SLWTF - A Second Life travelogue by Garth Goode

The museum at Forum Europe is notable for it’s models of dinosaurs and dinosaur fossils. It’s a lot like going to a real museum, except without any actual information about what you’re looking at. If you like to look at neat stuff and don’t care about filling your brain with, oh, I don’t know… knowledge, it’s a nice trip.

What I find almost more fascinating than the actual exhibits are the lobby and the passageways between halls. Though some sleight of hand or optical illusion they’re using photographs of a real museum to make you feel like you’re passing through a much larger space than you really are. Walking through these passages is almost dizzying. Everything around you moves in a way that isn’t quite right, and you get the feeling of moonwalking or walking on an escalator. 

In a way it’s kind of a cheat — creating the illusion of a build rather than actually building. Visually, it looks as if your avatar has crossed over in to the real world. It’s a neat trick, and I have no clue how they do it (though no doubt someone will tell me).

The dinosaur models are numerous and entertaining. Many of them have controls that will open and close the jaw, make a sound, or swing the tail. And, unlike a real museum, the curator isn’t going to run you out for screwing around with the exhibits.

On the second floor of museum there’s a Steampunk sculpture exhibit by Bryn Oh. The sculptures glitter and move and are probably the best thing about the museum. No offense to the dinosaur creators, but metal insects are cool.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Forum%20Europe/70/74/31

I returned recently to the island of Umbra to shop at MUWU. I bought a shirt there a while back and wanted to see if there was anything new I might like. The last time I was there I was on a shopping mission: Teleport in, buy the shirt I wanted, teleport out. This visit I decided to explore the island a bit. I should stop and smell the roses more often.

Off in one corner I found Le Parc. It’s a bucolic little farm area, complete with cows, pigs, and horses. It’s a lovely little spot that seems to serve no purpose other than to look lovely.

There’s no store, there’s nothing to buy, just a barn and  a blacksmith shop with some animations to try. Building for the sake a building? Maybe! I don’t know why Le Parc is there, but I like it.

Near Le Parc is the dance club No Name. It bears mentioning just because it’s great to look at. Someone with a real eye for design put this thing together.

Inside and out there’s a consistency of design and color that you don’t see often. Whoever built this had a real vision and plan.

The retail part of Umbra is not without eye candy, too. Directly across from MUWU is OhLaLa. While they don’t sell any clothes for guys, the giant tea set and box of crackers design made me look inside anyway. I found something I thought my wife would like and sent her the landmark (because I’m not foolish enough to just buy it and find out I was wrong). If having a cool building to draw in customers is a retail strategy, it worked.

I’m seeing a lot of this lately: Retail areas that feel like theme parks (in once case it was a theme park) or immersive alternate realities. They always make an impression, and I’ll be taking a closer look at them soon.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Umbra/128/128/29

I’m not a marketing professional, but I’ve always had an interest in it, and I like to think I have a clue. So it startles me when major corporations get it so incredibly, insanely, unforgivably wrong.

When I visited the set of Circuit City islands I had my hopes. They had been in Second Life for a while, starting first with an experimental retail building in one of the first IBM regions. When you land in Circuit City 1 there is a nice welcome and orientation area, along with a mission statement:

Our goal is to provide a place where people passionate about music, movies, and other technology-enabled lifestyles can connect, have fun, and unleash their creativity.

That’s a great start (though one can debate whether music and movies are “lifestyles”). It’st he sort of mission statement that makes you feel like they know just what to do in Second Life. They then proceed to do exactly the opposite.

Before I go any further, let me say that the region is very, very professionally designed. It’s frustrating to see so much effort put into it and then see them go it. To launch the region they had an iPod hunt where they gave away ten iPods. And then… nothing. They have a great concert venue in the center of the four islands so they can accommodate 200 people a an event. Except there are no events. I even joined there group and there is no history of group notices for events. Imagine if they had a famous or semi-famous music artist event every week?

Instead we’re stuck with several very static “zones.” You’ve got the Movie Zone, the Photography Zone, the Computer and Game Zone, and the Music Zone. In the Movie Zone you can see movie trailers in either the theater or the home theater shopping area (click a TV and see the link on the web site. Oooh, innovative). The Movie Zone is particularly annoying because it suffers from what I can only describe an aggressive media stream. From the adjoining Photography Zone or near the building you start to hear the movie trailer audio. You click STOP on your media controls. Within thirty seconds it starts again. Stop. Stop STOP. Rinse, lather, repeat.

The Photography Zone has a giant camera you can walk through, as well as a photography gallery. Except the gallery has no indication of who took the photos. Circuity City customers? Was there a contest? Who knows?

The Computer and Gaming Zone has a building where you can click various items to be linked to the product web page (do you sense a theme here?). There’s a very cool subway which will take you to… more products you can click. Never have so many put so much effort into connecting you with something so lame.

Over in the Music Zone you’ll find more products that you can click on and… oh, you get the idea.

There is also the obligatory dance club, complete with pictures of the launch event party. You can even recognize some of the staff members who’s photos are featured in the welcome area. Has anyone else been to this region?

In fairness, I did try to contact the region owner and tried to get help by clicking a Help sign in the welcome area and the Help button in their HUD.  Maybe, I thought, they are still in the startup phase and are still planning concerts and events (though they started up in February with the iPod giveaway, so I would find it odd to start with a bang and then rest on their laurels). Maybe they have grand plans for community engagement. I didn’t want to be overly critical if the region was not yet truly live. Alas, no one came to answer my questions.

I have to conclude that Circuit City has made the same mistake others have made. They built a beautiful place and thought that would be enough to attract visitors. They committed to building a place but not to running it. And really, does anyone want to click on a replica of Wii to see the web page? Better to use those spaces for events where you engage with that community. Bring in game designers for events, maybe? Famous photographers? Movie producers?

Hello? Anyone there, Circuit City? Hello?

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Circuit%20City%201/184/6/59

I saw a completely grey island on the map. After a while I realized it wasn’t “rez grey” — it was just grey. Naturally I had to take a look, and this is what I found. The entire island was covered with prims stating “NAME WITHHELDIS A BITCHT, ESCORT, IS VERY FAT IN RL AND IS A MAN! NAME WITHHELD IS A TRAVESTI!”

I’m assuming “travesti” is German for transvestite. In any case, there’s one pissed off German out there dropping these prims on unprotected land. The land owner is not the same as the prim owner, so I don’t think they intended their island to look like this. Actually the prim owner is not the same as the prim creator. Maybe there’s a horde of pissed off Germans dropping these prims everywhere. Name Withheld gets around.

That said… this informaion about Name Withheld comes as a surprise to the prim dropper? What they’ve said is true of a lot of (maybe most?) escorts in Second Life. Caveat Emptor, if the real life gender of the person behind the avatar matters that much to you.

No, I won’t be revealing the SLURL or the name of the victim here. There’s no need to spread the message further, and she… he can file their own abuse report.

I can be pretty hard on corporate islands in Second Life. They build meeting venues, arenas, and training areas only to let them waste away from inattention. “If we build it, they will come.” They think, overestimating both the allure of Second Life and their own brand equity. Content is king, and the content can be mighty thin on those corporate islands.

And then there’s Fujitus Siemens Computer (FSC). Normally, duplicating or expanding on what you did in real life is a recipe for irrelevance, but on FSC Island it works.

I think FSC Island works because it isn’t trying to be anything more than it is - a virtual analogue to a typical real life district sales office. Now, I’ve been to lots of these places in real life — Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and so on, and FSC Island has that vibe in spades. Everything is clean and beautiful, and fits into the corporate design ethos (in the case of FSC, lots of blue-green, right down to the leaves on the trees).

What they don’t have is the stuff that’s intended to attract visitors, because the place is obviously not designed to attract visitors. It’s there for invited guests, who will rez at a small Second Life orientation center and then will no doubt be ushered by their hosts to the conference room or through the product displays. It’s GoToMeeting or WebEx in 3-D. There’s no dance club here, no art gallery, no scavenger hunt. This is a corporate, not consumer island, thank you.

Now I’ve got to be honest here. I’m guessing that this island is not intended to attract visitors because that’s how it seems. It’s odd that island access is unrestricted, though. It could very well be intended as an enertaining destination, in which case it has achieved new levels of success in the Craptastic Derby. But I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

That’s not to say the island doesn’t have its amusements. After all, the corporate visitors still need something to occupy them during their lunch break. You don’t want them wandering off to Dell Island or anything.

So, to tkeep them occupied there are a few nicely desgned giant computers. A laptop spins and extolls its virtues on its screen. Across the way an open desktop PC shows off its innards, with important features periodically highlighted (in the requisite blue-green glow, naturally).

On the other side of an island another computer displays a video of a couple of salesfolk explaining in thick German accents why their computer is so environmentally friendly. (One amusement — every picture I took of the screen seemed to have them looking down, right at my avtatar. It was very surreal until I realized I captured them looking at their cue cards).

Finally they have an amusing, if difficult to control Pong game played on a giant monitor. Because nothing shows how shows how your computers can handle advanced data processing like Pong. They also give away a Pong HUD game in the office lobby (and the ever-popular crappy t-shirt, naturally). Maybe it has to do with some advertising campaign that isn’t readily evident to me.

If you’ve made it this far you’ll realize that I don’t have any compelling reasons for you to visit FSC Island, unless perchance you are a current or prospective customer. But that’s okay, it’s not trying to appeal to anone else.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/FSC%20Island/131/67/25

I try not to post too much about retail areas, because there are plenty of shopping and fashion blogs out there. Sometimes, though, I find someplace that is so visually interesting that I have to say something about it.

Nth Dimension is such a place. The whole Fantasie Wells region is pretty much filled with giant mushrooms, pipes, fireworks, animals, and plants. The vast majority of the scenery is sculpties. Or you think it’s scenery until you realize that almost everything is for sale.

I can deal with that because even if you’re not shopping for giant mushrooms or monstrous blades of grass, it’s still quite a thing to see. And if you are shopping for giant mushrooms or monstrous blades of grass I either a) am worried about you or b) want to see what you’re building.

Oh, right near the landing point there are some multicolored smoking things. Click them. Go ahead. Nothing bad will happen. Well, nothing really bad. Something kind of cool, actually.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Fantasie%20Wells/128/128/0

My wife, Jessa, IM’ed me from the Venice Passion shopping area because there was something fun she thought I might like to see. As you might expect in a place named Venice, there was a gondola. But not just any gondola… it was a gondola ride! We hopped on board, cuddled up, and set our boat on it’s automatic journey.

The ride is actually quite long and takes you through a lot of twists and turns through waterways wide and narrow, past what I can only guess are photosourced facades of Venice buildings. Here and there you can see romantic spots with poseballs that you’ll want to visit in order to extend your stay. If you get off the boat, though, it will dissapear and you’ll have to start from the beginning again. And when the boat makes tuns, those turns are sharp. Go on, you’ll find out what I mean.

The building textures get blurry on close examination and the build quality looks like Second Life circa two years ago, but really, guys, this isn’t about looking at the buildings. Once you’re snuggled up in the boat with the one you love the scenery doesn’t matter. Hey, honey, we’re in Venice, but all I can see is your eyes.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Busby/17/172/70

Sometimes I wander around through the Japanese regions and I find a few interesting places, but nothing that would justify a blog post. But if I put them all together in one post…. ah, ha! I’ve created a whirlwind tour for you. Get on the bus, y’all and hold on tight, there’s some sharp turns ahead.

First up, Tokutoku Pocket, from NEC. I thought this region might justify a posting of it’s own, but the game here is so inscrutable… argh! The region is a lot of fun to look at, but I don’t have a clue what they’re selling. There’s flying saucer floating above the central building. It has a fifteen minute timer counting down. When it gets to zero a pod shoots out in a random direction. Find the pod (good luck), touch it, wear what you receive (it’s a HUD) and touch kiosk. You get L$2.

I want to those fifteen minutes of my life back.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/tokutoku%20pocket/151/53/23

Meanwhile, in Higashi, I found what might be the ultimate bus for a Neko Road Trip. If Neko’s have road trips. You know, you buy kitty litter and yarn and.. stuff.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/HIGASHI%20GINZA/139/86/124

Floating above Toyosu is a GundamMuseum. There’s precious little information here, but the models are nice and several of them are available as free avatars.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/TOYOSU/178/225/547

Richman Movies appear to be semi-professional (and I do mean semi) camp movies from the 80’s and on. I say they’re camp because I don’t think anyone would seriously make anything this bad except on purpose. The fights are ridiculous and the costumes are awful. And, even though I don’t speak Japanese, it’s asy to see that the acting is really, really bad. That said, the films are fun in that they almost revel in their badness. There’s a short film running now (be patient, it takes a while to load) and it is worth a watch, if only for the surprise ending.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/TSUKISHIMA/120/117/22

On the egdge of Higashi there’s a unique tightrope camping setup. If you are patient enough to make it to the end (it takes a few minutes of watching yourself balance on the wire) you’ll receive L$1, L$5, ot L$50, depending on what the randomizer decides. Take a guess what it usually pays out. But maybe you’ll be luckier than me.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/HIGASHI%20GINZA/151/247/62

I was flying around the Bug City region when I saw something large floating in the sky. Upon further inspection it turned out to be Tabi’s Target Range, a rather large airborne platform with a lot of things to shoot at. As you can see, my shooting skills are impressive… with a shotgun at a distance of five meters.

Now, to be honest, I’ve never sought out shooting ranges in Second Life, so I have no idea how Tabi’s compares to any other one. Appearances aside, I’m not a violent guy. While Tabi’s is not a pretty place, it is functional and free. There is a store where you can purchase weapons, but my shotgun from Deadshot (the only gun in my inventory) worked just fine.

Most of the targets keep a score of some type or another, so you can try to best your record or a friend’s. There are several types of shooting challenges to keep you interested, if you like that sort of thing. As for me, I pictured a few old math teachers, pulled the trigger, and got it out of my system.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Bug%20City/156/154/261

I’ve been wandering around the edge of the grid lately, hopping from island to island on the utter frontiers of the world. That’s not to say it isn’t civilized out there, as I found out when I landed on OsMoz, the perfume island.

Now, I’ve seen perfume in Second Life before, and it took the form of an annoying chat spammer.“Emmie’s cologne: The fresh smell of hibiscus wafting by is cloying, yet vibrant.”Luckily OsMoz doesn’t go there. Instead they have a selection of perfumes and (yes, guys) colognes that manifest themselves as particle emitters. Attach your perfume, and use a HUD to control the intensity. A bottle of perfume lasts twenty hours and costs L$100, but testers that last an hour are free.

But let’s not kid ourselves. It’s a particle emitter, people. And maybe I’ve watched too many cartoons, but any smell coming from you that’s visible isn’t a good one.

Realistically, the perfume they’re selling is incidental. I doubt the island was built to make a profit by selling particle emitters. Instead it’s more of an extension of the osmoz.com web site, connecting to and providing similar content in a virtual world setting. It also gives people who are really, really, really into perfume a place gather socially. A very well done flower tour will take you to the major sights on the island. Its a flower built for two, so you can bring a friend.

There’s the obligatory dance club and a conferece center. It was a quiet Sunday when I visited, but the conference center features a video of the opening night party, and it looks like it was a lot of fun. Too bad they don’t have a schedule of events posted… hint, hint, hint.

The News Fountain is supposed to dipslay news, which looks like it would come from an RSS feed. Except it was either broken or there was no news. That said, it’s one of the nicer waterfalls I’ve seen in Second Life.

OsMoz is a French creation, everything, from the tour to the notecards, to the maps is available in both French and English. Bravo. If only the Japanese would do that.

One of the more interestng spots is the Ingredient Garden, where you can explore the different components that go into perfume. Click the sign next to the ingredient and it expands to explain where the ingredient is used. Guys, this would be a nice place to take someone special, and since there are ingredients that go into men’s cologne there’s something for you, too.

Even more interesting is The Quiz. There are versions of the quiz for both men and women. Attach a HUD, walk down the path to each sign and answer questions about your likes and dislikes. When you’re done the HUD will display what perfume family is right for you… so so they say. It got me pretty much right, surprisingly.

So, in conclusion… perfume in Second Life? Silly. OsMoz? Kind of fun.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/OSMOZ/140/102/32