Game Development in Second Life for 2004

Wagner James Au writes "Two shooters, two puzzles, one survival-horror, a *Uru Live* recreation, and a theme park featuring sword fights and cannon duels-- some of the highlights from "Gaming the System", a compilation of 2004's New World Notes entries on the state of game development in Second Life, the world-building MMO I cover as an embedded journalist."

*crickets chirping*

[prator]

The sad thing is that I don't think that the lack of comments has anything to do with what day it is.

-prator

Re:*crickets chirping*

[ASkGNet]

Well, I heard that crop cicles have appeared outside Washington DC

I suggest that you wear your tinfoil hat for a while. I for one, welcome our Alien Overlords.

Re:*crickets chirping*

[Zorilla]

You're right. It's 9:53 on the 26th here in Japan.

Definitely a hot topic these days

[Subjective]

I kind of liked Second Life.
It was just like There, in that they promised the same things, only Second Life seems to have more ability with it's scripting mechanism.
I found it truly shows the user, after only a few days tinkering with scripts, all the obstacles of the platform.
I hope they'll fix them all one day.

But what really bugged me about both There and Second Life, which was absent in the good days of Active Worlds, was that it was some sort of game, and the people were trying to play it.
It made them a bit robot-like (much like the market speak of these companies), and a whole less fun. I prefer to talk to the actual person, not the persona he's trying to play.

Active Worlds had telepresence and people built stuff, but it was a chatroom and used for such. I built there, too, but just to show my friends (and my AW friends), not to gain meaningless credits.

Until URU

[Datasage]

Until Uru sorta brought back URU live in a limted sense. It allowed users to set up thier own shards. But no content updates and i dont think the path of the shell content actually works on it. For those who are interested, http://plasma.cyanworlds.com/ is where you can find more info.

Ahhh.

[Apiakun]

Strangely enough, I first heard about Second Life through my mom (I'm 29 years old). She spends about as much time building things in second life as I do trying to level up in other games. I got her into BBSing when I was 13, and she hasn't looked back from the online world since.

"Embedded journalism"; how dare you?

[Anonymous Coward]

"the world-building MMO I cover as an embedded journalist."

Embedded journalist is a catch-phrase which specifically refers to journalists who make arrangements with the military to cover a war. Setting aside the fact that playing an MMO and blogging about it for free in no way whatsoever resembles the career and craft of newsjournalism, to use the "embedded" as a descriptor goes beyond the pale. But "embedded journalist" is a complete misnomer. Blogging is not journalism and Second Life is not the militar

Speaking of Second Life...

[IntergalacticWalrus]

What happened to the Linux port? IIRC, before launch they said the game would be Windows/OSX/Linux, yet I've been browsing their site lately and haven't seen any talk about Linux (except their servers).

Re:Speaking of Second Life...

[JamesMiller]

I believe that the Linux port is being worked on, and is going to be available in the first half of 2005. Second Life currently works under WineX (at least, that's what I've read -- seen some screenshots, but, never tried it myself.)

If you already have an SL account, try looking at the SL forums (forums.secondlife.com) and look for some posts about SL being used under WineX. You may even want to start one yourself.

If you don't have an account with SL, you can get a 14 day trial through www.mmorpg.com.