Style and attitude for Second Life Bad girls and bad guys Issue 19 - June/July 2009
Bankrupt?
Second Life and the world crisis
index
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Editorial Happy Happenings Interview — Zonja Capalini At the edge of the abyss? Age verification makes the crisis worst? AD Comments - Your problems are over! AD Choices - Unbelievable Places AD Choices - Gallery Bad Girl Good Guy nd con stu Fashion — Back to the future mad o Fashion — Cat people Profile — Nando Yip s The avatars also cry Linden Lag
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The cover issue is inspired by the poster of “Life stinks” (MGM, 1991) a movie where a big businessman lives a homeless life in a kind of topsy-turvy second life. It goes all with crisis.
Issue 19 - June/July 2009
Chief Editor: Alyne Dagger Fashion Editor: Lucrecia Slade Art Direction: Alyne Dagger and Lucrecia Slade Photos: Alyne Dagger and Lucrecia Slade (except where credited) Comercial Department: Marcello Winston Staff: Graphic Design: Alessa Glas Translation: Roddrigo Rossini
116 Lisbe Mastro viraram a união Sempre elas e c o Second N
BG Magazine is independent and it does not publish conflicting opinions with the ideal of the magazine nor even for all Lindens in the world. When we speak well, we are good. When we speak ill of, we are the best!
Site: www.bgmagazine.com.br Group: Bad girls go everywhere Flickr: A Lucrecia that is not Borgia
http://www.flickr.com/photos/16115209@N06/ Mas é im
Hio Tarin ga e M aitreya pos í G
Alyne Dagger
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alynedagger/
Editorial To save photos, we’ve decided “to make on hands” our picture of the month – you know how it is, the crisis… lie. I wanted to draw our avatars and that was a nice excuse! “And the crisis, huh?” How many times do you heard about it in the last months? And has it stalked you even in the SL? What boring, doesn’t? But don’t worry, despite the editorial page is “in the red” this is a very optimistic issue. We’ve analyzed the said one and had saw that the booger is ugly, but it isn’t impossible to be beaten. See on the cover matter what we’ve concluded about it. And, in general, a premiere: we’ve decided to make a photonovel. It isn’t a new idea at all – the first ones date from the 1950 decade, but it’s another way to make fun and to laugh about this crazy thing called Second Life, which a lot of people have been taken too serious. As this is our motto, this month laugh with us about the crisis before that laughs about you! Big kiss and have fun!
Aline Dagger Editor and “über cute”
Crisis? Let them eat brioche, a certain French queen would says. But, nowadays, it’s possible to you eat brioche if you have your head at its place and to know how to manage your inventory. Even with crisis it’s possible to well dress, matching very hype freebies – and nekos are very hype – and what you have in your inventory to be recycled. Then you can invest in that stylish piece, which can be find, by the way, in the island Gloom!, which had opened with glamour, circumstance and a tremendous party which has attracted the fashion world. See in our section Happy Happenings. Also it’s in Gloom! the new magazine Lounge, with an exposition center and a sympathetic hanging garden, where you are welcome by tea and donuts. I promise to arrange brioches as soon as possible! Kisses and c’mon, c’mon! =^.^=
Lucrecia Slade Fashion editor and neko-chan
Happy Happenings
Photos: Weber Yiyuan
Three partners. An island. An innovative fashion experience. Azu Catteneo, Kromus Korobase and Studio Red had made a remarkable party, full of beautiful, chic, happy people in the Gloom! opening party. Rooooooooooock!
atillas Joszpe
Sally Yachvili
Nando Yip
The party organized by Studio Red has counted with SLebs representing the fashion world, like KMADD, BOSL, Alphamale owners, artists, performers, models, jet-setters, besides the island partners: Nando Yip, CheerNo Destiny and atillas Jozspe, known by the endeavoring, good taste and works excellence.
Beautiful, anonymous or not, and fun people – we’ve selected some inspired and interesting looks.
Bad GirlsÊinterviewÊ/ Zonja Capalini
Herald of Digital Freedom
Photos: Zonja Capalini
Intense and passionate in every project she’s got herself involved, ZONJA CAPALINI was a mix between muse and investor of the Metaverse when the Openspaces crisis blew up in 2008. Revolted, she’s began to try to revert the price policy through mobilization and protest, but seeing that Linden Lab doesn’t worry with the investors and residents like her, she went to the fight and had searched for solutions for her business in other metaverses, before to begin her own grid, using the OpenSim as a tool. She tell us with exclusivity how was this painful process which can have opened horizons and frontiers for the age of the free metaverses.
BG Magazine: How
did you come to SL and what you did in your first SL year?
Zonja Capalini: I
was captured, as many other people were, by the hype about Second Life at the end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007. I first created an avatar in december of 2006, but I had some difficulties with it and did never log in. Zonja first rezzed on february the first, 2007. It was a pure adventure. Complete immersion from the first second. At the time the process was more complicated than it is today, and it was almost not localized. I spent several days at Orientation Island, then Help Island, until I found a way to get to the mainland. I first teleported into a germanspeaking infohub (all europeans seemed to be Zonja, the noobie
routed to that hub at the moment), and started to socialize. I was feeling awkward, was very shy, and besides I didn’t control my avie properly, I was crashing against all the walls I found, flying unexpectedly, etc. -- as everybody else. I had the impression to have landed in the recovery area of a hospital specialized in brain injuries :-) One of my main customers is a company dedicated, amongst other things, to education. I saw that LL was announcing voice in SL, and I thought that creating a campus for that company in SL could be a great way to allow them to have students from all over the world. I talked to the executives of the company and showed them SL, and they agreed that it looked as an interesting platform to evaluate. So that from the beginning my SL experience was dual: on the one hand I was living my own second life, experiencing the universe as a “resident”; on the other hand, I was learning to master SL as a technological platform. From the experiential side my life was as everybody else’s. I slowly learned how to customize my avatar (I remember believing that my avie was very pretty when I was a noob (beside) to buy skins, hair, prim skirts, prim shoes... I met people, made several friends, was
invited to dance and to explore, and in general socialized a lot. It was extremely fun! From the business side I learnt how to build, where to buy textures, how to script, etc. I bought my first parcel at Aglaia (a sim that does no longer exist), and my RL friend Ludmilla Writer soon bought a parcel there too. I was using my immersive life as a way to learn about the platform too.
BG Magazine: Why
did it became so important to have a state for you? And how did the Condensation archipelago grow up? Zonja Capalini: One
day the owner of Aglaia, the sim I was living in, suddenly decided that he’d be leaving SL, and sold all his sims to a new owner. All the tenants were given a deadline to leave; we lost the setup fee, and we became homeless. I realized I could not have a stable place for my experiments and my creations unless I was the owner of my own sim. The same was true of the company I was working for, of course. So my company bought a sim, and I bought another one, Condensation Land. In SL, if you want to be able to control your experience, you have to own a full sim (which is far too expensive by the way): if you’re in the mainland,
you’re subject to griefing, and you can’t be sure that your neighbours won’t create a really ugly building, or open a freebie shop, etc., so that your experience will degrade horribly. And if you rent space in a private estate, you are subjected to the arbitrariness of the sim owner, without an effective way to complain if you are mistreated or plainly scammed. To be able to finance Condensation Land I started by sharing it with my Friend Ludmilla and some refugees from Aglaia, then rented some land to several people I had come to know in SL. At the time I was a Second Life evangelist, so that I brought several friends from RL too and convinced them to rent a plot of land in Condensation. When Condensation Land was almost selfsustaining, I bought Condensation Beach, another full sim, and started to rent some plots there too. Then the Lindens announced that you could get openspaces in a number lower than four (https:// blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/ blog/2008/03/08/announcing-changes-to-theopenspace-product), and that you could place them anywhere. And shortly they lowered the price(https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/ features/blog/2008/04/10/details-on-the-q2 2008-
First version of Condensation SIM; february, 2008
island-price-change] to be prim-equivalent to a normal sim: a normal sim allowed up to 15,000 prims and costed US$ 295, and an Openspace allowed 15,000/4 = 3750 prims and costed US$ 300/4 = US$ 75. That seemed very fair, and allowed you to terraform more beautifully, avoiding the crowded landscapes you found in most of Second Life. So that I decided to keep Condensation Land as a full sim and move the rest of the archipielago to openspaces.
I ďŹ rst ordered the Condensation South openspace, and moved some of my tenants there. Then we had a long talk with Ludmilla and we agreed that she’d be getting her own Openspace too. The problem was that her parcel was in Condensation Beach, which was a full sim, and at the time converting a full sim to four openspaces was taking a lot of time, because the new Openspace product was extremely successful and the ticket queues were
collapsed; Ludmilla was a very active resident at the time, and she could not stay homeless for an extended period of time, so that I bought the Condensation SouthWest openspace, cloned the terrain from Condensation Beach, and moved all of Ludmilla’s stuff to Condensation SouthWest in preparation for the conversion of Condensation Beach into four Openspaces. This conversion took a lot of time to effect, and during this time the landscape in Condensation was awful, to the point that some of my tenants left, but finally we got four new sims: one was Condensation Beach itself (zilched in the conversion process, which is ridiculous btw), another was Condensation North, and the other two I sold in the open market. Then I re-cloned back the terrain from Condensation SouthWest to Condensation Beach, moved all of Ludmilla’s stuff from SW to Beach, terraformed SW and N, and offered to my remaining tenants to migrate to ampler, more beautifully terraformed parcels in these openspaces. Then the openspace crisis started [https:// blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/ blog/2008/10/28/openspace-pricing-andpolicy-changes].
BG Magazine: How
was your reaction when the Openspaces crisis came? Did you believe you could make change or start a movement to change the Linden Lab price policies? Zonja Capalini: Well
I joined the protests actively [http://www.flickr.com/photos/zonja/2985584883/ in/set-72157608631138523/]. The outrage was immense. It had taken us months of time, a lot of money, and a lot of hours of hard work to migrate to the openspaces. The announcements came approximately one month after we had been able to do our inauguration party [http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm0cN3DwMFI]. I simply could not believe what was happening. The Lindens were increasing the fees by a 66% just six months after announcing the Openspace product, and, to add insult to the injury, we were being called abusers! The notion that one can abuse a program is simply ludicrous: think about “abusing Excel”, for example -- it sounds ridiculous because it is ridiculous. The Lindens were treating us as retarded children. They were calling us “abusers”, when clearly they were the ones abusing us, making use of the fact that at the moment there seemed to be no clear alternative to Second Life. If there had been a clear competitor they would have never dared to take such a step.
When you understood they would not come back, you started a migration. How was the process? BG Magazine:
Zonja Capalini: It
was a very, very bitter experience. Till the openspace fiasco I was a strong believer in Second Life, and a big evangelist, I had brought several companies into SL and a lot of RL friends too. Now the Lindens had made me look as a stupid fool by convincing enterprises and friends to make business with a company,
Linden Lab, which proved to be unreliable, to have a maddening and erratic price policy, and to be completely out of contact with their user base. My first reaction was to open an account in Open Life. At the moment many people were doing the same, going to Open Life was an illuminating experience because you’d find huge crowds of frightened Second Life emigrees. I prefer not to reproduce here literally was being said about
the Lindens in Open Life at the time. Everybody was explaining their personal drama, telling how much money they had lost due to the price raise, and swearing they’d not trust Linden Lab anymore, never. I bought a private cluster of four sims in Open Life (right) to get some experience in the new world, I cloned the terrain from SL, and I started to migrate stuff using Second Inventory. I learned a lot in the process, but at the same time I realized that Open Life was not the place to be: there was no serious company behind (indeed most of the time it looked like a oneperson project), scripts behaved erratically when they worked at all, and, above all, you were substituting the Lindens by the Openlifes, which was no improvement at all (indeed it was worse because of the above: there was no real company behind, etc). I tried Legend City Online too, but it was performing so poorly that after some few attempts I stoped caring. And finally I also tried OSGrid, but OSGrid is not intended to be a stable grid, but as an experimental grid for technical pioneers. Since both Open Life, LCO and OSGrid were based on Opensim, I decided to give it a try myself. I downloaded Opensim and MySQL and
installed my first Opensim. Here’s a blog article I wrote about it: http://zonjacapalini.wordpress. com/2009/01/03/installing-opensim-in-windowsxp-with-mysql/ I discovered that Opensim is a charm to work with! You can make a backup of your database and some few control files, and clone your micro-world anywhere else, avatars, inventory, terrain, scripts, objects, everything! After having lost inventory in Second Life (not to speak of Open Life too), feeling that you can always go back and recover inventory or assets if you need it is really invaluable. Besides, Justin Clark-Casey, a core Opensim developer, was developing a very nice tool to zip a whole
What’s the main differences between SL Grid and Opensim grid? What’s the cool things and the ones to be improved?
BG Magazine:
Zonja Capalini: Well
indeed there’s no such thing as an Opensim grid. Opensim is a program, a 3D application server, in the same way that Apache is a 2D application server; you get your web pages from Apache (or some other server brand), and you get your 3D spaces from Opensim.
Condensation replicated in another grid: victory.
region to what’s called an “Opensim Archive” -- you can pack a region, terrain and all objects, into a relatively small .oar file, and unpack it in the same or in another world! Once you get used to regularly backing up your stuff, you realize that your property in Second Life is sequestered! You paid for it, but you can’t take it with you elsewhere, so you are in fact bound to continue using Second Life if you want to make use of it. After quite a lot of work, I completed the migration of the Condensation Land archipielago to Opensim, and abandoned all the sims in Second Life except the Condensation Land sim itself. The process is described in detail here: http://zonjacapalini.wordpress.com/2009/04/30/ the-openspace-fiasco-six-months-later/
Then using Opensim you can build grids, or host your own sim and join it to a preexisting grid, like OSGrid, for example. I opted by creating my own grid -- I thought I would learn more this way, and, above all, I wanted to have full control over my inventory, my objects, etc. To me the coolest thing about Opensim is that you’re the grid owner. This means that you decide who’s to have an avatar there, you can use arbitrary names for the avatars, and, above all, you are in full control of your grid. You can backup the database where mostly everything is stored and recreate your grid somewhere else: no more inventory loss. You can create a full backup of a region and clone it in some other grid or give it to somebody else. You can make a full backup of your inventory and clone
Recriation: Zonja works her Hypergrid
it in somebody else’s grid (that’s experimental at this time). And you can decide whether you run your grid as an isolated walled garden or whether you want to open it to the hypergrid, so that effectively you’re participating in a worldwide federation of grids, the Opensim metaverse. Another cool thing about Opensim is that you have easy access to the developers and to a
lot of very helpful people. You can post your questions to opensim-users[https://lists.berlios. de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-users] or opensimdev [http://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/ opensim-dev], and there’s a big possibility that somebody will quickly answer your question. I’d call that a really excellent support. And in case you need a particular feature, you can offer to
Hypergrid Condensation
pay for it and find somebody who’ll implement it for you. Compare that to Second Life, which is extremely stagnant as a software platform: since the latest big changes (i.e, voice, Windlight, Havok 4 and Mono) they have added absolutely nothing to Second Life.
somewhat strong technical background, if you want to do serious things with it. But anyway some of the latest releases are quite stable; indeed, if you take care to build things carefully, being in Opensim feels no different from being in Second Life.
The not so cool thing about Opensim is that it’s an alpha product, and therefore you can’t expect it to be as stable as Second Life is. And at the moment it’s a product for people with a
But the real challenge for the Opensim grids is how to get access to quality content. At the moment you can find tons of freebies in many places, including Second Life, and some of
these freebies (i.e., the ones that are full perms) you can move to Opensim. Most freebies are garbage, but some are not, so that if you’re careful you can get a pretty decent collection of stuff into Opensim. The problem with this approach is that it is extremely time-consuming, you have to be very careful and systematic if you want to avoid ending with an inventory which is a completely unusable mess, and not everybody has the time, the patience and the meticulousity to spend a lot of hours making this migration. My guess is that the first quality merchants that find a way to sell their stuff in Opensim will make a lot of money. I wouldn’t have cared to pay again for my favourite stuff if I had known that this time it would be really mine. BG Magazine: You
still have a full sim in world. Why didn’t you leave completely Second Life after disappointment with Linden Lab policies? Zonja Capalini: Second
Life is still very interesting as a place. Nowadays, the biggest problem of Second Life are the Lindens :-) You can’t set up a world, tell people to create it, and then manage it as if it was yours. I’m from the time where the slogan was “A world created and owned by its residents”. Well, I took that very seriously :-) Second Life is still the place to be if you want to shop, party and socialize. But Opensim is
growing and bettering very fast, so that this might change sooner than most people expect. BG Magazine: Do
you believe that other virtual worlds can someday be bigger than Second Life? Do you believe we can someday use an avatar in more than one world?
Zonja Capalini: Second
Life is based in a model which cannot scale properly -- not because of technological problems, which can in principle be overcome (although I have serious doubts that Linden Lab can effectively manage it), but because in the end it’s a model which is absurd. Think about the web: you can choose to host your web anywhere, including at home if you don’t have a lot of traffic. There are huge webs which get millions of hits a day and have access to huge bandwidth, and small, home based webs used by small communities, or even families. If somebody suggested to create a single, all-encompassing web where all the pages in the world would be hosted, you’d call her a fool. The same is true of the metaverse. The idea that there should be a single provider for the metaverse is absurd. Still another comparison: back in the 80s, there was a big network called BITNET that offered a lot of the services we’re nowadays used to: it had email, a form of IM, file transfer,
Zonja at Hypergrid metaverse: new life
and some primitive forms of file servers (the predecessors of the WWW). This network died and was substituted by the Internet not because of the technology, but because it was centrally administered. When a new node joined the network, the network administrator had to compile huge routing tables, which were customized for each node, and each node administrator had to install the updated routing tables. Of course, most node administrators were lazy or incompetent,
the tables did not get installed, traffic was lost, etc. The internet won because it does not have a central authority and because it autoconfigures. The same is true of the metaverse: people want freedom, not to have to submit a ticket and wait an undetermined number of days to have the simplest of tasks done. People want freedom, not to be told what to do at their own homes. People want freedom to choose how they will use their sims; if they want to place 30000 prims in a region and have only three concurrent visitors, that’s their choice. They don’t want to be imposed arbitrary prim limits, as they don’t want to be charged for a 100 avatar capacity sim when they will never get more than 20 persons in their island. Regarding your question about using the same avatar in different worlds, you can already do that right now using Opensim. There exists a mechanism called “hypergrid” [http:// opensimulator.org/wiki/Hypergrid] by which you can teleport between worlds, keeping all your inventory. This or a similar technology is clearly be the future for the metarevse. Here are some blog articles I wrote about hypergrid: http://zonjacapalini.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/ hypergrid-or-how-to-teleport-between-worldsusing-opensim/
http://zonjacapalini.wordpress.com/2009/02/08/ dynamic-hypergrid-links-the-new-metaverse/ http://zonjacapalini.wordpress.com/2009/06/10/ grider-prototypying-the-next-generationhypergrid/ and here’s a video showing an hypergrid travel from OSGrid to my own grid, the Condensation Land grid:http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=UIikPdQBsoI&feature=channel_ page BG Magazine: Do
you still have plans and projects for Second Life or do you believe it is better migrate to other worlds forever?
Zonja Capalini: Well
we have already migrated to the hypergrided Opensim metaverse :-) I have no plans for Second Life at the moment, and I doubt I’ll have them in the future. Second Life is technologically stagnant, run in a very unprofessional way, you’re subject to arbitrary price changes, and the content you buy is really not yours, because you can’t take it with you. In Opensim there’s very quick technical change and evolution, you can run it yourself, it’s much much cheaper, and you own what you create and what you acquire. Second Life is a nice place to shop and go dancing. For serious projects and for the enterprise, Opensim is the tool of choice.
SL Zonja: Now, only for socialyze
Capa Crisis Cri.sis n. (Gr krisis) 1. Medicine/Medical; the point in the course of a serious disease at which a decisive change occurs, leading either to recovery or to death. 2. Medicine/Medical; Sudden change, usually to recovery, in the course of a chronic disease. 3. Critical or decisive moment. 4. Tormenting situation. 5. ďŹ gurative; Dangerous juncture, abnormal and serious situation. 6. Serious, decisive moment. 7. Political; Situation of a government which faces a series of difďŹ culties to keep itself on power. C. for nerves: nervous breakdown. C. for work: complication or embarrassment on social relations regarding from a lack of services in which the low classes are employed
At the edge of the abyss? A million of Lindens is nothing more like it used to be... Text and art : Alyne Dagger
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Copyright: NY Times
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1. It happened between 1923 and 1929: excited by a record production, several small stakeholders had decided to apply their money on the New York Stock Exchange, in that time its assets were concentrated on industrial and farming production. Upstarts were made every week, they have become celebrities. This sentence is from that time: “A million of dollars is nothing more like it used to be...” 2. It happened on October 23, 1929: The American overproduction has began to suffocate itself: Producing every more, the profits has turned every less, because the offer was bigger than the demand…but these profits had been reinvested on production,
Copyright: Maine University
which was giving every more less profit, in a vicious circle. Trying to recover the investment, the brokers had started to draw the money out of the stock massively… the stock has broke, on a day known as “Black Tuesday”. 3. It happened between 2005 and 2008: The Second Life has released its economic system and the Linden Dollar circulation. On the first years, the Metaverse has expanded itself in a geometrical progression, new islands and mainlands appearing every day. In 2006, an avatar was the cover of the Businessweek, the famous Anshee Chung, who was made 1 million real dollars in SL. An authentically gold rush has brought a lot of people, including Brazilian, to Second Life.
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Foto: Anshee Chung
4. It happened in 2009: after years of growth, suddenly Second Life has suffered a downturn in several activities, most notice on the commerce of virtual estates. Many avatars have abandoned the metaverse, mainly those who has seen on it an easy way of profit. Part of the media has pronounced the death of SL. In Brazil, the Kaizen Games, a franchiser of SL, has announced an auction of all its properties and, finally, silent draw itself out of the scene. Speculation: what has made this crisis? Well done, we have introduced. Economics, as everybody knows, is a matter which is really boring for the simple mortals. There are almost two years since BG has talked about it; and we have talked about it on the summit of
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the euphoria on SL-Brazil. A sea of things has happened since then and two crises, a RL one and a SL one have changed everything regarding to virtual economy. It is not possible to ignore the elephant in the parlor anymore: every single day is harder to get profit in SL, especially real profit. We have started this article talking about the great depression in 1929 but not about the recent financial crisis because the naivety that leads to the critical situation on the early 30’s has more in common with the recent crisis on SL than the crisis on the change that marks the end of the Bush’s era. And yes, the crisis in SL would occur even if we were flying on a chocolate fudge sky on the RL economy, nevertheless would be probably less serious.
To begin with, the celebrity Anshee Chung, by instance, is in a risk to not ever have seen the color of that million in real terms. Two factors contribute to it: firstly, the linden change has an official limit to buy and to sell on the Linden Lab site: US$ 2500.00. If in that time Anshee had decided to draw herself out of the business, it will take more than three years, through the official site, to sell all her lindens, once she should to obey the monthly limit. But of course, if this equity (close watched by the American tax authorities) would be changed in a non-official way she could easily sell her lindens through paypal. The problem is that, even selling with some premium, she hardly would get to gather the so spoken amount, because one million dollars was, in fact, the avatar equity, which gathers not only its lindens, but also its properties (had the tiers already discounted), which were located, mainly, on the mainlands, which, from 2006 onwards, had suffer a great devaluation process. After the Businessweek news and a documentary on CBS, the Chinese naturalized German has started to avoid the RL and SL media and nowadays announces on the SL main page the rent of full islands in a very low cost, probably to recover her finances.
Let’s head back to the year 2006. Second Life was not what it is today, there were casinos, and they were everywhere, banks, and they used to offer profits around 40% per year on the invested amount and besides that, a 512sqm land on a mainland was priced on more or less L$15,000. There were less people making clothing, skins and textures – smaller offer, bigger price; there were no comments about copybot and the media adulated the Philip Rosendale (Linden) creation as a great revolution on Internet. Outside, the American economy has started to breathe hard... but few analysts had thought that the crisis would be like that. The profile of the Second Life user, in that time, varied from the curious geek who wanted to see “what’s all about” to the subject with some money to spend who has seen the metaverse as a way to multiply this thing, passing by people with some background on textures creation for 3D models and by the curious people on virtual sex. It was another metaverse, quite different from the current one. As today, most of the people were free users, but the curiosity for the environment was bigger, as the hope to make real money. I was in this background that appears the first actor on the first act of the economy crack on the metaverse: the speculator.
In 2006 was common to see users get into SL without a penny, camping to gather some and running to a casino and trying to multiply it. Casinos used to follow the same system as a regular real casino, slot machines, video poker, etc, they used to hold around 90% from the gambler’s money. It was a prosperous and strong sector on SL, but it creates a series of criticisms, because they were games of chance in which the percentage of winning was the minimum. In face of a polemic, Linden Lab had forbidden the casinos in July 26, 2007, in an act that many people had said would crash SL. But that was not a serious shake, because for the habitual players, had left the zyngo machines and places like Parrothead Cove, where people can play DMC (Devil May Care), games that, for a slightest programming difference, are not considered “by chance”, although they involve bets on money. For many, the casinos prohibition had marked the beginning of the “SL decadency”, but the truth is that the real shake was about to come, because the speculator who bets on casinos can not be compared to those who really lost money in SL: those who had invested on banks and lands.
photo: io9.com
The virtual banks were, in a kind of way, the real crisis precursors that had got real money from Second Life: unlikely real banks, which finance their activities through loans and investments, those from SL had used money from the contributors in high risk applications in RL without proper support – they lived on take money and invest, they does not have any capital and does not have any external regulation.
On the pre-crisis scenario, when the applications has begun to yield less, users had ran to the counter of the SL most known bank in activity then, the Ginko Financial, and, as the 1929 crisis, they had provoked the institution crack - which, as we have told, did not had any capital for its own. This hard hit had caused a loss, it is speculated, of more than US$700,000. Nothing compared to a crack on the RL financial market, but a great loss for each avatar that can not get back in time what they had invested. As in other cases, the Second Life image had been shook and the Linden Lab had run to solve the problem in the way that it believes fairer: unable to regulate these activities, the company has banned the banks from Second Life. Protected by the terms of service, the agreement which everyone signs to register an avatar, where Linden has never talked about to pay for anyone loss. Period. Second Life has moved on, with his economy been sustained by other products and services offered by residents. That was a crisis with room on RL media, with real loss, and motivated, yes, by external causes. But the great credibility crisis would be motivated by a product that starts to be offered in March, 2008: the openspaces.
Since the beginning, the millstone and financial support of SL comes from what Linden charges from residents that own lands. The tiers, maintenance fees, pay the servers that host the Second Life lands and sustain the Linden Lab itself, producing much more revenue that the selling and negotiation of lindens. Until the mid of 2007, own any piece of land in SL, if it was on mainlands (continents) or on estates (islands) was a guarantee, sooner or later, to gain that money back, because the land commerce was a good deal. There were people wanting land, the demand was great. Betting on it, Linden Lab had released a new product, called “openspace”, an island as big as an estate, but having ¼ of prims. Those islands were cheaper and their tiers were US$75, against the US$195 for a full island. The new product was an instantaneous success. People who wanted to have an island but does not have conditions to pay the correspondent tier for a 15,000 prims region had bought their openspaces in a rush. Stores had moved their headquarters to openspaces. Condominiums had converted their full islands in 4 openspaces (it was possible). But every coin has two faces. As the “open” was a big success, lots of lands on mainlands were offered, decreasing their
prices. Some not so ethical users had filled their openspaces up with rezzboxes, dishonestly raising the prims numbers, and others, more creative, had magnificently built, saving prims, and, in a few months, the metaverse had grown a lot moved by the selling of this product. The party has last until September, 2008. The problem is that, suddenly, Linden Lab realized that growth was suffocating its most interesting product, mainlands and estates. The openspace real problem is that every prim on an openspace has a more expensive cost, due to the room occupied by it on the server. A more expensive prim, results on a product, obviously, less profitable. Maybe after intense debates among worried executives, the stated solution was an increase on the openspaces from US$75 to US$125. The great stupidity on this statement is that was made in a disastrous way, telling that users were “abusing” on the use of openspace using all the resources and creating lag. A lie, in fact. If someone has an island with 3,500 prims, this person believes that can use all these prims and place on it so many avatars as can be done on a full island, but that was not possible, which was not told in any moment as soon as the product was released.
The shouting that this increase has made was not predicted as well, what was naivety, and practically stupidity, by Linden Lab. No one will accept an increase alongside an abuse accusation with their mouths shut. And the company has tried to fix it, firstly splitting the old opens in two categories, openspaces and homesteads, which the difference is, basically, the prims amount and the limits for use of scripts and avatars teleport, besides an attempt to make the product raises little by little, from US$75 to US$95 in January and, supposedly, to the new whole price of US$125 in July. But not even this has happened, because all measures were not able to avoid the massively return of openspaces/homesteads. As Zonja Capalini details, our interviewee of the month and former state owner, the great loss of the case was the deep scratch on the Linden Lab’s image among its users. Such credibility crisis is the exit engine for many avatars to get out from Second Life itself. And that has born, raised and keep going because of a project failure and successive wrong attempts to solve it. The best solution would be, for Linden Lab and for users, to discontinue the offers for new openspaces on the time when the problem was detected, maybe applying limitations on the already existent ones do not increasing the tiers.
Would not be the first company to discontinue a product, and it would not create more than a grief by those who could bought but did not. It looks simple. And it is. Usually, the more complicated problems are those which solutions are easier. Aside, there is a common sensation among storeowners and creators that the economy in Second Life is decreasing and the profits from products are lesser. Some blame freebies, others the copybots, and there are those who think that is the competition that had increased, the crisis that made people to spent less… and all them are right. Products and services on SL are offered by residents, and consumed by them. It is a fact that consumers intend to look which is cheaper and it is also a fact that the offer of a cheaper product is increasing, then it becomes more difficult to charge more and to think that will sell. Read the article from Lucrecia about solutions that the creators are looking for to promote their stores. The copybots question is more complicated and hard solution, because it is a fact that lots of people think the SL is a “lie” and the piracy here is “not that serious”. But, paradoxically, there are creators who face the piracy on SL more seriously than the real piracy: there are not a few who create for Second Life using pirate software… then, the best thing is still to invest on
the user awareness, not hoping the whole world will cease to use illegal products. About the competition, it is a fact, it has increased. There are more people creating, more people endeavoring, more people making skins, hairs, clothing, sculpts, poses. It is a sign that are still more room to develop. But it is advisable to understand that the creative effort in SL makes a lesser profit than in RL. The wish to be rich creating in Second Life is a utopia. Of course, will always be people who think that a dress to be good it has to cost 1K; but they are exceptions, not the norm. The good thing regarding competition is that the really creative ones can distinguish themselves, but still worth to remark that if you are extremely creative you will have more chances to yield with it in real life. And here, at the end, we will talk about “the death of Second Life” so flaunted in the Brazilian communication environment and commented by many Brazilians. Who has died was Kaizen Games, which drove the SL for Brazil and lots of people think it has finished for good. People, if you are reading about SL, is because for you it does not die. If there are people talking about the issue, the thing is still alive. Do you have lesser friends online? Sure. The trend has passed, now will left only those who want to stay. The media
has lost its interest and the newspaper O Globo has published an article with a disappointed resident (Marcio Moo) stating the end of SL. It is worth to tell that the experience of many avatars has resulted on loss and could be taken away a lot of good and capable people, as Marcio, who has celebrated marriages in the metaverse for more than an year before to quit, but the fact is that nothing of it has finish the SL. Kaizen interventions have not taken away from the Brazilian residents the will to play RPG, to create, to socialize and to be entertained in SL. Your second life continues as long as you continue in it. And can be that SL is ONLY the beginning, not the definitive platform. The global financial crisis has harmed SL? Yes, but as we displayed, it is only another factor to influence the last turbulences in SL, and in any way, it was not the most serious one. As every crisis, it will pass. The metaverse is only in the beginning, and it is not a crisis that will halt its evolution. The future of the virtual worlds, not only the SL, will be determined not only by a company or by a crisis, but for those who wish to continue to play in a virtual environment. And if you continue, as an island owner, designer, creator, service provider or free user, you are already part of this future.
Polemic
Age verification makes the crisis worst? Adult content makes polemic. It is impossible to have not heard in the last months about the new content classification in Second Life and on the obligation to age verification to access the content considerate adult, but it is important to understand the process before to call it censorship or freedom restrain, as it have been told all around.
upset with the blockage without standards, which moved a research on a way to stimulate the voluntary age verification. The solution was to split the content considerate “mature”, which was well wide, in two subcategories: “mature” – partial nudity and moderate violence; and “adult” – explicit sex and ultra-violence.
Unlikely many initiatives from Linden Lab to protect itself against criminal processes, the brand new classification looks like well planned, with the goal to avoid the exposition of minors to improper content in a fairer way than it was been doing previously: no one exactly knows the standard, but the fact is that during the year 2008, several avatars had their accounts blocked by “suspicion to be minor”.
To access adult content areas, including Zyndra, the new continent, will be compulsory the age verification, which can be done on the Linden Lab site submitting a documentation number: identity card, driver’s license or passport, regarding to Brazil, which only recently has started to have its documentation accepted, as many other countries.
Rossano Petrov is a Brazilian who had his avatar blocked. “I had to sent documentation” - he tells - “they didn’t told me the reason, only when I contacted the company I had known that the blockage was because of suspicion to be minor. After the mailing they quickly unblocked me”. As Rossano, many grown people had been
The credit card number can also be used to confirm age, but, if the person halts paying with that card, such person will be considered “not verified” again. It is important to highlight that is regarding to PUBLIC activities, as commerce, RPG and related. No one will be obligated “to remove balls from their beds” because it is located on mature
lands. Zyndra was designed to centralize lands which have part of their public content improper to minors. Stores and sex poses, for example, will be relocated to new areas, but not skins stores which have nude avatars on its vendors.
creators of adult content and Linden Lab. But those who are in Second Life are already used with mess, unfortunately.
Many people had complained that this looks like a change for a “ghetto�, but the truth is that the company really was in need to separate the hodgepodge from the mature content. Lands for sex and nudity located on other continents will not be prohibited, but should migrate to Zyndra.
Many pornographers complain and say that is the establishment of the reign of censorship and the end of Second Life as a free ground.
Regarding now to the islands entirely with mature content they will have another treatment: Avillion is mature and it is a light role-play island compared to Midian, Toxian City, Darkness Fall and others, in which in their RPGs are admitted scripted weapons which simulate violent deaths. All of them will be exactly where they are, but the last ones will be age verification required and those who are not age verified will simply not be able to enter them. On the drawing board, everything is very beautiful, but the migration barely started and we can not foretell yet if this will succeed. Even on the company site and on the actualization posts from Linden blog about the matter it is not clear who is who and what is what; therefore, it is possible to foretell a great mess on the next months among
Bullshit. It is not a plain and simple censorship, it is a classification which is designed to protect minors from access to non-permitted content. Who wish to walk on a sex land has as option to verify their age which is, let’s be fair, easier now. It is not enough to say that SL is for grownups, everybody knows that, in fact, a lot of minors access SL. We do not defend the age verification as a fundamental panacea to end up with pedophilia. But we do believe those who are in legal age will not have any problems to submit documentation. Does not worth a thing and avoid a lot of headache.
Bad girls have good friends! a.c. store
Glox City (78, 118, 23)
caos comunicação Caos Village, Tsering (187, 34, 94)
happy clam
Happy Clam Island (127, 127, 32)
hippie market Sled (182, 73, 93))
samba brazil RJ City (105, 67, 35)
universidade brasil virtual Vestibular Brasil W (223, 210, 22) Fortes Perez Cultural (212, 125, 31)
Alyne Dagger comments
I never was a great dealer, but the current needs make me to wonder that Second Life is opening market for new products that can make the avatars lives to be improve a lot. Taking a ride on the theme from the SL6B – the SL from the future – and paying tribute to the “Casseta & Planeta* way to be”, I present SL versions for the famous Tabajara products! In behalf of the “Alyne Dagger’s Corporations” I affirm that...
r u yo lems ! ! b ! o r r e p e ov r a An exercise of advertising & cheeky!
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Sugarcoat it and tell that you are part of a horror machinima cast!
Stop to be a moron and click on it again, duh! You’ve found out a little late that the Chimera has female dances...
Do you face it? Not me! Your date rezzed and has got a pink hair...
Your motherin-law has found out the SL and she’s send you a TP using this clothing
Don’t you think suicide is a great idea?
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Alyne Dagger Choices Crisis? What crisis? We’ve selected in this month places that don’t know the meaning of this word. With creativity and betting on a right public, they keep the traffic and keep away the financial insolvency witch. At the gallery, the “girl with guns” Bunny Brickworks confronts the sweetness from Carolina Sauntreau work.
AD Choices - Unbelieavable Places
What Crisis? Is there a recipe to dribble the pessimism that assaults the metaverse since the tangle from the openspaces and from the advent of copybots? There is, the selected four lands had found out a different formula to keep the trafďŹ c high not recurring to well known expedients as bots and camps. Betting on new concepts, we present 4 metaverse champions
Law & Order The American police shows as CSI, Law & Order and NYPD Blue were the base inspiration for CITY OF MASCOUTEN, a RPG island without combat system, based only on the emote way trough chat. A land fanciful built and with well defined rules – it’s impossible to leave the welcome center without accept a rules notecard – and, although it’s viable to participate in live-actions as a regular citizen, only getting in the RP group it’s possible to stick in the combat missions and to play as policeman, fireman or paramedic. Hint: The island content is adult and demands previous age verification.
Mascouten(59,209,49)
Latinidad Had become famous by the podcasts from DJ Azu, the group of lands COSTA RICA have as strong point the residential area with magniďŹ cent mansions made by great builders from SL and an extensive commercial island. The events are always happenings and the commercial land stores have got among its renters great designers from the international SL, with spotlights to Kmadd and AC Store. A place that gathers all the wishful concepts of the SL: good to know, to shop or to live. Hint: The landscape is beautiful and a must for residents that enjoy SL photography
Costa Rica(125,102,24)
Virtual Dream It doesn’t look like that, but SECRET GARDEN is a huge store where are selling poseballs, exotic trees, garden furniture, fountains and even mini-islands. But everything is disposal in a way that is possible to enjoy all the dreamlike landscape of the place even not buying anything. And for those who like to improve their garden with different things, all of the most beautiful and different can be observed in harmony with the buildings and the landscaping. Hint: Look for the teleport to “heaven� in the land if you have company and want to try something wilder. The content is mature for the time being.
Secret Garden(125,102,24)
Indian jewel It’s probable that that is the more complex and stately building of all current SL, from the modeling to the hyper-realistic textures. The set made of the two palaces, the white and the black, are for their own the sole justification to visit the BLACK TAJ and WHITE TAJ, but besides that there’s a ballroom, romantic walks and magnificent scenarios for photos. The mall is a commercial success which has as founds source the main Indian fashion stores of the metaverse, as Mashooka Designs and the Zaara. Hint: Those who go with company can look for balls for the couple walk holding hands. Cute! And there is a new sky graden over White Taj.
Black Taj (122, 37, 51)
AD recomenda - Gallery
http://www.ickr.com/photos/bunnybrickworks/
Bunny Brickworks
It all started with an angel... I had some wings in my inventory, a matching pose and found a location in the Rezzable Darklands. Two days later the edited picture was on my flickr, another week later it was on the Rezzable website and still is. My fellow flickrites encouraged me to create more, people like Jenn Villota or Morris Ceawlin who I appreciate both for their personalities and their work. I had found my niche on flickr: girls with guns. I was inspired by the girls in Quentin Tarantino’s movies; sexy but dangerous. From violence is was just a small step to sex, both sell very well! I was furious about the obvious censorship on flickr, seeing the streams of people whose work I love getting restricted one by one drove me mad and so I made my first porn picture. I love pictures with messages and after reading an article about the Stockholm Syndrome – a psychological response of hostages sympathizing with their kidnappers – I started a series with the same name. The Stockholm Syndrome comprises 20 pictures and is dear to my heart explicit and partly disturbing content.
AD recomenda - Galeria
http://www.flickr.com/photos/carolina_sautereau/
Carolina Sautereau
I’ve always enjoyed take pictures in SL, in the beginning I did it to kill some time, I didn’t have any notion about how to edit images. After a long time admiring the work made for friends that take very beautiful pictures, I felt myself moved and get myself interested in edition tools and has improved my pictures at the point that today I have requisitions by other people to make work for them. Nowadays I feel very glad and feel rewarded in each compliment I get by my pictures, and feel also glad to notice that I’ve got evolved. I know that I have a lot to learn and the received compliments only makes me to want to be better in that that I love to do in the SL which is photography.
TELL ME WHAT IS YOUR
SPONSOR:
R E L I G I O N
This will be the first Artistic Showroom about the concept of God. God as faith, God as life, God as hate, God as an Entity or as Caos, God as Nature or as Organization. Your Religion: past, present, future. Utopia, Reality, or only.. Myth. To Join: IM Loglady Loon in-world. As always, only one work, fullperms into a box with a facultative note. Work has to be unpublished. Send it to Miss Faina Cortes / Loglady Loon. No selection, no censor, only freedom.
Deadline: 2009.
Monday,
31
GODart Grand Opening: September 2009.
August
Bad Girl of the month
Diva
Alexia Ballinger Party person and contest hunter
Good Guy of the month
Outsider Tyrone Nitely Just a bon vivant
Fashion
Back On the issue #16, I’ve made a brief roundup about the status of saturation on the fashion market, with freebies in excess and a kind of discontentment from the creators regarding to the products cost x selling value in the SL – regardless the growth of competition among creators for high quality and low cost. As the crisis in the Real Life has coming upon the residents, especially on the Americans and Europeans, the search for cheaper, high quality items has began to make the creators to think about new ways to attract the customers.
to the future by Lucrecia Slade
Three issues later, we have noticed that this market has suffered an “accommodation” – predictable in fact – in which freebies are little by little being placed by dollarbies, treasure hunts, and sales. It’s now more common for you to get into a store and see a dollarbie offered by short prices, from 1 to 10 lindens, than a pure and simple freebie for you. In groups like Fashion Consolidated and Best of SL Readers, invitations for closed sales, auctions or products in special release prices just for the group integrants are usual. It’s also noticed a return, little by little, to the camp system for products and the massive return of Lucky Chairs, until now, relegated as a “newbie thing”. There’s also a revitalization for the product lottery
methods, as the current happening that is the Midnight Mania, and the information and items delivery system, which is the Subscribe-o-Matic. Not like these expedients don’t existed before, they exist since a long time as the Lucky Chairs which always had had their spotlights in any island/store. By the natural development of the market, the freebie, a gift for you only by the fact that you came into the store, has passed to not have anymore reason to be. You are now gifted because you are a consumer/ customer of that store, reflecting which has been done by great stores in RL (and also those that are not so great). But after all, what are these lottery and promoting services and what can they do for your store?
1. A store, it has a MM panel and its regulations; 2 and 3. The Lucky Designs store, it has all kinds of products and services for storeowners; 4. The traditional Lucky Chair, with high quality products.
Midnight Mania Midnight Mania is a creation of Lucky Designs, which is a property of Shep Korvin, the creator of the Lucky Chair and other services/products for stores in SL. The service starts from a simple premise: you place a prize from your store (clothing, for instance) inside a scoreboard and establish a “goal” of “X” number of avatars to click on it. The scoreboard also has a counter that starts from zero. For every avatar to click on the panel, the counter goes up one number (doesn’t matter if you click it twice, every avatar is counted only once). If the avatars counting reach the established goal BEFORE SL midnight, then all participants will receive the prize. If the goal isn’t reached, the counter goes to zero again and an IM is sent for all participants encouraging them to try again on the next day.
Which can sounds foolish became a real fever among the freebie hunters. Groups like Midnight Maniacs counts with thousands of fans of the service, they swap information about the most cool stores, the most desired products, the most difficult goals. Blogs daily inform where, in which store, which product is on the counting of any panel. That become into a huge word of mouth disclosure of stores that sometimes are not that known, but having nice products in disposal for the customers. The Midnight Mania is available as in the in-world store (Lucky Designs - http:// slurl.com/secondlife/Bermuda/50/21/22/) as in the XStreet SL site (https://www. xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Ma rketplace&file=item&ItemID=1373324). It also has a very reasonable price and counts with a kind and efficient customer service.
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1. The Subscribe-o-Matic; 2. A Subscribe-o-Matic model, which as you enter in the store group, you receive a pack of shoes as welcome gift; 3. A Subscribe-o-Matic model, that one is totally customized; 4. A traditional group joiner, but it already has an influence from the Subscribe-o-Matic on its presentation.
Subscribe-o-Matic The 2008 award for the technological innovation of the year, the Subscribe-oMatic has been created by Mso Lambert and it has come to stay foot as an exceptional disclosure tool. Controlled from outside SL and detached from the group system and its limits of 25 groups per avatar, the service shoot messages and items for thousands of customers. That is, you don’t need to be in the store or magazine group that you love to receive news and publications as soon as they are released. It counts with a Controller (which is possessed by the owner) and a series of kiosks able to copy, which can be placed wherever on the Grid. These kiosks can have your disclosure image updated by a touch and the consumer subscriptions
are simple: just need one click on it to subscribe and other click to unsubscribe. You also can ask people who are already subscribed in your group to be moved into the system, having no need for them to get out from the original in-world group. The users control is executed by the owner by an account on the Subscribeo-Matic site and its customer service is fast, efficient and safe. For customers that have 500 avatars subscribed on their S-o-M the service is totally free. For S-o-Ms that have more than 500 avatars, there are a lot of payment plans, all of them very reasonable and they worth every linden invested on it. For further information, go to the main store at Glenn (22, 97, 27) or on the site: http://www.subscribeomatic.com.
Fashion
Knowing how to recycle which there’s in the inventory and how to find sweet freebies, the crisis stays only in your head. Then also remains some to invest in pieces that are cheap and full of style! When the matter is a hype fashion item, nothing better like the neko stores — they’re modern, young, funny and creative.
Cat
Photos | styling | model: Lucrecia Slade
people
Skin SWEETEST GOODBYE, shape MADESIGNS, olhos EDDESIGN, cabelo ETD, casaco de pele AOHARU, meias SHEER, brincos EARTH STONES, 贸culos FREESOUL DESIGNS, anel AI JEWELS, sapato STILETTO MOODY
Eyes EDDESIGN
Neko ears DIRTY LINX
Skin & shape SAKURAKO Hair DEVIANT KITTIES
Pajamas and shoes CANDY CATZ/LUTRICIAS LUXURIES freebie
Teddy bear freebie
Scripted tail PSYCHOTIC NEKO freebie
Cute star COMET CORP freebie
Witch mouse SWEET LEONARD & NEEDFUL THINGS freebie
Bangles NOSOTRAS DESIGNS freebie
Dog tag NUMBSKULL DESIGNS freebie
Skin & shape SAKURAKO Eyes EDDESIGN
Neko ears DIRTY LINX Hair DEVIANT KITTIES
Hoodie ACID & MALA CREATIONS
Mini skirt BLOW-UP
Stockings LE PETIT PRINCE
Boots STILETTO MOODY
Hair with hat DEVIANT KITTIES
Skin & shape SAKURAKO
T-shirt NEKO ERIN
Belt i24 freebie
Scripted tail PSYCHOTIC NEKO freebie
Short freebie
Tattoo iN :: AFTER EARTH
Boots THE ABYSS
Facial piercings CLAW’D freebie
Band-aid CLAW’D freebie
Bangles AI JEWELS
Necklace CLAW’D freebie
Hair DEVIANT KITTIES
Bracelet i24 freebie
Eyes EDDESIGN
Skin & shape SAKURAKO
Necklace DIRTY LINX Credit card PSYCHOTIC NEKO freebie
Top CANDY CATZ freebie
Bracelets NON-KON-FORM freebie Skin & shape SAKURAKO
Hair REFUGE Neko ears DIRTY LINX Glasses PINK FUEL
Necklace PSYCHOTIC NEKO freebie Lollypop LEO’S PAW freebie
Phones SAVVY AVVY freebie
T-shirt NEKO ERIN Skirt BLOW-UP
Stockings PRIMITIVE DESIGN
Scripted tail PSYCHOTIC NEKO freebie
Clogs DANIKA DESIGN
Skin & shape SAKURAKO Nose piercing CANDY CATZ freebie Top SNATCH freebie
Bahia bangles SAMBA BRAZIL
Fire barrel SNATCH freebie
Boots SINISTYLE
ﾃ田ulos PINK FUEL
Hair CALICO CREATIONS Neko ears DIRTY LINX Necklace KITTENISH dollarbie
Tattoo GARDEN OF KU
Skirt BLOW-UP
Hair with hat EOLANDE’S HAIR Eyes EDDESIGN Wool scarf KYOOT ARMY
Band-aid CLAW’D freebie Fishbone SWEET LEONARD & NEEDFUL THINGS freebie
Skin & shape SAKURAKO T-shirt NEKO ERIN
Tattoo BARE ROSE
Bracelet SINISTYLE
Jeans ALYNE DAGGER’S HIPPIE MARKET Scripted tail PSYCHOTIC NEKO freebie
Boots LE PETIT PRINCE
Profile/ Nando Yip
Rezzday:
January 22nd, 2007 Why did you came to SL?
I’m a cyber culture consumerist, and I’d participated in the old Active Worlds, I’m always snooping for new ideas, but I never had too much patience for online “games”, nevertheless I’ve decided to get into SL when I happened to click on a link to the subscription page, then I was fulfilling the form, when I realized, I was logged in... Please, talk about your current project in the SL and how it’d arose.
One of my current projects is the GLOOM, the island towards to FASHION+CULTURE+BEHAVIOR, Atillas and CheerNo had this idea, they’d invited me then we’d decided to face the project which has as goal to make events for the international public, and that is the project differential, we face the SL as a multicultural territory where differences have to be synergist and to contribute to break, to diffuse, and to overpass boundaries. Do you think that the economic crisis had affected your SL projects/business in somehow?
Yes and no, because I’m like the most of people: it’s my “real” money (if it exists) that supports the SL, even if that translates only in the electric bill,
and equipment (hardware) maintenance; in the other hand the NY STORE FURNITURES store is selling as usual, and the exclusive buildings orders are keep going.
Favorite lands:
What I like best from the SL is that there I do part of my RL work, because I’m a set designer so I’d an atelier where I can test sceneries I’ve made for music, theatre and dance shows in the RL, besides that is the biggest reason to use the metaverse.
• Route 10, Lill Burn Valley (91, 5, 68) • Zero Point, Kelham (166, 147, 36) • Okatu Brazilian Art & Culture, La Seduccion (184, 97, 25) • St Louis Cathedral, Fat Tuesday (127, 118, 23) • BLITZED , BLITZED (81, 169, 73) • Shemale Sanctuary & Shape Up Mal, Alta (164, 199, 601) • Black Swan: follow the path, Black Swan (9, 57, 21) • Ilha Mata Atlantica, Ilha Mata Atlantica (204, 89, 98)
What is worst than Lag and Crash in the SL?
A message for the residents:
Lack of politeness, hysterical, snobbish people, like “15 people celebrity”
Use the pixels in favor of imagination and be happy…
What do you like best in the Second Life?
Special So much drama, so much unhealed chips on the shoulder… the Second Life romance pattern keep going, according to my friend BrunoLisboa Oh (at BG 14 he’s said that) the Hollywood pattern, or, the Bollywood, therefore India is so on nowadays. But the plots has been so convoluted that for me the Hollywood pattern has been out since a long time. So, our reference to create a love story in a joke way in SL is a telenovel. Especially, those from Televisa (yes, Mexican and poorly dubbed on the SBT studios*). Before the readers say “Oh, no, she’ll turn the worst even more worst” I beware: it’ll be three chapters in the most pure insanity. After all, we are telling a love story between our heroine Thalia and his beloved DJ Rodolfo Antônio…
Soap opera by Alyne Dagger luxury supported by Lucrecia Slade and Xhentai Kurka, with complains from all those that are involved. *SBT is a Brazilian broadcast television group
ThaliaMercedes Valeska – An unhappy noobie obligated by her stepmother to camp indefinitely, dreaming about a better second life, which she doesn’t have an opportunity to know in the RL not even in the SL yet. She would be cute if she wasn’t another girl next door.
RodolfoAntonio Beck – Popular and desired DJ, tired of the promiscuous women in SL and involved with the bad character from his ex-fiancée. Some kind of a moron, but he has a great musical taste. MariaEugenia Demonia – Thalia’s stepmother in SL and her boss in RL. Evil, jerk, opportunist, an authentically bitch. Her dream is to own a land, especially not paying for it at all, on others expenses. She exploits Thalia blackmailing her and in her free time she asks for free clothing to stylists using her cavernous old lady’s shrill voice echoing on the voice chat. Striknina Boa –Vindictive ex-fiancée of DJ Rodolfo Antônio, secret identity for a virginal nerd and unloved women in RL, in SL she looks like a virginal nerd and unloved women.
SuppaSparkly Oh – Undefined gender avatar who becomes ThaliaMercedes’ best friend. Freebie Hunter and full of style, (s)he’s going to promote her transformation into the most desirable women in SL.
Another bad day in Thalia’s life. MariaEugênia completely ignores her
Go immediately to the camp site, Thalia!
noobie needs wearing a mega kitsch polka dot
Maria Eugênia, I’m camping
dress…
for you since I came here and I couldn’t gain almost anything... please, I need to be free!
Maria Eugênia: That’s not my problem, darling! Go right away to the Camp. Only more 956K and 35 lindens for me to be able to buy an island! And you’ll camp all this
But in that way I’ll never have a happy, unassuming and independent second life!!!You can’t do this to me! There’s a limit for what an avatar can handle in life!!!
You owe your second life to me! I’m your boss in RL and if you stop camp before I be able to buy my island I gonna write on my report that you are not doing your corporative research for Second Life!
Heaven, how I’m miserable!!!
Meanwhile, in a hyped up club, DJ RodolfoAntônio suffers as he plays dance, electro-house, hip hop, eighties remixes…
MI to Striknina: Heaven, this party never ends. I can’t hold this insane agenda anymore; I never meant to be the most popular DJ in Second Life!!
(MI): What the problem, Rodolfo??? You are the most loved in SL, you have 26 parties to play per week that I scheduled, a fan club with 895 people that I got together, a flickr where you receive 360 comments in every picture that I shoot… Why are you feeling so miserable if I AM here?
Is it possible that you don’t understand, Strike, that’s your second life, not mine! I wanna, I just wanna play my tunes and once in a while grab my guitar to play a song from Reba McEntire…
Striknina (shouts): Reba McEntire???? Are you MENTAL?
I just wanna be “myself”. ENOUGH! I gonna go to a
Striknina: You are not yourself!!!
place where I can be free as I
This is your second life, do you
was when I was a noobie!
understand, SE-COND LI-FE! Come back here at once, Rodolfo Antônio!!!
And Thalia, as she little knows
How I wish to have a fair second life, to be
that destiny
able to camp only for me and to be able to
had made
buy so many clothes and pretty things…
a surprise, daydreams…..
I love Reba McEntire!
And suddenly, no more
Sometimes I feel myself so
than suddenly, a stranger
alone in the world because
appears, as answer for her
of it!!!
prayers….
I just wanna be myself! It’s not for that we are here, second life, your world, your imagination. Oh my God... how could I foolish myself so much... why can’t I play Reba McEntire, why?
Really? And are you not a bot? I’ve thought that were only bots in this camp! No! My SL stepmother obligates me to camp because she wanna have an island… and I have to stay here, among these bots… my life has been like that since I get here… five days ago! Oh, how much I’d back to be a noobie like you... I’d do everything different… my SL fiancée rules my life… even in my avatar she gets into. Everything that’s mine is ruled by her! May I sit with you?
The silence of a soulmates meeting...
She is so innocent, I may look menacing to her
But sometimes destiny needs some help: Oh my goodness! I didn’t know here were the depression holders and miserable noobies world conference! Shoo, get lost, pain in the neck!
Oh My, what a handsome avatar... how can I be an equal with him?
Who...?
I got it. Who am I? I tell you already. SuppaSparkly Oh, more than an avatar, a state of grace. Blogger, globe trotter and personality in Second Life. And don’t ask me my gender because it is impolite!
Jeez, you’ve got an amazing outfit
It’s sad that I can’t say the same about you darling… they already tell you that you can wear another thing than this basic and sad polka dot? I am just a noobie and I have no money and…
Oh!
Oh for sure! Oh what a dreadful visual of yours!
Money? Who has talked about money? My dear, you’re talking to a person that pays less for clothing in second life. SuppaSparkly is every trip a freebie!
Oh!
But that you are wearing isn’t a freebie!
it’s really not! I’ve received everything from the storeowners that want me to talk nice about them in my blog! Oh my goodness. You don’t know how to say another thing? That’s right that you are the heroine of the story, but what a restricted vocabulary, girl! You know what: you come Oh!
with me. You, take this landmark and go play Reba McEntire. There are more three crazies that like this kind of music. They’ll love you there! Oh!
My goodness, they are soulmates!
That bastard! She’s vanished and she’s disabled the search friends on map! Where has she got into??
That bastard doesn’t answer my IM for many hours now!!! And he’s disabled the search friends on map! Meanwhile... Rodolfo Antônio with his guitar, he’s singing on a land and being watched by the record of audience of ONE person.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
Nothing to lose since i’ve lost you Feeling all alone Used to have it all and now my heart is gone it’s true, i’ve got nothing to lose...
Stop e-ve-ry-thing! I know that is the time of your life, but you have to see this.
And everything just has cost TEN LINDENS!!!
Hi Rodolfo, it is me... Thalia
YOU GO, GIRL!
To be contnued in the next issue of BAD GIRLS MAGAZINE
Let’s DESTROY Scenes
this couple
from next
No matter what it costs
chapters...
Another exclusive production from Bad Girls Magazine. Any coincidence with actual avatars will be just their fault. Photographed in actual Second Life places. Please don’t ask for a role in the soap opera. We’ll say no to you for sure.
Alyne Dagger
Linden Cuteness and mental, it’s Louyse Winkler, who always has a message in a good vibe to give to me at the good morning of the second news forum (www.forum.second-news.net)
Colete Jacobus, a friend that is already even a RL friend, is always nice and very smart. A performer of the SL, restless defender of the Brazilian culture in the Second Life!
This month the “drawer booger” really bites me and I’ve decided to pay tribute to some friends with my humble scribbles!
Lisbella Lane, Vicky Spitteler and Lotus Mastroianni are so inseparable that they’ve become “family” in the SL. The friendship and the union of these three astonish all. I always have fun talking to them and with their posts at the Second News forum! :)
Hio Taringa and Maitreya Graves are two insane. But it’s impossible to not be fascinated by which this couple products regarding to brilliant images, that is together or each one per se. In time: the blood on the Hio’s box is NOT his! :) With no doubts my favorite cyber clothing stylist is the creative MimiSoleil Dagger. And isn’t because we are “relatives”, but because everything she does shows this restless creative geniality.
Alyne Dagger
LAG I didn’t thought that ONE DAY I’d live to see someone to use a fair hair from Analog Dog in a production which has to be qualified as AT LEAST gruesome. Every proportion of this girl are shameful, the AO is depressive, these boots are dreadful and to complete the skirt looks like a Photoshop mistake. Not even Jesus and much less the Lola hair can save!!!
It doesn’t cost a thing to remember that in the year 2007 I used to say that the skins with oil were with their days counted… we almost don’t see people embedded in oil around anymore. This fellow doesn’t know that, in his pearled chest!!!
How many times I have to repeat: beware of the compromisers. I’m going to be kind of cool to talk only about the AO, which pose makes her looks like she’s willingly to scratch a part of the body that is too “adult” to be scratched in public!
The “one million question” is: what’s the deal with the bad mohawk with the cartoon little cute owl he’s wearing on the shoulder? And as we are already asking, doesn’t cost a thing to also ask where the hell this guy believes that big gas station dummy shape that he’s got made him a sexy avatar? Tell me, because besides all that he keeps hit on women in the chat! ¬¬
Thest r wo ne o
Are you thinking the production of the incridible provolonecheeseman up there is ugly, wearing this undescribable trousers? If you’ve seen him dancing you’d see that the well bottom has a basement.
For the second month in a row our friend AndreDF Beck makes a concentrated effort to get himself on the magazine. This time he’s decided to be the enlightened Jesus in a pink thong. And he still doesn’t know how to edit a sneaker. (I said SNEAKER). For the effort he deserves the trophy “at all costs”. Another more month and he can be awarded with the second “triple crown” of the session, deed only accomplished by the friend DJ Bexiga.