Last words

Second Life to IPO?  

Ok, so this was one of those conversations in a bar with someone who was too inebriated to remember his NDA, so I won't repeat much.  I will say keep an eye on SL, they are making moves to clean up their image for legal reasons, and they are still profitable and working to become more so -- I have reasons to believe there's an IPO ahead.

Stanford's Virtual World?

Last month I attended a conference on Machinima at Stanford, where I had the chance to speak with members of Stanford's Humanities Lab.  Turns out Stanford has been looking at using virtual worlds for education for the last two years and is ready to launch their own world later this month.  Take a look at this article for more info.

Experiment

Tittle:

Not your mother's tourism.

Experiment Scenario:

Prepare for your trip by seeing your destination virtually, learning about language and cultural matters, and exploring sustainable travel through recycling.

SL Location:

Meet at Translator site found at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spike/26/198/621/ then follow directions to china town

Roles:

Recorders, question askers, tourists (see list bellow)

Recorders -- Record the virtual trip using screen shots and sound and video recording if possible.

Question Askers -- Follow tour group and ask one or two specific questions about culture, art, architecture, or language pertaining to the locations visited.

Questions to Learn:

- What time is it

- Good morning

- How are you

- Where is the bathroom

- How much does this cost

- Do you have vegan/vegetarian food

- I'm lost, where is the nearest embassy

Things to learn to say

- (some form of slang such as)

- Cool

- Awesome

- (informal) hello

- (informal) goodbye

- Which way to the bar

Tourist -- Follow tour group, and think about if you would like to visit this place in the real world and how the virtual trip influenced your decision.

Role Assignments:

Question askers for each group --

1 Colleen

2 Danny Pan

3 Jose Ramirez

4 Laura

Groups --

1 Grant, Chris, James (recorder)

2 Josh, Karen, Xiaomin (recorder)

3 Ed, Tara, Kim (recorder)

4 Stephen, Zachary, Brandon (recorder)

Assets Provided:

Translator found at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spike/26/198/621/

Participant Preparation:

Download translator, think about any concerns you have regarding foreign travel.

Production plan:

We will be taking participants to existing areas in Second Life and leading virtual tours. As such we will not be designing most of the in-world materials, but will instead focus on the user interaction, and how best to guide a tour group through virtual China Town, Museum, etc. We will leverage existing materials to explore cultural, language, and sustainability issues in Second Life.

At the end:

1. Go to Sand Box for survey.

Land name: SAND BOX, Build for FREE

Navigator: 129,80,95

You will find a Survey billboard in Sand box, click the center of the billboard and go to SurveyMonkey.

2. The green eco bag will be given away during the trip.

Second life features

Ok, so to some degree this is cheating.  I went on the SL blogs looking for cool tools and found an extremely helpful community with more tutorials than you can shake a stick at.  I decided that rather than subject you to my poor technical writing skills I was going to leave the instructing to the experts and leave you in their capable hands.

5 Fun Apps demonstrates 5 ways to make videos in Second Life -- think tutorials, promotional material etc.

Headtracking is another interesting idea -- it connects to your computers webcam and tracks your head movement then translates that to your avatar.  Why?  Because it makes the world just a little bit more immersive.  

And thinking about immersion, if you've tried voice interaction in SL you might have noticed that the sounds are directional so an avatar to your right will sound like it's to your right.  Devil is in the details after all...

SL places

I spent some time over spring break looking at interesting places in SL, and here is what I found:

Nonprofit commons (112, 56, 24) is a gathering place for nonprofit organizations in second life.  It is also a very well built up place with more greenery than I've perviously seen in world.  They offer tours, give you free stuff, and create a networking environment for nonprofit organizations so check them out.

Shakespear Island Sim (138, 104, 37) pictured bellow was a fun place to visit as well because of the historical recreationism and because it is a cross section of two digital worlds (Sims in Secondlife).

Exploratorium (170, 146, 25) is the Second Life space of the San Francisco Exploratorium, and at the time I visited they were celebrating Pi month.  I liked this because it's an example of an educational space within SL and a real life space taking up a virtual real estate.  

Bartle test

This is an interesting test because it seems to ask the same questions in a lot of different ways. I wonder if this is to make people break out of thinking about how they would like to be seen and answer the questions more honestly on the whole. I also found that my avatar persona is more aggressive and violent than my real persona which was rated "Socializer"

I'm planning to read more about this test's background to find out how players apply this knowledge, as well as how the test was created.

project idea

I think the digital world environment can have a lot of educational applications. I am specifically interested in using it as an ESL tool -- an ESL garden if you will where your avatar can walk through a virtual space in which certain objects and situations will present an opportunity to learn new vocabulary or practice existing vocabulary. I am trying to work out how to do this without breaking the immersive feeling of the game and how to allow avatars, and consequently users, to learn from each other.

Who is there?

I tried There, and my first thought is that the target audience is entirely different than that of Second Life. I think they are looking at less tech-savvy users. My mother might like this for example because it gives you the immersive digital world feel without the pressure to create the world you're stepping into.

The video intro is great for people who have never tried to interact through an avatar, but might drive tactile/experiential learners such as myself bonkers. The training island in There is a lot more hand-holding than Second Life as well...again, great for novice users, bad for experienced tech users. The activities and interactions I had were basically one long day at the spa (I had a hard time getting screen captures for this post because I had to switch computers to get There at all). Now I love the spa in real life, but if you can create anything in your imagination would you really create the dressing room at Barney's? I guess so, and There is proof of that. Again, I think this is a game my mother would love, it is very friendly to novice users, and I am given to understand that content is limited to a PG-13 rating and all uploads have to be approved before appearing in world. Could it be they have a significant user base in the bible belt?

Second life -- fresh off the boat

My online persona is a punk-rock chick. She is friendly when she's in a good mood, but can be a snarky bitch to keep people from getting too close. A large part of the inspiration for this was the avatar. I didn't want to spend a lot of time perfecting my look so I went with a ready-made. The clothes, hair, and general style of the avatar I picked said finicky musician girl to me, so I played up that attitude.



Interacting with other avatars has been interesting. Most have been really nice, though sometimes I walk into a conversation in the middle and I can't figure out how I walked into it or what it's about (this is done with local chat). I have a general feeling of being a just off the boat immigrant from a small rural place suddenly dumped in a large, bustling port town. I'm not sure how to introduce myself, who to talk to and whom to avoid, how to make deals with people, and what the social mores are. Basically this is virtual culture shock, which I find amazing. How will virtual worlds combined with globalization to change how people interact across timezones and cultures?



I also visited a shopping mall, but it seemed abandoned, and I wasn't sure how to buy things. I was surprised to find it too...I was flying around just looking at what's there when it popped up on the horizon.

Task communication

5. How are various tasks and goals communicated to you at the start of the game? How and why does this evolve as you gain more experience?



When you start the game you get a training task which is explained in a lot of detail, and very hard to fail (I've tried to play poorly and only lost two happiness points despite taking several blows from the cog). The start task does not require a lot of travel or navigation. Some tasks are communicated in textboxes that don't seem connected to other characters which breaks the game for me, but gives useful information.

In-game information

3. What other ways – other than text – are used to inform you about the world, how objects work, and your avatar's status?



Toon Town provides a lot of visual cues including the happiness meter, and arrows that point to specific locations as well as other toons. The most successful visual cue in my opinion has to do with emotions. When my toon loses a game I'm informed by it's dropping head. When I defeat a cog I know he's angry by the fact that he jumps up and down before exploding. This conveys information on an emotional level, which keeps me engaged in game. Reminders are frequently given at the beginning of the game and tips are also inserted at transition points but those go by too fast.

Which features break that immersive feeling?

The biggest problem I have in this area is the perspective. Having my avitar's head in the middle of my field of vision distracts me from the virtual world. I also got distracted when many toons were present in a space because the space became cluttered and navigating through the environment became difficult and frustrating.

escape in Mac?

The first issue I've found in playing Toon Town is that I can't get out!  Maybe this is because I've recently switched from PC to Mac, but I expect a full screen application to go away when I hit escape.  Toon Town doesn't, and I've had to click the "purchase" button to get it out of full screen mode.  Is there a better way to do this?

What happens if I want to pause the game, check email, and start right back up where I was?  Well I don't know, because this game doesn't make that possible.

Hello world

Hi there, this is a test of my DAI 627 blog.