Metaverse Media Observations

(update: weekend in review part 3 is still coming, where I'll talk about the different car companies in SL. I still need to check out Pontiac but I've already looked at Nissan and Scion.)

Where to begin?

Old Media

Back in October I reported on a few leading in-world blogs. I didn't mention Metaverse Messenger since that's still in PDF format (no matter how many times I tell Katt that she should raise her ad rates and hire an HTML person). I probably should have, since they have been very thorough to cover a lot of media events in SL as well as resident-related happenings that mainstream media (and me, true enough) can overlook. They've established themselves as a steady-running newspaper, even having paper copies at the SLCC 2006.

Old Media as New Media

And, since October, Reuters has joined SL. I meant to blog about this sooner but I simply haven't had the proper time to chat with in-world reporter Adam Reuters or check out there build. I'm very excited to see them join given their long standing reputation for providing news around the globe. I did chat with Adam a bit at the Dell Computers opening last week, welcomed Reuters to SL, so I suppose I should here.

Reuters, welcome to SL. Old Media becomes new again! And while recently "firsts" has been shunned by the media recently, I think it's important to note that Reuters is a pioneer being the first real-world media to establish a dedicated reporter in SL.

Subjects of Blogs vs Traditional Media

From my own observation of a couple dozen blogs on my RSS feeder compared with mainstream international and regional media coverage of SL, I have some points to share:

1. Mainstream media taps into things hyped by SL blogs, but not all things.
2. Mainstream media loves any story that involves the phrases, "makes real money", "hacker attack", "sued", or "[real life celebrity name here]".
3. SL Bloggers care about some pretty trivial things, like, "OMG this person made XYZ clothing accessory that has an animation in it." Often times, these are free advertisements in the form of outright plugs for personal friends.
4. SL Bloggers also seem to pick up on very controversial and fascinating issues that mainstream media simply doesn't understand. Try explaining the value of mixing Google Earth and GLIntercepted geometry of SL models to CNN. Even if it is on their radar, they have trouble explaining it. Heck, I've talked with reporters who know so little about SL that, while they are calling to talk about how I make a living in SL, I wind up spending 30 minutes explaining what SL is.
5. SL Bloggers tend to post lots of articles that are essentially news-coverage, and post very few articles that are analysis.
   

I wanted to focus on this final point in more detail.

Hype and Firsts

The SL Herald has been on the forefront of blogs that have criticized mainstream media for overly hyping events and misclaiming "firsts" in the Metaverse. As readers pointed out, it's not even the developers that are usually behind the wrong "firsts" claims, but the mainstream media simply being lazy and doing doing insufficient research. However, it should be noted that, as I pointed out earlier in my list (1), mainstream media is getting a lot of their stories from the SL blogs.

In fact, looking over some recent events, it seems that the hype seems to be seeping out from the SL blogs themselves, not mainstream media!

Three recent examples:

• Jay-Z coming to SL
• Machinima Film Fest being in SL
  
• Scion launching in SL

Now these are indeed worthy news stories in SL. The problem? I had heard all about them before they happened, and now that they are done, I'm not reading anything about how they went.

Don't Just Hype Ahead of Time, Report Afterward!

Looking over my RSS feed, it's clear that SL bloggers are mostly covering the announcement of the event, and hardly talking afterward about what actually happened. I have to ask: "Are SL bloggers even going to the events they are hyping?"

The Herald is a good counter-example, though by their own admission, they are an "unbalanced tabloid". And I've seen some excellent critiques by Hamlet over at New World Notes, though he seems to be fairy selective about what he chooses to really dig into. Metaverse Messenger is pretty thorough, as I pointed out earlier; they also have a group of people working on it, unlike most bloggers being solo artists.

I know many of these bloggers personally, and I'm trying hard not to single anyone out as doing a poor job. I know I've sent out some fairly "just reporting the news" type articles myself, but I try and keep remembering to look at motto at the top-left corner of my blog to keep me on track.

Let's Stay Focused

There's a lot of things happening in SL now, and I realize there's not enough time to properly cover everything, but please, if eight or nine of you bloggers pop up on my RSS feed and all simply quote the same original press release, it's not adding anything to my understanding. Let's try and stay focused, shall we?

I will, meanwhile, keep trying to put any news I present in perspective. I will keep trying to not report news, but instead provide insightful commentary.

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Weekend in Review Part 2: Machinima Festival

Yes, I realize I'm now a week behind.

Machinima festival was really cool and very fun. I went last year, and they outdid themselves this year.

SL Very Visible

I was really happy to see a lot more Second Life interest. Some examples:

• Linden Lab was there, again. But this year, the average person had heard of SL, and I didn't have to go into long-winded explanations of what a virtual world was. Additionally, Linden Lab had more staff on hand.
  
• Second Life films earned 5 nominations for awards, and one winner (congrats Eric from Linden Lab for Silver Bells and Golden Spurs!)
• The comedian for the night (who was about 5x as funny as last year's, great job!) mentioned Second Life a number of times in his routines, and even did enough research to have (censored) pictures of f***ing furries. (If you don't know, don't ask!)
• Electric Sheep streamed the event into SL, which became de facto the official virtual presence of the Festival. Good job, sheepers!

So, all that was very encouraging.

A Couple Discouraging Patterns

There clearly were a host of great winners at this year's Mackies. I was really impressed with the quality of editing and writing that has gone into this year's winners. We're certainly a far cry from Dance, Voldo, Dance.

At the same time, I was also really disappointed at a couple patterns some the awards seemed to take. These two are the desire for realism and the reliance on war as a subject.

Machinima is virtual puppeteering. It's making the best of something not really designed to make movies. Most are made in video games and it's fairly obvious it's not real. According to Machinima.org, Machinima is "filmmaking with a real-time 3-D Virtual environment." Well, if the virtual environment becomes nearly identical to real, and so much of it is done in prep-work and post-editing, what's really different than traditional filmmaking?

The winners this year seemed to reflect that *realism* is the key to winning. Now, I'm certain to have people disagree, but it seems to me that just because something looks real doesn't make it good machinima. Some of this stuff is so heavily choreographed and automated that it is much closer to "traditional" movie CGI than it is machinima.

I'm all for post-production, sure, but I think that if we're going to reward machinima for being super-automated and looking real, heck, we should just make them compete with regular movies and shorts. What's the difference between some of the winners of this year's machinima fest and say, Pixar's latest film? Not much anymore.

A Sign Of Impending Doom for Machinima?

And here's a question I've asked before: What happens when the machinima tools get so good that it's indistinguishable from traditional movie-making CGI? Is that the end of machinima? It would seem to me that if the machinima community wants to ensure its survival as a unique genre, it has to focus on what distinguishes itself from CGI and standard filmmaking.

Take, for example, the loss of Game Over or Trash Talk to Company of Heroes for the award of "Best Virtual Performance: Custom Animation". Let's compare.

Game Over was made in Second Life by one person, with all of the visual elements created from scratch using the Second Life engine and mostly audio post-editing.

Trash Talk is half a dozen folks getting together with premade sets and props, who are able to put together shows live.

Company of Heroes was made by a team of people who work for the same studio who released the game, have access to all the artwork and the platform itself, and who basically used off-the-shelf software with some fancy post-editing.

How then, does Relic Studios win for its own damn promotional video? (Which, by the way, I can't even find available for download on the Net!) How is anything they do with their own platform "custom animation"? For that matter, why aren't all video game commercials submitted automatically for consideration? I'm sorry, but the World of Warcraft Coke Ads and the entire 20 minute episode of South Park's "Make Love, Not Warcraft" pretty much blow away everything in the Machinima Festival, hands down.

or, hm, the feature length Final Fantasy: Advent Children?

The point is - machinima should not be about making the best-looking commercial piece. Again, if it is, then they belong at the Academy Awards or the Cleo Awards. Heck, if we're counting commercial pieces, I'd like to suggest that every single awesome cutscene and opening intro to every single video game with one published should be considered for an award.

"What Machinima Needs is a shot of Estrogen"

As a (male) person at the Machinima Festival said it. War films, war films, war films! Why is it that not only the majority of machinima is war-related, but they dominate the festival's winners? I realize there's a lot of war games out there, but even war games can be used for non-war storylines. It seems us war-hungry males just *have* to have our war-dominated machinima.

Or another idea: Maybe war is popular in the winner's circle at the Festival because the war games tend to *look* more realistic - bringing us back to my original point.

I'm sorry, but at some point, machinima as a genre needs to grow up and realise that piss jokes and missile-out-of-control humor makes for great comedy, but that comedy isn't necessarily what makes a film great.

Throwing Down the Guantlet: A Challenge

I know there's some machinimists out there who read this blog, and some friends of machinimists. Here's my challenge:

Make some machinima that's beautiful, has a great story, clean editing (both visual and audio), and doesn't rely on humor or violence as primary crutches to keep the viewer's interest and isn't made by the same people who made the software/game it's made on. I'll personally pay $250 (US, not L$) as a token prize to the first person who can come up with something that will wow me this way, and I'll also personally promote your machinima on this blog, and to all my machinima friends. Make it at least 5 minutes long, not including credits or title screens. :)

I want to push machinima forward! Let's do it!

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Virtual Currency Does Have Value: $29 million US per year!

If you haven't noticed yet, Linden Lab has added a new statistic to the homepage.
Right now I'm looking at:
"LindeX Activity Last 24h: $82,523"

This is a much more meaningful number than transactions per 24 hours; as we've seen, this can be easily gamed.

So, now, the number. This, to me, seems to indicate a fairly good ballpark estimate of the overall profitability of in-world sales of SL. It certainly will be off, as sellers may spend some of the L$ that they earn, but it is much closer than the L$-traded statistic.

So, some simple math is 365 x 80,000 = $29,200,000US per year.

"Holy carp!" is my initial response. At the current rate, there is a market of $29 million dollars US in selling virtual items and land. And that's a low-end estimate, again, since sellers will reinvest L$. That's enough for 1000 developers to make $29,000 US per year.

And this is just virtual currency. Contractors like me make most of our money directly in US$.

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Dell Enters Second Life

Pictures from Dell island on SLpics.com

From Dell's Press Release:

Dell Enters the Metaverse

In 1984, with barely one thousand dollars in his pocket Michael Dell started building and selling personal computers made from stock computer parts out of his university dorm room. What started off as a pet project for this biology major turned out to be the birth of a multi-billion dollar company.

Innovation has always been at the core of Dell. Innovation coupled with the idea of working directly with its customers has now led Dell to participate in Second Life, one of the hottest, most popular 3-D virtual worlds.

Tuesday, November 14, Ro Parra, Dell senior vice president and general manager, Home and Small Business Group, and Philip Rosedale, Linden Lab founder and CEO, gave an exclusive preview of Dell Island in Second Life. Following this invitation-only event the island was open for the public to visit

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MTV Features Virtual Artists

(yes, I know I'm behind on blogging)

I wanted to mention how forward thinking MTV has become in their attitude toward virtual worlds. I still haven't had the chance to explore Virtual Laguna Beach, but I can point to two features I've seen on MTV News Online.

Frogg Marlowe interviewed by MTV - and two items up in the list, Keiko Tamakura is also interviewed.

UPDATE: I was at a bar tonight having 20cent wings when I look up at MTV and BAM! There was Keiko on-screen. I caught myself saying to my companions, "Oh my god! I know her on the TV!" :)

It's funny to me how MTV has long since abandoned television as a medium to premier musicians. I'm happy to see MTV's Internet division picking up the slack. How long until MTV starts doing more in SL to premier artists? Well, the technology for machinima is here ... hopefully soon? I'm imagining a series of themed studios for performances, music video production, and listening rooms for visitors in off-hours.

This may not be super-new news, but I think it's important to point out that MTV is a media that's starting to really get virtual worlds, and not only showcase them, but get immersed. BBC also seems to be getting it, so we'll have to wait and see what they have in store.

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Weekend in Review Part 1: SLDevU

SLDevU

Linden Lab ran an event Friday that was part of a series called, "SLDev U". This took form as a series of presentations to an audience of mostly ad and marketing agencies looking how they can introduce their clients to Second Life. The last two were in Amsterdam (I'm pretty sure) and San Francisco, but this one was in my backyard, Manhattan, so I had the chance to attend. That being the case, I am happy to share some of the efforts LL is making to, in essence, market the Metaverse to the world.

Lindens Catherine Smith, Eric Call, and Robin Harper each provided their expertise on marketing, technology, and community. Rodica Buzescu from Millions of Us was also invited to speak from a developer perspective.

Not a Game

While Linden Lab has maintained this for a long time, but it was reassuring to see that somewhere along the line they decided it should be the first thing they tell SL-outsiders. Smith continued by talking about the general demographics of Second Life, and gave some examples of exciting projects and events that have gone on this year.

I was happy to see a nice, broad mix of developers that were showcased. It shows Linden Lab giving exposure that supports the developer community as a whole and not just a select few. At the same time, Catherine was able to show some of the rich diversity of things happening in SL.

And then, they really got it.

When Eric turned on SL and put it on the big screen, I could see the eyes of the ad and marketing people light up. They were getting it. His part of the presentation focused on the tech side of SL, and what businesses coming into SL needed to know about hiring a contract developer. He demonstrated how objects were built, some of the tools in SL, and spoke about things like the value of knowing how to properly balance texturing and prim-manipulation.

That is about when the audience started to ask a lot of tech questions. I was very much impressed; they got the analogy and were asking a lot of the really good questions about intellectual property, copyright, privacy, land ownership, and so on. In the grander scheme of things, I am happy about the questions because it shows that the outside-SL world is becoming really ready to enter SL.

Robin approached the audience from the community perspective, and the dialogue opened further. Again, ad agency and marketing folks were asking lots of good questions. A few of my own observations:

• Agencies are definitely looking to market to the teen demographic.
• Agencies are looking to have statistics for usage and there seems to be a lacking.
• Linden Lab is looking into how 3rd party identity validation can be used in SL.

Dos and Don'ts

Rodica presented a series of useful advice of Dos and Don'ts for people working in SL. While I won't get into specifics here, what is important in the greater scheme of things is that these ad and marketing folks really have no clue about some of the tricks and pitfalls of SL. Making something successful in Second Life has major differences between making a successful ad campaign in another medium, like radio, TV, or print. I have had debates with clients on occasions about certain things, and it's tough sometimes when you're trying to explain these new rules and a person pulls the "I've been doing advertising for 20 years" card.

So that's a message that needs to keep going out: "Welcome to the Metaverse. There are new rules to learn here." (and rules we haven't even discovered yet!)

Conclusion

I'm really happy Linden Lab is making this effort to reach out and promote Second Life to ad agencies and marketing companies. These are the people that are going to help do the convincing of other companies to set foot in SL. These are the people who need to be educated to make sure ventures in SL are successful. These are the people who are going to help us developers promote the SL as a platform to use.

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