SLWTF - A Second Life travelogue by Garth Goode

I’ve found a few games in the Japanese regions, but they’re often inscrutable. Not so with Dead Shot. Pick up your shotgun, walk into the abandoned building and start blasting away at the zombies. If it seems like they appear out of nowhere it’s because they do.

Before you walk into the building, give the poseball with the two zombies crouching over it a whirl. In the picture above they’re supposed to be feasting  on my innards, but try as I might, I couldn’t shake off the impression that one of them was fellating me. Ewwww… pervy zombies. Now that I think of it, I think the other one was trying for some nipple action. Who knows, maybe it’s a zombie delicacy.

Zombies may move slowly, but they’re hard to kill. It takes at least three shots to bring one to its knees. Meanwhile, the other ones keep on coming, and more appear, and they’re closing in on you so you shoot at the one you think is the closest but then you  notice the one behind you and, AND–

…aaaaaaaand the brain munching begins. Avatar damage is enabled inside the building, so keep moving. When your health meter drops to zero you’ll be teleported home. Since you’re armed with a shotgun there are frequent pauses to reload, which makes keeping up with the pace of your zombie enemies all the more challenging.

The second floor of the building seems to be a kind of training ground. Ring the big green bell and distinctly un-zombie like red things attack you. These attackers display their health statistics, though, so it’s easier to figure out who (or what) to shoot.

Dead Shot isn’t pretty or sophisticated, but it’s a good way to kill some time or indulge your more violent urges. On the downside, all the zombies look the same and they don’t seem to get any smarter or more challenging. On the other hand, sometimes it’s just fun to shoot at stuff — especially if that stuff wants to nosh on your entrails.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Nipponbashi/225/186/27

Now I know where avatars go when they die. Pan and Agapee islands are supposed to be simulations of the afterlife. They have a decidedly Buddhist bent, but no matter — the afterlife is very pretty and weirdly ethereal.

Sometimes the afterlife is very foggy. I guess they haven’t quite worked out their humidity problems.  If you keep to the path you’ll find kiosks along the way which explain the nature of the afterlife. Don’t worry about getting all the answers, though. The explanations are often inscrutable.

Here I am, as ever, outstanding in my field. Ha! I kill me. Oh wait, I’m dead.

As the far end of the island is a meditation area. There are also a number of secluded spots on the island where you can just hang out and contemplate your life, or death, as it were.

Near the temple is a set of freebies, including star, fog, and flower particle emitters. Watch out for the flower emitter, it’s especially aggressive and hard to find amid all the flowers once you rez it.

To the north of the meditation area is another island where you can have a little more privacy. Again, it was very pretty and not quite like any other place I’ve seen. I’m not sure if it was the concept that it was the afterlife that made it seem different, or the strange glows coming from unexpected places (such as the flowers) that made it so. Turn the environment to midnight and the flowers and fog still glow brightly. Freaky.

All in all, being dead is an interesting diversion.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Southhampton%20dAlliez/171/228/24

Japanese telecom companies sure work hard to promote their mobile phones. Softbank has built yet another city floating in the sky, but it’s inteesting because it features a scavenger hunt for clues that you can play for freebies.

Floating around the region are giant mobile phones in what would appear to be random formations. Not so. On top of buildings throughout the region are telescopes. Look through them and the mobile phones form keywords used to receive a particular phone. Except the words are in Japanese, so to me it looks like a random pattern. But that’s okay, because the telescope also says the English keywords in local chat.

In the central building you’ll find a set of doors in what looks like a mobile phone museum. Say the right keyword at each door and you can get to the freebie phone behind it. Ot, if you’re lazy, you can also use your camera controls to look past the doors and grab the phones anyway. Oops. Maybe Softbank should have thought this through a little more.

The phones are typing animation overriders. When you type, it looks like you’re taking a call. I’m chatting with you No, I’m taking a call. No, I’m chatting with you. No, I’m taking a call. I’m… arrrgh!!!! Who’s idea was this?

In the central building you can also grab a cute oversize camera phone into which you can drop textures to create a slide show. To be frank, I trashed most of these freebies when I was done gathering them. Still, you should make it a point to visit Softbank just to see the speactacle of the flying phones.  

http://slurl.com/secondlife/SOFTBANK%20SLIM%20JAPAN/128/7/325

The possibilities in Second Life are endless. In it’s own immersive way it can take you to another place or reality… or time. Now, I’ve seen my share of Medieval roleplay regions, ancient Rome, and science fiction futures. But what I haven’t seen until now is an attempt to create a historically accurate (as far as we know) representation of a ancient structure now lost.

In Holy City they have attempted to recreate the Second Temple in Jerusalem as it existed before it was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. While the construction is not stellar (some good texturing would help) it is huge. As you walk the grounds there are helpful notecards that inform you about what rituals were performed there or for what that area of the temple was used.

My only complaint is that no flying is allowed inside the temple walls, so getting from place to place gets tedious. If you stick with it, you’ll find it interesting, though.

This sort of thing really has potential as a kind of living archaeology. Think of someone doing reconstructions of Jamestown, Pompeii, or the pyrapids. Tourism in time without leaving the comfort of your chair!

Oh, hidden somewhere beneath the temple is the Ark of the Covenant. Yes, I found it! Indiana Jones would be proud.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Holy%20City/15/12/35

Let’s end another week with some torture, shall we? 

I gave up camping a long time ago as a way to earn lindens in Second Life. It was just too time consuming relative to the payoff. However, I still see a lot of camping going on, especially in retail locations where campers are often tasked with scrubbing floors, washing windows, and sweeping up garbage.

When I landed at Play Time Toys, however, I learned that if you can really make your campers earn their money. There they sell camping electric chairs, nooses, and impaling spikes. If campers get on these they must really need the cash. The electric chair animation is intense. You can almost feel the current, aided no doubt by the loud electrical sounds.

Is it wrong of me to think that the impaling spike and te noose should have twitching animations for the campers? Does that make me a bad person?

Okay, I’m a bad person. I haven’t seen these camping chairs outside of Play Time Toys, but maybe I’m shopping at the wrong places. They have a number of the items set up with a typical payout. But it’s a fun stop if you just want to, er… watch.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Whitewater/129/80/428

I debated with myself (always entertaining) about whether to write about the Stella concert. I don’t want to be mean. Stella is a fine performer and seems like a nice enough person. But the people around her, who are ostensibly professionals, did her no favors. What I’m going to say may sound harsh, but remember: There are amateur performers in Second Life putting on great shows every day.

Okay, here goes. Indignant Mode ON.

If you recall, I wrote about Stella’s region a little while back. Since the Second Life live premier concert was coming up, I decided to attend. I’d never attended the premier of anything before and was looking forward to something new and different, even if I gave her island a less than glowing review. Even if it wasn’t my kind of music I was still kind of excited to see the premier and asked my wife and some friends to come with me.

The event and the region were set up by her producer’s company, Virtual World Arts. With a name like that you would think they have a little experience in the virtual world and could manage an event like this. You would think, but you’d be wrong. It was, to put it lightly, somewhere between a bus crash and a trainwreck. Maybe a bus crashing into a trainwreck. Perhaps it was lucky that there wasn’t much of an audience to witness it.

I knew something was amiss when I cammed backstage (Hey, they started late and I was getting antsy) and saw Stella standing there in a really, really poorly fitted gown. Seriously, the skirt prim didn’t make any pretense of possibly touching her waist. You can see a hint of it in the picture above, but I couldn’t bring myself to take a picture showing clearly just how bad it was. At that point I was still inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, so I tried to take nice pictures.  What I didn’t understand was this: Stella has been in Second Life for more than a year… and she doesn’t know how to fit a skirt? The supporting cast was not much better. Umm, guys, I know I’m bald, but… ever hear of prim hair?

Now, the concert venue was a few hundred meters above the ground. There was a stage and a walkway that ran between floating seating areas. Nice. Except when Stella walked out to sing her first song, she proceeded onto the walkway and immediately stepped off into the void below.

I’ll admit it, I laughed out loud.

Okay, stuff happens. What made it worse was that it took almost the entire length of that first song for her to make it back on stage.She was still singing, but apparently she made it back by way of the butterfly ride. Why she didn’t just fly back is beyond me, but it was starting to look like amateur hour. The fact that the land was set up as an invitation to griefers (scripts, object creation, and pushing all allowed) didn’t make me feel any better.

The performances were very good, even if the technical glitches continued. When Stella talked you could barely hear her, though the volume for her singing was fine. The violinist appeared on stage about two minutes into his feature song. And so on. There was talk of rehearsals, but honestly, you wouldn’t have known it.

Even then, I was inclined to feel that despite all the difficulties, Stella and her team plowed ahead like troopers. She disappeared pretty quickly after the show, but the harpist hung out talked with us for a bit. This is where it went truly wrong. At the end of our chat he invited us to the after-show party. We thought that was nice of him and asked him to teleport us when he got there.

Sure, he said… it’s at our house on the beach in California. Come on down.

That’s class. Maybe I’m overly insulted by that one little joke, but it felt like he was looking down on us, as if to say, “You are in Second Life? Sucks to be you.” What once appeared as an earnest and honest (if not technically adept) attempt to make a go of it in Second Life suddenly appeared to be nothing more than a half-assed publicity stunt. It’s not that they couldn’t have made the premire good, they just didn’t care. Let’s premiere the record in Second Life, we’ll get some good publicity.

Stella herself my be a victim in all of this. Maybe she logged on to Second Life a year ago and her producers ran with it. As for her producers, they shouldn’t make a video of their artist in Second Life, premiere her record in Second Life, and pass her off as a denizen of Second Life if they don’t at least have a clue about Second Life.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Stella/22/127/35

I’m a sucker for eye candy. That said, I like to think that my standards for eye candy are pretty high. So when I find a place makes me think, “Oh wow, this is nice!” I figure it must be worth writing about.

When you land on La Romantica you find yourself inside a stone building high in the hills. Through the doorway you can glimpse the pine trees. There’s a real sense of place here. You can almost imagine the cold, thin mountain air.

Walk down the steps to the dirt path and you find yourself in a deep forest. Even in full daylight it is moody, quiet, and just a little bit mysterious. Make your way to the shore and you find some docks, a small village, and a pirate bar.

Okay, the pirate bar kind of threw me, but it’s well done, especially the glow of yell0w-green light from inside. Alas, I encountered no pirates.

As you walk around the edge of the island the path becomes more tropical. There are lovely places to sit on poseballs and watch the Windlight sunset.

As you walk around the island you’ll find some spots with restricted access. Make it a point to make your way to the top of the second mountain, though. There you’ll find a fire and dancing area, all set for whatever rituals you care to perform.

It’s the variety of La Romantica that makes it unique. There are plenty of other tropical islands and romantic forests, but when you walk through them everything is the same. A walk through La Romantica takes you and the one you love seamlessly through a number of environments, making a romantic walk that much more fun.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/La%20Romantica/182/66/41

You know by now that I spend an inordinate amount of time in Japanese regions, looking for the strange and surreal, mainly because I’m likely to find it there. With notable exceptions, however, the build quality hasn’t blown my socks off.

I’m also impressed by builds that are big. Things that make you go whoah. Maybe it’s a guy thing. So there I was in Dejima checking out a life-size replica of Tokyo Tower (an accurate 333 meters tall!), which is impressive all on it’s own, when I saw what appeared to be a big metallic bowl in the distance. As I moved closer it’s size became apparent. It filled up almost the entire NTT DoCoMo region. That little speck in the center of the first picture? That’s me.

On top of the bowl is a small city, dedicated to marketing NTT DoCoMo (a Japanese mobile telephone company).  The build quality excellent and surprisingly engaging. Oh, sure, there’s the usual boring kiosk full of giant mobile phones. But I found the old mobile phone museum oddly entertaining. Check out that giant 1985 bag phone. Is it a phone, or is it luggage?

Look around and you’ll find a little men’s and women’s hair display. Collect the full set of freebie phones from the shelves behind the hair and you’ll be allowed to pick up the six freebie hairs. (Once you have the hair you might want to delete the phones from your inventory *ahem*). The hair is actually very nice quality, although the one I’m sporting in the picture above was probably not the best choice for me.  

Elsewhere in this floating city you’ll find a Lego-themed building promoting imode.net. It looks like it allows communication between laptops and mobile phones, but don’t take my word for it — I don’t speak Japanese. Why is the building Lego-themed? Beats me, but it sure is some nice eye candy.

At the center of the Shibakoen region next door is the Tokyo Arena (which looks nothing like the real-life Tokyo Arena). It’s a lovely performance space, though at the moment is is set up for wrestling.

And finally, back to the Tokyo Tower. It’s big. It’s freaking big. You get a real sense of the tower’s scale. It feels like it has mass. It’s probably the closest you’ll get to the real thing without going to Japan. I took an elevator to the top and was surprised to find the windows covered over with photographs. So much for a Windlight sunset at 333 meters. What gives?

Then it hit me. The photographs are the actual views from the same windows in the real Tokyo Tower. On one of the lower nightclub floors you can see the equivalent views at night. Sweet… I just saved myself a whole lot of airfare.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/NTT%20DoCoMo/128/158/129

http://slurl.com/secondlife/dejima/161/132/129

I don’t know what I expected when I landed in the Rock Vault, but I was really surprised. It’s the most unique retail space I’ve encountered in Second Life. Soon after you land a skeletal apparition invites you to ride his boat on a river of lava by picking the name of a heavy metal band.

When you are arrive at your destination you’ll find… a t-shirt store. You can also buy the same shirts for your first life, which explains how Rock Vault can afford to dedicate an entire region to selling t-shirts.  

If you don’t want a heavy metal t-shirt there isn’t much more to see…. except at the center of the island. If you dare to sit on one of several grisly torture devices, a demon will suddenly appear and ensure that you feel maximum pain.

It’s very entertaining, and sometimes very gross. Like the time I was tied down and my innards were being ground up by spinning blades and the demon reached into my chest and yanked out my pulsating heart. I swear he seemed positively giddy.

Oh, I’m gonna have just great dreams tonight.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Rock%20Vault/128/128/0

Building a tourist region is a challenge. You want to promote the unique character of your city while making it interesting in Second Life. Do it wrong and you run the risk of being excruciatingly boring. Of course, it helps if your city actually has some character. Nonethleless, when you land in Second Gijon and you see the location description “SECOND GIJON - Spain Spanish Latino DJs La Isla Extasy World” you can see the delicate balancing act they’re trying to pull off. Happily, they are somewhat successful.

The real Gijon is an old seacoast town in the north of Spain, noted for it’s museums, port, and old world charm. The builders have obviously taken great pains to preserve the look of city by photosourcing building facades without being slavish to the layout of the city. You get the good parts. Some buildings have beautiful squares or art museums. Others are multi-purpose facades. One building looks like a church, but when you approach it from the side you can see the space is used for retail space rental. The city is dotted with little shops like this, and you have to take your ime strolling around to find them. It’s not a bad way to spend a few hours.

Near the Jovellanos theater is a what appears to be huge walled church or museum. One of the downsides of Second Gijon is that they don’t seem to have any notecards up yet. There’s no information on what this building is or it’s history. So while you get a good feel for the look of Gijon you don’t come away knowing much about it, except that it is very pretty. The only thing that mars the experience is the occasional shouting from the nearby Spanish orientation region.

In one of the central squares and in the next-door region of La Isla are dance clubs labeled Extasy (their spelling, not mine) World. Despite the name they are just dance clubs, not escort areas. While the clubs don’t seem to have real-world equivalents, they are actually (gasp!) being used. If you can understand Spanish there is something unique something about partying under the stars with a view of old world buildings around you.

Overall, Second Gijon is doing a good job with the balancing act. The region looks like Gijon and gives you a sense of what it is like there while keeping you interested with shops and dancing. It’s one of the more successfully executed tourist regions I’ve seen.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Second%20Gijon/17/243/39