaux and her slave, Toy). Some accounts have reportedly been suspended for using the “slave of [...]
Full StoryThe Alphaville Herald on the Boob Tube
CNN has produced a story on the joys of cyberbrothels in alphaville. It’s up on their website at http://premium.cnn.com/pr/video/meta/tech/2004/02/11/bb.sin.city.cnn.np.smil. I have no idea if it has aired on the network. It seems that the reporter (Bruce Burkhardt) got his virtual ashes hauled in the Jiggolo [sic] Escorts cyber brothel, which offers a good hour of [...]
Full StoryUru Live bites the dust
In a sad bit of MMORPG news, Uru Live has been shut down by its owner Cyan Worlds (better known as makers of Myst and Riven).
Full StoryMeet Mr-President of “The Alphaville Government”
By: The Teflon Cambridge Don With all the bad things covered in the Alphaville Herald in recent times, I approached the publisher and challenged him to present something positive for us to read for a change. That’s when he offered me a job as a reporter. This is my first story with the AV Herald [...]
Full StoryAlphaville’s Robin Hood?
In an interesting, but presumably impossible to confirm story, a sim recently appeared in Alphaville, stayed long enough to hack into the account of a member of the ex Van Clan, give away his 800K to newbies, and then disappear. The story goes like this. Ex-Free Money for Newbies regular Julia (among other names), known [...]
Full StoryOn the Map: Interview with Godfather Antonio Armone
Several weeks ago the AVH reported that the collapse of the Sims Shadow Government would lead to the rise of Mafia activity in Alphaville. That prophesy has certainly been fulfilled, with one neighborhood currently under the control of X-Mafia and another under control of mafia newcomers, the Armone Family (many members of which are ex-ssg). [...]
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