New World Notes

This atmospheric machinima from Loki Eliot is the teaser for a murder mystery adventure game set in New Babbage, the steampunk town. Called "Shadow of the 13" (official website here), which nicely integrates a web experience with SL interaction. If it's half as god as the machinima, it must be capital entertainment indeed. "New Babbage is a town built on Mystery," as Loki puts it to me inscrutably. "This January an old name shall once again be whispered... and a hidden truth shall be rediscovered. It all starts with a small box."

And no, Master Eliot insists, the fact that this is a murder mystery set in a fantastic Victorian England has nothing to do with a suspiciously familiar certain popular Robert Downey Jr. movie. "The Sherlock Holmes thing is complete coincidence since I had planned to do this roleplay back in October but got side tracked by Burning Life." If you do brave this mystery, dear reader, be sure to report your findings back here!

What you're looking at below is a step-by-step demonstration of the Preso-Matic Game Kit (online documentation here), a free toolset for building adventure games in SL. It's the creation of DoctorPartridge Allen, an educator who developed it for his PHd students at University of Pennsylvania to create learning simulations in SL:

While the kit was intended for educators, it's easy to see it re-purposed for games of all kinds. Partridge's students used it to develop "The Pilgrim Experience", a game designed to teach early American history. Demo video after the break:

Diogenes Aurelia Kuhr has an inspiring profile of Perceval Dryke, lead founder of Deadwood 1876, an SL roleplaying region based on the old West mining town which was also the basis for a cult HBO series of the same name. (Official website here.) Ms. Kuhr explores the many fine, historically accurate details Dryke has brought to Deadwood, including a mining simulation, and pistols which leave huge gouts of smoke when they fire, as guns using black powder-loaded ammunition would. Most intriguing to me, Diogenes writes that Deadwood has evolved over its two years as a community, which currently counts nearly 2000 members: "In an odd sort of way, it also kind of parallels what is going on in Second Life itself," she writes, "as the 'Wild West' times are passing, and new social, political, legal and economic pressures make themselves felt. Not everyone is going to be happy." Read the rest here, and visit the place for yourself: [SLurl teleport at this link]

With this profile, Ms. Kuhr was responding to my SL blogger challenge to profile the world's many undiscovered and under-appreciated personalities. If you'd like to write one of your own, here's several dozen suggestions. Post the URL of your profile in the Comments there, and I may blog it! Image: ephemeralfrontier.blogspot.com</p>

Tami "Cuppycake" Baribeau writes a smart blog devoted to online games, an industry she also works in, as a community manager at Metaplace. And after some frustrated first experiences, "I finally get Second Life," she writes, "I understand why it’s addictive, and why people spend so much time there." She makes that case to gamers in their language ("[Y]ou think EQ2’s housing system is good? Hah") and describes what they've been missing beyond the media stories of adultery and flying penises. Check it out here.