A Funny Thing Happened on My Way to the Agora: community and participatory sim management in SL

~~~

Pericles in the Agora

My friend Sere and I have been active in a couple of the same sims over the last year or so, and I find it useful to talk with her about our shared experiences. I greatly value her perspective, not just because she is coming from a very different background than mine (academic), and therefore understands things in ways that I am not necessarily inclined to, but also because she is whole hell of lot smarter than I am.

So the other night we were talking about what makes certain sims work, and others flop, and the thing she brought up was a connection between the degree to which a sense of community identity and common shared purpose is developed, and the level of success and survivability that a sim experiences.

This made sense to me, and I asked her, "ok if we need to build community to make a sim live long and prosper, how do we do that?

She replied that she thought it came down to a couple of things: make sure that the sim residents feel like they are listened to, and have a defined role in managing the sim and making things happen; that the residents must feel that their contributions and ideas are valued and respected; and there should be structured means to give the residents the opportunity to participate and contribute.

This seemed reasonable. I have certainly seen sims where there were some very good structured systems--such as town councils, circle of elders, elections, etc.--that brought the residents into the process and made it clear to them that they had a role in fostering progress. And of course it only works if those systems are actually utilized and the residents ideas and opinions and contributions are taken seriously. It doesn't work if they are just given lip service while the local oligarchy goes forward with making all the decisions, crafting scenarios and determining what the sim is going to have in it.

The sad reality of it, of course, is how seldom this happens. Most sims are run by a small cadre or an individual with a distinct vision (or as de Tocqueville described it, "the despotism of selfishness"). Some people come up with an idea, find the money to start a sim and then by golly, they are going to run it in such a way as to assure that they get what they want and need out it. We all have the potential to be sim despots within us. How often have all of us said, "great horny toads, if I ever win the lottery, I am going to buy my own private island, build what I want, and as GAWD is my witness, I shall run it the RIGHT WAY!"

Which of course, you can....it's just that the likelihood that it will be a successful, dynamic, well-populated sim is relatively remote, unless you bring others into the mix to help you build a community and collectively work as a community to make the sim move forward.

Which brings us back to de Tocqueville, who said, in writing on democracy in early 19th century America:

"...as soon as a man begins to treat of public affairs in public, he begins to perceive that he is not so independent of his fellow men as he had first imagined, and that in order to obtain their support he must often lend them his cooperation..."

I then said to Sere, "well, hon...giving people role in decision making--even if it's just getting their opinion, making them feel their contribution is valued...communication and respect...that all sorta sounds a lot like what LL is going to have to do on a macro scale to make SL survive n' thrive."

She laughed and said, "yes, but that's going to be a lot harder than just doing so in one sim."

~~~

"Rectangles R Us"--content creation for the clinically inept

~~~

I love Dusan Writer's blog. Even with the qualification that a good 30% of what he has to say goes completely over my head, I love to read his stuff. In the parts that I am able to comprehend, I always find something illuminating, thought-provoking, or just beautifully phrased. For example, I really enjoyed a piece he did back in late November about the idea that companies that are involved with "participant media" and building "digital communities" (such as Linden Lab does with Second Life) should value, engage, and jolly well make sure they retain the "clever people" among their customer base. He argues that particularly in a product like Second Life, the people who have the motivation, creativity and skills to create high quality content are vital to the health of the enterprise.

Sadly, however, Dusan concludes:

"...that Linden Lab has abandoned its 'clever people'.

The Lab turned its back on 'Your World, Your Imagination,' as Philip clearly did (and told me so, when I interviewed him at SLCC) and as others at the Lab continue to do.

In the discussions about mesh import, for example, Jack Linden made the point that 'there are very few creators' in response to my question about the cultural implications of mesh. This implies that the number is significant, and equates a one-to-one relationship between how many people there are and the influence they have on the culture of an online community.

Jack (and others) would say that mesh changes very little, it doesn’t shift the emphasis out of the in-world experience, because the number of creators is very small....But the larger significance is that the Lab’s principle concern is with a volume of people – that it’s the larger 'casual users' who matter, the users who haven’t even arrived yet. Philip said to me: “And most of them will never rez a prim, so it’s not really ‘Your World, Your Imagination’ because for them, they’re just shopping and hanging out.'

Which may be true (although I’d argue that you enter a world of your own imagination no matter WHO you are, when you arrive in Second Life and many other online platforms) but places a certain literal faith in the power of numbers alone."

I'm really glad there are bright people like Dusan who actually get to talk with the folks at the Lab, and who can come back with something for the rest of us to chew on. What is really fascinating to me in this particular discussion is the idea that it seems there are only two groups being focused on--the small minority that has wild skills and the hyper-creative warp drive to make really awesome shit, and the large majority of "casual users."

The thing that doesn't quite fit for me in that world view, however, is that I really believe that the majority--the big lumpy pile of avatar flesh and blingy bits called "casual users"--is actually more diverse and complex than the Labsters seem willing to acknowledge. I find it curious (and disturbingly revealing ) that Philip argued that in the case of the common garden variety boobis avataris, "most of them will never rez a prim."

Perhaps that was only hyperbole. I hope it was, because it is a view that misses the fact that there are a great many of us who might be considered causal users because we lack the skills to make wonderful content, but by golly, that certainly doesn't keep us from using at least some of the tools provided by the platform to make all kinds of crazy crap.

Let me offer up myself as an example:

I am utter and inescapably digitally challenged; a recovering cyber-luddite with a limited range of skills. Yet that has not stopped me from being a sort of content creator in my own right. OK...yes, admittedly it is often pretty retarded stuff, but I have a hell of a lot of fun making simple bits and bobs and using them to enhance my experience and personalize my environment in-world. In fact, my friend September Blasidale (who has a similar skill level to mine in the content creation department) and I have decided to embrace our ineptitude and opened a vendor space in the Deadwood OOC area to hawk some of the less awful junk we have caused to appear in the pixelated vale of tears.

We have named our enterprise "Rectangles R Us"--because that's pretty much what we can handle: books, posters and pictures, a Hudson bay trade blanket, cigar boxes, ammo boxes....you get the picture. I have even produced a piece of furniture--a dry sink. In short, if it can be made from rectangular prims, we can pretty much deal with it without too much trouble. Sort of.

September and I at our booth in the Deadwood vendor area. And yes, rectangles are the predominant form of prim on the premises.

Look, I won't blow any smoke up yer hoohoo about it. I know my limitations. Sculpties scare me. Torturing a prim is torture for me. Hell's britches, it took me about a year to get around to putting a decent "squatting cross-legged" animation into that mashugana trade blanket, and even then I could only do it with guidance from Clay.

But I like the stuff I create. I have a great time either taking pictures of real-world stuff that I or my friends have (such as ammo boxes, antique beer ads, or the labels on vintage cigar boxes), or finding public domain images, and turning them into unique textures for what I want to make.

And the thing is, if I really put my mind to it, I probably could learn to make more sophisticated stuff--it's just that it would be an ugly and unappetizing process (think "making sausage"). Because let's face it, when it comes down to the bubble and squeak of creating content, I am a "casual user"...but it's certainly not a case of being someone who "will never rez a prim."

I believe that the creative potential of the platform is very important to me and people like me. No, we will never be super-duper "clever people." But I am convinced there are an astonishing number of us who fall into this sizable category that lies in between "the makers of really cool shit" and the folks who want to just hang out and shop (by the way, I fucking loathe shopping in SL almost as much as I do irl--but that's another story for another time).

I just hope that if Dusan is ever able to talk LL into not abandoning the "clever people," he might also convince them to not forget those of us who are among the "cheerfully inept."

~~~

Rod Humble comes to LL: we got a new guy to break in

~~~

Linden Lab announced today that they have a new CEO coming on board in January: Rod Humble, who will be leaving a vice president post at Electronic Arts, where he oversaw the Sims brand.

So what does this mean for us, the surviving residents of SL, the unpaid part of the equation that creates the content that makes the platform an attractive and viable product?

Well boils and gurls, I ain't sure. My inclination is to say that it's a good sign, suggesting that LL isn't getting ready to pull the plug on SL anytime soon. And I like the idea that the guy comes from a background that actually involves games and online communal activity (he had a role in Sony's Everquest before going to EA). But I've been wrong before. You're welcome to ask any of my former spouses--I'm sure they'll be happy to tell you in detail exactly how much I have been wrong before. So here's some random evidence I have collected, which I invite you to review and consider, and then we can try to arrive at some conclusions together:

First off, here is a picture of Mr. Humble in his work space:

photo from Kotaku.com

You will note that not only is Mr. Humble not a terribly pretentious looking dude, he's got toys on his desk--there's a little tank and some ships, and other crap, not unlike the crap I have in my office. So he's human--that kind of bodes well...maybe.

I also found a blurb from when he was made a VP at EA back in October 2008:

"Humble will be responsible for The Sims Label, which develops and markets life-simulation games and online communities with an emphasis on creativity, community and humor."

I like the fact that when he was moving up the food chain at EA, among the things they mentioned about the brand he would be managing was the emphasis on community and humor. Those are things I value highly, and hopefully he actually has s commitment to both of those ideals.

That said, I must admit I find it mildly disturbing that he worked for EA. I haven't had anything to do with that particular company since the days of The Sims Online, but when I did have some dealings with them, the people I was interacting with were a mixed bag--some were decent, straight-shooting types; others were consistently condescending, manipulative pukes. So it could go either way.

I will admit to having been a bit confused about when Mr. Humble actually joined EA--it turns out he went there in 2004, but it is unclear to me as to how much he was involved with TSO before it was killed off in August '08. He seems to have been more directly associated with the various offline manifestations of "The Sims" franchise, so hopefully he isn't burdened with any of the responsibility for the incandescent three-ring cluster-fuck that was EA's mismanagement of TSO. That is, however, only my impression of the circumstances. I'd love to get to ask him if he had any hand in what happened to TSO, and what kinds of lessons he thinks might have been learned from that particular adventure.

For that matter, it would be fun to talk with him about what kinds of things he discovered overseeing "The Sims" lable from late 2008 until the present. If you read the comments made by "community members" on Sims forums, many of them don't seem to have thought very highly of Mr. Humble. Again that could bode either ill or good--the things that they seemed to have issues with were an alleged interest on the part of Mr. Humble to introduce "rpg" elements into The Sims, and downplay some of the more supernatural aspects of that game brand.

To be honest, I have no idea what the frenchfriedfuck those people are talking about, but hey, maybe it's important. Myself, I could see some real benefit coming the addition of "rpg elements" into "The Sims," even though back when I played it, mostly I just liked to build shit.

The key thing here is that as far as I can tell, Mr. Humble isn't a bean counter like M was supposed to be. That could be a bad thing if he's into the whole hippy-dippy, do what feels good, oh "we don't need things like deadlines" philosophy that made Phil Rosedale such a a mixed blessing. The last thing we need is another CEO who doesn't establish clear goals and standards for his staff and insist that they be responsible and productive.

On the other hand, as a person who apparently comes from the creative side rather than the bean counter clan, maybe...just maybe, there is a chance that Mr. Humble could be the sort of CEO who will listen to and appreciate the customer base that pays the bills. Maybe he won't be afraid of us and embarrassed by us like Philip and his minions seemed to be...maybe he will actually come down from the Linden ivory tower and walk forth among the residents and find out how we could all work together to keep SL healthy and profitable and fun...

...and maybe Santa will finally bring me that fucking pony for Christmas.

Saving a sim

~~~

Part of my effort to help save a sim: Kuhr's Wholesale Liquor and Fine Tobacco

I don't know, maybe it's the phase of the moon or something like that, but lately I've found myself wandering from one sim to another that needs some help.

Things do tend to go in cycles, and everything has a life span, but that doesn't mean we have to just roll over and just say, "oh well, natural selection is inevitable--the herd must be thinned!" I admire the people who try to do what they can to revitalize a project that they care about.

One place where this process is underway is in Deadwood. Traffic dropped off and people found themselves struggling to maintain the sense of shared narrative that makes a place like Deadwood so special. I will confess that I was part of the problem: between the demands of real life and getting caught up in splitting my time between Deadwood and other sims such as Alsium and 1920s Berlin, I wasn't contributing much to life in the 1870s. We can only stretch ourselves so far, and we have to make choices.

So when the folks in Deadwood decided to not give up and to look at how they could work collectively to breathe some life back into the project, I became determined to do what I could. I have made my choice, and I will just have to spend less time with my Roman and Weimar era friends.

At present a significant effort is being made: sim owner Caed Aldwych has given a carefully selected group of die-hards and oldtimers permission to add new structures to the build and to provide "set dressing" to various environments within the rp area. The roleplay timeframe is moving into 1877, when the town had more complexity and socio-economic depth, and that should help make things more interesting. Rents have been reduced (at least temporarily) to encourage more activity. This enabled me to make my first contribution to the revitalization process: a wholesale liquor and tobacco store on Main Street.

My next production will be a blacksmith and farrier's shop located back off one of the secondary alleys, and I am looking forward to playing around with that (my friend Clay and I built a dandy smith's forge back during our time in Deadwood 1.0, and I intend to dig that out). Other people are working on projects such as the Gem and Bella Union saloons, a jail, a bank, and other diverse businesses providing goods and services that fit within the context of 1877-78.

To bump up interest--and traffic-some of us have been doing what folks in many rp sims do these days: setting certain times where people will concentrate on coming into the sim, so there will be more likelihood of having someone to interact with. Likewise, people like Clay (now known as C.T. Kungler) and the Leitners are hosting regularly reoccurring events each week, such as boxing matches and talent shows, which give people a reminder that the sim exists, and provide an opportunity to come together and see what can happen.

So far we have seen improvement in traffic, the sim looks good, and we've been having some fun. A few of us have been trying to encourage folks we know from other sims (and time periods) to stop by and try it out.

Is it going to work?

I've got no goddam idea.

But the important things is that we are having a good time trying. It kinda brings us back to an idea that gets trotted out periodically: that ultimately the quality of the experience we have in SL is shaped by our own actions and choices. If you sort of slouch around, expecting other people to entertain you or to keep things fixed and running smoothly, you're probably going to be disappointed.

So if any of y'all have other thoughts of how a community might try to keep their sim lively and interesting, I would appreciate hearing your thoughts.

~~~

That education thing in SL

~~~

Sooner or later I was going to need to write about the total goat screw on ice that is the current situation regarding the future of education and non-profit activity in Second Life. Most of you know that I have a great deal of enthusiasm for the various manifestations of learning that take place in SL, but I have never been impressed by the "Education" that goes on in-world. And I am not alone in that holding that point of view. For example, one of my academic friends who has been heavily involved in virtual educational projects--and wound up being extremely frustrated in the process--recently summed up her perspective on things with the statement "education in Second Life has not lived up to its potential."

She puts it so much more politely than I tend to, but I think we have a similar degree of dissatisfaction with the quality and outcomes we're seeing from many education projects in SL.

Nonetheless, I initially was somewhat disappointed when Linden lab made its recent announcement that they would be ending the 50% discount for education and non-profit customers. Even though I hold the personal opinion that the majority of educational projects in SL are mediocrities at best and dismal failures at worst, I still felt that it was important for the Labsters to continue to provide some kind of encouragement to people who are trying to use the platform for something more than pixel pokin'. Why? Well, mostly because I have really enjoyed learning things in Second Life, and I hope that other people will be open to the idea of making that happen. As my frustrated professor friend was pointing out, the educational potential of the platform is in fact immense and still largely unrealized.

Simply put, it didn't make a great deal of sense to me that LL had made this decision. I really hoped there was some kind of rational reasoning behind it...because that's just the kind of spit-dribbling, wild-eyed optimist that I am. So, I very much wanted to talk to someone about what had happened, but unfortunately, the people I used to talk to--such as Tom Hale and Claudia Linden--ain't around no more. By the way, if you will indulge me in going off on a tangent, I would like to state for the record right now that when I think about the fact that hard-working, intelligent people like Claudia have been let go, and a feckless, slack-jawed, incompetent like Wallace Linden is still there, I am utterly fucking gobsmacked. Do they somehow think that this brainless donkey turd of a wally has some special kind of understanding of how to communicate with the social user segment of SL's customer base, or is he simply blowing somebody in HR?

And please don't tell me that I might gain some insight into what is going on by looking at what the former Pathfinder Linden has to say. Totally aside from the fact that I have yet to meet any serious educator who actually derived any real practical benefit from trying to work with Pathfinder (please let me know if you have a verifiable example of something that would help me revise my view of that self absorbed, self-promoting douche), I can only conclude that Pathfinder was a naive simpleton who didn't realize that something like this was going to happen to the customers he brought in, OR he was aware and just conveniently neglected to mention that SL was likely to change it's policies towards educators. Consequently, I don't put much stock in his self-righteous pronouncements at this stage and wish he would just pretty much shut the fuck up.

But I digress.

The fact was, I hoped I could talk to someone and get a reasonable explanation from LL, but that wasn't going to happen. So all I can offer is some speculation based on what I have seen, especially now that Linden lab has kinda sorta backtracked and is going to phase out the discount over a little longer period of time.

Here's my thought: I wonder if the labsters had initially thought of the education/non-profit discount as a temporary incentive--get the teachy, feel-good folks in up front on the cheap so they could learn first-hand what the platform could be used for. It could also have been an opportunity for the creative educators to get something started that they could then show doubtful administrators, and be able to justify continuing their experiments.

Hey, if that was the case, I could really understand the whole thing. It would make sense to me. Plenty of companies give you an introductory rate to get you hooked on using their product: it is a standard rational type of business strategy. It's just that if this was what LL was doing, they didn't do a terribly good job of communicating about it with their customers, or their own staff people in certain areas for that matter. And they're still not communicating very well about it. But hey that's what they do--it's not like we should expect them to suddenly start doing communication right--not when they have a wally like Wally "managing conversations."

Ok...so let's assume that this was the strategy: get the educators in and doing cool stuff, and then eventually phase out the discount that encouraged them to start. Unfortunately, what happened was that the discount seems in many cases to have become something that enabled mediocre and failed projects to live on well beyond the point at which plugs should have been pulled. So maybe that's one of the silver linings in this particular ongoing chimp-and-weasel clusterfuck. People who should have looked at cutting back on their sim expenditures or moving to alternate grids long before this, will now be motivated to think more carefully about where they are going and what the hell they are doing. Plenty of very bright people have already made their moves (Heritage Key being one of the highest quality and possibly most successful examples)...

So boys and girls, now there's no excuse for other groups and institutions to not do the same. And yes, in many cases, when some of these institutions start asking themselves the hard question, the answer is going to be "screw it--the virtual world isn't ready for us and/or we're not ready for it." But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes the best thing you learn from an experiment is what doesn't work.

The ironic thing to me, as I reflected on this, was that this whole mess doesn't affect many great places in SL because the non-profit discount didn't apply to some of the best learning/teaching environments I have experienced in SL. Lots of places have done great stuff, but because the people putting the project together didn't happen to be associated with a school or have a 501(c)(3) letter from Uncle Sugar, they had to pay full price all along.

So does that mean that with the change in pricing, it is going to make things more of a level playing field for educational, informational and cultural projects regardless of who is behind the effort? No, it's just going to mean that life is going to be equally unfair. But--and I think this is the good part--it may also mean that schools and non-profits that do still see the potential in experimenting on SL will think really goddamn carefully about what they are doing, who will be doing it, and what outcomes they hope to achieve, before they move ahead or continue with a project.

While that is probably not the pay-off that LL was expecting or looking for with this pricing change, I think you can argue that it'll be a good thing if it does work out this way with fewer--but potentially better--education projects taking place on the platform. Hey, like Papaw used to say, even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then.

~~~

Dear Philip: It's ok, I've changed my mind...

...I have decided that if I ever meet you in person I am not going to kick you square in the balls.

Sincerely yours,

Diogenes Aurelia Kuhr

_____________________________________

Having read the above statement, you regular readers of this blog are probably asking, "Why?"

Well, I've been catching up on reading other people's stuff and I came across a piece about a fairly recent interview that Mitch Wagner did with LL founder and newly reappointed CEO Philip Rosedale. You can find the first part of the piece here:

http://blogs.computerworld.com/16905/second_life

Additional commentary on their conversation may be found here:

http://blogs.computerworld.com/16932/second_life_iphone

Lots of people seem to think of Philip Rosedale as some kind of grand combined muse, guardian, benevolent father figure and guild leader who represents the creative spirit in SL. But I've always seen him as a flawed genius who had a great idea, and then to execute it, created a corporate culture in which the larger part of the customer base was not respected and the workers were allowed to fecklessly fart around doing what they wanted to instead of focusing on the hard work of customer service and making the product run reliably and smoothly. That's why some time ago I issued the warning that should I ever get to meet Philip in real life, first, I would shake his hand to thank him for creating the SL platform, and then I would firmly and enthusiastically plant a size 10 Corcoran boot right in his grocery sack to thank him for how he has mismanaged his creation.

For the most part, the interview with Mr. Wagner suggests that Mr. Rosedale still doesn't entirely get his own product and/or the people who use it.

Nonetheless, based on some things he has done and said since returning, I have elected to issue a reprieve to Philip's junk. If nothing else, I think he deserves it for the following statement he made in his conversation with Wagner:

"I'm back, and the company is going through a change of direction. We're really regarding the situation as serious....We've got a lot more work to do....That work isn't enjoyable in many cases, or fun. It consists of a lot of debugging and quality control that's tedious and unglamorous, but necessary."

Which brings me back to what I would like to say to Mr. Rosedale:

Thank you, Philip for the above statement. You sound like a goddamn adult and an actual leader when you talk like that. Now just translate the words into more actions. Listen to the fucking customers. Keep your staff focused on clear, practical goals; keep them on track and on schedule, and appropriately reward responsible behavior and productivity. Make this thing profitable and stable--even though, as you quite sensibly point out, doing so is a task that isn't always going to be "fun."

And hey, things could be worse. You know, SL may not be the cool thing anymore, but you've still got a hard core of engaged customers who find interesting, useful and entertaining ways to use your product. Yeah, we might not represent a massive Facebook-style audience that interacts with the product in a very superficial way. But everything doesn't have to be the subject of mass adoption--look at Playel, the great French piano maker. They only make 25 really goddam good pianos each year, instead of trying to compete with cheap Chinese piano makers who crank out thousands of OK instruments annually. Look at the whole skiing industry--it's based on a sport that only a limited audience can take on due to the necessary learning curve and the cost. Even so, lots of people make lots of money off this sport.

Please just keep these things in mind. And then you can completely forget about wearing the protective cup.

~~~

Has Second Life changed...or have we?

~~~

I've been trying out some different things lately--this is Alsium--I'll tell you more about it soon.

~~~

Not too terribly long ago, I was talking with my friend Aldo, and he mentioned that he had gone in-world to pay his rent on the Falling Anvil pub in Tamrannoch, Caledon. While doing so, he got an IM from Prokofy Neva, who he has known since our days in The Sims Online. Prokofy isn't perhaps the easiest person to get along with, but Aldo seems to do pretty well at it, and Prok seems to have respect for him. He said that Prok asked him if he thought that SL is dying, and Aldo replied without hesitation, "no...but it definitely is changing."

So he and I kicked that around some: how it is changing; the evidence for why it isn't dying (unless the labsters seriously settle down with the intention to kill it, once and for all); and speculation about why it is changing. And the thing that I came to conclude is that, yes, Second Life has certainly changed, but perhaps more importantly, a great many of us have changed and are continuing to change, both in how we approach our virtual lives and how important those lives are to us.

Of course, all I can really give you is personal anecdotal evidence for this. I wish I had hard numbers based on serious research and extensive surveys of former and current SL residents...but I don't. All I have to go on is what I am seeing and what I have experienced myself. So yeah, this is yet another opinion carefully extracted from the recesses of mine own middle-aged ass, and its ultimate value should be judged within that highly questionable context. But I can say that I have witnessed--and experienced--some things that make me think that an awful lot of us have changed, much more so than the platform itself has.

For starters, you probably noticed that I haven't written anything in a dreadfully long time--since June. I'm sorry about, but there's a great many factors that influenced that: I took on a new job that has been very intense, one that required me to move again, and that has involved some energetic kicking-of-ass-and-taking-of-names to get things on track. So, by Gawd, I just haven't had the mental energy (nor sufficient time) to actually sit down and write more of the palsied drivel that I was regularly spewing here. More importantly, I felt like I didn't have anything to say that was even remotely worth you all taking the time to read. Not like that stops lots of other bloggers from wasting their readers' time, but hell's britches, y'all, I got more respect for you than that.

To be honest a big part of what was going on was that SL just didn't seem all that important in the larger context of the real life shit that I was dealing with. Yeah, I kept showing up in-world when I could, and I even tried out some new stuff, which I will tell you about in another post. But an awful lot of the time I was angry, and I transferred a lot of those feelings about real life stuff into how I was acting and interacting with people in-world...and, yeah...jeezuschristonafuckingpogostick, I became the original Holy Roman Bitch.

Partly this was because I was having to be a ball-bustin' beeyotch in my rl work, in order to get shit done, to shut down the forces of vile self-interest that were torpedoing the work that needed to be accomplished, and to make sure that the agencies I was working with would not be pissing away the People's money.

I guess I kinda found it hard to shut that off at the end of the day.

And you know, it seems that a lot of friends and acquaintances are going though a similar thing: if you have a job, more than likely, the pressures of doing it well and making sure that you keep it will have an impact on what you are like when you go in world, if you go in-world at all.

I know Aldo is going through something like this. Hell, he is planning on getting rid of the Falling Anvil--that's the oldest continuously operating social venue in Caledon--the home of what may have been one of the first (if not the absolute first) storytelling series in Second Life. His partner Betty has already abandoned her shop next door to the Anvil. She tells me it hadn't been profitable for a long time, but she had held on to it for sentimental reasons, because it was her first place of business in SL, and she and Aldo met there in Tam and wound up getting married irl. But now, it apparently just doesn't seem that important to her in the same way...

Another interesting aspect of this is that Aldo checked in with Desmond, his landlord, to see if there was anyone still on a waiting list for land in Tam, and Desmond replied that no, he actually had quite a bit of land available throughout Caledon. So I take that as another indication of many of us having changed what we consider important--like having a piece of property in a certain place...

Oh, and I had a sad bit of news from another one of my good friends--the kind of news all of us have had recently. My old friend Roku--yes, that Roku, the inspiration for the cynical, gunslinging, hard-ass woman security guard/courtesan in my stories--told me that she was giving up on SL. Leaving her dancing job, selling her land, pullin' up stakes and headin' out. To some extent this is because she's got some health issues going on (and I regualrly say a prayer for her continued progress with it). But most of all, she said she "just wasn't having fun anymore."

Another friend of mine--a very smart and creative lady, an academic irl, dedicated to the idea of education in SL--suddenly announced to me not long ago that she had given up on a particular sim that she had been associated with for a long time. This was a project that from its inception had been meant to have educational value, but the organizers never really quite figured out how to make it work. This friend of mine had nonetheless hung on--literally, for months, if not years--always hoping for an improvement, working to help make the sim live up to its potential. And then all of sudden she decided it wasn't going to happen. She shook the dust from her sandals and moved on. And I don't think it was about SL changing, or the sim changing (if anything, it was perhaps that it wasn't changing). Something changed within her....I think...

I know what that feels like. For a long time, I cut way back on spending time in Deadwood, and it wasn't because of what was going on there. There new build is SUPER, the folks there are working hard to make good stuff happen and to do good rp... so it wasn't the sim or them...it was me.

Likewise I have now left Hogwarts. Why? Well, a lot of people I liked to play with aren't there anymore. But at the same time, some very good folks--folks who I am extremely fond of--are still there. But I found it hard to keep going and putting in the kind of commitment it took to play one of the adults in that set of storylines. Again, it wasn't the sim or the people or the stories--it was me. I think I just got tired. And mean.

I think you can see these kind of changes in the personnel at the Lab as well. While I was taking a break from blogging, M took his leave. Mind you, I never had issues with M the way some folks did. I liked the fact that it appeared that he was trying to make LL run in a more business-like fashion. Of course, he was fighting with a corproate culture that had essentially embraced irresponsibility and elevated fecklessness to the level of an admired virtue. But I wonder, was he forced out, or had something changed inside of him? Had he gotten burned out and tired...or simply saw that what he wanted to happen just wasn't going to happen?

And woopdefuckindoo, now we have Phillip back. Except he's changed too. Did you notice how the whole Emerald thing was handled? There seemed to be none of the old Phil Rosedale style, hippy-dippy, warm and fuzzy, "well kids, let's see how we can work this out with you creative little rascals" type of response, where things would drag on and nothing would happen and you would know that in your heart of hearts, somewhere, a group of miscreants was getting mollycoddled in the typical overly optimistic, California mollycoddling tradition. Nope. Instead it was a fast and hard response, with Phil himself coming forth and saying "hey motherfuckers. You CAN"T DO THAT SHIT. Now cut it the fuck out, RIGHT NOW, or I will make castanets out your testicles."

And lo and behold, the castanets were made.

So either Philip has really changed, or maybe his understanding of how things have to work has evolved.

But things do keep changing. Including us. I'm starting to spend some more time in Deadwood again. I am really enjoying my experiments in NEW STUFF in an ancient Roman sim (which I will tell you about soon, if you would care to listen). I've come to grips with the fact that even though I need to be keep being ol' Blood and Guts in rl, I can get back to being a bit more reasonable in-world. And I am going to get back in the habit of writing here..not as often as I used to, but more often than once every three months.

And I definitely want to get a set of those new Philip Rosedale-brand castanets.

Clackity-clackity-clackity-clack

Hmmm. I guess maybe I haven't changed that much. I'm still pretty mean.

~~~

Second Life and the layoffs: is that a Rubenesque soprano I hear singing?

~~~

My oh my. Some interesting stuff going on. The Linden prize is given to an operation that treats the grid as a simple tool for museum exhibit prototyping. And the Lab lays off almost a third of its staff and closes overseas offices as it consolidates its functions.

Do I think this is the beginning of the end for SL; does it portend terrible events to come?! IS SL CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT ABOUT TO FINALLY DIE THE PATHETIC DEMISE THAT VIRTUAL "JOURNALISTS" HAVE BEEN PREDICTING FOR SO LONG?!!

Do you really want to know what I think?

Well, bucko, if you actually do want to know my opinion, what I think is this:

I don't think any of these things really mean all that much one way or the other.

Yes, I as I stated--I think these two developments are "interesting," but are they reflections of anything going on that will actually change things for us very much?

I'm guessing no.

As usual, as far as I can tell, what is going on with the Lindens really doesn't have much meaning or impact for the vast majority of us on the grid. As I have said before--and as many others have opined of late--the bulk of what the Lindens do, think , feel or say is pretty much irrelevant for most of us who actually use their flagship product.

Mind you, I do feel bad for all the folks who are getting laid off. Getting laid off is no fun--even when you find something to go over to relatively quickly, the process still chips away at your self esteem a bit. But ultimately, in this case it seems like this really isn't about whether or not people have been doing a good, bad, or indifferent job--the Lab is simply letting go of almost everyone who is in the business development side of things. And maybe it just comes down to the fact that those aspects of the operation have been too large and expensive compared to the amount of business they were bringing in. That's possible--I'm not really sure--but again, it doesn't really matter.

What the Linden Gods do on their tin-plated Mt. Olympus by the Bay simply doesn't touch me and most of the people I associate with in SL, unless it affects the functionality and reliability of the grid.

That of course, is a rather significant qualification. But at present, my personal reality is that SL does tend to run pretty well in the areas that I frequent. Yeah, there are still a lot of things broken or goofed up--but not so badly that I can't do what I want or need to do with the platform.

And that's the thing about all this--when I do occasionally get mildly curious about the direction LL is taking and I bother to speculate about what will be the outcome, I start to suspect that they are focusing on treating the grid as nothing more than a tool. It's not a world, it's not something that is going to actually change the human condition, or rewrite history, or make us all live better lives.

Nope. It's just a product that people can use--something that we can choose to play with, be creative and make stuff with, and have a great deal of fun with--or use in practical ways: for meetings and communicating, and even prototyping. That's why I think it's interesting that they gave the Linden prize not to some spectacularly warm and fuzzy charitable thingy or high minded NGO or anything like that. They gave it to a dull, rather pedestrian operation that uses the grid as a tool to generate and test mediocre exhibit concepts that may or not get translated into something in meatspace. Yeah, the outcomes may be unremarkable, but at least thanks to the prototyping capabilities of the platform, a whole lot of time and real-life resources won't have been pissed away in the effort to produce those unremarkable real life outcomes.

It's as if they are saying, "hey, we finally realized it's just a big lump of software on some servers--it's up to you guys to do with it what you want. We'll try to keep it running for you as long as its profitable and you give us money in return for using it to do whatever it is that you weirdos are doing with our product." And so they have gone ahead and got rid of the expensive and often temperamental staff people who were trying to help make it into something more than that.

Yes, I know I am being selfish and narrow minded here in my outlook. I know there are many people who try to use SL for activities that don't work so well with the platform in its current moderately frakked-up state. There are undoubtedly people who are hoping for fixes to happen on the grid that now will never happen, thanks to the departure of some coder guys who were supposed to do the fixing. And my heart goes out to those people, just as it does to the labsters who got dumped.

But do I really see this as the final rumblings of the chorus as the tomb is sealed, along with the fate of the hapless lovers within? Nah. I think there's still a couple more acts and at least one intermission to go.

~~~

May the best humanity win: visiting the Linden Prize finalists

~~~

You've undoubtedly seen the messages that are showing up lately about the finalists for the "Linden prize." Tonight I got an IM from my friend Ernst Osterham asking me if I had looked over the list. I said I had, but that nothing about the list had particularly struck me as terribly intriguing. He replied that he too thought that overall it was sort of "blah." And I thought, "well, maybe Ernst is right and that's why nothing about it struck me. But I figured I probably should go and actually look at some of the nominated places and programs before I got all judgmental.

Not that I'm ever judgmental. Nooooo...of course not.

So I pulled up their list and started teleporting...and I got through most of them before I just gave up. Does that mean they were dreadful choices for the prize? No...not really. They're just....not really as blindingly unique or stunningly creative as you would expect a project to be get a big ol' 10K prize from Lindens.

Here's how they explain the prize initiative:

"The Linden Prize will award one Second Life Resident or team with $10,000 USD for an innovative inworld project that improves the way people work, learn and communicate in their daily lives outside of the virtual world. This annual award is intended to align with Linden Lab’s company mission, which is to connect all people to an online world that advances the human condition. Many projects inside of Second Life have already enhanced and changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around the world, and the company wants to recognize the users’ accomplishments...."

And here is what they say about what they are looking for:

"We rely on several core principles when choosing the finalists and winner.

* Work in Second Life that also achieves tangible, compelling results outside of Second Life.

* Distinctive, original work using Second Life that clearly demonstrates high quality, execution, function, aesthetics and technical sophistication.

* Work that has the capacity for inspiring and influencing future development, knowledge, creativity, and collaboration both inside and outside of Second Life."

Mind you, I'm not going to go so far as to say that I thought that the finalists for the prize didn't meet the above criteria. But I will say that here is what I found when I went to visit the nominees' builds in-world:

* Sims that were almost entirely empty. When I went to Non Profit Commons, there were a couple of greeters there--really nice friendly people, ready to help with answering any questions. But few or no visitors.

* The usual sort of visual communication techniques and design choices that make most SL exhibits and museums so terribly ineffective--panels and text on walls, objects to click on to get notecards, etc.

* Environments that did little more than replicate real life educational spaces and exhibits.

Chatting with one of the friendly greeters at Non Profit Commons.

Am I being too harsh? Probably. The argument can be made that I really didn't give the time or attention to each build that they deserved. But that's the thing--I suspect that a great many of the standard garden variety SL visitors are going to react to these builds in ways that are similar to my reaction. If we're not engaged quickly and in a lively, unpredictable fashion, then we wander off to look at the next shiny thing that catches our attention.

So I'm not saying that any of these prize nominees had anything wrong with their content, or that they lacked content--they just weren't presenting it in an engaging way, or in a way that connected well. Non Profit Commons, for example, had a lot of content--important content. In fact, it probably had TOO MUCH content: the dense multiplicity of narratives and messages overwhelmed me: I just glazed over in a matter of minutes, and moved on to the next build.

When so many of the finalists for the Linden Prize are like this-- unimaginative builds dealing with oh-so-serious topics and Education with a capital "E"--it can be discouraging. It seems to reinforce the sense that so many of us have that the Lindens want to foster an image for SL that is serious and perhaps even more than a little pretentious. It seems like the version of SL that LL hopes to promote is largely unrelated to the reality that is experienced by the majority of us users, who are basically in this for shits and giggles and maybe a bit of highly unstructured self-directed learning. Many of us have long suspected that the Lindens not only don't understand what we do and why we do it, they are downright embarrassed by us. And at first glance, it would seem that the list of Linden prize finalists reinforces that suspicion...except...

...and this is a big exception...

...one of the finalists is the team that brought the "Sion chicken" concept to SL. I have no idea how it got to the finals. but gawd bless those folks for applying for the prize, and gawd bless whoever said, "yeah, that's worth recognizing." The chickens are of course, silly. And pretty much pointless...other than the fact that a lot of people seem to have fun with them.

It gives me some hope that maybe there are Lindens who do "get it"--that life on the grid has to have an element of fun. The fact that the platform can still attract creative, pleasantly silly people and offers stuff that is silly or creative--or silly AND creative--is what gives it real appeal. It's not Education with a big "E," or business meetings, or serious non-profits sharing serious messages...although those are all important in their limited, limping ways. But they are not what makes SL unique.

Now, I will admit, that there is another way of looking at the inclusion of the Sion Chicken business in the finalists for the Linden Prize. This concept is somewhat suggestive of certain growing stuff/task-based game-ish elements that are such a popular facet of certain facebooky things. When the Lindens included Sion Chickens among the prize finalists, is that reflective of some deep-seated Linden desire to make the SL platform more like those massively-adopted social media products? If so, then yeah, that's a little scary.

But being the optimist that I am, I prefer to look on it as evidence of the possibility that they do simply comprehend that fun is important too.

Of course, I think we can make a pretty good argument that what is really most important in SL is how it brings people together. This was the thing that struck me more than anything else when I visited the locations associated with the Linden prize finalists. I generally couldn't tell to what extent these projects and builds fostered the development of micro-communities or encouraged and facilitated interaction between people who otherwise would never have had the opportunity to talk with each other.

This was brought home to me during my explorations tonight, when--after I grew tired of visiting prize finalists--I started going to places that had some association with Memorial Day--places like the Vietnam Memorial build. I finally wound up at "Patriot Island," home of the Wounded Warriors programming and the site of a decent recreation of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Watching the sentry walk his post at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Patriot Island.

It was a pretty nice build; it had some very good content--including useful information for rl veterans about where they could go for help regarding various issues and problems--but most importantly it had people. There were more people on Patriot Island at 11:30 PM than on all the Linden Prize finalist sims combined. They were talking about nothing earthshaking--mostly they were just being silly and having fun (although there was one volunteer in dress blues doing sentry duty in very dignified fashion at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier). A couple of the people IM'ed me, welcoming me and answering some questions. I also talked to one of their admins to get information about who to contact for an interview. At some point before long, I think I'll write a longer piece about the build and related projects.

But yeah, what made the build appealing and encouraged me to stay there longer than I did at any other place I went tonight, was the human element.

Whoever gets the prize, I really hope that it is whoever does the best job of incorporating the human element into what they do--although giving points for silliness and fun would be appropriate as well.

~~~

Looking for signs of ancient life in SL, pt. 1

~~~

An ancient build--I forget which one, now--pretty but empty.

Ever since I visited the Amarna build in Heritage Key, I have been wondering about what kinds of ancient historically-themed rp sims I might be able to find back in Second Life. I know there are Roman sims, and at some point I'll certainly go check those out. But I wanted to look at other civilizations and see what I could find.

Here's a quick sampling: totally unscientific, completely incomplete, and undoubtedly lacking in analysis, because goddammit, I'm tired and my brain hurts these days. But at least I'm telling you that up front so you know to pay no attention to this nonsense I'm spewing.

I started this process by simply putting "history" in the "places" search and started looking at what came up. Some of it looked promising. For example, I found a listing for a build that recreated the ancient City of Thebes. And I thought, "cool, an ancient Egyptian sim, and it looks like they got a shopping mall AND rp."

So I put on my extremely modest Egyptian outfit and tp'ed in. I found myself in a decent if slightly empty shopping mall with various outfits, hair, and useful artifacts from the long ago land of the Nile. And then looked for the transporter to go down to the rp area...and I looked...and I looked...and I finally was going in circles and clicking on random things with no result.

I could see green arrows indicating someone was down below me, so I rezzed a cube, sat on it and slid myself out through the wall of the sky box the mall was located in...and then I de-rezzed the cube and "dropped in" for a visit.

No city of Thebes. Just a lush landscape with some very nice folks in Na'vi avatars who were working on the plantings. Turns out these people--who were extremely nice and looked damn good in their blue "Avatar" avatars--were the owners and they told me they were redoing the sim as Pandora because the ancient Egypt business had been pretty slow. While we were standing there chatting, a "Royal slave" popped in looking for Thebes, and the poor thing seemed to be even more confused than I was.

Talking with a Na'vi sim owner and a confused royal slave girl.

So the first stop was clearly a bust, at least as far as finding ancient civilization and roleplay.

So I went on to a couple of other places: the city of Knossos, capital of the Minoan people on the island of Crete; ancient Carthage, the home city of Hannibal, implacable enemy of the Roman Republic. They were ok, the builds themselves were acceptable. Nobody much around. And old Crete was a bit off-putting, as their guidelines strongly suggested that ladies should go topless--for religious reasons, apparently. Yes, I know that Minoan women's formal dresses left the breasts exposed, and that the bull-jumping athlete girls just wore cute little kilty things and not much else. But the only other people in the sim--two females of some sort--they had their shirts on. So I wasn't going to take mine off. It sort of reminded me of the old joke with the punchline, "what kind of a Cretan do you think I am?"

Finally I tried out another Egyptian build--one representing Amarna, called Terra Egypta. And it was actually kind of interesting. They made an effort to recreate a working harbor, a full-scale sphinx, pyramids, and a walled city.

On the paw of the Sphinx, in Egypta Terra

But again....no one there. This seems to be a recurring theme: there are many ancient sims in sl, but there seem to be few people playing in them. Am I just coming at the wrong times? Are there too many of them, thereby spreading the ancient rp population too thin?

So where should I look next? Rome? Greece? New Jersey?

~~~

thinking about Native American stories in SL

~~~

Studying the Cherokee alphabet developed by Sequoyah

Hi guys.

Sorry I haven't been posting for a while. I started a new job and it has pretty much sucked up all my energy for the last few weeks. The good news is, it's a decent job, and I'm mostly working with great people (only a couple of feckless goobers in the lot).

But that doesn't mean the intellectual well has run dry. In fact I have been thinking a great deal about SL, particularly the ways that Native American culture and history are represented in-world.

I got to pondering this topic a few months ago, when Ernst Osterham sent me a screenshot of of a vendor in one of the various "old west" sims that was emblazoned with an image of a voluptuous "Indian" woman wearing a skimpy sort of deer hide bikini. At least I assume it was supposed to be deer hide. Anyway, it was furry and left little to the imagination. And of course, it looked nothing like any actual 19th century Plains Indian female clothing I had ever seen...and in fact, it looked pretty frakkin' preposterous. But hey, it's SL and one of the principles we all embrace here is our Linden-given right to make goddam fools of ourselves, right?

Not that long after that, I happened to go with September Blaisdale to visit an "historical" western sim that initially seemed all right. When checking out an Old West sim for the first time, I always start by going into the saloon--if there is (a.) a stage with stripper pole, (b.) modern line dance pose balls, and/or (c.) stools at the bar, I just go ahead and say "fuckit," and leave. Yeah, I know, it's SL and people can do whatever the smeg they want to...but I also have the right to my opinion that there is a minimum level of authenticity I ask for if I am going to spend any time in an Old West sim, and the presence of a stripper pole is always a good indication that I'm just going to get irritated. Then it's probably best if I simply accept that reality and move on.

Anyhow, like I say, this one didn't seem too bad--it was about your average pre-fab generic old westy environment, and actually there was a smattering of really cool bits that showed some promise. But then we got to the "Cherokee" village.

And of course there were tipis.

If I may, I would now like to direct your attention to the FAQ page of the website of "the Museum of the Cherokee Indian" which unequivocally states in its second paragraph that "The Cherokee never lived in tipis." This revelation is in the very first return you get when you google "Cherokees and tipis." In short, how fucking hard is it is check something like that? The answer is, "not very, unless you just utterly determined to be a bonehead about the subject matter."

Ok, so the tipis were bad enough, but then there was also stuff like a circle of "war dance" pose balls that allowed you to do some animated choreography that looked suspiciously like an Elves' circle dance I had seen long ago; plus there were these huge-ass drums that looked like the things that Bill "Bo Jangles" Robinson danced on in "Stormy Weather." Best of all, there were some kind of fucked-up looking totem pole thingies that had various bondage poses built into them so you could tie "captives" up and presumably dance around them in uncivilized glee.

Jeezusfuckinchristonafuckinpogostick.

Now mind you, as far as I know, I do not have any Native American heritage in my background. But holy Moses in his woolly bathrobe, I was pretty sure that if I was of Indian descent--particularly if I happened to be Cherokee--I would have been even more irritated than I actually was. Which, in point of fact, was pretty goddam irritated.

Consequently, I was not surprised when I came across this recent blog post by Barnabe Geisweiller regarding this very topic: Native Americans Object to Portrayal in Second Life

The author of the piece is evidently a graduate student in Journalism at Columbia, and is not specifically an SL blogger, so I thought it was interesting that he picked up on this. Among the people he spoke with for the post was the typist of Nany Kayo, an individual many people regard as a crank and a troll because of her strident (and at times vitriolic) objections to not just the inaccurate representations of Native American history and culture in SL, but to any portrayal of Indians by non-Indians. In fact, she argues that it is inappropriate for anyone who is not an officially enrolled member of a federally-recognized tribe to play in SL using a "Native American" avatar. Furthermore, she contends that the portrayal of Native Americans in sims like Tombstone is so offensive that it violates the LL TOS and those places should be shut down.

While I understand the whole thing about being pissed off over the egregiously inauthentic fantasy "Indian" stuff in SL, I think the lady goes a bit too far. I have friends who may not be card-carrying members of any federally recognized tribe, but they do some really intelligent, respectful and thoughtful representations of historical Native Americans in roleplay. For example, I have a couple of pards who have created roleplay characters that represent Crow and Arikara army scouts of the 1870s. In all honesty, I am not sure of their heritage--they may in fact actually be Indians--but more importantly, they are very careful about how they look (they based their appearance on actual historic photographs), and they are very careful both in how they speak and act. They demonstrate a familiarity with aspects of the history and culture of those people, and strike me as being very respectful in how they explore both Native American and US Army history.

And as for the idea of closing down sims...well shit...that just seems like a big ol' serving of "Worms, Canned, Size-large, 1 (one) each."

It makes more sense to me to provide authentic alternatives. If you want people to get hep to the real skinny on something, you need to go ahead and put it out there, right?

Well, as a matter of fact, Nany Kayo has done just that--she is associated with a group of "educational" sims called the "Virtual Native Lands." So I went there the other night, and you know what? By golly it's got some of the most authentic-looking representations of different traditional Native American living quarters you have ever seen in SL, plus they are situated in some reasonably well-done natural environments.

17th century Eastern Woodland dwellings in the Virtual Native Lands

It's also screamingly dull, with standard museum-style two-dimensional interpretive panels (the usual text, maps and pictures approach) that are supposed to help you understand the historical and cultural context of the three-dimensional builds.

The size of the panels however, is such that I couldn't read most of them even if I wanted to...which I really didn't. You have to keep in mind that I am a terrible museum-goer. I seldom read text panels and labels, and I never move in the direction that the exhibit designers intend for me to go in. But that's just me.

Very conventional--and hard to read--signage in the Virtual Native Lands sims.

The sims were empty except for one other person. Which wasn't surprising as they clearly suffered from the same issues that plague many "educational" and/or "virtual museum builds: they were sterile, lifeless, and lacking a clear interpretive purpose. So it's unlikely that the Virtual Native Lands will accomplish much in terms of counterbalancing the gawd-awful, idiotic fantasy "Indian " stuff you generally find in-world.

And I'll bet right now you're thinking, "holy porkbellies, Batman, ol' Dio sure is in negatory mode tonight! Doesn't she usually try to find something positive to write about to balance out her crankyrantyness?"

Goddam , Hon, I am glad you asked that question.

Because after all, I really do prefer to write about things that are good and positive, rather than writing about the not-so-good side of things. Matter o' fact, after my disappointing trip to Virtual Native Lands, I decided to go on a little quest and see what I could find in the way of Native American builds that were authentic and interesting.

And what I found was a sim called "Sallisaw, Indian Territory." at Maresias 117, 138, 23. Here is how it is described:

"Re-creation of Oklahoma in 1890. A quiet historical Cherokee town in the old west. No roleplay, just good international folks."

The sim was apparently the brainchild of Tsali Kamachi, who is also one of the owners. It consists of a little 1890s town and railroad station and some simple farmsteads. The build itself is nice. It's perhaps not as polished and refined as some of the other historical builds that are out there these days, but you know what? It has a charm and quiet dignity...and authenticity. It shows aspects of life in Oklahoma--the "Indian Territory"--as it really was at the very end of the 19th century. And not a tipi in sight.

A Cherokee family farmstead, circa 1890

Adjoining the Sallisaw build are some recreated structures that are associated with important stories from Cherokee history. And I had the pleasure of meeting their builder, Lee Lovenkraft, who happened to be present when I made my visit.

I thoroughly enjoyed talking with Lee, who was extremely proud of her work on these two recreations: the home of Chief John Ross--the principle leader of the Cherokee in the middle 19th century; and the cabin of Sequoyah, the brilliant creator of the Cherokee alphabet.

Inside the home of Chief John Ross--that is a portrait of the Chief over the fireplace.

Again, while Miss Lovenkaft's work may lack a bit of the refinement that is demonstrated by some other historical builders, her creations are very faithful in their representation of the actual historical structures (which in the case of Chief Ross's home was based on the evidence provided by a single photograph of the facade, as the actual real life building was burned down during the Civil War by Cherokee confederate cavalry).

The home of Chief John Ross

I really like Miss Lovenkraft's work. She obviously deeply cared about the stories that are connected with these structures. I don't think I am projecting when I say that I believe they have a certain feel to them that is extremely appealing.

Sequoyah's cabin

I particularly loved Sequoyah's cabin (the home he built in the 1820s in what would later become Oklahoma). Miss Lovenkraft had also made furnishings for the cabin, based upon the items that can be seen in the actual cabin today, which still stands, not far from the real life town of Sallisaw.

Builder Lee Lovenkraft demonstrates the animated spinning wheel she made for Sequoyah's cabin.

Due to prim limits, these were not in the cabin when I saw it. But Lee rezzed them specially for me to see them and I was very impressed to note that on the table lay a copy of Sequoyah's alphabet.

Sequoyah was one of my heroes when I was a kid, even though I have no connection to the Cherokee. It's just a great story, and he was simply a cool and inspiring dude. I am thrilled that there is something representing his story in SL. And that's the bottom line here: there is Native American-related material in SL that is authentic, respectful and pretty well thought out. Yeah it's not always as well presented as it could be, but there is some good, fun stuff out there. It's not all furry bikinis, badly-made tipis and Gorean "Red Savages."

I would be curious to know if any of you all have any examples of Native American builds that work well, or of people who portray Indian characters in ways that are respectful and well thought-out.

~~~

Goodbye Deadwood 1.0 -- a Second Life experiment enters a new stage

~~~

Everything has a life span. The virtual town that I called home for over two years is coming to the end of its existence. Our sim owners Caed/Percy, Deac and Estwee decided that this weekend would be the weekend that we will "burn down the town." Then we will temporarily close the sim while they install the new build that will take us back to the spring of 1876.

Here's how Caed explained it on our Deadwood community forum:

"The Deadwood Fire begins on Saturday the 27th of 1879 sometime in the mid afternoon so as to allow as many as possible to show up. The day before (Friday) can be the run-up to the events on Saturday. After all the destruction, Sunday the 28th will be the closing party in the late afternoon/evening.

Timeline;

Fri the 27th, events leading up to the fire.
Sat the 28th, Deadwood Fire.
Sun the 29th, Closing OOC Party & final day to pick up prims.
Mon 30th thru Friday 2nd, Deadwood Rebuild
Friday 2nd 1876, Deadwood Grand Re-Opening at 5pm SLT


Rentals for merchants and players will operate much the same way as before with only a few 'minor' changes, and as always, rentals will be first come first to be served.

There will be plenty of space, tons of new buildings, more special 'named' buildings (Cricket, Senate, Progressive Hall, Shingle's, the Custer House Hotel, Bella Union, Iowa Restaurant, California Chop House Restaurant, Grand Central Hotel) and more, many un-named saloons, shops and residences will also be available to choose from."

The idea, if you missed the previous discussions of this, is to turn back the clock and recreate what Deadwood looked like when it was newly established, an illegal gold mining camp located on land that had been promised in perpetuity to the Sioux under the Ft. Laramie treaty of 1868.
You may recall that our first version of Deadwood was a remarkable experiment in historical roleplay as time moved forward in the sim: we started as mid-1876, and experienced the passing of the days, the turning of the seasons--and the progression of events as our own roleplay storylines mingled with historic events such as the murder of Wild Bill Hickok. We also witnessed the town developed, becoming more "civilized" and developing a more sophisticated social and architectural fabric.

It is now early 1879 in the Deadwood sim, and we are about to include one last historic event--a recreation of the great fire of 1879 that destroyed much of the early town. When the sim reopens, many of us will have new characters (I'm going to be splitting my time between Malachi--an older Black miner--and a Sergeant Major OHanlon, up at the fort). The environment will be very very different as well. We have done a great deal of research on what early Deadwood looked like, and Caed has been working for months on new structures and new terraforming that he will install during the brief hiatus. I think people are going to be surprised and impressed. The Deadwood build--even in it's first iteration--never looked like the other western builds in SL. This new build will look even less so: it will be a mixture of tents and cabins, some with canvas roofs, and a few others looking a bit fancier with plank false fronts dressing up their facades. It certainly is not going to be just another standard mish-mash of "old West" buildings.

Other folks have been working on new accessories and equipment as well--from mining gear, to new weapons, to more accurate clothing and furnishings. Everyone has learned a lot in the last two or so years and we're putting that knowledge to work.

Sadly, I am going to miss the end of the old build--real life work has me on the road for the rest of this week and into early next week. So this evening I went in and pulled up all my stuff (I didn't want to have it all returned as one big mass into Lost and Found over the weekend). So I started at the laundry--the first place I had in Deadwood.


From there, I went to the Blacksmith shop that I had set up for someone who suddenly decided to leave the sim, but I liked how it looked, so I kept it. Clay and I had a great time trying to make a forge for this shop because we wanted something that looked more realistic than what you usually see in SL blacksmith shops. I have always enjoyed collaborating with Clay. We give each other ideas, we share information and our different skills, and it's...well, it's just been a whole lot of fun.

Next, I went and cleaned out the wholesale liquor and tobacco shop I had set up with Blackjack--part of our "silent partner" storyline. Blackjack/JF has been a co-conspirator in some of the best rp I ever was a part of. I have had fun with a lot of folks--so many that I can't name them all. But there were always a few very special friends like Blackjack who--along with Elizabeth and Carrie Anne/Rachel, Roku and Sal, Clay and all his goddamn alts, Mahaila and Meri, and Lefty/Hawk and Brook--often had me moved to tears or laughing so hard I thought I was gonna puke....

Finally, I headed over to the hotel and cleaned that out. Sharing that with Cookie/Coodnank was a truly fascinating experience. I really loved working on fixing that place up and furnishing it as the town evolved, and places like the Grand Central became less primitive.

Then I went up into the hills and collected my shooting targets. I was thinking about the fun we had with the Deadwood shooting society--and the many happy hours spent talking about guns with Lock and Ernst and some of the other boys.

There's a few odds and ends left, but I guess it's ok if Caed just returns them during or after the fire. Street signs; a couple outhouses...oh hell's britches, there's probably something else I have forgotten. But I know one thing that won't be forgotten...all the friends and all the good times...learning and building, laughing and crying, shooting the same stupid griefers on different alts over and over...and creating some great characters and some wonderful stories.

I walked over the bridge one last time...

I think what everyone is doing here is very brave. In SL it's tempting to leave stuff up even after the life has gone out of it. To be honest, it really was time to do something different with the Deadwood concept. Even so, it's often hard to let go...to take all the hard work that has been done and dump it for something new. But the platform is a dynamic and continually evolving place, and to truly embrace it, you need to embrace the fluidity of it.

So I will let you know how the next stage of this experiment turns out.

~~~