[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMnseuxcCmA[/youtube]

I have noticed that this blog is turning into mostly things I have created in Second Life or close friends, not a bad thing I suppose as long as those creations are worth singing about. I believe this one certainly is. I was lucky to work with Richard James Allen and Karen Pearlman (of Physical TV) who are the drivers behind an ‘idea’ called Thursday’s Fictions. This idea has been manifest in film, book, theatre and my task was to be the designer, producer, builder etc: in Second Life. It was only a small project compared with many of the multi sim creations I have done and are currently working on, but it excelled in being a worthy, experimental, artistic and aesthetic statement. It fell strongly into something I call Story Environments – spaces that have narrative embedded in them at varying degrees, more on that later.

The basic premise of the story is a woman who lives for one day only is trying to take her most valued creative possession (her dancers in a trunk she carries with her) between various reincarnations. There is more to it than that of course and the themes of death, love, life, mind, body, spirit all intermingle to create a fascinating pot pourii of philosophy, psychology and self awareness.

My challenge was to find appropriateness in Second Life which is itself an allegory of the themes of the piece from the outset. In other words, as I mentioned in this panel interview on SLCN.tv, (yes I talk!), SL is a space that is already routed in parallel existance, new incarnation and so on. It was about trying to find something that was different enough from quite a few existing ‘spiritual’ areas in SL but also providing links back to ‘real world’ perceptions of spiritual architecture.

I haven’t time in this blog post to go into vast detail but to say the build was done very rapidly and I worked iteratively with the writers (that included script consultant Rock Sonic – SL name) who are all relatively new to the true creative potential of this world. Some of the techniques used to deliver the narrative elements included invisible sensors that talked to you randomly, spirit ‘spheres’ that whisper as they pass through you, moving and still texts of various forms on the walls, objects and nature that chats residual and direct thoughts, sound and embedded gate-keeper questions.

There are effectively two longer form experiences at the moment. Purgatory, a series of halls and alcoves exploring a range of ideas mostly routed in one word ‘choice’. What life to go to next, what to take, decide what happened in the previous one, choose a state of mind and so on. The second experience is one life you inhabit, the ‘fractured’ mind of one of the characters. For the latter I created something that was slightly unnerving and disorientating yet also welcoming and familiar. It was loosely based on the sets of the film but I injected some play and elements of confusion. Go see and you will understand. The first main area purgatory is populated by Richard’s a range of texts, my favourite being the ‘self-destructive’ lines (in the floating spirits in the main hall) from his book Kamikaze Mind. I also wanted Purgatory to show how music, sound and visual effects, text, signs, places to explore and architecture create a new kind of experience in SL that becomes very cinematic. There were many compromises that had to be taken but happily they are all easily overcome in future experiences I will create in this and many other properties. I/we also wanted this experience to be as social as possible. In a full 3D social space anything that doesn’t allow a shared user journey through it is doomed so it has been great watching couples and small groups exploring.

There are many more elements planned for this ‘idea’ of Richards and these will include another 6 or 7 more life journeys that will attempt to cover a broader spectrum of the ‘human drama’. To go to this experience now here is a link to the starting grove – SLURL.

Posted by © Gary Hazlitt from inside Second Life

We are down to the last three contestants in the Big Brother event that has been running in this world since December 1st. For those who don’t know there is apparently a popular show in bio world where people are locked together for weeks on end in a house and then one at a time voted out, until there is one winner. I have been visiting Kingdom of Media Island every two days or so over the last four weeks to track who and what is going on. The running of the event has left a lot to be desired, especially as regards promoting it effectively in this world, but with a prize of an Island (paid up for a year) most contestants were happy to overlook the rather weak production management. Going back in these last few days (Thursday is the final evictions) it feels quite sad and empty – all those early housemates are now gone, and there is a sense that the friendships that have developed may dissipate once those thrown together are far and asunder. Luckily my two favourites Golda and Lillani (on the horses above and who I talk to lower down) are still in there, with the third being Madlen Flint. In my opinion it is a two horse race, but Golda and Lillani don’t rule out Madlen’s chances. Here is the final voting board.

There have been some great moments in the house of the past weeks. One that stood out was when all fifteen collaborated on a wonderful christmas scene in the picture below and the result was put up for charity. To quote Lillani at the time “I think this charity thing is worthwhile…probably one of the best things I’ve been involved in in SL”.

There were also some great times when the sim was actually full to overflowing and all the contestants were lobbying for votes. Some played it straight and got together groups of friends of friends, others tried dirty tactics and slurred others in the competition and some even resorted to buying votes. Lillani’s blog covers much of the intrique over the past few weeks.

The contestants had to stay inside their ‘glass pens’ for eight hours per day. Some improved themselves getting good at scripting and building, others sat around complaining but most were very friendly to all the visitors that passed by. Warda on the left (in the pic below), the ‘shapechanger’, was very friendly but sadly she was on a different time zone and missed most of the ‘voting’ crowds, so was evicted early.

There were some characters too like Diva and Simone who knew how to woo the crowds, but some of their tactics I think rebounded on them in the end. Others like Simon Walsh, in his wheel chair, had to bow out for other reasons. It was interesting how each persons character came through and developed as we, the audience, got to know them. A friend in the bio world has put up some of the photos I took, on flickr.

Golda is the only furry in the running and it is no surprise she has managed to last out the weeks as her supporters are very active in getting votes and she is one of the most friendly ‘rats’ you are ever likely to meet.

I asked her how she will feel when it is all over

You: Seems like a long journey
Golda Stein: It has been. I am afraid i’ll go through culture shock when I get out of here, a lot of people have had that problem

At the moment, as you can see from the horse picture at the top, Golda and Lill are together in the same room.

You: Will they be putting you in different pens?
Lillani Lowell: Split me and Golda up? No way!
Golda Stein: We are together by choice
You: I think you both should win half an island each
Golda Stein: But that wouldn’t make for good television

I noticed while I was there earlier that Lillani was surrounded by demons, Goths, Gors and other in that ilk, and naturally wondered if there had been this world ‘identity’ groups who were now congregating towards the three that are left.

You: So the Goth vote has come through! Who do you think your core fans are Lill a mix of certain factions of SL
Lillani Lowell: I think I have a wide mix of factions. From Furries to Goths to Goreans……
You: I wonder if that will now split. Won’t all furries go for Golda? and all Goths Gors etc: for you? Or is this about personality vs identity group?
Golda Stein: Gary, lil has loads of friends all over, and i would expect them to vote from their heart
Lillani Lowell: People vote for a billion different reasons. Some because they know us…. some because they were brought to vote. I don’t think any one reason stands above any other.
You: But I am interested if there are allegiances between types that would be interesting in this last stage as we have a three way between SL identities
Lillani Lowell: It’s a difficult thing to unravel, Gary. But really, you can bet…. the core of the vote…. comes from the loyalty and closeness of one’s friends.

An earlier shot of Lillani riding one of her scripted reindeers – what happened to these BTW?

Almost on cue we started to talk again (it has come up in many conversations with all the contestants) about how things could have been improved.

Lillani Lowell: I think if they had wanted to make BB a little more interesting…They should have streamed it to a website. And let the (bio) world vote.
You: I actually thought that was the plan but never happened, would have been great
Lillani Lowell: Well, Fox Diller has a system for streaming live from SL to websites. I’m wondering if Big Brother will do another.
Golda Stein: i think they need to find a different format, there are too many holes here
You: There is the possiblity that anyone can start something like this as a new format. Perhaps one of you guys on your new island!
Lillani Lowell: Well, again…this isn’t the first time someone has done a contest like this. Fox Diller did his own SL ‘House’ a couple years ago. He gave away 4,000,000 L as the prize. About 14,000 USD at the time. SL wasn’t as large back then.

I asked about the voting numbers which are in four figures and wondered how many are doing multiple votes:

You: I wonder if in fact only 20 real people vote – each with 100 avies
Lillani Lowell: LOL, that wouldn’t surprise me. I don’t know how people keep track of so many characters. I barely have time for me. There’s only one Lillani Lowell…. if I split my time, I lose money and I’m not rich enough to afford time off yet.

As you can see from the above the ‘build’ assignment this week is to make an object of your choice that symbolises your new ‘dream’ Island. In the above and final picture below someone has built a very nice motorbike, someone else a lighthouse and a third one a female, symbolic monolith. It is anyones guess whose is whose, I have my idea. The big finish is next Thursday and I was curious to find out what goes on during New Years eve and day.

You: What are the rules for new years eve here are you allowed to drink champers? Or ahve the day off?
Lillani Lowell: No day off I imagine. I’m wearing all white New Years. I wore all red Christmas Day. A nice, big red Christmas dress. Very classy.
You: Now thats what BB should be about Classy dressing
Lillani Lowell: Hehe, classy dressing would kick me out. I’m 99% catsuit.
Golda Stein: and I like my jeans and T-shirts

Posted by Gary Hazlitt from inside Second Life

There, that got your attention, in true call-to-action style! I went to an interesting panel discussion today down at the Electric Sheep tower about ‘alternate reality games’ in our world. There was an eclectric crowd such as one (devon1234 Allstar you know who you are) who insisted on setting off fireworks at the beginning (pic above), people wearing cubes on their heads and the omnipresence of DestroyTV, the sexy camerawoman broadcasting video (not just stills as in my other post) to the bio world at destroytv.com.

There is a link at the end of this post to a bio site run by SL’s Future Salon that explains the speaker’s connections to bio world games and those strange recorded ‘speech’ things, avies in a podcast? Still beyond me how this works. Anyway back to the event, panelists were skillfully moderated by Electric Sheep’s (ESC) own SNOOPYbrown Zamboni as they tackled the complex issues of running alternate reality games here in Second Life. Among the other panelists (shown in the images below) were Zero Grace, Adrian Vanalten, danhon Giles and Aip Pomegranate I believe, although they kept using their alternate names a lot, confusing? Anyway to the discussion.

Zero Grace (who is also known as Tony Walsh apparently) did a nice text introduction about ARGs while the audio was fixed:

“Over the last 12 years I’ve worked as an artist, writer, and designer primarily with web-based sites and games for the youth market. In the last few years I’ve been involved more heavily in game design. I designed game play and wrote storylines for two editions of Xenophile Media’s ReGenesis Extended Reality Game based on the Canadian TV series ReGenesis. and I was a game designer and writer on the Xenophile and Double Twenty co-produced ARG “The Ocular Effect” based on the ABC Family TV movie “Fallen.” My work in alternate reality gaming over the past couple of years has involved a heavy broadcast component and combines some traditional elements like puzzle design and interactive storylines with non-traditional elements like interactive video and working with gaming hooks embedded into broadcast TV.”

When the 90 minute panel really got going there were lots of issues and questions that kept coming up:

• How to devise a ‘game’ that truly plays against and parallel to the consensus reality of our world vs just a ‘treasure hunt’, and if this world is enough in itself (what a question!)
• How to make money (Linden dollars obviously) from running these games
• How hard and time consuming it is to develop a rich and deep narrative and keeping it going
• How to keep control of the ‘game’ as many players take it to areas you never considered possible
• How to make the media in this world, video, sound, text, im, chat, objects, outdoor media, role playing avies etc: etc: work together seamlessly – merged media.

The audience as they do were asking lots of parallel questions and comments (which I find intriguing as a parallel narrative) to the slightly ‘from another world’ audio. One that stood out was from Matthias Eisbar who in relation to a game where a player was set-up to play guitar in front of everyone, talked about the 4th wall and players trying to get behind the mask.

” There are serious privacy issues for any actors though everyone wants to pull back the curtain but breaking the 4th wall like this – sometimes the idea that it’s a game gives people the excuse to cross lines – what if he gets hit by a car getting the guitar?”

InKenzo also raised a point about writers for ARG’s

“writers must be embedded and fluent in ARG worlds….it will not work with two separate teams.” and on linking games “for ARG developers, why must it be competition? there are ways to float between worlds here and there’s no shortage of ways to link games”

I haven’t quoted much from the panelists themselves as they will be on the recording coming up at the Future Salon site which has more information from the bio world here.

Tomorrow looking forward to my friend DanCoyote Antonelli’s SkyDancers 2007 – I have a VIP seat at the 9pm performance, now wheres my glad rags

Posted by Gary Hazlitt from Inside Second Life – using OpenSource – SL Mail, Postie & Cron

Life is nothing but a game. We decide on the ‘way’ we want to play it, which rules set by others we choose to follow and how we respond to victory or defeat. I have been away from Esperance island for a week leading a ‘future media’ conference on another island called Tasmania. As part of that conference Rock Sonic (a great writer avie) and I created a game for the participants, a quest, part truth, part fiction but something to inspire them to give a presentation based on their own experience of the gameplay. I made a part of it on Esperance that I talk about below.

Benvenuti to the final resting place of the famiglia Zanchetta.
To find who you are looking for, make your way to the archway.
But please walk lightly on this land. The spirits are weary and do not like to be disturbed.

“Through the Divine Arch”

It is great fun creating simple games in this world. I have done a few quests that are cryptic and play on our reality here, but for team building exercises creating something in a couple of hours is possible. Objects (that contain sounds, clue notes, triggers etc) can be built quickly and also match the story environment. This one was about granite mining so of course the guides, which I called Sentinals, were animated granite monoliths. Each one guided the four teams to the next challenge. The game was not that complicated. Follow a route to a graveyward. Find a specific grave to get the final instructions to the last clue in this world. There were some hurdles to overcome, such as a team split, a thick fog on the graveyard and a shark guarding the last clue. Some music and sound effects placed strategically around the route added atmosphere. Everyone I spoke to enjoyed the twenty plus minute linear gameplay though.

“Across the Bridge of Deth”

ATTENSIONE!
The Mists of Time are here to protect those that rest within.
Find the grave of the ancestor you are looking for and click on it.
But take care not to click on the wrong grave.
The spirits do not take lightly to being awoken before their time.

“Into the Graveyard”

“and the mists of time”

Buongiorno.
You have discovered the holy site of my remains.
But the key to my death is not found here but in the watery grave where I lost my life.
Walk to the sea and turn left. Follow the coastline towards the sun.
Turn left at the boat with blue sails.
Tis a long walk so make haste.

“the long walk home”

“the leap of life”

Bravo. You have done well.
Now you must cross the Bridge of Life to where the Lamp Post stands.
There you will find a diving board over the water, my secret lies in the treasure chest below.
Jump in if you dare, but LOOK OUT for the cause of my demise.

“the final choice, the final clue”

Finally for some of the projects on the conference we created quite a few interesting projects in this world that I will talk about – without revealing too much as they are very, very cool and a bit secret for the moment.

Posted by Gary Hazlitt inside Second Life

PS: This simple game is still available on Esperance for a few weeks. It is part of a much bigger game, but you will probably find the misty graveyard element fun as a standalone element