Second Life Sketches: Field Notes
By Warren Ellis
The following is an independent opinion column, and is not connected with Reuters News. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by Reuters.
Tombstone: not quite the clanking of spurs, the slapping of leather and clinking of whisky bottle to shot glass. But there are horses, here in this new Western-themed sim. The horses are little marvels of determined coding against an intractable software environment. I mean, they’re more than a little disturbing, these jerky things that mostly slide across the sand while lifting up their legs like broken clockwork horse-puppets, playing recording clip-clops and neighs…but I guess that’s what you live with if you want a horse in Second Life.
Naturally enough, the conversation you hear most in Tombstone right now is “I have read all the rules and I am here just to tell everyone that they are Wrong” or variants thereof. Strangely, on my first visit, I also appeared to discover six male avatars with the designation of Sheriff or Deputy killing a female avatar in the cells behind the Sheriff’s office. I’m entirely prepared to believe that I saw this entirely out of some softening context. That said, this being Second Life, I’m also entirely prepared to believe that the moment I looked away the six cowboys grew immense squid-shaped Cthulhuoid spermatophores and filled the female avatar with their little tentacled pixel-babies.
In any case, there is a slightly creepy vibe to Tombstone, and, so far, a few Sim Queens. It is, however, early days. And if it doesn’t have the tactility and authentic grime of, say, Deadwood (my favourite Western) - well, there’s time yet. The entrance area is among the friendliest and most comprehensive I’ve seen in Second Life, preparing you for your Tombstone experience right down to giving you a free period outfit and making the introductory material available in a dozen different languages.
KABUKI is just beautiful. It’s another themed sim, urban Japanese, but the theme is oddly specific: late-night shopping. The lighting in the place is amazing, the sim is set to permanent night and the attention to detail in the cleverly-designed shops is excellent. It really does work to communicate the feeling of late-night shopping-district wandering in a foreign city. The ambiance and the lighting design completely pulled me in for a few minutes, putting me inside my own memories of nights on the Champs D’Elysee, or Hamburg, London, Oslo, New York. Bring money if you can: there are lots of very interesting and presumably unique avatar clothes there. Really, though, I’d advise you to just visit, wait for the place to rez, and then just walk around and look….
GLASS EARTH is a settlement on a funny-coloured island. Post-apocalypticism (which, no, may not be a word) is becoming ever more popular in SL, and this place is a little jewel of an example. It’s mostly given over to shops, I warn you, but it’s worth a visit just to look at the sign of the place and take in the stinky air. Ah, yes, another warning: I don’t completely understand what’s going on there, but it seems that if you leave the settlement, you might be considered fair game for, um…for the inhabitants to track you down, savage you, do a variety of fairly uncivilised things to you which have nothing to do with romantic love and, then… well, the word CANNIBAL keeps cropping up there. Given that I saw a particularly vicious one-time Carnage Island regular at Glass Earth last time I was there, I would suggest you be careful and polite to all residents.
And what of Carnage Island? Well, it’s gone. They’re moving to what will supposedly be a faster sim, but the last rules update on the island insisted that everyone switch from automatic fire to burst fire, because it’s easier on the sim and bringing it in line with pretty much every other combat space on Second Life. Which amuses a lot of people, as Carnage Island has mostly been deserted since the admins slapped a LS$500 charge on obtaining the HUDs that make the combat system work. Hard to stress a sim that never seems to have more than three or four people on it any more. In the meantime, one of the Carnage designers has opened a combat sandbox with damage enabled, the Enigma Lab Sandbox. Beware badly-placed fenced zones, bombs, etcetera.
Eyefood is a photographic gallery set up by an association of Flickr users. A wonderfully designed space, and some stunning work on display.
There’s an absolutely immense construction on the coast at Duck. It looks abandoned - much of the construction seems to have been done in February and March. But it’s really incredibly big and incredibly ambitious. Worth visiting just to look around and wonder what the creator’s plans were. I find myself doing this a lot in Second Life. It’s almost like virtual archaeology. North of this construction, by the way, and about 250 metres up, is a very good aerial trading post done in a retropunk style.
Finally, I would be derelict in my duty if I didn’t direct you to this build at the Fissure.
