Machinima and Other Content

Video games have been a huge part of my childhood and teenage years. Now, as a college student, I find myself playing them less and less (it's more of a time thing rather than an interest thing). Regardless, I still appreciate the value video games have when it comes to creativity and storytelling. One unique things video games can be used for is to create machinima.

We talked briefly about machinima in class. It is essentially using real-world filmmaking techniques and applying them to interactive virtual spaces, which in most cases is a video game engine. One could think of it as a hybrid between animation and traditional cinema.

The types of videos created using machinima vary from features to music videos. Yes, there is even an academy for machinima arts and an international machinima exposition. I personally don't know of any long-form machinima, but it most certainly is a legitimate form of art/filmmaking.

Some of the only machinima that I have watched is not even true machinima. There is a fantastic YouTuber, Captain Sparklez, who produces video game content as well as music videos about games such as Minecraft.

While some of his earlier work is done mostly through the actual game, some of his stuff (like the video above) does not use the physical video game engine at all to produce machinima content. The style and look is almost exactly like Minecraft, but is actually animation. I personally like it better.

The ability to tell stories through non-traditional ways is really interesting, and machinima is a great outlet. There are many popular series, such as Red v Blue (done using the Halo games). I am excited to see where this form of art can go.

The End of the Semester

I wanted to write a little bit of a summary of what I have done this semester in case some of you wish to visit what I've build in Second Life. I think we'll be illustrating these things on Thursday as well. I have tried to illustrate the process of radiation therapy, since this is what I do full time when I'm not pretending to be a student so it is what I'm most familiar with.

There are four different areas, an Introductory area with a quick video clip of the facility where I work. There are several posters with links with some helpful information. The Intro Room is the area where a patient will get "simulated" for their treatment. This used to mean using a machine similar to the radiation delivery machine which was called a simulator. With the advent of digital media and computers that could handle the huge data sets there is no need to use an actual machine as a simulator, a "virtual patient" is created from the CT images of the patient and all of the simulations is then done in a computer, along with a bunch of calculations. This is all performed in the Treatment Planning area which in Second Life is not so cool since it is all about working on computers and there are many VR types of tools already in existence to assist with this (Vertual). The final room is the Linac Room where the radiation delivery machine is in place. There are several posters explaining the process.

While the idea of radiation can be scary to some, or even controversial to others, it serves as a means of cancer cure for many. It's technology is expensive, but in some cases it is used as a substitute for surgery because of the reduced side effects and risk. I hope none of you have to experience this process in real life and it could become and only virtual process!

Hope you have all been able to get something out of this class, I know I have learned a lot mostly as a paradigm shift about how I approach the use of digital media, it has made me think of news ways to illustrate concepts and ideas, and I love some of the ubiquitous ideas (especially with the handhelds). I know I have barely scraped the surface on what can be done with digital media in education and in medicine.

What's next for Second Life?

Since I have spend a bit of time now in Second Life, I have started to wonder if it will stand the test of time. The move the company made towards the Enterprise version (at such a high dollar) along with Shamar's post about the possibility of law suits for visiting someone else's creation (or filming while there) makes me question what the future will hold for this particular platform. I believe there is a lot that it is flexible and provides a platform to illustrate different concepts and even for a novice like myself it has been fairly usable. While there are still advances being made and some companies creating new tools like this new 3D software for graph illustrations (BrainBoard - picture right), other areas seem to be closing down. I have found myself in some Islands that were pretty vacant that looked like they used to contain merchandise or some other form of activity. One article I found (picture below) seem to feel that second life needs to find a new life. I think that this critique comes from people who don't see much use for walking around trying to buy stuff and maybe "talking to weirdo's". Another hit for Second Life comes from Australia where a major internet provider who had given unmetered access to Second Life to its customers has decided to pull the plug and also to take down their BigPond Island because after 2 years the company's "focus has moved to other social media opportunities". I can completely agree that from a social networking standpoint, Second Life doesn't quite make it. It is too slow, too expensive, and is really awkward, that along with all the materialism it makes me a little crazy. However, this doesn't discount the fact that there are huge opportunities from an academic point of view for lectures, meetings, conferences, and for illustrating abstract concepts. This class and others interested in using the medium to convey ideas will determine if Second Life succeeds or fails; not the number of shoes or outfits that I buy.

EFF Lawyer Says Second Life Copyright Issues "In Some Ways Worse" Than Real Life

Over the past few weeks, I've been experimenting with how the content of Second Life can be used to create Machinima videos and also brought into Isadora to create content for projections. As I played around with the possibilities, I began to become very interested in zooming in on objects to create abstract images of flowing color. I realized a swaying bush could become beautiful abstract swirling greens and have no resemblance to a bush at all. I thought to myself, "Wow, what a great way to collect abstract footage to mix with real world footage". I was reminded of the abstract film pieces of Stan Brackage. So, Second Life, more than presenting opportunities for filming virtual spaces that represent real life, has unlimited abstract potential, if areas are filmed from an angle of distortion. Or, for example, if a moving character is brought into Isadora and connected to a time-blur and color filter, then the content can change tremendously!

I got really excited about all of this and even about the possibilities of making straight on Machinima videos with little abstraction. But, then I started to wonder about copyright. Did individuals who created the trees have a copyright on their trees? Would Linden Labs have some rights to everything I would make within their virtual landscape? What if I abstracted the content to such a potential that it could not be recognized? Could I be sued for filming an avatar without his/hers/its consent if its name appears above its head and the shot is included on a short machinima film that is uploaded to YouTube, receives 200 million hits and shoots me to superstardom? Ok, just kidding! But, you know what I mean.

I did a quick google search and came across this article: EFF Lawyer Says Second Life Copyright Issues "In Some Ways Worse" Than Real Life

Here's the meat of the article:
"Second Life in some ways is worse than real life. That's because users retain the underlying intellectual property rights to their SL creations. And after all, as Fred pointed out, you can walk down the street in real life without worrying that the textures in the sidewalk are copyrighted. "In Second Life these are gray interesting mysteries" around the law, he added. Something worth considering for people who publish screenshots or machinima extracted from SL. It's been argued that if you run a photo of a Second Life street, you don't really need to get the permission from the creator of every single item in the frame, just as you don't need to do so when you take a photo of a New York City street. However, that assumption has not yet been tested in court. As Von Lohmann added, most of the Second Life community is unlikely to be aggressively litigious. But if Second Life continues growing, I believe that sense of good faith won't always hold."

So, after reading this, I began to have second thoughts about using Second Life for content creation. Why would I want to put all of that time an energy into learning how to use it, or film scenes and edit them, etc., if ,down the road someone could tell me that it is not really my content at all, but belongs to ten other individuals, one of whom would like to sue me?

The article did state that "the Second Life community is unlikely to be aggressively litigious. But if Second Life continues growing, I believe that sense of good faith won't always hold". And, that's what I'm worried about. Any thoughts?

My Machinima Experience

I had hoped to be ready to share my machinima by now, but what I can share is some of my experience with this process. First of all, I am disappointed in the information from the SL Wiki on Machinimas. They list "machinima friendly sims", locations where filming is allowed. I tried almost every one of them and only one allowed you to create a film path, and even that one deletes anything you create in 5 minutes. Also, I did not find very many free tools for Mac for filming. I ended up purchasing iShowU HD which is extremely user friendly, but if you are running that and SL you have to stop every few minutes or the animation in SL will stop being able to Rez. Also, as all of you know by now, there is a great deal of time involved in editing. I am using iMovie'08 which is quite easy and I've used it once before. Overall I'm relatively pleased with how my machinima is turning out, (but I have to admit, I'm not a perfectionist). Probably the most frustrating thing of this entire process has been the inordinate amount of time I had to spend "creating sets" for my movie I cannot even tell how many hours that has taken and the finish product by no means looks like it took so long! Hopefully I'll have time to also complete some of the functional aspects of my second life project so that it is a better teaching tool rather than just a stage. It has been an interesting project so far.

In the Company of Strangers

In The Company of Strangers



No need to watch the entire video, but I've posted it because I was intrigued by the way that Second Life avatars and environments were mixed with real life scenes, sometimes actually within Second Life through television sets. Other scenes were combined with Second Life through editing software techniques so that various layers were created.

Also, I took at look at the blog associated with this video. The master's student who made this video was concerned with indeterminacy and how it acts "as a significant governing factor in the articulation of our relations with others, reinforcing our description as time-based entities traversing the passage of the everyday". Mike Baker, the master's student, also talks of the "Roaming Body" and how "our meetings and encounters with people frequently manifest as disjunct mis-communiqués and dis-engagements".

I think this is especially true in the parts of the world that have access to computers and cellphones etc. We always seem to be on the go with something else to attend to. But, in other countries that I've been, people have related in entirely different ways. In the countryside of Northern India men would sit under a tree for hours and drink chi tea and talk. In Quito, Ecuador parks were filled with men in the middle of the day playing soccer and chess. Granted, this was largely due to the economic situation at the time due to the dollarization of the country, but the fact remains that people were relating differently. It was not a quick hi and by or a few words, but afternoons passed together on a regular basis.

So as I think about us as "time-based entities", I wonder how the concept of this has changed over the generations. How was time experienced 15,000 years ago, 5,000years ago, 300 years ago, 50 years ago, 10 years ago? What factors have contributed to the ways in which we experience time? How will multi-user virtual environments or chips implanted in the brain capable of downloading information change how we experience time and space? How is time experienced in the same moment by different people in different countries with differnt cultural and social values? Well, these are just some questions and thoughts that arose from watching this video and reading Baker's blog.

Lynette Wallworth in Second Life

(You Tube excerpt)Austrialian artist Lynette Wallworth was a mentor at the Producer Institute this year at BAVC in San Francisco. Her installations utilize technology to amplify and celebrate the human spirit. During the course of these intense 10 days, she engaged with filmmakers and technologists in fruitful collaboration and also entered Second Life for the first time. Certainly Draxtor Despres had to sit down with Lynette's avatar alter-ego Rasaa Mistwalker and chat a little about physical versus simulated reality.

Get a First Life

Face it, we all need to from time to time

Is Second Life worth saving?

Evidently, while we in Digital Worlds have been busy with our final projects, trouble has been brewing in Second Life.

Does anyone remember a few weeks ago when we logged in to Second Life and were greeted with a new Terms of Service (ToS) to agree to? Turns out that Linden Lab had altered their ToS to become more restrictive as to how others use their copyrighted material (their logo, icons, etc.). You can read what were some of the changes here, as well what are some of their legal ramifications.

To make a long story short, Linden Lab has decided to restrict any kind of usage of their copyrighted material to only that usage which they find VERY favorable. Since it's not possible to enforce this kind of preferential usage of copyrighted material through trademark and copyright law, Linden has taken the audacious step of circumventing copyright law by making these restrictions on their copyright as part of their contract with the user (the ToS).

Now, most of the users out there in Second Life (myself included) are not really affected by this. However, there are some who are irate as to the situation and have gone to strike the use of Second Life (don't worry, the strike's over by now).

In light of all of the other problems that have been plaguing Second Life, from banks running away with people's money to companies leaving Second Life for greener pastures, pissing off your core audience is not something that Linden Lab wants to do. After all, these people give you, in essence, free publicity by blogging about their second lives. The last thing Linden Lab needs is more bad publicity.

As such, a question needs to be asked that I think we all should answer: Is Second Life worth saving?

Now, don't get me wrong. I believe there is a bright future in virtual environments and I think that they will become more interconnected with our lives. But, will it be in the form of Second Life? Why should it be?

Second Life is limited environment for programmers to work with. For example, from my experience in this course, programming in Linden Script has been a challenge, to say the least. Not because Linden Script is hard to understand. But rather, it is very limited in what one can "officially" achieve in Linden Script. And unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to expand on the language, as it is still closed-source. Add to this Linden's willingness to take advantage of the open-source community, at the cost of providing almost no feedback this community politely asks for it, as well as their other recent problems and I start thinking that something's rotten in the state of Linden. Maybe those companies are seeing the beginning of the end and have decided to abandon ship.

Or maybe not. Maybe the recent change in the ToS was really necessary due to the amount of increased competition Second Life's been getting from other open-source virtual environments. And maybe they'll finally finish their Mono upgrade of Linden Script and then become fully open-source. And maybe Linden Lab will create new ways to appear lucrative and companies will flock once more to Second Life where they'll live happily ever after.

It seems the time is coming when Linden Lab, and us as users of Second Life, must decide whether we want Second Life to grow and expand, or not. Regardless of the outcome, I think Second Life has shown how Linden Lab has been a pioneer in brining virtual environment to the masses, and that there is a future in virtual environments. Let's just hope that they're not another Netscape.

Social behavior in virtual environments

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal was discussing the "surprising power of synthetic identity." (WEEKEND JOURNAL; Is This Man Cheating on His Wife?
Alexandra Alter. Wall Street Journal (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Aug 10, 2007. p. W.1 - link: http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1317807881&sid=1&Fmt=3&clientId=20179&RQT=309&VName=PQD). Some interesting statistics reported in the article: 40% of men and 53% of women who play online games said their virtual friends were equal to or better than their rl friends... and 25% of the 30,000 surveyed said the emotional highlight of their past week occurred in the virtual realm. The link to the Stanford study should be attached. I find this fascinating and curious. Is it bad, good, neither, or both? Thoughts?

UF Graduate Student Council 2008 Research Forum

To our Class:

I just was notified Saturday that I was accepted as a Poster Presenter for the Graduate Student Council Research Forum happening this Monday, April 14 at the Rietz Union.

Between 10:30 and noon I will be displaying photos, summary documents, and logged into SL on my laptop showing how Group 6 is Bringing (Criminal) Justice to Second Life.

Drop by if you get a chance, I'll give a report on how the Forum went when I get the opportunity.

Doug

Nicholaz “The Mad Patcher” Beresford's Moment of Truth

"At the moment I simply don't have the time, but to be true to myself and you, probably even if I had, I'd be no longer willing to put up with Bullshit™ any more." Says Nicholaz one of the leading Second Life open source viewer developers. Read Nicholaz' blog here

I have read on this blog and others about people's complains about the recent hours long outages, viewer crashes, and several other technical concerns, and I strongly believed that LLs move to open source the viewer and later on the grids was a smart move in the right direction to remedy those problems. [have a look at "How Many Eyeballs Tame Complexity" from The Cathedral and the Bazaar]

However, a key component in open source development is the transparent communications between the core developers and the community around the project. Ignoring developers submission hardly qualifies as a good open source practice.

If examples were a teacher LL should have a look at how successful open source companies handle their communities. Like Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, Mozilla, IBM ... and the list goes on.

Finally, Linden Labs might have laid the ground for a successful bazaar mode project -A precondition for bazaar mode development- however, they should invest in the effort the community invests in them.

Scripters and Builders on Second Life

Last week, I was close to an equivalent of a panic attack. The deadline was approaching fast, and we still don’t have a structure: what am I going to do?

The first thing I did was talk to Arturo and Dennis about the situation, and they talked to me about the fact that there are builders and scripters all over Second Life looking seeking some tasks to fulfill—some of them do it out of joy and others think of it as a job and as a source of financial gains.

Well I looked round, and it was hard locating people at first. Then I realized the best way to search for builders is searching through the classified ads. I contacted about 10 people last week, and I finally contracted with a lady who owns a building company and a guy who like scripting.

The most difficult part of this process is that it is time consuming. It took a lot of time to first find these people, try to explain to them what exactly our group is looking for and finally negotiate a price. There was also the issue of trust. You don’t really know these people, and you don’t know their level of skill, so you have try to figure it out through your conversations with them. I hired a person who said he was capable of doing our building—which is a really complicated building—but I soon found out that he doesn’t have the right skills to fulfill this job. I asked the person if he can do the scripting and I found an experienced builder who is currently doing a beautiful job creating our structure—you can teleport to our space using the blue teleport right across the Fine Arts building.

All I want to say is that if any of you are having trouble with scripting and building, you can find people who can do the job for you before the deadline. Just be patient, careful and have your Lindens ready.

Good luck all, and I hope you guys check our building and give us your opinions on it.

Observations and recommendations

Thanks to those of you who attended the Team3/Gator Quest event in the Swamp on Thursday. The virtual Gods were smiling on us and all the technology came together for the presentation so the folks in the real world were able to see the virtual world, and the virtual audience was in fact able to see both the SL presentation and the live webstream from Weimer Hall. Along the way, we learned a few things I thought might be worth sharing right away.

Regarding audio and video, in order to see and hear multi-media effectively, you should load the newest version of SL AND the newest version of QuickTime. THEN, spend a few moments learning how to use the new navigation bar at the bottom of the screen. You can turn on/off the music, turn on/off the multi-media, and adjust ambient sounds, etc. with the volume controls. If, for example, as was the case on Thursday, the audio/visual came from the streaming media. SO, the master volume should be turned up, music and ambient sounds turned off, and the media button turned on. And viola! Sound and video in real time. We got quite a few IMs with people having difficulty initially, but I believe, in the end, everyone was able to see and hear effectively. Hope this is helpful in some way.

3D Library Visit: Using Second Life To Research Everyday Problems

I found this article that may be of interest to the Library Group, and also to any of our class looking at business education applications. European college students are also having classes with SL elements.

The computer science students in the article treated the library checkout process to a systems analysis for using RFID to track and control the collection at an SL version of a conventional library.

The article closes by making connections between that class and the potential for teaching other logistics and supply chain management courses that can benefit from simulations.

Doug

SL impact in Education

This March 2008 report about responses that were received on the topic "Measuring the impact of Second Life for educational purposes" by John Kirriemuir (Silversprite Helsinki), is a transcript of a meeting held in Second Life to discuss the issues raised by a UK academic survey on the subject of developing, or teaching in Second Life.

The Eduserve Foundation ( check their Eduserv Island if you have not done it already) is evaluating "what is happening in SL, particularly with regards to its use in education, and partly with the intention of providing help and support to educators and librarians as they begin to make use of SL as part of thier service delivery to end-users." Very interesting and timely indeed.

You can find the pdf here.

Intel x3100 or gma965

Do you have a brand new pc or mac with a x3100 integrated graphics card? This integrated mobile graphics card needs special settings in the settings file for second life to operate. If you log in to second life and it crashes right before it should load, then this fix could be for you. In the settings file under your windows username, and follow the path from the picture you can access the xml file. You might have to unhide folders if you are using vista. Google that process first. After you have reached the settings xml file add the following entry





This should let you in, hope this helps and sorry about the delay Donna. Your Viao should work now. Also this post may be useless if one of the new builds of second life, that has just been released, automatically configures for the x3100.

UCD takes first steps as Second Life university

I'm starting to wonder if I am behind the times or ahead of the power curve. Another university is starting to conduct activities in Second Life. So what are they famous for doing? Conducting a lecture with PowerPoint slides in SL, as the first Irish universtiy to do so.

Granted, this is like MIT's open courseware that opens the intellectual knowledge to a broader audience,

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

but it is not an innovative advance that pushes the envelope of new educational best practices. Where is the student engagement?

Doug

To Advertise Life

"I like totally tried to get into First Life and those dudes were like, sorry man, you're totally not old enough. I was like, WTF! Then I found out about Teen FL, and everything's cool now." --Aaron, 15

Sarcastic as the website is I think it is making a very valid point.

The Corn Field

I know that the topic of law and order in SL is kind of a taboo but since there is a prison in Second Life with a one way teleport terminal, one should expect ,that there is a legal system that is separated from the legislative and executive systems; And since we know this is not the case I wonder if Linden Lab can maintain a stable social and economical environment that would encourage major "foreign" investments in Second Life.