• Making Starry Nights

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 3 Comments

    I almost linked this beautiful Second Life video the other day, but didn’t. Now New World Notes has an extended article describing how it was made.

    Some interesting things to think about with this:

    1. This was done in a multiplayer world. There’s nothing multiplayer about it. The power here comes from the ease of construction, not the setting. This could have been made in Maya or 3DStudio Max. But I bet the presence of an avatar adds a lot to the vibe.
    2. The movie is, to my mind, art. In other words, it’s art in the form of machinima, made with a VW as a tool. But I am less sure that the in-world installation would be or was as powerful — the lack of music, of narrative, and so on, probably made it far less compelling.

  • Barbie Girls (maybe) registers 3m

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 19 Comments

    According to a blogger over at Scientific American,  the 3m is in the span of 60 days.

     Last night at the Digital Life preview a Mattel rep–who, just to make the conversation extra surreal, actually looked sort of like Barbie–told me that in the first 60 days of its existence, the new online virtual world Barbie Girls has signed up three million members, and they’re adding new ones at the rate of 50,000 a day.

    “Could Barbie Girls Become The Largest Virtual World?” has some good discussion over at TechCrunch, including some controversy over the stats. Among the other comments that caught my eye:

    • It has to be fun for me to be there: “I think Niche games like this will end up being more popular that games like second life. I have no interest in second life, but if there was something that was a little more specific that was interesting to me I might be motivated to try it.”
    • Probably less than you think: “out of the 3M users, lol – how many of those accounts are pedophiles?”
    • Yeah, good idea: “These virtual worlds should allow users to travel to other virtual worlds through special “gates”.”

  • The Sunday Poem: Why It Is Hard

    Hours Categories The Sunday Poem
    Comments 2 Comments

    We always write our verses on the green.
    Extolling nature, one dull paean, then
    Another, the savannah evo psych
    So loves a bellwether to our brains.

    We hammer home our thoughts of death, with odes
    And eulogies, our writing full of black,
    Of wistfulness, of melancholy. Sad,
    As if mere “sad” was “deep” and “deep” was “good.”

    We speak of love, the thrust, surrender, catch
    Of breath, exchange of fluids, the coy glance
    And longing. Each of us forgets that all
    Of us know all of this. Forever. Now.

    So much of writing tells us what we know.
    So much of culture trades old comforts, myths
    We tell ourselves to keep the strange away.
    Just three great subjects, and our story’s done.

    This makes it hard to write each Sunday poem.

  • GH3 and strippers?

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 28 Comments

    From the Joystiq article:

    They fully updated the graphics, including doing motion capture for the avatars, and the NPCs in the background, like the go-go girls in the stage that’s set in a strip club. Neversoft has a full-sized motion capture studio at their facility in California, so why not make good use of it? Especially if you have to mocap some strippers. Tough work, this rock stuff. Based on what we saw, the dancers will be giving Soul Calibur a run for the money. Jiggle factor five, Mr. Sulu.

    Dammit. Wasn’t it obvious already that this was a crossover game of broad appeal? One played widely by families? Sure, it’s rock ‘n’ roll. Well, guess what, ten year old daughters like rock ‘n’ roll too.

    *grumble*