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Designing Worlds studio

Designing Worlds studio

Join us at 2pm SLT today, Tuesday 14th May, for a special live recording of Designing Worlds at our studio in Garden of Dreams, as we are joined by Chantal Harvey, the weel-know machinamatographer and Tony Dyson, the designer who created R2D2, who will be joining us to talk about their fascinating new project – the Bobbekins – which utilises Second Life as a part of a wider project to create interactive electronic materials for children.

Bobbekins eBook

Chantal and Tony will be talking not only about their project (currently online as an Indiegogo project), but also about their work and careers.

And there will be the opportunity for our audience to ask them questions too!

As this is a recording of a show to be shown at a later date, we will be starting the filming at 1pm, and you will not be able to see all the inserts we will be discussing (although we will supply web addresses so the audience can take a look!). But it will be a chance to find out more about Tony, Chantal and their fascinating project!

So do come and join in the recording at 1pm!

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Sign up for our talks!

Sign up for our talks!

Following the success of our discussion / interview programmes at the Home and Garden Expos for 2011 and 2012, and the Christmas Expos and the Birthdays … well, you get the picture!  At the 6th Home and Garden Expo, running from May 24th to June 3rd, we are planning a further series of talks with designers and breedable creators.

These talks will take place outside our very special Greek taverna on the Prim Perfect sponsored region. But we’ll be telling you more about that later!

We’re planning to host events at 3pm every day.  If you would really LOVE to give a presentation, but can’t make that time, contact us and we will see if we can fit you in.

We are happy to host talks, presentations, interviews, question and answer sessions.  It’s an opportunity for designers to share ideas, for people to meet their favourite creators, for communities to come together and talk about their culture and ideas.  We’re very open to hosting what YOU want to tell us about!

If you would like to be a part of our programme at the Expo, please complete this form with your topic and preferred dates and times. We will try to fit in as many people as we can!

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There’s good and bad news from people who are looking to raise money for virtual-world related projects through Kickstarter-style projects.

Bobbekins eBook

Firstly, the good news is that the Wall Street Journal has picked up on Tony Dyson and Chantal Harvey’s project, the new range of eBooks for Children, the BobbeKins – which I wrote about here: Supporting BobbekinWorld – a new case use for Second Life.

The article focuses on Tony’s server choice and while it’s a great plug for the product too, it’s a real shame there’s no link to Netdreamer Publications (see? that’s how you do it, WSJ!) or to the Indiegogo initiative to raise funds.  I’m all for built in redundancy, me (as regular readers may have noticed) but hopefully the article will lead to people following through to find out more.

At the time of writing, they have raised $744 of the $15000 they are hoping for, with 48 days left.  You can see more – including a great video – on the Indiegogo page. And here’s wishing them every luck with it!

Another initiative is coming to its end, and, sadly, seems unlikely to raise its funding – a real shame, I think, as it’s an interesting project.  Well, it inspired me to relaunch The Quest for the Golden Prim, and Darren Greene, who is behind it, has been of great help to us in thinking through the technical side.

Splintered Rock

Splintered Rock

He has been raising funds for his own webcomic, Splintered Rock, and using Kickstarter to raise £350 (US$545 approx) to enable him to work on a second chapter, as I wrote about here: Be part of the adventure of Splintered Rock.  So far, it’s raised £170 (Around $264) so, with two days to go, he still needs to raise just over half.

I hope he makes it. I’d love to find out What Happens Next in his story!

At some point, I’m going to look at these kind of projects in some detail, perhaps a Prim Perfect article.  What do people think?  What’s been their experience?

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Bobbekins eBook

Tony Dyson, well-known as the creator of R2-D2, the much loved robot from Star Wars, has long been working in Second Life (and real life) with Chantal Harvey, one of the most talented machinimatographers in virtual worlds. Together they are launching a series of kid’s e-Books with advanced animation, “BobbekinWorld”.

The e-Books combine video, music and still images of cute little characters called Bobbekins, more interactive than ever before, taking full advantage of new media – including Second Life – to create some engaging stories that children really love.  Chantal and Tony believe that digital books at this moment fail to take advantage of the full potential of the new digital readers. Even young children find digital readers easy to use and enjoy apps that are designed for them (I have a very young friend who loves to do jigsaws with me on my iPad, for example!).

Tony and Chantal believe that children expect to engage all their senses, when they are being presented with a storyline or teaching exercise. In addition, educators have found an enormous success ratio in the principle of not only engaging all the senses of a child, but also in motivating their imagination in a passionate way, that can only lead to the child developing a sense of wonder and encouraging their questioning mind. “We are looking for a reaction, in the magic words: but why? What does that mean? Our publications are designed to provoke,” they say.

To develop this project, they have turned to  Indiegogo.

“Over the last 2 years, we have invested a considerable amount of money and time in this project. It has been very difficult to stay independent. We know that if we sell to the large publishers too early, we will most definitely lose control over matters we find very important and are close to our heart. We now need to market and develop the full range of e-Books and printed material. At Indiegogo we have the perfect opportunity not only to pre-sell our publications, but to also offer exciting bonuses to families and teachers who share and appreciate our concept.”

You can find out more at:
Indiegogo project:  http://netdreamer.com
Website:  http://netdreamerpublications.com
Fanpage:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bobbekinworld/137238533106251
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Bobbekinworld

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We recently featured the planet Araxes on Designing Worlds - and talked to Darren Green, who produces the interactive web comic Splintered Rock, which is captured in Second Life.  And an exciting feature is the interactivity, using reader input to dictate where the story goes.

Splintered Rock

Splintered Rock

As Darren says: “At the end of each episode I ask readers to vote on what should happen next and then use their input to create the following episode.”

Splintered Rock is a mixture of hard sci-fi and western, very much in the spirit of Joss Whedon’s ‘Firefly’. Prospectors are mining rare crystals on a desert world. The planet’s inhabitants, known as the ‘desert-born’ have not caused any trouble… yet! But tensions are starting to rise at the mining outpost known as ‘Splintered Rock’.

Now he has created a Kickstarter project to fund further development of the comic.  You can find out more about it here – and there’s a video too to explain more!

I think this is a really exciting project, and the sum Darren is seeking to raise is modest – I wish him every success (and would urge all you scifi/webcomic people to go and support him!).

 

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Arcachon Harbour

Arcachon Harbour

Join us at 2pm SLT today, Monday 11th February, for our new episode of Designing Worlds at our studio in Garden of Dreams as we visit Arcachon, the beautiful Francophone region based on the Languedoc region of France, which has recently come close to closure, despite offering great activities and developing a brilliant immersive language learning programme.

We explore some of the beauties of the region with Claire Pascale, the owner of Arcachon and with Cybère Placebo, who has been working on developing language courses, as well as Karelia Kondor, a teacher of French in the UK, who has used the region of Arcachon in her teaching.

Arcachon cam close to closure in January

Arcachon came close to closure in January

We’ll be exploring the region, discussing the plans to use it as an immersive language resource, and also experiencing some of the activities it offers, from wine tasting, to a hot air balloon trip, to harvesting (and enjoying!) fresh oysters.

And we’ll be looking at the problems owners face in sustaining such a region.

Arcachon farm, photograph by Aisling Sinclair

Arcachon farm, photograph by Aisling Sinclair

It makes for a fascinating show – so do come and join us at 2pm.

Or – if you can’t attend in person – tune in at 2pm SLT on Monday for the live show on http://treet.tv/live – where you can now chat with other audience members and even some of the participants during the show – or catch it later in the week on our shows page on the Treet.tv web site at http://treet.tv/shows/designingworlds – our very own version of the iPlayer!

The Lighthouse at Arcachon

The Lighthouse at Arcachon

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Now available on the web – our latest episode, as we explore a new region with a decidedly Vintage Retro theme.

The name of the region is Old Time Prims (as the owner of the region, Mila Edelman, is also the owner of that well known vintage store), but it is also known as Vintage Retro. It is drawing together a wealth of vintage and retro commercial ventures – and some that actually cross boundaries into real life, as we discover on the show.

Vintage Retro - photographed by Wildstar Beaumont

Vintage Retro – photographed by Wildstar Beaumont

Modelled on a bustling vintage European city, with echoes of Munich, Vienna and Budapest, it provides an intriguing home for a number of stores and vintage locations. Mila will be giving us a guided tour and an insight into how smaller stores with a strong theme can help one another – and themselves too!

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Join us at 2pm SLT today, Monday 4th February, for our new episode of Designing Worlds at our studio in Garden of Dreams as we visit Old Time Prims, the home of Vintage Retro, a new region next door to 1920s Berlin, but covering a far wider time period, and featuring some interesting real life crossovers.

Vintage Retro - photographed by Wildstar Beaumont

Vintage Retro – photographed by Wildstar Beaumont

The name of the region is Old Time Prims (as the owner of the region, Mila Edelman, is also the owner of that well known vintage store), but it is also known as Vintage Retro. It is drawing together a wealth of vintage and retro commercial ventures – and some that actually cross boundaries into real life.

Modelled on a bustling vintage European city, with echoes of Munich, Vienna and Budapest, it provides an intriguing home for a number of stores and vintage locations. Mila will be giving us a guided tour and an insight into how smaller stores with a strong theme can help one another – and themselves too!

It makes for a fascinating show – so do come and join us at 2pm.

Vintage Retro - photographed by Wildstar Beaumont

Vintage Retro – photographed by Wildstar Beaumont

Or – if you can’t attend in person – tune in at 2pm SLT on Monday for the live show on http://treet.tv/live – where you can now chat with other audience members and even some of the participants during the show – or catch it later in the week on our shows page on the Treet.tv web site at http://treet.tv/shows/designingworlds – our very own version of the iPlayer!

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News story submission form

News story submission form

This is your chance to submit news for Prim Perfect’s Valentine issue which will be out at the beginning of February – and at the moment we are looking for news stories to feature in our popular News from the Grid feature.

If you have a news story to share about your store or your sim, you can use the special Prim Perfect news service, to submit your news story directly to the magazine.

All you have to do is to go to www.primperfect.net/news_form.html and complete the simple form. If you want an image included, send it to primperfect@gmail.com.

To appear in our next edition, we must receive your news story by 12 midnight SLT, Thursday 31st January, 2103.

The news story might also appear on this blog, especially if the story concerns, for example, the kind of time-defined event we like to cover – a special store promotion, or a charity concert.

So what are you waiting for? Send your news to us – and see it in print very soon!

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In my extended family, the children (pre-teens) sign.

This isn’t because they are deaf – or include a deaf child.  No, they have evolved sign as a secret meta-language in which they can serenely communicate, undisturbed, unheard and uncomprehended by adults.

It happens that a couple of the adults in the family can sign.  One taught her very bright eight-year-old and he picked it up and ran with it, teaching it to his contemporaries across the family so that the younger cousinage, when they meet, can communicate.  And, like most meta-languages, it has evolved to meet their needs.  I’m not sure if people fully conversant with conventional BSL would be able to follow their evolved dialect – it serves its purpose in that none of the familial adults can.

Second Life's Secret Users?

Second Life’s Secret Users?

Private generational communication has been an aspect of the evolution of social media (and perhaps one spoken about anecdotally, but less studied than other issues, such as online gender). Here’s a couple of examples.

Back in the day, we were all on Live Journal, chatting and sharing.  A friend of mine would, occasionally, complain about her job. Then one day, she was shocked to read a helpful response from her aunt who had recently joined. And then, suddenly, a load of strange people started appearing, offering chirpy advice – and occasionally referencing the aunt.  “Yes, dear,” said the aunt when questioned. “I told my bridge club. They’re all on Live Journal now – such fun! And I told them my niece had a wonderful Live Journal so they all friended you!”

Back to my family again … and a generation that was cheerfully sharing on Facebook had a Moment when they realised that parents were starting to make accounts – in order to share family info and gossip. The look of naked shock and horror when the young adults realised that aunts, uncles, parents … were there, in their play space, invading their cyberspace fun … well, it was quite something.

People looking at Second Life from the outside (especially journalists and doubly journalists working in the tabloid market) look at the avatars in Second Life and are fascinated by the gender choices of residents. The men who choose to explore their feminine side. The women who choose to take on a masculine role in a virtual world.  Even in Second Life, apocryphal tales abound about the prevalence of Gorean slave girls with surprisingly gruff voices, or the discovery that this or that well-known Second Life Lothario is, in fact, female.

Second Life's Secret Users?

Second Life’s Secret Users?

And let’s not even get in to the questions asked about people who choose to live their online lives as vampires, dragons, or children – and maybe cross-gender there too.

Suffice it to say that over the years, the question of gender in virtual worlds has formed the fodder for a wide variety of newspaper and magazine articles and several well-regarded academic studies in the wider world, some fascinating blog posts from inworld and a hideous amount of Outrage and Shock and Hurt on numerous twitter and plurk streams.

But one area that has been comparatively overlooked – and it’s one that I think has an important bearing on some of the problems that Second Life faces today (and some of its potential strengths that could ensure its longevity) is the demographic of age.

First of all, let me make one thing abundantly clear – this has nothing to do with avatar age as it is conventionally understood, with adults choosing to play juveniles.

This is about something quite different.

It was some years ago that Tateru Nino looked at the demographics and said that, given the preponderance of the demographic, skewed to over 35 and female, it was clear who was using Second Life – “It’s your mother.”  And that hasn’t changed.

Let’s think about this …

You are a brilliant software engineer.  You create – or help to develop – one of the most advanced and stunning game systems that exists.  In many areas the capabilities of your product outstrips the top ranked and best selling computer games of all time. Cutting edge? You are so far the other side that the cutting edge is a flashing light on the horizon behind you. Be proud because you have made something so unique and exciting that it’s the favourite game for … your parents.

And when things go wrong – and, oh boy, do they go wrong – you have your parents on your back, or your aunts and your uncles and their bridge club … except it’s not a bridge club any more, because they’ve discovered Second Life and so it could be their night club or their sex club, or their dragon clan, or their pirate chapter or their very upmarket yacht club … but it’s their community and it’s going wrong so – Do Something About It, Young ‘Un!

Second Life's Secret Users?

Second Life’s Secret Users?

As is often the case with avatar gender, many people know – it’s just not something that’s generally talked about.  Occasional references give the game away: college aged children. Grandchildren. Sometimes even the fact that people have ample time for Second Life without the urgent need to make a living suggests … a period of life when the drive to support a growing family has passed – although this is not to discount other reasons why people may spend a large amount of time inworld.

And this is also not to say that everyone in Second Life is pulling down a pension – I doubt that many are. But there is a sizeable number of people who have followed the evolution of computer technology from the 1980s to the 2010s, and who have settled down in Second Life.

In marketing terms, these people are the grey panthers.  They have leisure and disposable income. They also have energy and creativity in bucketloads – and it’s coupled with life experience.  These people enjoy a Second Life because they can bring to bear a full First Life … and Second life gives them a chance to try something different. And they create wonderful things.

But, in computer terms, the obsession is always with the new.

Once, a group of us on our way to a holiday in Tuscany met up with an American couple. They expressed their dissatisfaction with much of what they had seen (they must have been a very unusual pair of American travellers in Europe – everyone else I have met adores it).  When they were asked why, they looked disgusted and said, “It’s not new!”

That became the catchphrase of our holiday. Looking at the Duomo in Florence, the amazing pavement at the Cathedral in Sienna, the towers of San Gimignano, the central square of Volterra … we would exclaim: “It’s not new!” and collapse in fits of laughter.

Of course, an obsession with the new has long been a feature of every attempt to sell anything – and so too has the desire to acquire a new audience by appealing to the young, the hip, the cool.

Second Life's Secret Users?

Second Life’s Secret Users?

But … what if Second Life wasn’t the place to attract a young audience? What if it was, instead, a perfect place for people of more mature years (with larger, if more shrewdly managed wallets)?  What if Linden Lab should be luring not the young gamers of Steam, but another audience entirely?

This isn’t to suggest that Second Life should be slipping ads into Saga magazine and Retirement Planning Monthly and ignoring all other audiences.  There are as many brilliant young designers in Second Life as there are more mature ones, and the same goes for event planning, sim ownership, club management etc. Targeting one particular audience at the expense of all others hasn’t worked so well in the past (remember the drive for the business customers, anyone?). But making Second Life more grey panther friendly (for example, making sure that the info hubs where newbies arrive aren’t packed with idiots shouting sexual abuse at each other) could certainly help.  As would some thinking about grey panther friendly policies for residents. Because these residents have the capacity to be long stay, faithful customers.

Growing your business by constantly looking for the young, trend-setting demographic is one way forward.  But there’s a very substantial business to be built on the discerning mature customer – ask any cruise line.

And yet … it’s not sexy (in so many senses of the word).  It’s also not the way most Second Life users would want to be regarded – they are here, after all, to live a very different life.  Ages ago, I made over a Second Life house for someone who told me, “Some friends came over to visit us, and said our house looked like it was created for a couple in their sixties. Well, actually, we are in our sixties – but we don’t want to be seen that way!”

Second Life's Secret Users?

Second Life’s Secret Users?

So there is a demographic that loves Second Life, and whose participation in Second Life could probably be expanded.  But … how to target them without alienating them? And is there any will at the Lab to sell the game to … well, their parents’ generation?

Perhaps it will remain Second Life’s little secret …

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