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The ABC in Second Life: one year on

March 16, 2008 by Editor 12 Comments

The 19th March brings up the one-year anniversary of the ABC’s launch of ABC Island. Launch night coincided with the screening of You Only Live Twice on Four Corners. Since that time, there’s been a steady stream of events, including a great number organised by the Australian community of Second Life residents who frequent the island.

ABC Island’s presence is a modest one when compared to the Telstra build, but it packs a lot of variety in the area it does inhabit. The Sandbox remains the most popular area, but themed areas like Melbourne Laneways provide a lot of ongoing interest as well.

There are also rumours of further expansion via another island. I caught up with Lisa Romano (SL: Lise Robbiani), the ABC’s Project Manager, Strategic Development for its Innovation unit, who wouldn’t confirm the rumours. We also asked her to confirm the original intent of the presence in Second Life. “The ABC created a presence in Second Life to learn more about virtual worlds so that it could understand how to create and present content and build a community in this rapidly growing three-dimensional environment. One of the ABC’s core principles is to reach audiences wherever they are and to pursue opportunities for innovation, so a new platform of this kind which shows strong audience growth and interest is worth exploring,” Romano said.

So after a year of effort in Second Life, has it been worth it for the ABC? Romano certainly thinks so. “We are thrilled with the response from audiences over the past year. The response has been overwhelmingly positive, and we feel like the Island really offers a sense of Australian community based around content, creativity and innovation for both Australian and international visitors, mainly due to the dedication and enthusiasm of the ABC Friends Group.”

That same ABC Friends Group (of which I’m a minimally contributing member) is organising some anniversary events this week. There’ll be plenty of information in-world or watch this space for details.

What are your thoughts on ABC Island’s first year? Has it been a success? How do you see it evolving in the coming year?

Filed Under: Australian News, Business, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: abc island, australia day, community, rockit

Interview – Paisley Beebe

February 3, 2008 by Editor 7 Comments

Paisley Beebe is an Australian Second Life resident who I’ve run into a number of times over the past year or so. I finally caught up with Paisley for an interview on her dual activities of musician and TV presenter in Second Life.

Lowell: Tell me your story in regard to discovering Second Life

Paisley: I read about SL in an Australian woman’s magazine it mentioned Frogg Marlow and Cylindrian Rutabaga, both wonderful real life musicians playing music on Second Life. I was curious about it. Downloaded the client and then spent about 6 hours a day discovering SL. Spent about 2 months just getting acquainted before appearing at French Musician Fabrice Crosby’s venue and going on from there getting gigs and a manager and moving into SL TV.

Lowell: You are a singer in real life – how hard has it been adjusting to the challenges of in-world performance?

Paisley: The hardest part is trying to financially support my gigs in SL. The actual gigs are fun and easy. I’m used to being very interactive on stage due to my theatre and show band background in RL, and the technicalities of streaming live music are not a problem once you figure it out.

But I pay my RL accompanists RL money to play on SL with me (my voice is my only instrument) and have brought in some real Aussie jazz headliners including guitar legend George Golla, pianist Ray Aldridge, and bassist Craig Scott. I was determined in the beginning not to use backing tapes or recordings to sing along with, as the fun for me being a jazz vocalist is the actual interaction and improvisation between us during the playing of the music and I wanted to present a high quality show. I have managed to stick to that so far, but have had to inject quite a bit of money in order to do that as the SL payments for my concerts are nowhere near covering my expenses. As a result I have cut my gigs down recently to once or twice week in SL (I have done up to 8 gigs a week in SL in the past). The SL music scene is financed mostly through small tips from the audience, which results in under $5 Australian dollars a gig for most musicians for an hours work and even less for the venue owners. Yes everything in SL costs less than RL, but by comparison to other SL businesses, SL musicians are paid very very low wages…for a product they can’t keep selling copies of in a store. And MP3 sales are very low on the whole due to the low music-going population in SL, and so do not compensate for the fact that most of the in-world audience will see a musician for free if they can and won’t even tip. This will change with population growth and more professional artists but right now you do not play SL for money, only for fun and a little more international exposure than you can otherwise get.

There are sometimes one-off events to promote or launch new sims or businesses, which can pay more, but they are rare. The majority of my SL music audience are American due to the time zone and population, and they are somewhat more used to tipping in RL but this means that using the American based tipping model for other cultures doesn’t really work. Europeans and Aussies don’t tip so much, and that then becomes a disincentive for musicians wanting to play in Australian and European time zones, and no one wants to be the first club to charge entry at this stage, so most musicians play for the Americans who will at least throw some virtual coins in the hat for a musician who wants to at least pay his tier, pay for stream rent and buy stuff. Some of the clubs are part of a mall or have a shop and the club owners benefit from the increased traffic to their rentals or shops, in which case they may be able to pay their artists a very small fee, often only about 5 Aussie dollars. But many of the best clubs are there just for the music patrons only, with no money making business attached, and they are really struggling now, getting artists to play only for tips. My average tips are about 2-3 K for an hour so it’s not much. You can’t live in SL off that, and own land…

Lowell: It’d be fair to say you’re very ambitious and keen to promote your talents – do you see Second Life as a competitive environment?

Paisley: No, I don’t see SL as an competitive environment first and foremost. I see it as a social network and another dimension to the Web as we know it. It is an avenue for me to work in the field of work I was trained to do, but had to give up throughout my 30’s when family responsibilities and difficulties took first priority, and it was impossible for me to continue with my career of choice in entertainment. I have a Theatre Arts Diploma from the Ensemble theatre, 5 years of singing training and some radio presenting training through the AFTRS extension courses they offer, and experience in film production, advertising, graphics, theatre and singing as a soloist and as part of a successful concept band. I have also worked as a volunteer presenter for community radio for 3 years. For me to work in RL as a TV host now, is really prohibitively competitive and some would say an impossible dream at my age being in my early 40’s. Having given up my entire career in my 30’s and into my 40’s to deal with some major personal family issues, now that things are getting a little easier for me personally I have a second chance to start again back where I was in my 20’s. And have a second chance, through Second life, where age, demographics, opportunity, experience and looks are no issue at all. You can have a go and make something successful as long as you have the right stuff.

Also the music climate here in Australia particularly in Jazz, is very very bad, worse than most non-musicians really understand. Lack of RL gigs due to closing venues (as a result of 20 years of draconian licensing laws and poker machines), makes it impossible to develop a fan base (we hope the new licensing laws will change things but it will be sloooow going). At least I can develop as a singer on Second Life through virtual gigs, and create an international fan base that would be otherwise impossible.

I find SL at the moment less competitive in the field of what I’m doing in TV and Jazz than RL of course, because its all so new, SL has not been saturated yet with competition in those areas. Like many people in SL who are in business, we hope that when the big guns figure out what SL’s advantages are, and how to utilise them, that we have enough experience and brand loyalty that we can survive the inevitable competition.

As far as ambitions go, Second Life business is such a risk right now, as its all so untried and new, you need ambition and a quite a bit of Chutzpah (and a little madness I think). It’s certainly not for the faint hearted. I don’t think ambition is a bad thing at all as long as you don’t sacrifice integrity and family to pursue it, and I would never do that. A lot of Australians in the past have viewed ambitious people, especially ambitious women as abhorrent. It’s not really been seen as part of our culture, but I think we really have to let all of that fear of being seen as ‘ambitious’, if we want to be successful on a global scale. Keep our individuality and our Australian unique culture sure… but I’m not going to sit back and wait for my ship to come in….

I’m keen to promote my talents in as much as it’s all I have to promote. Singing and hosting is my RL job, it’s what I do, what I was trained for. I don’t have a ‘full- time’ job in RL other than my music, and that can hardly be called full-time due to lack of opportunities for work. So far I haven’t been able to break even financially in Second Life but I believe in what I’m trying to do, and enjoying it so much that I think that one day I might be able to earn some money from it.

Lowell: Where do you see yourself in a year’s time in regard to your work in Second Life?

Paisley: If all goes to my plan, and plans are well, who knows. I would like to be playing music in Second Life with other Second Life musicians in real time with no latency and a better stable SL client, without having to worry about going into debt to pay my musicians. I have plans to release a Live in Second Life album, it’s all but finished…and I would like to see it selling well at shows.

I would like also like to see continued success of my production company and TV shows, the audience is growing but we are still chasing sponsors to finance it. I really hope in a years time to really still be enjoying my time working and playing in SL. And I would like to be able to earn at least a wage above the RL poverty line on SL, to help support my family in RL and perhaps cut my working day down to 9 hours instead of 16 🙂 Dream on 🙂

Lowell: Have you had any involvement with other virtual worlds?

Paisley: Nope I’m not a gamer at all, and I don’t consider SL a game. And the other virtual worlds I have read about appear to be less developed and inferior at the moment. I was fascinated with having a virtual self to start with, and sort of playing dress up dollies with my avatar, but I really just see it all as an extension of my self in RL that’s all, but lots of fun too.

Lowell: If there were three real life musicians you’d love to convince to perform in Second Life, who would they be?

Paisley: Well selfishly, I would want them to perform with me….and that would be Christian McBride on Bass, Harry Connick Jnr on Piano and harmonising with me on vocals, and John Clayton on Guitar. Basically Dianna Krall’s Band without her.. and with Harry in her place sigh. The other band I would love to have on SL would be a big band …and Duke Ellington’s Band would do 🙂 I’m afraid although I love to listen to music the most fun I have is performing it and interacting with other musicians, so that would be my dream.

Lowell: Who inspires you in Second Life?

Paisley: Circe Broom, the owner of the Laurel sim and the music venues she has built there, for her dedication to music and musicians, her desire to promote it at a great cost to herself financially and overcoming all the obstacles she has personally, to do so. Slim Warrior is also another great inspiration, in that regard. Also Wiz Norberg and the team at SLCN.TV in Melbourne, and my own team on Tonight live also inspire me greatly with their drive and ambition creativity, humor and honesty in business. I trust them with my business and my future.

I also admire Cylindrian Rutabaga for her dedication to her music and her unwavering stoicism and Frogg Marlow and Jaycat for their talent and humor.

There are many many more who inspire me, mostly people who see the potential in Second Life and are willing to stick their necks out to use it in an innovative and creative way to bring pleasure to others, or support, or to start their own art or business.

Lowell: Our staple question: three locations in SL that you love the most (with SLURLs if possible 😉 )

Paisley: 1. My home ….no SLURL 🙂 – it’s private.

2. Sailors Cove for its very pretty New England Theme and all my wonderful friends there.

3. Circe Broom’s Laurel sim for her Egyptian Themes buildings and of course Sunset Jazz Club.

Lowell: What new features would you like in Second Life?

Paisley: I would like a more stable client of course, crashes during my show and during my TV show are just awful..

No lag! At all, without having to have a computer with a graphics card that could run a Space Shuttle pleeeese…(I know that doesn’t make sense but you know what I mean).

The ability to stream my concerts without any delay. It varies from 3 seconds to a 30-second delay. Between what I say or sing and when the SL audience hears it..

The ability to play music together with other SL musicians without having to use Ninjam which is really hard…perhaps voice with really really great sound quality….

The ability to have mouths moving on my TV show without it looking like you are pulling faces and eating something like really sticky toffee that is flavored with pepper….

To have better mic animations and singing animations without….see above…

To have prim eyelashes that blink when your eyes blink…

To not have shoes and hair and jewelry go up your bum when you teleport…

To get rid of Ruth!!! Or give her a real make-over so she looks like Claudia Schiffer instead of Cro-Magnon woman (or George Clooney if you are a male ). Please can we get rid of the low brow Donald Trump hair that Ruth has….

To have better support for Macintosh on SL…so I don’t have to use Bootcamp for Windlight.

To have the ability to switch off group notices from time to time…when Im doing my show.

To go to busy mode without a busy sign above my head which looks so rude…

To increase the Group Limits to about 100.

To increase the sim limits to 200 and have no lag…yeah right.. bring on Havok!

To have better security against griefers..

To not have Capped IM’s…

To make the SL Client look more like a Mac design instead of DOS…..

To have Preview as in Mac OS Leopard on your inventory so you can see the jewelry, dresses etc without wearing it or rezzing it .

Hmmmm what else…

To be able to take multiple pictures in Second Life and be able to label them in SL each time I take it…

To have better privacy in SL so people can’t see into places that you don’t want them to see,…

I could probably think of a lot more but …..I think you have enough to go on there 🙂

Lowell: You host a show for SLCN TV – can you describe its focus?

Paisley: Yes…it is a Second Life live TV talk show which through interactivity with the live audience attempts to highlight and promote in a positive way the creativity of Second Life residents using Second life for fun, business or non-profit. It is then recorded and available for download and viewing on the web. It is not current affairs, but hopefully informative and fun.

Lowell: What are some of the more memorable moments on the show to date?

Paisley: Maxamillion Kleen writing and singing his first original song ever for Tonight Live and reducing some of the audience to RL tears, whilst packing out the sim with the biggest audience in downloads and watching live we ever had.

Torley Linden from Linden Labs also attracting a huge crowd and talking so fast and relentlessly that I couldn’t get a word in edgeways, whilst he was also fielding questions from the audience who were also trying to get in on the act (he was of course also taking pictures at the same time).

Having the Second Life Fire Brigade bring a SL fire engine inside the studio and setting fire to the audience whilst explaining techniques in firefighting in SL and RL, and then getting the brigade to put it out..

Having the Harry Potter Sim manager on stage and the Harry Potter sim role-players pack out the audience and the houses of Griffin and Slytherin start fighting amongst themselves across the audience….

Having the Midian sim role-players almost doing the same thing…with various factions all together in the same place……

Having Frogg Marlow and Jaycatt Nico on and having such a wonderful funny interview with them both.

Lots more for many different reasons but every show has a different funny thing happen within the audience and podcaster and blogger Crap Mariner is often responsible for it 🙂 Whether he sets himself on fire or comes as a cup cake or encases himself in ice and Razzap tries to “melt” him with a blow torch, it’s all I can do to stop laughing on set – “don’t read the chat, dont read the chat…”.

Lowell: If you had to describe virtual worlds in ten words or less to someone who’s never been near one, what would you say?

Paisley: The best Disney animation you’ve ever been in.

Lowell: I’ve seen a number of promotional items come from you emphasising your status as a Diva – what qualifies for Diva status in-world?

Paisley: That’s a joke…I get called that by my friends in RL and in SL if I get argumentative about anything 🙂 They use it to put me back in my box…and also it basically gives people a very basic idea of what I do, but is definitely tongue in cheek without using all the other stupid hackneyed words. Diva’s a bit hackneyed too probably, but so is Jazz Chanteuse and Torch Song Singer and all the other words that they use to describe jazz vocalists. When I’m in meetings my staff make sure I have no access to phones or anything else with which to hit anyone with (thats a joke too….). People think if you are a jazz singer who sings like I do, sort of a mixture of modern jazz and cabaret I guess, and a TV host , that you probably are a Diva in as much as you have tantrums. And ask for ridiculous things like only white flowers in your dressing room and not to be looked in the eye. I’d only ask someone not to look me in the eye if my prim eyelashes were not placed properly and I didn’t want them to laugh….on camera 🙂

Lowell: Anything else you wanted to add?

Paisley: I’ve just started a production company called “Perfect World Productions”. It will be producing several TV shows broadcast on SLCN.TV. The next production due for release is an arts show called “Dimensions In Art” which will be a 1/2 hour live weekly show with one guest per show. Featuring film, theatre, dance, sculpture, digital art, sound art, music and painting. I will be the host, and some of my wonderful existing team from Tonight Live will be working on it. It will be launched in April/May 2008. I think that the creative arts in SL are going to really boom as it’s such a wonderful platform for artists of all genres to get exposure for their virtual and real life art, on a real global scale. The quality of what I see in SL constantly astounds me.

We will add more shows to the production company as we build our expertise and our team. And will produce shows that are concepts from other sources not just our own, with other hosts.

My hopes for Second Life are also that more Australians discover and embrace it. The Australian community while very friendly and close is very small by comparison to many other countries using SL. Anything I can do to help promote Aussie culture on SL I will. But there are so very few of us on Second Life yet.

Filed Under: Australian News, Profile, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: music, paisley beebe, Profile, SLCN

Death Of A Skeptic Part 1

January 22, 2008 by Bix Ashbourne 1 Comment

We’re thrilled to be able to introduce a new writer at The Metaverse Journal. Bix Ashbourne is in real-life based in the USA and after some chats in-world I suggested he might like to document his experiences as a new user in a virtual world – in this case, Second Life. Below is Part 1 of his journey from skeptic to virtual world resident.

Dec. 14th, 2007.

Winding down on the shittiest year of my life. Sitting up in bed on a Friday night, I began to seriously start wondering about this Second Life thing. I figure, I’m already alone….the internet is dead…no one on my chat forums…what the hell. All I gotta do is look. Might be good for a laugh.

For the past year or more, I’ve been poo-pooing this SL thing. Real life is difficult enough, so what the hell do you need a second one for? Can’t get the first one dialed in, a second one oughta be just the ticket to encouraging a chemical dependency of some sort, most likely from one of the major drug manufacturers. Just wait ’til the tax folk find a way inside.
But, it’ll be something to do, I reason, ’cause despite a backlog of projects, I’m bored out of my skull.

I poke around. I get a feel for the process, the environment, the vibe. I start wondering, out loud, to my friends on the chat forums, about this place. The very same people to whom I openly made fun of–in a well-meaning if not somewhat self-righteous fashion. And who must surely at that moment, be kicking back with a drink, chuckling to themselves about the burgeoning RL casualty developing on their LCD’s.

Dec. 15th.

More searching. More musing. More acceptance. More cheese and crackers. More chicken on the grill. The possibility of muscular atrophy in my lower extremities is very distinct.

Dec. 16th.

Early in the afternoon, I make my first tenuous steps at the website. The name…who’d’ve thunk that would be so difficult? Apparently, someone at Linden Labs thunk it, because I didn’t get the first names I really wanted, and was treated to a dizzying array of surname options. After much deliberation, some snacks, and a pot of decaf, I settle on a name. I’m pretty good with it.

I take the plunge, and launch.

Thank god for Orientation Island, structured so that you don’t ever feel the briny tentacles of the etherbeast slithering into your awareness, forever altering your tangible interactions with the outside world. I grab a torch. I fool with my appearance (to hell with love handles and who really wants a coin purse for a package?). I crash into things. I ogle some woman changing her features before my eyes. I crash into another woman while ogling the first one. I stare blankly at people chatting me in French. I watch other people pop out of the sky, all bearing a strange resemblance to me. Hey…get your own damn androgynous look, thank you very much. I get some stuff dialed in on my body. I quickly learn to loathe the rolled-up cuffs of the Noob’s jeans.

Apparently, I dialed in well, as a fetching young avatar named Nathasja took a shine to me, and struck up a conversation, along with a few other things. We talk sweet and sexy, having to move every few minutes due to people who can’t get enough of causing people hassle, or acting the obnoxious drunk at a gathering (like the guy that swooped down on us and screamed for sex on the grass, then told us to go fuck ourselves after an awkward pause); we were about to achieve a breakthrough, of sorts, when we got bludgeoned by an inferiority complex piloting a plane. Thrown way out of our way, and into two different spots, I never heard from her again.

I look at the clock. Hello? You can’t be serious. Oh, but it is, the clock as serious as Dallas newsmen on a November day. And, as if to sense my disbelief and grabbing some salt for the wound, the sun began to poke through the wooden blinds of my bedroom shutters. Over 12 hours later, and not an ounce of energy lost. What is this strange technology, that can infuse energy into a person without so much as hearing a whisper from the butler that delivers your third wind?

I finally log off. My laptop breathes a heavy sigh as the fans can finally shut off. As I pull up the covers, I am awake and exhausted. This is going to be a long day. I can feel the bags under my eyes being crafted by the ghosts of former Samsonite employees (I think that’s what they do in the afterlife, create eyebags…I always wish they were a little more stylish, had fewer pockets, and weren’t so damned rugged.)

This is going to be a long day.

Go to Part 2

Filed Under: For the new user, General News, Humour / Satire, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: bix ashbourne, new user, orientation

Australia and Virtual Worlds – 2008 predictions

December 28, 2007 by Editor 4 Comments

It wouldn’t be the end of a calendar year without making some predictions for the coming twelve months. Here’s a handful of predictions – some are fairly safe, others push the envelope a little:

1. Australia will see its first legal action in regards to a virtual world – Second Life is likely to be the battlefield and it’s likely to involve an intellectual property dispute or financial regulation issues.

2. Second Life viability will remain under question – there’s not likely to be a sudden improvement in the technical issues confronting the platform. The reality for Australian users of Second Life is at least another 6 months of laggy virtual world experience. There’s been rumours of a deal between Linden Lab and Telstra to locate Second Life servers locally – we can only hope. Expect lots of negative mainstream and Second Life blogosphere press if the status quo remains.

3. VastPark will flourish – we’ve covered the VastPark virtual world platform a few times and its evolution has been promising. If the platform delivers what it promises during 2008, much interest should be garnered. I wouldn’t be surprised to see VastPark acquired by one of the bigger players. Vastpark’s Australian operations make this one we’ll be watching closely.

4. Google will not launch a virtual world – they may have launched OpenSocial and continued to develop Google Earth but 2008 will not be the year of Google truly entering the virtual world domain.

5. There’ll be failures aplenty – World of Warcraft will remain the dominant gaming MMO and of the swathe of launches touted, some will obviously fail. Claims are being made about the Conan and Warhammer franchises making some serious inroads. I’m not convinced that either will be enormously successful although neither lack significant backing and associated marketing power. And it’s not as if Blizzard will be sitting on their hands – the Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft is on its way.

6. Australian business will remain conservative – 2007 saw the entrance of corporations like Telstra, the ABC and the REA Group into Second Life. I doubt there’ll be as many large presences launched in 2008. There’s still major skepticism out there about virtual worlds as a business tool – it remains only a research and development option in the eyes of business and 2008 is unlikely to change that. One disclaimer – if Google do launch a virtual world product, then all bets are off. On a related note – I predict Telstra’s SydSim development in Second Life will not cut the mustard for larger businesses and for those that do set up in that location, there’ll be consternation of how little traffic is generated.

7. Mainstream media will continue to get it wrong – aside from some of the more savvy technology journalists, mainstream media reporting on virtual world developments will remain hit and miss. 2007 had some real clangers and you can expect that to continue.

Most importantly, what are your predictions for the coming year? Make a comment here and see how right or wring you are when we revisit the predictions in a year’s time.

Filed Under: Australian News, Op-ed, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: Op-ed, predictions

Virtual Worlds and Australia 2007 Part 2

December 23, 2007 by Editor Leave a Comment

Following on from Part 1 of our 2007 roundup, let’s look at the second half of 2007.

July 2007

– Garden for the Missing was featured.
– we discussed the Australian Federal Police’s monitoring of virtual worlds.
– we interviewed the person who manages Hilary Clinton’s (unofficial) Second Life presence.
– active Australian users of Second Life climbed to nearly thirteen thousand.
– an OECD report confirmed how badly Australia lags in broadband speed.

– we stumbled across The Greenies
– the second Traffic Index was published – due to time constraints we haven’t continued this and no-one seems to have missed it 😉
– Telstra offered land rentals on its suite of Second Life island sims.
– Thursday’s Fictions launched – another interesting Australian collaboration.
– Second Life poker machines were blown up.
– we started our regular Friday Weekend Whimsy posts.
– one of the worst ever pieces of mainstream journalism on Second Life received a little criticism.

August 2007

– the Gold Coast arrived in Second Life
– we went a second round with the World Stock Exchange’s Luke Connell.
– stability issues in Second kept biting.
– VastPark continued its promising evolution

– educator Kim Flintoff was profiled.
– Second Life residents could now get their real life face into Second Life.
– Victoria University joined the growing number of Australian universities in Second Life.
– the number of active Australian users of Second Life rose past 15 thousand.

September 2007

– the AIIA hosted a forum on Second Life and business.
– the CSIRO commenced education sessions on ABC Island.
– VastPark previewed their Worlds Collide upgrade.

– we paid Rezzable’s Toxic Garden a visit.
– a new virtual world, Metaplace, entered the marketplace.
– the number of active Australian Second Life users fell more than a thousand to under 14 thousand.

October 2007

– we discussed furries in-depth with Australian furry, Wolfie Rankin.
– the Melbourne Laneways presence launched in Second Life.
– the much hyped virtual world Project Outback bit the dust.
– we had a walk around La Trobe University Island.
– another significant drop in active Australian Second Life users occurred with the grand total under 12 thousand.

– the REA Group, best known for its realestate.com.au site, entered Second Life.
– the Australian Internet Industry Association also launched in Second Life.
– we documented the impact our ageplay stories had on our website.
– Linden Lab’s new search functionality in its Second Life viewer showed promise.

November 2007

– the Wonderland saga drew a lot of mainstream media attention.
– development of a replica Sydney CBD in Second Life was announced.
– Second Life’s first political party was profiled.
– veteran metaverse writer, Tateru Nino, was profiled.

– Australian musician in real life and Second Life, Dexter Moore, was also interviewed.
– an interesting 2007 Federal Election night was spent on ABC Island in Second Life.
– we celebrated a year reporting on virtual worlds.

December 2007

– age verification in Second Life began.
– ASIC makes a call on the operations of virtual stock exchanges.
– Anglicans in Second Life are led by a passionate New Zealander.
– an Australian company launched a Facebook-based MMOG.

– we profiled Rezzable’s Pavig Lok.
– active Australian users of Second Life stabilised at just under 12 thousand.

Every year contains chains of significant events and the microcosm of virtual worlds have been no different. There’ll be no shortage of predictions for 2008 and we’ll add to the queue in that respect in coming weeks. What is certain is we’ll be around to bring the latest news to you.

Filed Under: Australian News, Op-ed, Virtual Worlds

Interview – Pavig Lok (Rezzable)

December 18, 2007 by Editor 3 Comments

Melbourne-based Pavig Lok is part of the Rezzable crew that have created some of the more memorable Second Life presences this year. We caught up with Pavig for some thoughts on creating something unique work in virtual worlds.

Lowell: Can you tell TMJ readers a little about your background in regard to virtual worlds?

Pavig: Many years ago I developed an interest in virtual world technologies. A whole bunch of folk, perhaps naievely, saw VR as part and parcel of the coming wave of ubiquitous net access. This was the early nineties, and hacker culture understood that until computers moved away from the programmer/user divide into visual metaphors there would not be strong adoption of them as any kind of enabling technology for the general public. VR was one of the ways we saw that going forward, understanding that games would be an element of that.

As usual, futurists get the general shape and the order that things happen absurdly out of whack. 2D visual metaphors like the desktop did pretty much what we expected them to, though are only starting to fulfil their true potential now, and 3D ran across a lot of stumbling blocks along the way. Immersive 3D (like VR goggles which we thought were “just around the corner) ran into the “simulator sickness” issue – nobody saw that one coming, but it pretty much put the kibbosh on what we thought 3D would be. Without cheap immersive 3D for the architects and industrial applications, it was very difficult for anyone in VR to convince business it was anyting more than a game technology, so I left off trying to get involved in virtual worlds until the general public caught up.

By the mid nineties most of the technologies we think of as radical in SL existed already as prototypes. Onlive had proximity based avatar voice chat (on modems!), things like Activeworlds with streaming 3D etc etc. The public wasn’t quite ready for it, business saw it as a toy, it was going nowhere. Ironically it was games that virtual worlds ended up riding on the back of to show their potential to business and the public. I figured the time was right to start looking at virtual worlds as a possible line of employment again.

Lowell: When did you first get involved with Second Life and what were your initial reactions to it after logging in for the first time?

Pavig: I’d heard about SL and kept an eye on it during development. I’d also been on the beta program for There.com. As far as a beta tester for them it came down to an email saying “your client won’t install on my machine” and that was that. After a year’s sabbatical from the net I got straight into SL. From watching what they were doing I could tell they had got it more right than anyone who had come before them.

When I first arrived in-world I was pleasantly surprised – it was just as disorienting and insane as it needed to be. It didn’t hold your hand – you arrived there and instantly saw that you had been given a body, access to prims, access to scripts, an entire system the same as everyone else. When I saw what people had been able to make in SL I was stunned – not because it was particularly sophisticated but because there was no solid division between residents and content creators.

That was the trick that nobody outside the hacker community had ever got right before – access to tools for everyone. It’s still the most important differentiating factor – you can teach a newbie to rez a prim, and when discussing something you can go “that bit there” and rez a prim on it – not some premade tool the designers gave you for pointing at things, basic use of the world and it’s qualities to improvise solutions on the fly.

Lowell: What are the biggest changes in the SL community that have stood out for you?

Pavig: The biggest change in just over a year that I’ve been here has been very much like the change on the internet between 1996 and 1998. Masses and masses of people, many of which don’t know precisely why they’re there. Consumer culture has grown hugely and local communities have suffered. This isn’t a bad thing just a shakeup – SL hasn’t had it’s Web 2.0 revolution yet to refocus on the local, so it’s become a big world with no center, and for the folk in it less of a sense of belonging to a community.

When I arrived there was something like 250,000 registrations and now there’s way over 10 million. Even if they aren’t all real people or stayers they represent a huge dilution and expanding of the community away from it’s frontier neighborhood origins. That must have some effect on the general quality of community in SL – it certainly has an effect on grid stability too 😛

Another change is corporate flirting with SL. For a wee while folk thought SL might be the “next big thing” and so folk started pumping money into it as the next push media. Like the web, SL is proving too anarchic to really work in this way. So by treating SL as a new revenue source rather than an experiment in tomorrows media – well let’s just say big business has been less than successful so far. So big business itself has had less of an effect on the world, but certainly had an effect on incoming resident expectations. I can’t say exactly what it is, but I feel it in the community.

Lowell: What is your role with Rezzable?

Pavig: I must say from the outset I’m just an artist working for Rezzable so anything I might say about company strategy and whathaveyou should be taken with a grain of salt. It’ll just be my opinion.

Originally at Rezzable I was bought in with Littletoe Bartlett to do the Greenies build. That also ended up including some project management type stuff and…. well the roles were then, as they are now, quite fluid. As Rezzable has expanded I’ve ended up tinkering on a lot of projects, and that seems to be the case for all of us.

Though MDC’s (Metaverse Development Companies as they’re evidently called now) like to think that there’s some kind of solid job description for folk working on these kind of projects, it tends not to be the case. SL itself is a fluid medium, and changes under our feet constantly – when they beta something all of us start losing sleep over if it’ll break our current builds or change our future plans. That’s just the way it is. I can’t imagine how that must look for big company clients who come to SL for representation, probably like chaos compared to what they would be used to in other media, but that’s just the topology of SL and virtual worlds – constantly in flux.

Part of my role is probably keeping on top of that changability – knowing what works and doesn’t, and what will soon work or break. That is on top of design, building, working with other artists and scripters etc. I’m sure my boss would have a different picture of my role if you asked him. I’m probably listed as a “creative” on the books – nobody really knows what they do 😛

Lowell: Rezzable is arguably one of the biggest phenomenons to hit Second Life in 2007 – why do you think the impact has been so large?

Pavig: I think Greenies was a big part of the buzz, and that’s not blowing my own trumpet. When Greenies went into beta we got a lot of attention from the business blogs because they couldn’t figure out what on earth we were trying to do. It even came down to conspiracy theories about the secret illuminati behind rezzable. Myself and some of the artists were on the rumor mill as well, being picked as alts for anyone but ourselves – which is ironic as most of us had a history in SL for anyone with interest in digging. As insane as that was it kept us in the blogs, which kept folk coming to our sims as they began to open. At the time we weren’t quite ready for that, but we couldn’t have asked for better PR if we had done our own marketing (which we didn’t) – nothing seems to placate bloggers when they think they’ve found a mystery. That got us a lot of initial traffic.

The other thing that kept people coming to peek I think is the content Rezzable has been working on. Just about everyone who builds for Rezz is an artist in SL who was already prolific or recognised. Rezzable simply let them do their stuff and produce stuff they love, and tried to find ways to fit it all together into a cohesive whole. That’s an old school entrepeneurial approach and very different from what the other big companies were doing at the time. As with all entrepeneurial activity it involves risk that some projects might end up plain silly, but that risk is distributed over a lot of projects, artists, sims and so becomes quite manageable. There’s a different approach if we do something corporate, but we’re pretty happy doing stuff that’s fun at the moment, and it pays for itself.

The big difference between rezzable and the main MDC’s is that the larger companies start with a corporate client and their demands, and are forced into a position where they must be risk averse – this will usually produce slick but uninteresting builds, no matter how creative a team you throw at it. Since Rezzable arrived on the scene though I think there’s been positive moves by the larger companies to address that space – we laughed when MOU got their first artist in residence finally with Robbie Dingo. Considering Rezzable was almost ALL artists in residence and a lot younger it just seemed silly – MOU’s creative director is already an artist but not advertised as such.

These creatives were all there already waving their arms around saying “Heya we got ideas let us do something that’s just plain cool for a change.” So we ended up on the crest of a big wave to recognize creatives in the professional SL developers community. The big names had all started out that way too but shied away from the creative-driven way of doing things as they’d grown – now they’re coming back, and I think their creatives are pretty happy about it. Now they have a reputation they can rely on based on what they’ve done and we have a reptation for what we’ve done, so we’re in a different market to the big MDC’s and not really in competition with each other.

Lowell:Did you have a marketing plan in place when Greenies launched or was it an organic approach that just happened to take off?

Pavig: Rezzable was very hands off and open brief with Greenies – they said “big kitchen, tiny aliens, make it amazing and fun.” So that’s what we did. Rezzable trusted me, Littletoe and Light Waves to come up with the goods based on our personal work and attitude. That was probably the best thing they could have done. Every SL builder would love a sim to go crazy on, a solid theme, and a pay packet to get it done. Rezzable was pretty flexible about our vision for it – we tweaked the brief a lot to get something we thought would work and take the design probably deeper than it needed to go from the outset – that’s part of how artists and designers work, they’re fussy about stuff that really hardly anyone notices.

Light Wave’s Greenies were already known and loved on the grid so it was about making a home for them and extending that story, though I don’t think we’ve tied up all the loose ends, nor should we. The other active thing we did when designing Greenies was tp try and make it look as unlike everywhere else in SL as possible. We wanted it to be somewhere you arrived and the look was different enough that your early SL wonderment came back. So that meant researching a lot of techniques that hadn’t been done before or often in SL – the use of physical hollow megaprims, first generation sculpties, shadow and light overlays etc.

One thing we were determined to do was allow for a day/night cycle, which is unusual in builds of this type, and so control of lighting and tradeoffs along those lines were a large part of design. Locking the sun makes it easier to light stuff but takes away the natural moods of a build and makes it static.

So the real plan was to make something different. If you hit on something that people like then you have the most valuable currency available in virtual worlds – traffic. For any company wanting to get returns in the virtual worlds business that’s the bread and butter – without that there’s very few revenue models available to you. We figured the “if you build it they will come” approach to clients was also a hole in the services MDC’s provide. So L’Oreal Paris has been one of our early clients, and jumped on our Greenies traffic for a low key promotion of their own. They’re giving away skins for their new makeup looks, and we’ve integrated their build into Greenies in a way that doesn’t damage the spirit of the sim. We always saw it going that way, and hoped to keep the “branding” subtle enough and in the spirit of SL that we wouldn’t alienate visitors.

Lowell: Can you list the presences Rezzable has created in SL to date?

Pavig:
* Greenies, which you know.
* Toxic Garden, curently in beta.
* Surfline, currently 3 sims devoted to surfing, and officially opening soon.
* Crimson Shadow, a gothic type build.
* Cannery, predominantly photography based artwork.
* Black Swan, an art build.
* The Stratos sims, which are nearing completion.
* Carnival of Doom, also in beta
* Cascade – closed beta
* The dump – currently being built.
* and several others also in development.

Lowell: Greenies would be the most popular one so far wouldn’t it?

Pavig: Greenies had the advantage of the flood of interest we had when we opened for beta. It put Rezzable on the map and generated a lot of buzz. But visits have been fairly consistant since opening – so much so that it’s been difficult to get in there and rebuild, redevelop, or finish some of the improvements we’ve had on the cards. That’ll be changing in the next week as we push through some long overdue changes. Black Swan has got a lot of traffic as well lately.

Apart from that I think many of the potentially popular Rezzable sims are still in development and not officially open yet. As such they haven’t had a chance to build the same popularity as they simply haven’t been launched. Surfline for example is the kind of place which will build community slowly, but retain a solid community of folk who come back once that’s established. Greenies I think by contrast is the kind of place everyone visits once, but the community that makes a habit of returning will be smaller – kind of like a picnic destination. This is something we’re working on improving, as repeat visitors are a huge asset to a sim, but we’ve all been tied up with so many projects it’s taken longer to get back to Greenies than we’d hoped.

Lowell: Can you describe how you work up your concepts and get them to a finished product?

Pavig: I generally work with Littletoe Bartlett when I can, and both of us are extremely different visual designers. We see the shapes of things differently, and I think we both plug around with our internal lego until a concept works then pretty much realize it complete. For me that means a lot of research, and I think Littletoe is like that too. So for project manager types it’s the old critical path type workings out, we just work a lot more flexibly and internally than most. By the time a concept has a shape in my head people can ask me about a detail of it and I can list the steps to realize it.

This is why I find working with Littletoe so fluid – we can agree on the bits and see the outcome. I’ll tend to start and finish things while she fills in the middle while I do a bunch of tangential stuff. Then I usually use up my remaining reserves of neurosis doing fiddly things I’ve worked out along the way. This isn’t so hard as people imagine, working out of your head. In order for a concept to actually have any kind of value it must be simple and elegant, and if it’s that, then the pieces should fit together to that end. An old wax and bromides designer once told me “put nothing in unless you can explain why it’s there” and that’s worked well for me in SL.

Lowell: What plans (if any) do Rezzable have for presences in other virtual worlds?

Pavig: That’s something you’d have to ask my boss.

Lowell: We always ask the question – what are three locations that you keep coming back to – outside your own builds of course 😉

Pavig:
Calleta’s Hobo Railroad Infohub: It’s my home, and I’ll always be a hobo. They got me started building.

NCI Kuula: Those wonderful folk are still helping the newcomers after all this time, and where I found my feet in SL.

Suffugium: a build that hasn’t aged in the entire time i’ve been in SL. It’s just “right”.

Lowell: Who inspires you in Second Life?

Pavig: This is a hard one because I always miss someone. Littletoe of course, and Mis Ordinal Malaprop for her stoic devotion to elegant and tasteful exploding things. The wonderful Arcadia Asylum who we sorely miss. Mis Tateru Nino for her balanced coverage of SL on the net. Thinkerer Melville for his can do attitude. Tooter Claxton for his builds. Light Waves, who sets the bar for what SL can do. Aley Arai who is prolific beyond belief. Orhalla Zander who established the hobos, and Yadni Monde for his freebie culture. There really are tons of folk. Oh and of course the Grendel’s Children crew.

Lowell: Any predictions you’d like to make for the coming year in regard to Rezzable, SL or the wider metaverse?

Pavig: Well Rezzable will continue to grow I’m sure. At the moment we’re in the process of consolidating builds and tying up loose ends in anticipation of a few launches and “stage two’s”. When that’s solid Littletoe, Light Waves and I are back onto another crazy scale ambitious build that we can’t talk about just yet. I also expect to see some crazy builds from other amazing artists that have come on board recently, but I can’t even imagine what they’ll be yet.

As for SL I believe the growth will continue steadily and things will improve on the grid. I really haven’t seen any other VR that is based on the philosophy of resident = content creator in the same way as SL. So I really do see SL as remaining the only game in town despite the other ambitious startups. Nothing I’ve seen on the horizon quite compares. People wave around Kaneva and so on, but today they’re beta testing 750 concurrent users – they’ve got a long way to go.

When it comes to the wider metaverse I see a lot of activity, but it’s going to be highly factional. Kaneva’s target user, There’s, Activeworlds, Croquet, SONY, etc… well they’re all after different things out of a VR. Some of the new entrants are going to be wildly popular – but I don’t see that impacting SL significantly. Barbie World user registrations make SL’s look piffling but we won’t all be there.

Filed Under: Australian News, Profile, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: pavig lok, Profile, rezzable

World Stock Exchange lays out roadmap and some history

December 15, 2007 by Editor 1 Comment

On Friday I received a notecard in Second Life from the World Stock Exchange. It’s a lengthy piece (replicated below) that provides some insights into future plans. It’s also a dogged adherence by WSE to the belief that the whole operation is for entertainment and educational purposes only and that its currency is purely fictional. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again – the so-called fictional Linden currency can be directly converted to US dollars so how does one argue it’s not real? Recent advice sought from ASIC also casts some doubt on such an assertion.

On future plans for the WSE, there’s nothing greatly different than that discussed with Luke Connell in our August 2007 interview – expansion to a model that appeals to non-Second Life residents.

If you’re game, the full notecard’s contents:

“WORLD STOCK EXCHANGE (WSE) – IMPORTANT NEWS
www.wselive.com
HAVE FUN – LEARN AND PROFIT FROM IT
􀀀
WSE Main Trading Hall
Level 3, 1 Hope Capital Island (VOICE ENABLED SIM)

IMPORTANT – HAVE A GREAT HOLIDAY SEASON AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Dear WSE Customer,

You have received this notecard because your avatar has an account with the World Stock Exchange. This notecard has been developed to assist all customers with information about virtual finance in Second Life and in using the WSE and its related products and services. If you do not wish to receive correspondence from the WSE please visit our website and request submit a request to be removed from our mailing list using the form on our contact us/help page.

Please find all the latest news and information related to the WSE below. Remember, this is all about learning, having fun and trying to make a potential fictional currency profit. Never deposit or trade with what you cannot afford to lose and start small so that you can learn and have fun.

I would like to wish you all good fortune and good health moving into 2008 and hope you all have an exciting New Years Eve!

Kind Regards,

LukeConnell Vandeverre,
Chairman & CEO
World Stock Exchange

CONTENTS
1. WSE – Past, Present and Future
2. WSE Traders Fund
3. Banks and Exchanges
4. Update on Ginko Financial
5. Update on Midas Bank and Merlin Investment Bank
6. Overview of OurBank Ltd
7. Understanding Fictional Services
8. Understanding Fictional Currency
9. Understanding Risk vs. Reward
10. Understanding the World Internet Currency
11. Second Life Economic Report
12. Second Life Chamber of Commerce
13. How to Create an Account on the WSE
14. What is the Exchange Risk API
15. Request a WSE ATM
16. What is a Company on the WSE
17. How to Buy or Sell Linden Dollars
18. How to Research a Company on WSE
19. How to Trade on the WSE
20. Listing Rules and Constitution
21. How to Contact the WSE
22. Disclaimer
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1. WSE – PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

The WSE now has come along way since March 2007 to become the leading internet- based stock exchange system focused on virtual companies operating in Second Life.

I joined Second Life in December 2006 and within the first week I was convinced that virtual worlds with endless possibilities such as Second Life will provide an extended platform to the existing website and over time would provide Internet users with a complete Broadband Entertainment experience. Thanks to the great leadership, innovation and achievements of Linden Lab the creators of Second Life, we have now entered a new era in the technological evolution of mankind which is the virtual world. Second Life and all that it represents is bringing people from around the world closer together and providing a great opportunity for residents to be inspired, learn, collaborate, innovate and to share their knowledge and creativity.

At the heart of most economies is a Stock Exchange and therefore I felt it was the right time to establish a stock market for the Second Life economy.

On the 22 December 2006 Hope Capital Ltd a Second Life based company was nothing more than a vision in a pdf file. Today WSE is the first and leading fully internet-based securities exchange and trading platform based on the virtual world of Second Life. The World Stock Exchange has experienced exceptional growth over the past 10 months and this growth is expected to continue. Second Life and the World Stock Exchange are History in the making and have exceeded all our expectations.

Since being established, the WSE has constantly overcome all challenges it faces while continuing to improve and growing all services to provide users all over the world with a fully interactive securities exchange and trading experience. The WSE has constantly made every effort where possible to improve and develop our services while providing information to allow all stakeholders an opportunity to share in the future growth and prosperity of the World Stock Exchange and virtual world economies such as Second Life.

The WSE has achieved over 26,100 accounts, raised IPO’s over L$129.5 million, WIC$1,800, secondary offers have raised over L$27.1 million, nearly WIC$ 3,000 and had exchange turnover exceed L$519 million.

The WSE is progressing well and has made a significant contribution to economic activity in the virtual economy of Second Life. We have been aggressively cleaning up the market, making sure CEO’s keep the market updated and de-listing any companies that fail to adhere to the WSE Rules and Terms.

We have also been extremely busy developing the very latest version of the WSE Platform – called WSE 4.0 -, which is progressing well and we expect the new website design, layout, functionality and services should be completed by mid-January.

WSE staff is cleaning up the market and preparing the WSE platform for our worldwide launch of the World Stock Exchange to the mass market as the world’s leading internet-based stock exchange platform to be used for educational and entertainment purposes.

The majority of future WSE traders will be general internet users with a browser using the World Internet Currency as their chosen currency for trading on the WSE.

We estimate that trading volume will exceed L$10m per 24 hours with in excess of 50,000 new additional WSE traders participating in the market between now and April 2008.

We ask for your patience and continued support while we complete this final major phase of the WSE’s development and growth.

Every decisions we make or action we take are made in the best interests of the majority of stakeholders at all times. There are times when leaders must make decisions that can lead to some negative consequences in the short term in order for us to make a greater positive impact in the longer term. It is for this reason that the WSE is still operational when many other virtual businesses and banks are not and it is for this reason that the WSE is on the verge of major growth which we hope you will share in with us.

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2. WSE TRADERS FUND
It has always been part of the WSE’s agenda to ensure that all WSE traders whom we class as stakeholders would be indirectly protected as much as possible from the potential ethics-based fraud and misconduct that would come from businesses listing on the WSE during the start-up and development phase which has been an almost entirely unregulated environment in order to cultivate and encourage growth.

The time has now come that we feel there is an improved regulatory environment and sufficient information available to WSE traders in order to help them make informed decisions when trading on the WSE.

The World Stock Exchange Traders Fund (WTF) is a specially designed fund that holds shares or bonds (securities) in companies listed on the WSE on behalf of all WSE account holders who have lost their securities in de-listed companies up to the 19th October 2007 with a few exceptions. All WSE account holders are stakeholders in the World Stock Exchange business. The WSE Traders Fund has been established to ensure that shareholders will get the best possible opportunity to recover any lost linden dollars through the dividends and interest payments from all securities and assets owned by the fund.

Management alone did not make the WSE what it is today and it is through the participation of our customers that the WSE has become what it is today and what it will become in the future.

All securities in previously fraudulent or bankrupt companies that were listed on the WSE have now been transferred to the WSE Traders Fund.

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3. BANKS AND EXCHANGES
The World Stock Exchange had first-mover advantage in the market and is now a solid start-up operation with a strong brand presence. We are constantly improving and developing the service. Since the WSE was established in March 2007, there have been a few start-up stock exchanges trying to replicate the basic concept and service. However, they have been unable to differentiate themselves or gain traction in the market.

The WSE has over 95% market share and we ask that users express caution when dealing with the recent start-up exchanges as they are operating basic websites and trading platforms with extremely limited functionality compared to that offered by the WSE. Other start-up exchanges lack brand awareness, exposure and have far less transparency, functionality, credibility, liquidity and stability.

Although it is good to have competition in all markets especially those that have matured it is important to remember that in a small emerging economy such as Second Life there is limited liquidity and available capital in the market and as a result it is imperative that we have a large strong solid Stock Exchange and Bank backed by real life people who can pool all its vast resources into continued Research & Development, Growth and Marketing rather than many small operations that are likely fraudulent or scams and simply dilute the precious market that remains.

The WSE does not deal with the start-up exchanges as they have companies that either breached the WSE Rules and Terms or did not pass the WSE Listing Rules. Most of their customers already use the WSE. There is no motivation for the WSE to acquire or merge with a start-up exchange that will not bring any value or growth to the WSE. Eventually, those start-up exchanges will run out of liquidity while the WSE continues to grow and improve which will ultimately result in the financial collapse of those exchanges.

We have also seen a wave of stock exchange and bank start-ups trying to gain a share of the lucrative market through lots of empty promises that try to create the impression of a safer and more regulated trading environment along with offering unrealistic interest rates or by using questionable tactics to acquire customers.

We express caution to all users before considering to use a start-up exchange or banking service.

When you deposit your linden dollars into a virtual bank and pay the ATM, you have given the ATM avatar permission to use those linden dollars in order to hopefully generate a return that would cover interest commitments.

Second Life banks aren’t real-life banks. Their owner is an avatar providing a fictional banking service to residents using a fictional currency and as a result there is risk and no real-life legal protection.

To minimize the risk of losing your linden dollars, use a bank/exchange with:
– A website that provides a terms of service and disclaimers;
– A website providing full transaction history and interest payment records;
– The main business activity being to generate profits to support the bank’s interest commitment to depositors;
– A real-life individual or company operating the bank service. This means their reputation and credibility supports the business;
– An interest rate below 20% per year or less than 0.055% per day;
– No withdrawal limits;
– Continuous innovation and development
– Regular website and service updates.
– Detailed announcements
– Detailed educational resources and help facilities
– Listing Rules, Code of Conduct and a Constitution for companies

Most businesses in Second Life offering a bank service are owned and operated by anonymous avatars offering high interest rates to depositors that are very high-risk and not sustainable.

Many big banks have not been able to generate steady profits from their activities to support the large interest commitments to their depositors. In most cases the bank holds less than 20% or in extreme cases less than 5% of the total deposits in the ATM avatar account for depositors to make withdrawals. This unsustainable business model has resulted in many of the banks holding an insufficient amount of linden dollars in their cash reserves to cover for withdrawals by depositors and has lead to the bankruptcy of these banks with limited to no chance for depositors to recover their deposits.

Most of these banks are set up with little to no accountability and to provide linden dollars to the controlling avatar for recreation and personal use.

The WSE is a fictional securities exchange and banking service using a fictional currency and as a result the only actions that can be taken to protect the interests of the WSE are to lock user accounts and garnish any remaining fictional currency and securities in an avatars’ account that were owned by an avatar that has breached the WSE Rules and Terms. We do not take any legal actions as any breach or fraud related to a fictional service is on an ethical basis only and not illegal according to real-life laws and regulations.

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4. UPDATE ON GINKO FINANCIAL
Ginko Financial went into bankruptcy due to holding insufficient cash reserves and was also unable to meet it’s interest commitment to depositors and bondholders.

The WSE agreed to assist Ginko Financial depositors and issued one share in the WSE Traders Fund for every bond in Ginko Perpetual Bonds. (Prior to the formal bankruptcy, Ginko Financial issued one bond in GPB for every linden dollar in deposit at Ginko Financial.)

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5. UPDATE ON MIDAS AND MERLIN BANK
Merlin Bank and Midas Bank both held insufficient cash reserves and were unable to meet their interest commitment to depositors and went bankrupt.

The cause of the bankruptcy of a bank is not our concern as the WSE is not responsible for the decisions and actions of a bank’s management. The WSE is not obligated in any way to the depositors of third-party banks or the customers of any virtual business controlled by third-party avatars. However, the WSE has a process for situations such as this. The WSE does not transfer control of fictional assets in the WSE to any third party once an avatar is found to have gone bankrupt or breached WSE Rules and Terms.

The WSE locked the bank avatars’ WSE accounts in order to prevent the users from dumping fictional assets on the market, crashing prices or running with additional linden dollars. The WSE then delisted all Midas Group companies and transferred all shareholders, shares and bonds of Midas companies to the WSE Traders Fund. Shareholders of the WSE Traders Fund own former Midas assets, not HCL or the WSE. The WSE requested the CEO of Midas Bank to provide the WSE with a full list of former Midas Bank depositors and their account balances so that the WSE could issue shares to depositors in the WSE Traders Fund. However, this request was denied by the CEO of Midas Bank.

A former executive at Merlin Bank has supplied the WSE with a list of depositors and their balances. The WSE will issue shares in the WSE Traders Fund to all former Merlin Bank depositors.

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6. OVERVIEW OF OURBANK LTD
OurBank Ltd is a fully integrated banking service operating on the World Stock Exchange platform. The current interest rate provided is 15.95% p.a. ( per annum / yearly), calculated daily and paid once every 14 days. This is a realistic rate supported by the solid profits of the WSE.

Features include:

– No withdrawal limits on user balances;
– Interest calculated daily;
– Interest paid once every 14 days;
– Online Transaction and interest payment records.

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7. UNDERSTANDING FICTIONAL SERVICES
All fictional services provided by the World Stock Exchange are an imaginative creation in a simulated exchange, trading and banking environment that are without basis in reality and hold no legal monetary or asset value.

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8. UNDERSTANDING FICTIONAL CURRENCY
Fictional currencies (Money, Currency, Cash, Dollars, Capital, Funds) are used as game tokens and have no monetary value of themselves and are therefore not directly taxable as income in real-life. Using the Linden Currency (Linden Dollar, LND$, L$, Lindens) is subject to the Terms of Service provided by Linden Research, Inc. located at www.secondlife.com and using the World Internet Currency (WIC, WICS, W$) is subject to the Terms of Service of WIC Exchange Pty. Limited. located at www.wicexchange.com

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9. UNDERSTANDING RISK VS. REWARD
Risk is related to the potential losses resulting from a risky event and to the probability of such an event. The larger the potential loss and the more likely the event, the greater the overall risk.

Fundamental rule: The greater the amount of risk, the greater the potential return.

Potential risks in the virtual and real markets include:
– Losing the money you invest (your principle/capital);
– Currency movements or changes in the Terms of Service by fictional or real currency providers may affect or remove any value;
– Low liquidity in the market or economy may result in slow sales or no sales due to the lack of buyers;
– Other risks may include credit risk, information timing and source risk, management, operational, start-up, legal or regulatory risks.

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10. UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD INTERNET CURRENCY
The World Internet Currency (WIC, WICS, W$) will bridge the gap between the real and virtual world by allowing the majority of the internet users to trade and invest on the WSE. The WIC offers more flexibility and freedom, no buy limits and less fees. www.wicexchange.com

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11. SECOND LIFE ECONOMIC REPORT
Second Life was established in 1999 by San Francisco-based software company Linden Research, Inc. – better known in Second Life as Linden Lab, commonly abbreviated to LL. Second Life has experienced extraordinary growth since late 2006 as it gained increased attention from media coverage around the world. There are now over 11 million resident accounts, of which over 91 thousand are premium accounts, spending an average of more than three hours per month inworld. Resident linden dollar balances exceeded L$3.5 billion in the end of September 2007 which at an exchange rate of 265 / US$1.00 has a potential US dollar value of approximately USD$13.2 million. 2007’s Second Life annual GDP is estimated to exceed L$130 billion linden dollars which would equate to approximately USD$ 500 million, which is more then that of about 10 real-world countries!

In September 2007, the top five countries by active residents were the United States, Germany, Brazil, Japan and the United Kingdom. Over 88% of active users were between 18 – 44 years of age.

And:
– A total of 1,496,322 residents logged in to Second Life during the 60-day period prior to December 7th 2007;
– At the end of November 2007, there were 563 new regions added bringing the total number of regions to over 11 thousand. Each region is made up of 65,536 square meters of virtual land and is simulated on a single CPU;
– A total of 71,564,912 square meters sold by residents in the month of November 2007 with the average price paid per sqm at L$6.30.

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12. SECOND LIFE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
The Second Life Chamber of Commerce (SLCC) is the peak representative body for business professionals in Second Life. It is a registered group in Second Life run by its members for its members to provide career development, networking and training.

The SLCC holds regular events in Second Life including popular topics of interest to the business and investment community. The knowledge gained from events held by the SLCC aims assist members in both real life and Second Life. Some of the events already held by the SLCC included speakers from real-world and virtual world business. Recent speakers included Andrew Mallon, Executive Director at the non-profit, real-life Social Research Foundation.

You can join the Second Life Chamber of Commerce by searching the group in the Second Life search feature or by requesting an invitation to the group from MouzurX Wise, Erik Goff or Sven Cordoso.
*Please note that SLCC group IM and group voice features may not be used for advertising of your business without permission.

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13. HOW TO CREATE AN ACCOUNT ON THE WSE
If you are a Second Life resident you can create an account from within Second Life to use your linden dollars. Click the landmark in this notecard and visit the WSE ATM. Wait until all objects around you have loaded then click the WSE ATM and select “Reset Pwd” . The ATM will give you a password which you can change once you have logged in to the WSE website, www.wselive.com. To log in, use your avatar name and (ATM-supplied) password.

HOW TO DEPOSIT
To deposit Linden Dollars L$ into your WSE Account simply right click on the WSE ATM using your right mouse button and then select “Pay”. Enter the amout to deposit and then select Pay.

CHECK BALANCE
To check your balance select the WSE ATM and then select “Balance”. Your balance will dispaly in the chat window using a private channel.

HOW TO WITHDRAW
To withdraw linden dollars from your WSE Accountselect the WSE ATM and then select “Withdraw”.Enter the amount to windraw on the number pad and then select “Ok”.

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14. WHAT IS THE EXCHANGE RISK API
The Exchange Risk API has been developed by Linden Lab as part of an overall plan to minimize and remove fraud and similar malicious activity related to the Linden Dollar fictional currency. The Exchange Risk API allows the World Stock Exchange to receive the result of Linden Lab’s determination of the risk associated with the purchase of Linden Dollars in a particular transaction. The Exchange Risk API uses the same risk assessment factors that Linden Lab uses for LindeX. If the Exchange Risk API sends a high risk result to the WSE for a transaction then the WSE system will cancel the transaction and will not accept payment. This may prevent a user from depositing Linden Dollars into the WSE. If a user is unable to deposit they can submit a help ticket via the WSE website for further information.

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15. REQUEST A WSE ATM
If you would like a WSE ATM in your shop, office, estate or building please add “Wse Huet” as a friend in Second Life and send her a teleport request when she is online. Wse Huet is online on Tuesday’s at around 5PM PST

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16. WHAT IS A COMPANY ON THE WSE
A company or entity on the World Stock Exchange is a business operating in a virtual world such as Second Life. The Entity is a registered group conducting transactions using fictional currency to generate a profit and which is controlled and operated by a resident using their main Avatar or a dedicated Avatar for all business transactions. Many avatars choose to remain anonymous and to keep their real life identity confidential.

The controlling avatar is the founder/owner of an entity on the WSE and is required to act as the chief executive officer of the entity also known as a company and to adhere to the WSE Terms of Service, Constitution, Market Rules and Listing Rules.

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17. HOW TO BUY OR SELL LINDEN DOLLARS

You can buy or sell Linden Dollars using the Lindex by Second Life located here:
http://secondlife.com/currency/

You can also buy or sell linden dollars by creating an account on SL Exchange (www.slexchange.com)

Once you have created an account on SL Exchange you can visit the following link to purchase linden dollars:
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=LindenDollars

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18. HOW TO RESEARCH A COMPANY ON THE WSE
Since you as the WSE Trader and Investor are solely responsible and accept full risk for your own decisions, trades and investments it is very important that you do due diligence and research companies using all available information in order to minimize risk and increase the potential to profit and generate a return on investment.

To research a listed company on the WSE simply click the Research button located on the top menu of wselive.com and then select the company name to view the Company Profile page. On the Profile page you can view financial reports, announcements, market data, ratings, analyst reports, charts and more. You can also contact the CEO of each business with questions using Second Life or by email. You can also check the CEO’s avatar profile to find out what classified ads the CEO has along with information about the CEO, their group memberships and any favorite landmarks they may have.

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19. HOW TO TRADE ON THE WSE

About Shares, Stocks and Bonds:
A person buys Shares, Stocks or Bonds called securities in order to see an increase in the value (known as a capital gain) while also holding on to the securities over 3, 6 or 12 or more months in order to receive dividends (A share of the Profit) or bond interest paid by the company either monthly, quarterly or annually.

A bond is a debt security in which the buyer of the bold acts as the lender and the issuer of the bond is the borrower. Bonds act as a corporate loan and usually have a defined term consisting of fixed interest payments after which the bond is redeemed by the issuer on the maturity date for the principal amount.

A share or stock is an equity security in which you own a share of the company and as a result are entitled to your share of the companies earnings (profit) as well as voting rights if specified by the constitution. Being a shareholder of a public company does not mean you have a say in the day-to-day running of the business. Instead, depending on the constitution and type of shares owned shareholders will have one vote per share to elect the board of directors and vote on any proposals put forward by the company CEO.

The management of a company are supposed to increase the value of the company for shareholders. In real life if this doesn’t happen, the shareholders can vote to have the management removed however individual investors like you and I don’t own enough shares to have a material influence on the company. It’s really high net worth individuals, banks and large institutional investors who make the decisions

In Second Life this is slightly different as you can’t sack the management or the founding avatar, however you can ask the WSE to meet with the company’s management to discuss ways of improving their business while also selling your Shares or Stock (At a Profit) as another way to display your unhappiness with management decisions.

For more information about shares please visit:
http://www.wselive.com/education/shares

Making a Deposit:
To buy securities on the World Stock Exchange you will need to deposit your fictional currency into your WSE trading account. You can use the Linden Dollar Currency (Lindens) or World Internet Currency (WICS)

In-World ATM right click on the ATM and select “Pay” then enter the amount of Lindens you would like to deposit. The Lindens will be instantly credited to your WSE Linden Trading Balance. If your avatar account does not have any Lindens you will need to buy your Lindens from the LINDEX located at SecondLife.com

How to Buy and Sell (Trading) on the WSE
Login to WseLive.com and then select the “Trading Room” button on the top navigation menu. First select the companies you would like to add to your Watchlist so that you can view real-time price movements along with volume details. To buy securities in a company select the company code (symbol) or select a company in the drop down list and then select “Trade”.

Once you are looking at the Order Entry page scroll down the page to view the Top 10 Open Sell and Buy Orders. You can buy securities immediately from any sell orders using the “Market Buy” feature or you can place a Buy At-Limit order to specify the maximum price per share you are willing to pay. If you select Buy at Market make sure you have checked to see what the current Open Sell Orders are so that you can estimate what price per security you will pay.

To sell securities on the WSE immediately you will need to enter the amount that you want to sell and price per security listed in the Open Buy Orders list so that the system will match your sell order with current open buy orders instantly. If you do not want to sell to the current buy orders then you can specify a higher price per security using the Sell At Limit order. You can place a sell order in either currency however you will receive the buyers chosen currency. The WSE charges a fictional currency commission to the seller of 3% on the sale of all securities such as shares and bonds.)

We would like to remind WSE Traders that the objective of investing is to buy low, hold and sell high. This means buying securities at the lowest possible price you can, hold them in order to generate dividend income (share of company profits) or interest payments over the longer term and to sell your securities for more than you paid. If you need to exit your position in order to access your fictional currency or to reposition your portfolio then sell at a price per security that minimizes any potential loss from selling below your original cost.

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20. LISTING RULES, MARKET RULES AND CONSTITUTION
– Listing Rules governs the admission of an entities to the official list, quotation of securities, suspension of securities from quotation and removal of entities from the official list. They also govern disclosure and some aspects of a listed entity’s conduct.

– Market Rules govern the conduct of all participants in the market including company officers, companies, traders, investors and all accountholders.
– The Constitution governs the internal management of any company listed on WSE

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21. HOW TO CONTACT THE WSE
The WSE has inworld customer service provided by the WSE Concierge team. If concierge are unavailable or if you have feedback, a proposal, technical issues or wish to close your account you can contact the WSE Help Desk on the Help page of Wselive.com or by going to http://www.wselive.com/info/contact . A WSE Concierge will contact you within 72 hours.

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22. DISCLAIMER
The World Stock Exchange (WSE) is a Fictional Securities Exchange and Banking service developed for educational and entertainment purposes and is not a real life securities exchange and bank. You are receiving this notecard because you have an account on the WSE, if you wish to close your account or do not wish to receive future communication from the WSE then please send a request to close your account using the WSE website.

This notecard does not provide individual or customized legal, tax, or investment services and advice. We make no guarantees as to the accuracy, quantity or quality of the information on this notecard, which is provided only on an AS-IS and AS AVAILABLE basis at Users sole risk. The WSE, Hope Capital and all related parties shall not be responsible or liable for any errors, omissions or inaccuracies in this notecards content.

The WSE does not use real currency and only operates using fictional currencies called (Linden Dollars) and (World Internet Currency). Using the Linden Currency is subject to the Terms of Service by Linden Research Inc. located at www.secondlife.com and using the World Internet Currency is subject to the Terms of Service by WIC Exchange Pty Limited located at www.wicexchange.com . The World Stock Exchange is owned and operated by Hope Capital Pty. Ltd, Australia. By visiting and using the this website titled World Stock Exchange and located at www.wselive.com you are accepting and agree with the WSE Terms of Service (“TOS”). Hope Capital and World Stock Exchange are registered trademarks of Hope Capital Pty. Ltd, Australia. Second Life and Linden Lab are registered trademarks of Linden Research Inc.”

If you’ve got this far then surely you have an opinion – make it known here!

Filed Under: Australian News, Business, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: LukeConnell, WSE

Legality of virtual stock exchanges – ASIC makes a call

December 7, 2007 by Editor 1 Comment

Massively’s Tateru Nino has written about the legality of virtual stock exchanges, including Second Life’s World Stock Exchange run by Australian Luke Connell.

ASIC is Australia’s financial market watchdog and their view on virtual stock exchanges is that they don’t fall under their purview – but that Fair Trading entities may scrutinise any claims of such markets being touted as only a game. As Tateru states in her piece, “There’s no real difference, of course, in a bank or stock exchange that deals over the Web, over the telephone or in a virtual world”. It’s hard to see the logic in the opposing viewpoint, however it appears that some virtual exchanges have a vested interest in claiming it’s all a game. It’s increasingly appearing that such a claim isn’t even a defence from a legal viewpoint.

Filed Under: Australian News, Business, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: legal, LukeConnell, WSE

‘Librarians’ tie-in on ABC Island this Thursday

October 29, 2007 by Editor 1 Comment

Australian made comedy The Librarians makes it debut this week and there’s a tie-in event scheduled on the Melbourne Laneways section of ABC Island.

The full info from the notecard I received:

“DATE: Thursday November 1st

TIME: 7:30pm AEDT, 5:30pm (WA) 1:30am SL time (PDT)

The Librarians, is a new six-part comedy series from ABC TV, based around the highly-strung head librarian of an outer suburban Melbourne library.

This new social satire premieres on Wednesday October 31 at 9.30pm AEDT. Or if you can’t watch it live, you can view it online at http://abc.net.au/tv/librarians/from 10:00pm.

Then on Thursday night, in conjunction with the ALIA, Emerald Dumont – a librarian avatar from the Australian Libraries Building – will host a discussion.”

Filed Under: Australian News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ABC, community, Librarians

‘The Office’ covers Second Life

October 27, 2007 by Editor 1 Comment

With the massive blog coverage on CSI New York’s episode on Second Life, another TV appearance has been overlooked. The US version of The Office had an SL cameo. One part of it can be seen here:

There’s a reason for mentioning this – one of SLOz’s sponsors, Encore Design Group (EDG), was responsible for the build “The Hanging Gardens of Ancient Babylon”. EDG helped us with our modest SLOz HQ earlier this year.

Other info from the press release:

“I have never been more excited than when Dwight and Jim were shown near the welcome center at the Hanging Gardens,” says Kat Claxton, co-founder of Encore Design Group. “I have been a fan of The Office since it first aired, and I watch it every week. When we were informed that the producers of the show had been capturing footage in Mesopotamia, we had no idea how much would actually make it into the show. When it aired and both Dwight and Jim were shown in easily identifiable areas of the Hanging Gardens, we just couldn’t believe it. It’s like a dream come true for us at EDG, and we’re very proud that our build was chosen to represent all of Second Life to a nationwide viewing audience.”

As a side story, the episode of “The Office” that aired on Thursday October 25 had Jim making fun of Dwight for Dwight’s involvement in Second Life. When Jim calls Second Life a game, Dwight corrects him by saying that SL is not a game since it has no end goals, winners or losers. “Oh, there are losers,” says Jim while staring pointedly at Dwight.

But later in the episode, Jim creates his own SL avatar to monitor Dwight’s in-world activities, and his character’s love interest Pam (Jenna Fischer) points out how much attention Jim had spent in making his own avatar look exactly like his real-life self.

The last SL-related scene in the episode has Dwight standing by a kiosk in Mesopotamia near a sign advertising something he’d made called “Second Second Life”, which the show’s other characters deride as being yet another step removed from Dwight’s reality.

Filed Under: Business, General News, Virtual Worlds, Virtual worlds in the media Tagged With: 'the office', media

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‘The Office’ covers Second Life

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