It’s official – Paradox Tectonic is entering the world of life simulation games with a new title called Life by You. Life by You will be officially unveiled on March 20, 2023. Mark your calendars and make sure to watch the event on Paradox Tectonic’s YouTube channel!
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As the title says, I was a cloud in Second Life for 24 hours and it sucked! I decided to update my viewer on Monday. Unbeknownst to me, some inventory maintenance was also taking place on the grid at the time, so my inventory vanished. I did a quick Google search for missing inventory and tried so many different things to get the inventory back. I deleted my cache. I did a fresh installation of my viewer(s). I visited a water region. On my computer, I replaced this random inventory cache file. Nothing worked! I came across this blog post about Inventory Management and Performance, which advised me to contact support as soon as possible.
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The unsung heroes of Second Life marketing and collaboration are resident-run projects. I founded iheartSL in 2008 (over 14 years ago!) to help aggregate Second Life blog contents into a single central location, to help bloggers gain exposure, and to provide readers with a convenient one-stop shop to browse all the latest posts from residents. Over the years, I have mostly funded iheartSL with my own money and advertising support from sponsors. It is critical to support resident-led projects because they have frequently stepped in to fill gaps left by Linden Lab.
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After months of discussions, Mark Zuckerberg and the Meta team have determined that Second Life is the true metaverse. They have now completed negotiations with Linden Lab for the acquisition of Second Life, and the transition is currently in the works.
“This transition will take place over the next few months, and we will do everything we can to make it as smooth as possible. Don’t be alarmed if you notice your legs disappearing; this is a new user function.”
Half Linden
Conquerors have amassed land and power on the battlefield throughout history. For the metaverse, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Meta, and Philip Rosedale, the founder of Linden Lab, will compete in a boxing match to see who can have the weirdest hair in the metaverse. In addition to getting the hairstyle, the winner will be able to decide whether or not avatars will have legs.
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When it comes to music events in VRChat, its hardcore partygoers are happy as long as there’s good music and positive vibes. With only a few optimization hiccups, Slyfest provided such a space this weekend, with a 3-day roster and slick social presence to boot.
Slyfest is a virtual festival aimed at bringing IRL and virtual djs together. It isn’t the first venue to do this, but the ease of real djs announcing they were playing at an event in VRChat was impressive. Loner Online, a well-established dance scene with its own heavy social media presence, is one of the only other venues which does this regularly. The club paired itself with Slyfest for the event, so it’s no wonder this was observed again. Real-life djs also sometimes announce spinning at other weekly virtual clubs, but the crossover isn’t that frequent.
Slyfest’s map design felt top-notch:
Usually in a virtual club like this, you would peer out the window and find a background shader put up to cover the vista, with the exception of places like DDVR and Loner.
Slyfest’s vista is a gently rolling sea with jellyfish floating slowly towards the surface. It’s beautiful.
There was the expectation that the main floor would be different from TheSlyThief’s tribute map to Porter Robinson’s Secret Sky Festival. The same round dance floor was found again in Slyfest, with two whales from the previous map swimming around at the top. None of this was a paid experience, so there’s not a lot of room here to complain. I probably would’ve kept the same tech but changed the shape of the floor, though, to make it a bit different.
The normals on the map were beautiful, and everything was optimized pretty well when the festival wasn’t at capacity (to provide ease with lower end computers, I would have a button to disable video on surfaces except for the main video screen next time). No one can complain at how luxurious the map’s textures were. This is still top of the line work.
Both Slyfest and Virtual Bass should be showcased as the kind of quality VRChat is capable of with digital events, along with Ghost Club.
The real star of the show with Slyfest was the energy. When there were technical issues, people stayed in the Twitch chat and played word games or provided encouragement while the staff figured out the problem. Every festival day was completed with a group photo and shared around with thank-yous. Pregaming, as with other EDM festivals in the game, became its own event. I even wound up at a small apartment with a group of streamers to pass the time until the day 1 festivities kicked off. These events aren’t built-in to virtual festivals, but the way they organically happen are special.
Slyfest is still going with day 3 events. If you don’t want to log into VRChat to attend, you can click here to listen in and watch the festivities.
VRChat does not need VR equipment to play. Pick up the game on Steam for free.
“Cake, what’s one of the most exclusive, immersive VR club experiences I can find nowadays?” you ask. I would immediately tell you, it’s Ghost Club.
Ghost Club is a cyberpunk EDM club that opens when the mysterious twitter user @gst_kkgr announces it. You can’t find the map on VRChat during the week, not even if it showed up as a private world on the aggregate map lister VRCW.
At 10pm Tokyo time (9am EST), GST uploads the club map and opens it to anyone who is a friend of someone currently visiting. They then tweet out a link to the instance the party is being held at, so you have to wait at their Twitter page to get the key.
But once you’re inside…
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Don’t fret. Second Life is very likely not going to shut down within even a year’s time. In fact, the recent buyout looks like a good thing!
Change is scary, but the extra cash flow might be what gives Second Life its… well, second life. If Linden Lab makes its move to the cloud by the end of the year, it can sustain its userbase for a while longer until it finally crosses the threshold of being unprofitable.
So for now, the game is safe! You should enjoy it without any worry. Of course… there are some things that can shorten SL’s lifespan in the long run. Can you guess what I’m going to say here? Let’s go over them again, and zoom out a bit to see what else might be a contender down the line for the Lab’s income.
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I found myself on this map in VRChat not long after signing up for the game. I didn’t know what was going on at first. People were waiting in this lobby like it was a real club. I could hear muffled music as if I were outside a real building. A group of girls chattered away near me, talking about what club to hit up next since their favorite dj’s set was over.
Inside, people were dancing. A moderator was positioned off to the side and looking over the crowd like a bouncer. As I had no one to talk to and didn’t have a VR headset at the time, I left once my curiousity was satisfied. I wouldn’t return again for half a year. That’s when my experience changed entirely.
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Do you like my outfit today? As soon as Neve announced this new release, I ran to get it! Grime and Grit are a respective top and shorts set that makes me feel like it’s the 90’s again. Not that the 90’s were a particularly great decade for me growing up, but sometimes it’s fun remembering the fashions from back then. You can grab this set from Uber.
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So, who called for Ryan Schultz to be banned from Second Life and Sansar for correctly reporting that Sansar was due to be shut down after a round of layoffs? Who did that? You owe Ryan an apology.
The poor guy was reporting on what he knew. He got a reliable source that said shutdowns were happening. Despite the shortage of comments I found on his blog entry about it, he says he got a lot of backlash and someone calling for him to be permabanned from Linden Lab’s social worlds. How petty! What a trifling thing to do, especially when he was right all along.
Look at today’s announcement. You really think Sansar’s going to come back strong and have another EDM concert featuring a famous dj?
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