Lots of info on Blue Mars
(Visited 8473 times) Game talk
Apr 152009
Not Possible IRL has a great interview about Blue Mars up, with tons of details on how they plan to work.
In a lot of ways Blue Mars looks like this generation’s try at the original There.com model, with some evolution. Themed zones based on corporate partners, lots of pro-only pathways for content but not UGC, pretty graphics and lots of friendly interface. It’s got great partnerships and visuals, so it’s worth keeping an eye on.
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If you can’t make stuff, what’s the point?
Second Life continues to thrive in large part due to an active and vibrant user-creator community. Choke that down by imposing a steep barrier to entry (Maya/3D Max), and you end up with an entire VW suffering the same fate as most of the ill-considered corporate ventures in SL, i.e. out-of-touch marketers flailing helplessly in a medium that they just don’t get and users staying away in droves.
The success stories in Second Life aren’t outside professionals taking the world by storm, it’s average users empowered by the built-in tools to do extraordinary things. The users don’t just have their fingers on the pulse of virtual society, they ARE the pulse.
Blue Mars feels like a huge step backwards. They’re going after the corporate bucks stymied by Second Life, but those corporations will find their builds even more deserted in a world that’s more concerned with sponsorship than with community.
Empower the user. We are the future of content development, and the “professionals” need to just give us some good tools and get the hell out of our way.
FTFA: “Teleportation to any place at any time is a mistake for a developer. It reduces the potential for the social fabric of a place.”
Bold statement. Seems like they want hardcore socializer worlds.
Blue Mars welcomes everyone as a content creator and we support some of the best content creation tools available, 3DSMax and Maya. We also support the COLLLADA exchange format and are working to add new import plug-ins to additional 3D packages, especially free ones. We understand the barrier to entry a commercial 3D package might present and want to open the door to as many people as possible. Just so there’s no confusion, everyone can participate as a content creator in Blue Mars. The process may be different than some other virtual worlds but the capability has always been there. The development environment is free and affordable hosting/land options will be available for individuals.
Themed zones don’t have to be based on corporate partners. Anyone can run their own region. I understand Yukon Sam’s point of view. “Empowering the user” is exactly what we’re doing. There are plenty of great tools out there for content creation and we’re creating a platform to share that content with the world.
Best Regards,
Jim Sink
VP Business Development | Avatar Reality
I had this covered a few weeks ago after seeing Blue Mars demo’d at the Engage!Expo in New York:
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2009/03/blue-moon.html
Look at the subsequent discussion as well.
Yukon Sam is right. The beauty of SL is that anyone can create at will, even at an amateur level. A requirement that you have to be able to use 3DSMax and Maya already filters out amateurs. The SL tools as wonky as people think they are in fact are far simpler that even dummies like me can learn them and make simple things to sell, and yet they are robust enough to support very professional content makers in businesses where they can make themselves a living wage.
Jim, when you say you “welcome everybody” that is technically true, and yet you do have an application process, and that person applying would have to demonstrate competence in making content. They’d have to already have the skills and the financing to have Maya or COLLADA or other packages to be using. That’s pretty different than SL, for sure!
I have to agree with that. DD&G plus good libraries are the way to grow. Even SL is harder and not really a mass consumer production site. It’s still caught in the vertex economy. I get it that professional content is necessary for the brand sites, but that is not a mass consumer tier.
Collada is not enough. It will be interesting to see what the new W3C working group for the Social Web comes up with.
alert(“hello”)
in 1993 almost everyone was an amatuer who then went on to use lightwave/3dmax/ and then maya for tv /film 3d world building ala animation…
but they did own their tools, or got them “free” from school buddies..lol
SL did offer the in world simple tools, very similar to swivel3d btw– part of the suite, lanier used with his vr data glove in 92… and yes, that enable the housewife shoe maker with craftyness to make a buck…
BUT living wages i still question, i exclude server flipping…real estate in a amway way-i know this gets prok pissed, but lets talk about WHY people need LAND in sl..–mainly to dispaly items for sale,(yes sexrooms too- but unless your a ecort its not for profit)…
but the hope for a real living wage ecommerce of digital assets IS key and important… and IF, the current insanity of the bubbles vestment systems is finally swarted, we will find that digital 3d item/world economies MAY create exaclty what FLASH did for 2d elements,it created a new profesional class…lol
same as the film camera did, and the printing press before it..
since on one cant eat.3D, or sleep under it, i still suggest the media is mainly an entertainment/communications platform, and while people dont usally pay to see a BAD movie, they also dont pay to talk to people they dont know on the phone..lol
MANY WILL BECOME A PRO at making these experiences BETTER and this is VALUEBLE and must be PAID for.
so to monetize, one must professionalize….even agricultural societies have professions within the tribe…
systems that attempt to keep everyone a surf…and im not sure SL isnt that:) will die as the shiny fades from the specular rendered water…
The right mix is there to be found…. though Jim, without the MAC port, youll find your job very very tough.:) been there .:)
c3
And the irony is that is also what makes parts of it look and run horribly…
I know a woman who sells hair in Second Life. She’s not one of the top creators; she makes enough to cover expenses, though, with a little left over, and she’s starting to attract some positive attention from the fashion blogosphere. She didn’t start out with the intention to be an entrepreneur; she simply wanted a hairstyle that she couldn’t find at any of the existing shops, so she decided to try her hand at making it for herself, and discovered that she had a flair for it.
If this user had been required to obtain a license or set up an offline SDK beforehand, I don’t think she would have done it. Her confidence grew as she experimented and learned. That’s something that I don’t see in the Blue Mars model (though perhaps it just hasn’t been revealed yet).
I honestly hope Blue Mars does very well, if for no better reason that it might rouse Linden Labs into bringing their ‘A’ game (alpha channel bug? After how many years? Hello?). But I had a front row seat when The Sims Online imploded, because Maxis couldn’t quite work out how to tap the biggest motherlode of user-generated content of ANY PC title. It’s not the only reason that particular world bit the dust, but it was a big enough factor that it shouldn’t be overlooked.
XSI Mod Tool will export to Cryengine2 formats and it has always been free.
So I wish people would quit complaining and go download it 🙂
The problem is not professional content vs amateur content. The problem is mixing them in the same virtual world.
The problem is not do we or don’t we own the tools. The problem is can we do with the tools available what we (me, thee or Ma and Pa) need to do.
DD&G tools online for mass consumers are not the same tools professionals use. They are a way to enable the DD&G consumer to create IN a professional environment. They are to 3D what professional loops are to musicians.
Consider that regardless of how one does it, the business problem for the browser/language/tools vendors in the mass consumer market is making sure what they provide produces content that plays without error if produced with their own tools much less Maya, etc. The assembler/scene artist isn’t building vertices and materials. They are just assembling them. If they have better chops, get in the developer program.
Interop across worlds seems to be fading as services across worlds seems to be gaining via third-party integration of YouTube and privately hosted content. IOW, 3D is exactly like any other web 2.0 portal in that respect.
>And the irony is that is also what makes parts of it look and run horribly…
It’s in the eye of the beholder. People want to be free to build their own tacky little shacks or put up terribly kitsch little prefabs. Leave them alone.
“The problem is not do we or don’t we own the tools.”
NO Len, that IS the problem.
Without control/ownership of yout tools and work product, youre are a serf.
Drag and Drop is fine. yadda yadda, but the myth of the amateur is just that, a myth. Youre myth that the desired media of tommorrow will be created by amateurs is just nuts. Even Americas Stupid Videos have been edited by pros for 25 years on TV.:)
Sunday painters/poets or musicians will do as thev’e done for centuries, tools /drag drop or whatever.. Prok will have her white fences:) all will be as it has been:)
But youre clarion call for new media producers/dancers/actors/ etc etc. will not be headed if they can perform “only” at the kings alone request.
The Globe Theater didn’t work that way… and neither did Hollywood or NY TV….they were all pay for the play buisnesses to be payed for by the many.
🙂
You can have the last word on it, C3. I’ve got a long day ahead plugged into a toxic drip and steroids so conversations become strange.
I did take the invitation to join Metaplace a few minutes ago. Kick ass graphics! Well-thought through introduction. The avatar build was smooth. I’ll have to test the building tools later tonight. Many thanks for the chance to look, listen and learn, Raph.
Tapping into the creativity of the masses is a concrete threat to the established media in many content-creation disciplines, and underlying their scorn and contempt for such efforts is the sharp scent of fear.
Because we know. We know there’s a community theatre in Fairbanks, Alaska that could knock the socks off most Broadway companies. We know there’s a woman in rural England with three chins, one eyebrow, and a voice so hauntingly beautiful that it would make pop divas throw themselves off a cliff in despair. We know there are graphic design geniuses working on a canvas of crumbling brick with spray cans under cover of night.
And we know some teenage kid with a second-hand PC, a pirated copy of Maya, and too much time on his hands can take a best-selling game and warp it into something new and wonderful.
Second Life is Sturgeon’s Law made manifest, but it is also a place where everybody has the opportunity to rise above the crap and shine. You don’t need a degree, capital investment, audition or portfolio; you don’t need an agent, manager, promoter, boss or any other form of pimp. All it takes is talent and effort. It’s what we were always told America was all about.
Going pro isn’t the end-all for most of these folks. Perhaps it’s just about getting in touch with a more balanced, less specialized human condition, in which hunters dance, gatherers make pottery, farmers fiddle and everybody raises their voices in song. We’re discovering once again that we’re perfectly capable of entertaining ourselves and each other. And if that leaves Madison Avenue and the venture capitalists scratching their heads, well, I’ve no doubt they’ll figure out how to profit from it. That’s their special talent.
Blue Mars has the potential to be a splendid platform for all this. I’ll be interested to see if and how they realize that potential.
Yukon,
The world already works this way. It dosent take Second Life to make “unknowns-known”. The false deconstruction of the real world, by many who create technincal expressions of virtual worlds, IS a major reason why most of these virtual reconstructions of “the world” fail.
Creative Professional is only a combination of commerce and experience. Both factors, when removed from the meta-vr laboratory experiments of the last few years, usually end up with still born “meedia world” technologies.;)
Just hear what i suggest Len;), it may become more evident I think Im sorry to say soon enough.;)
Yes, from what ive seen of Metaplace its a well designed presentation, no issues there, I just question the longer term effects on peoples value and the sustainability of service networks tied directly to tools/distribution/ and governance of real people, not game pieces(avatars).
Did anyone see the wired/cnet? article “Turn Google into a Game” ? This is not a trivial issue folks;)
I wish that were true. In rare, isolated instances, it is.
But I’ve seen too many dreamers ground into the dirt by the weight of “responsibility” and “practicality”, people with talent, vision and passion now wasting their days shuffling numbers from one column to another or performing even more menial tasks, because the gatekeepers deemed them unworthy. That’s assuming one has the means to even approach the gates — billions of people around the world lack even that.
Were judgement passed on the basis of talent alone, it might make sense in some crude Darwinian framework. But far too often, beneath the facile rationalizations, the sentence is “too old”, “too poor”, “too dark”, or “too female”.
A virtual sandbox such as Second Life or the Spore Creature Creator or Metaplace makes the gatekeepers superfluous. Who you are doesn’t matter. What you can do is everything. It’s just creator and audience, and the middlemen had better be looking at unloading the Malibu beach house.
To date, the platforms have been imperfect, the creative tools clunky, the techno-priests unresponsive and the users impatient. That’s changing, and it’s changing fast. We’re remembering that the media aren’t the art; the media are the just the tools that we use to create and share the art.
The peasants are revolting. And the ramparts of the old media infrastructure aren’t even slowing them down.
I agree, Yukon. What I am saying is where professional and amateur content have to be mixed together, DD&G works. We do need to level our approaches. I understand where Larry is coming from but it isn’t news to me. As I said, this is what loops are to musicians and without those, rap and hip hop wouldn’t exist. The value add in that content is the lyrics. It is the content layers being fed to these worlds that is increasing their reach, popularity and pop culture impact.
What has happened in music is we’ve been getting rid of one set of intermediaries and replacing them with another set of companies that we never see, only login and register for, the service vendors. They don’t rule our art but they do have a firm grip on our furries. It’s a better deal than the label system but it means we have to develop and polish our own talent, we don’t have that deep reservoir of marketing and sales and so on. Artists who believe as unfortunately some veterans weaned on the old system do that being close to the groundlings diminishes their star status are going to lose. We are sheepdogs now and need to get used to the high energy required to nip and tuck.
But on the other side of this, we will like the business better and unless I miss my guess, we are going to see an explosion in art like we saw in the 60s as the media of that day merged. We will see another reaggregationa with the suits taking over, but not for awhile. Enjoy the day while it lasts and “blast yourself all over the subway walls and tenement halls”.
Maybe I am too far from your business, but I think the web collapsed that space because it’s pretty easy to see the shape of it even from this swamp. The peasants aren’t revolting. They don’t have to. No one is in charge and if stirred up to fight the haystacks, they’ll just burn themselves our of the feed. Don’t fight. Code. Draw. Doodle. Do.
And don’t quit your day gig yet.
Don’t make the mistake, Larry, that I am an amateur. I am not trained for graphics, but I am a professional composer and a software VP because I put in my time and worked my way up. No free ride. The decision I made about where my time would go suited my conviction that ambition which robbed my family of my time was ultimately the stupidest sacrifice I could make. That time won’t come again and everything I produce except that will be forgotten before I am dead. Pick troubles wisely.
I never made any references to YOU, Len, the world is free to pay you for your expereinces and products;) I know who you are , 🙂 Ive read your posts for many years, and i also see the change in them in the last year.
But I suggest strongly that those you now believe have some “new insight” in providing these media/tools/offers are really just playing the same old song. Putting it bluntly and into your lingo, musician dude:)
And you really should have spent more/some time in SL over the last 2-3 years, your quest/postings to find/encourage those “new producers realities” would have more insight I believe.
Yukon, you may enjoy the 1960s revival that Len is nostalgic for;), but it will go as the first one with the new boss being the same as the old boss. eventually youll see that i think:)
And Len I also think that the “explosion of art” you speak of was really just an illusion, the first lesson of virtual reality is the “focus of the cameras attention”:) the second is — “OWN the camera..”
even rebels eventually learn that.:)
🙂
What is DD&G? I even googled it and got Dolce & Gabbana instead. 🙂
lol…
ooh ahh…fff fashion. as the song goes……and it really does again bring in the reality of “context” to all this metablog fodder.
Len means DRAG and DROP and Grab?..im pretty sure?.. the fact that “tools/service platforms” are being made finally in interactive 3d as interactive 2d- flash/director web apps had for a decade… hes referring now to the simplest of drag inventory to world features in the current bunch of 3d vr social worlds platforms……
alas a small number of tools with- drag drop for rt3d have been around for a decade, but they were eaten by “mac/pc ” issues, or “we only want flash” issues..
scene compositing, not object building methods…:) same ideas for both 2d tiles and 3d objects:)
Best quote of the day. There’s creativity out there that most people don’t know they have, until given the chance to unlock it. An incredible treasure, and I’m glad to see the opportunities expanding that let it happen.
cube, I don’t have any white picket fences. I never have. In fact, oddly enough, given all the land I own, I don’t even have a house in Second Life. I guess it’s because I’ve never understood why people would want to sit cramped in a dark box with a roof when there is no cold or rain and where you can fly. I tend to flit around from one hang out to another, and if I make any perch, it’s literally a tree or a giant cactus or some mountain or something because we’re avian creatures.
In fact, I notice few, if any, of my tenants that are inclined to kitsch have any white picket fences. In fact, you know where I just stumbled over a little fence and a kitschy plasticy garden made out of photo prims? In one of the Lindens’ showcased items called the Museum of Philosophy, which is supposed to be where all the highbrow cool kids go. Go know.
I advocate *freedom for* little white picket fences. And I repudiate the cultural condescension that always comes with hatred of little white picket fences. They’re ok!
I agree, Robin, that the charm of SL is the ability to rise out of nothing, Horatio Alger, the untapped genius. There are builders and designers in SL who worked as store clerks and drivers but then harnessed the simple tools (not Maya) within SL itself to make amazing things and rise to prominence.
But I still think that what freedom is about is not creating a path to meritocracy, it’s about me having the right to create even if you aren’t talented. Remember “What about the people with no talent?” That means making as tacky a seafood restaurant as I can and be happy in it, even though it doesn’t have much traffic, only a few friends or newbies flying by, but it just fulfills some need to create that will always be at a tacky level but will bring a sense of accomplishment.
For example, I feel inordinately proud of myself that I found an old Sims offline content site with perfect pink aluminum siding meant to fit the sims games, and using the Metaplace gadgets, uploaded that to make something like it in MP. It will be slow and stupid but I don’t, there is no substitute for that feeling of co-creation that the amateur can enjoy with a virtual world’s tools.
Prok,
I actually went to the museum of philosophy a day or so ago when it appeared as a TOP PLACE… yeah:) i was kinda bored by its design;) i guess its a top pick cuase it uses the word “philosophy” in its name?:)
I was teasing about “your” white picket fences.. but you often have in your blogs attacked the “designer” types for being too “designery”?.;) and expressed more appreciation for the “white fenced suburban” aspects of virtuality/visualizations expressed in SL…
yeah i dont own a “house” either in sl.. never did…no bathrooms needed for my curser inada, and he never sleeps either;)
Im for white fences for fence lovers too…;) but personally more interested in the “new” of new mediums to be explored, but im a designer type guy, but not too “designery;)” to ever condescend to anothers “likes” of styles…etc.etc.yadda yadda. freedom..yadda yadda
I also demand the rights of all to make lousy stuff…but when that stuff is designed to prevent/profit unfairly from my lack of control/ownership of my lousy stuff, thats where i get grumpy…;)
meritocracies are for creating editors, editors are for creating filters, filters are valueble for everyone. Freedom does and should allow for such paths but also for the checks and balances against them, when they are used unfairly.
Drag Drop and Go.
Is it the same old song?
Tools: I have lots of them. They are sound recording. What I have for 3D is motley collection of VRML/X3D editors. I use it precisely because I own them.
I recognize that the Vivaty and Metaplace markets are likely to become pay to build or deal. They are in the position of the early labels who controlled everything from talent to A&R to production to distribution. OTOH, like the myspace model, they are dependent on being service aggregators to people who’s primary art media is not 3D, for example, the musicians. These are not flush customers so their best deals are with the labels and to provide discovery room for the bands, soloists, theatre groups, churches, etc.
IOW, anyone needing a room to meet, discuss, listen, review, study, hang out. The social networks are a different set of services.
The sea change is not the graphics. That is the same old set of songs really, because we are looking at a bifurcation into sites using in-world tools which make construction easy but keep the product under control of the software vendor host. Without private label servers, this is 100 percent capture because they are the radio and the TV.
I should have spent more time in SL, I agree. I’ve only had lines and machine that could do that for a few months. In that time, Vivaty popped and their weather suits my clothes given skills, tools, and preferences about being able to keep my content out of their IP stack instead of inclusion by fiat of tool stack. I do get that.
I still think Metaplace is a very good piece of work and will succeed because there are a lot of people who prefer worlds with more to do in them. Raph’s game chops and understanding of 3DPsych do him credit.
Blue Mars and Sirikata will be as successful as Sony Home and Google Lively.
The real measure of success for a virtual world today is not to try to outdo Second Life. Nor is it to even care about how successful whatever gets rolled out is. The true measure of success is how much cash you got from investors and paid yourself till it all falls down and you go start the VC funding process all over agin for the next big thing that will implode.
Second Life is a success because anyone with a basic computer can connect and be a designer.
“Because we know. We know there’s a community theatre in Fairbanks, Alaska that could knock the socks off most Broadway companies. We know there’s a woman in rural England with three chins, one eyebrow, and a voice so hauntingly beautiful that it would make pop divas throw themselves off a cliff in despair. We know there are graphic design geniuses working on a canvas of crumbling brick with spray cans under cover of night.”
And because these people have no money you set the bar higher than 99% plus of the people on the internet can reach. OK. Makes sense.
It will be a little grid of geeks showing off kewl stuff to one another. Whatever. Call me when your developers can code something the average person can run and you really have UGC because what you call UGC is misleading. What Blue Mars offers is PGC. Partner Generated Content. And yes I don’t expect to be invited to the beta since I did not bow and scrape and lick your geeky designer sneakers.
Ive had over 100 plus 3d media tools/platforms since 1990..lol
I cant/have no reason use almost any of them today. Especially the ones which were by companies that thought they were the radio and the television, not the microphone and the camera providers.;)
and we did plenty of interactive web3drt music videos with B3D/ Def Jam in 2001;) Id love for you to all see them today— but that’s the problem;)
ann’s comment is sad;) but not quite incorrect..lol
anyhow…..
Bear in mind, all assets in MP are created outside of our IP stack too — there are no proprietary formats there. And assets can be trivially brought in from a number of sources. Even the scripting is done in a common, widely used language.
We humans tend to be terribly myopic about seeing the way that things have been our entire lives and projecting that forward to the way things will be. Even most of our science fiction shows people and societal assumptions from the here and now, only with more nifty gadgets.
It’s easy to see a cycle in artistic trends where an authentic groundswell of folk arts (both visual and performance) is co-opted, defanged and commercialized. Go forty years back from the sixties, and you see a similar dynamic in the twenties, with jazz and art deco instead of rock and pop-art.
Technology has made possible greater and greater aggregation of content under centralized control. Movable type to offset printing, wax cylinders to vinyl records to cds, theatre to film to video, all has progressed under the watchful eye of editors, directors, producers and publishers watching the bottom line.
But at the same time, there’s been a growing countercurrent also powered by technology. Hand-copying to mimeograph to photocopier, reel-to-reel to cassette to cd burner, home movies to home video, the tools for people to “roll their own” art, music and literature have become more available and sophisticated.
The rise of the web represents a profound convergence, the first time that the grassroots creators have access to the same distribution channel that the content aggregators are utilizing, with tools nearly as sophisticated.
Blue Mars (I seem to recall, vaguely, that we were discussing Blue Mars) seems to me to be an effort to impose some order on the chaotic creative muddle that produces the Second Life mainland. I’m not entirely opposed to that: it is somewhat dismaying when your neighbor decides to erect a gigantic cubic neon pink dance club next to your painstakingly-crafted, historically accurate medieval keep… which in turn is probably something of a trial to your other neighbor, the modest Victorian with that much-maligned white picket fence.
But it’s that sprawling, messy, discordant eyesore of a mainland that incubates everything that’s great about Second Life. And if a new virtual world doesn’t have something analogous, someplace where utter neophytes can just whip out some prims and start to teach themselves 3D design, I’m afaid that world is missing something crucial to nurturing and retaining a vibrant community.
And before I wrap up this meandering lecture, kudos to City of Heroes for opening up their mission design tools to the players. That’s what I’m talking about 🙂
“…if a new virtual world doesn’t have something analogous, someplace where utter neophytes can just whip out some prims and start to teach themselves 3D design, I’m afaid that world is missing something crucial to nurturing and retaining a vibrant community.”
No disagreement, but I note the handcrafted worlds with some judicious pruning or zoning looks better. Other than early VRML experiments at these, I’ve not had to build for a mainland somewhat in the way I don’t often co-write songs. It isn’t that it isn’t productive; it gets personal and that’s what a free building zone jostles against. The beauty of virual space is it’s only limited by servers and bandwidth, so there’s lots of room for more. The industry itch is compatible services.
Thanks for the update on the IP stack, Raph. It’s a good point to make. We really are in a quandary regards how to protect the content building investment and how much difference that makes to the success of any framework is reckoned in terms of the value of the asset over it’s lifetime and worlds in which it is used. The object economy is one layer. The assembly economy (think shrines, etc) is another and the licensing or natch changes because of the numbers and kinds of service suppliers for a given assembly (graphics, audio, assembly maker, label, etc.).
iTunes quickly evolved a middleman model for the independents. It has the charms of filtering but those charms led to the Dark Lords of the Labels who take most of the money and often for services that are not value add.
yukon, i agree with most of what your saying, but not sure about any “firsts”.. fire is a technology, so is the wheel, both have leveled much before;)….
were just seeing “digital” software media tools/ made cheaper/ubiquitous– the reality to any technology when market/scale effects take place.
case in point– too many “live musicians in the small town of sl”? and no new hamlets for them troubadors to yet move on too…;)
BLUE MARS NEEDS MUSICIANS>>lol but first they need to get them there.!.;)
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2009/04/live-music-downturn.html
I read Hamlet’s article with some interest, as my wife is an SL musician. Just to be contrary, let me throw out an untested hypothesis… the situation in Second Life is occuring not because there are too many musicians, but too few. Somebody who frequents the same club regularly might hear the same act in the same time slot for weeks or months on end. There’s likely some audience burnout happening, and it might help if club owners would shake up their lineup, swap musicians around with one another, and bring in some fresh blood.
The only support I have for my contrary hypothesis is the fact that some of my wife’s fans disappear for weeks or months, only to pop up again one night as if they’d never been away. Sometimes you want to forego the filet mignon and just grab a greasy burger, I guess 🙂
The issue may be deeper than that, but it’s hard to gauge on the basis of anecdotal evidence.
That’s a good blog link, Larry. Virtual space and meatspace share all the same problems except smell. I’m surprised anyone is surprised. We went through exactly the same things with the Cybertown concerts years ago.
But a VR gig is more like an MS gig than one expects because we work hard to mirror the meat. There is so much creatively one can do in a self-created world by using the 3D sound engine and real time sensors that don’t get done because of ‘performers’ driving the train over composers who work the media’s strengths.
Many A-list respectable performers don’t have much time for what SL offers. They are road critters. Once the broadband wi-fi is really ubiquitous and/or portable, it will be better for the a-listers who want to jam when on the road with other players on the road around the world. Those will be sessions worth setting up a tip jar for.
I think you all really overrate Second Life. For most of us non-designers, it isn’t a blip on the radar. I keep thinking of LambdaMOO when I hear people discuss it, or the WELL. Places where upscale netizens go to do their thing and get written up approvingly by Mondo 2000 or Wired while the real revolution is elsewhere, in xboxlive or wow.
You have to realize us end users don’t want to be able to create content. Creating content is not easy and is hard work for many of us, which is why we don’t make games or books or paint pictures ourselves. We like to be part of already-created experiences that are polished, which is why we flock to things like WoW or console games.
You guys are all rapturous about the potential for artists, but you should be more about the audience.
LOL
The REvolution will be Eaten!…
yeah, always was….mondo2000….lol i wonder how many of the new metas even remember it…lol
more burning men, never trust em:)
Anyone else drop in on the JJ trek in HOME press junket this morning?…it was..ah.. interesting, as spock would say:)
I’m just an end user myself. And as an end user, I love Second Life’s building tools and Spore’s creature creator and City of Heroes’ mission creator. Even if I never used them myself, they exponentially increase the amount of content available for me to enjoy. When you look at the sheer volume of missions, creatures, buildings, ships and other content being produced with these tools, you understand that making stuff is WILDLY popular, and not just with some sort of creative elite.
Second Life may not be a blip on your personal radar. But what’s happening in Second Life today is what’s going to be happening in WoW and on the Xbox tomorrow. Count on it.
And if Blue Mars wants to be more than a blip, they’d better be contemplating why Second Life is still growing while more “polished” virtual worlds without accessible creation tools have fallen flat.
People in the game modding communities are intensely creative people. Why do so many people believe that they are somehow “pros” and somehow “bad”?
Because anyone familiar with the game modding community would know they are mostly young amateurs who, sat down with the tools and learned them.
I see a lot of people stuck back in the year 2000 here. Wake up, its 2009, and there are free tools you can use to make content for 3d worlds based on pro game engines. Anyone trying to convince you otherwise is spreading a whole lot of FUD.
These are free:
Blender
Sketchup
XSi (the Mod Tool)
These are inexpensive (under 1k):
Modo (I <3 this one, its what I usually use)
Carrara
Sketchup Pro
I see people in their 60s and 70s using Sketchup, I believe its better than the Second Life tools for making models. It’s fun, its easy and its powerful.
And people who think some 60-70 year old making house models with Sketchup is a geek need to get their brain reexamined, srsly.
The fact that architects and other 3d pros can bring in their pro work into the same world as the amateurs on equal footing with tools such as ColladaCGF is not a problem for talented amateurs – I welcome them, too.
“And if Blue Mars wants to be more than a blip, they’d better be contemplating why Second Life is still growing while more “polished” virtual worlds without accessible creation tools have fallen flat.”
Well, considering that importing to Blue Mars isn’t any different than building for Crysis (same engine, duh) I suspect they don’t have a problem, no?
I read their materials and it looks very open to me. They have a registration system but anyone can register. If someone refuses to register for the free tools … well their loss I suppose… I registered, and I am an “amateur” really. That is, I make 3d stuff mostly for the sheer joy of it.
I didn’t go to some fancy school to learn it either. I am not a 20 something year old boy geek, … a woman entering middle age, actually!
And if I can do it, so can anyone else.
Hypatia, I think you are selling yourself short! No, not anyone else can learn how, it’s a fairly demanding skill and relatively uncommon (though becoming more common over time).
Blender is an interesting application. As I understand it (feel free to correct me), it was developed as an in-house tool before it was released into the public domain. As such, it’s “consumer grade” in the sense that it’s free, but it’s also powerful, complex and has a steep learning curve. I’m not exactly new to graphics apps, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of Blender without a detailed tutorial.
I haven’t tried any of the others, so I won’t comment on them. But I have seen modding evolve from individuals hacking encoded files, to companies providing simple editing tools for download, to the editing tools being distributed with the game disc. The logical next step, and one that’s being implemented in diverse worlds, is to integrate all the tools you need into the game or world itself, and structure it to accomodate mods as an integral part of the experience.
There are big challenges in all this: to make the tools intuitive enough for a wide audience, to make them powerful enough for power users, and to prevent your online world from being overrun by 8-foot anthropomorphic penis-creatures. Challenges are what keep developers from getting bored 🙂
I’m picking on Blue Mars a little bit because it looks very, very interesting in a number of other respects. And maybe it’ll hit big without an integrated toolkit; I’m not much of a prognosticator. But I think whatever splash it makes, it would be bigger and generate more buzz with an well-designed, integrated tool suite. And while it’s probably to late to launch with such, it’s something to keep in mind for the future.
A lot has been said about Blue Mars and their attempt to create a more advanced virtual world. It is hard to predict what will happen with it, by offering developers to create and sell content they avoid the cost of having to invest into content creation themselves, on the other hand, when dealing with advanced 3D contact produced by applications such as 3DSMax or Maya the developer in question needs to be trained at the use of these programs which most Second Life content creators aren’t for example. So 1 dollar shoes will not work (until the market gets flooded of course).
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[…] is a not-all-that interesting post Lots of info on Blue Mars that has lots of really interesting comments posted. Check it out for more on what people think of […]