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Bixyl Shuftan, reporter (R) and his partner, Jasmine Dawn Shuftan (L).
Continuing on my series of interviews with avatars I bump into on the grid -- the first was Ludo Merit, now my former neighbour from Grote, who was able to sell that great piece of land to a nice Canadian lodge-builder, but is still looking to sell this other nice piece by October 30 as she has to rearrange her holdings.
Looking up what else could be found about this creative personage Ludo, I found another blogger, Bixyl Shukhran, who interviewed her first -- and I was astounded to find an entire blog with regular profiles of avatars that I had never heard of.
Imagine, you're in Second Life eight years, you think you know all the blogs (well, maybe not all the fashion blogs, but the news-type blogs), and suddenly you find this: SL Newser, which has been around about two years.
So I contacted Bixyl and gave him some written questions which he answered -- then he invited me over to his partner's home on Sherkin Island and we chatted (keep scrolling) (Some lines were removed as off-topic or RL related and some confusing chat is re-arranged).
Prokofy: You have an impressive body of work with... how many interviews? Hundreds? Avatars from all walks of life. How many posts have you done, and what kinds of avatars do you seek out?
Bixyl: Thank you. I've lost track over how many people I've interviewed in my five years in my writing about Second Life. But yes, I believe it is well over a hundred. As for who I seek out? All kinds of people whom have done something newsworthy in my opinion, from artists to sim owners, to event organizers, to builders, and sometimes ordinary residents whom got caught up in something or stick out in interesting ways.
Prokofy: Based on these many interviews, what are you finding about Second Lifers? Do they tend toward fantasy or reality? Are they 20-somethings or 50-somethings? Do they play other games and view SL as a game or are they not gamers and see this as a chat room? Can you make any characterizations?
Bixyl: People come here for all kinds of reasons, and once here engage in a multitude of activities, many more than one. The majority are looking for a break from reality of some kind, such as role-play areas or combat sims. Though there are still many whose reasons are solidly grounded in reality, such as teachers whom use Second Life to educate, and there are people whom use Second Life to hold virtual meetings in peer groups such as therapy. Ages vary greatly. I've met people who were in their teens, and others who were grandparents. As for games, a number of Second Lifers play those outside the Grid such as "World of Warcraft." My virtual neighbors have their own WoW guild, as well as their own "Minecraft" server. Others are not really gamers, though my observation is that most of them do things here that you can't really do in a chat room.
It's difficult to pin down what consists an "average" Second Life resident. The Grid's been described as a "community of hobbyists." Not every one of us is, though you're not going to find many who sit around and wait to be entertained. Those who stick around here learn how to find their entertainment, whatever it is.
Prokofy: I notice with a lot of your interviews, you enter into the lives of your subjects, i.e. the Native Americans who had the vision quest. What have been the most moving and most intriguing of such experiences on the grid?
Bixyl: To begin with, that article was written by Grease Coakes. He did quite a good job, as well as making some new friends. A number of subjects I've interviewed, I've continued to be in touch with as well.
The most moving experiences? The Vietnam Wall certainly counts as one. It's a shame that sim faded away. Another was when a friend, Delinda Dyrssen, passed away. I've also covered a couple funerals, the more famous one being a member of both the Tombstone RP and the Burn2 communities. Even though it was a virtual bonfire, I don't think I'll ever forget it. Then there was one Iraq veteran who showed me the virtual memorial which had his late comrades on the wall, and described how one by one they fell.
On the more positive, I've met a number of people with disabilities in real life, on occasion severe ones. Here, they're able to go about normally, sometimes achieve great things.
Prokofy: We are constantly hearing that Second Life is dying, the number of islands sold is decreasing, people are going out of business and moving to alternatives. Are they? What are you hearing from those you interview?
Bixyl: Yes, I've heard that as well. While Linden clumsiness has driven some out, it's my observation the majority of people closing their sims are doing so because of the economy. Sims are not cheap, and when a household has to cut back on expenses, things like this are often among the first to go.
When the economy bounces back though, people will probably be slow to return. Linden Labs has had a way of getting under the skin of many residents. I've heard of some looking at the Opensim worlds as an alternative and setting up places there. But after a while some shut their places and I've heard of others quietly moving back to Second Life and setting up shop again under new names. While the Opensim worlds have a small base of faithful fans whom insist they are the future of virtual worlds, so far it isn't happening.
Long term, I've heard people say Second Life will be having serious problems keeping their numbers unless the Lindens "wise up." Of their decision to split their focus on projects besides Second Life, there's been a mixed reaction. Some called it the beginning of the end, seeing Linden Lab as abandoning the Grid once they find something that can appeal to the "dumb masses." Others see it as a smart move, feeling much like the Macintosh computer, Second Life would have a better future if the company behind it found something that appealed to the general public much better.
Prokofy: Many of your stories are so interesting precisely because they don't involve the usual round of SL drama. They aren't about what the Lindens are doing or not doing, or about what this or that powerful or influential group in SL at large is doing. Do most people just not care what the Lindens/forums/cool kids are doing? Or do they?
Bixyl: When watching the news, I don't pay much attention to the Hollywood articles other than what movies are out. I guess I felt news should be about, news. While people are curious as to what technical moves the Lindens are up to such as Mesh, I haven't sensed much of a desire to know about SL celebrity gossip. A few of my stories involve drama to some extent, but not many.
Prokofy: Have you ever tried to interview a Linden?
Bixyl: On several occasions I tried to get in touch with one for an interview. I never got a response.
Prokofy: You mention that you have a "working class" background, not a background in journalism. What moved you to move from "working class" to "intellectual" work, if you will?
Bixyl: I've always had an interest in keeping up with the news, at least since 1979 when the Iranian Hostage Crisis started. Some of my relatives kept telling me to be wary of bias, not trusting the media. But I've always like to write, as an adult writing a number of stories, though never got one published.
When I began coming to Second Life regularly, I wanted to know more about it, and soon came across blogs and newsletters, among them Second Life Newspaper. One day they asked for reader submissions, so I sent them a few. Well, the owner JamesT Juno invited me to write for them regularly. Steady employment on the grid and an audience for my writing, not to mention I'd go up from keeping up with the news to helping to report it. It was an opportunity too good to pass up.
I'd just gotten this fox avatar a few weeks before as first one after giving up my newcomer look. So I became known as the "fox reporter."
Prokofy: You opt to craft your interviews into news stories with a literary flair, rather than just post a raw transcript as so many do (including your humble correspondent). What is the advantage? And do you think people want to see the long, raw transcript or not?
Bixyl: Perhaps it's from having a hobby as a writer for years beforehand, being used to "crafting" the information into something more easily read, though to the point, and having the goal of avoiding bias. Perhaps it's not always reached, but it's always a goal.
Prokofy: What tips do you have for people doing interviews if they want to get beyond the raw transcript and the problems of the SL interface itself (i.e. repeat questions, people talking past each other, crashes, etc.)?
Bixyl: Yes, crashes can be a pain. I've had to redo one interview of a storeowner for the purpose of an advertisement because of one. There have been a few times the conversation got a little broken. When it's an interview for an article,
Prokofy: How do you discover people in SL? How do you find out new things? Do you search randomly, fly around randomly, or how does it work?
Bixyl: Flying around randomly has led to a few interesting places, though I didn't meet much of anyone that way. Blogs and newsletters were how I found out about places where people hung out, such as Luskwood where I got my start.
I have had some happy accidents. For instance I found out about the Yamatto when looking at a friend's profile. One landlady I met when a friend invited me to dance with her at a club. And one friend I met by accident while at the SL6B. Word of mouth has led to some interesting places as well, and I sometimes meet new friends though mutual ones, like real life I suppose.
I spent hours today unable to log in to Second Life. I thought I was being punished for first visiting Kitely, a competitor, on Imprudence and Catznip, third-party viewers, then using viewer 1.23 to log on -- just to be able to find my inventory (only half my inventory ever loads on viewer 3) and to use the easy and better search to look up my own search/places ads to see if any need to be removed because people had rented the land -- I must have found 20 of them! That's because I can only get through so many pages in viewer 3 search of my search terms before I can't turn the page over any more.
OK, so if I can't get logged in, what can I do?
Check the SL grid status -- and find out that yes, they are doing what is euphemistically called "unscheduled maintenance" -- or fixing something that broke that they didn't expect. They are "working on avatar profiles" whatever that means. That may or may not be related to login. I gave it time to perk, but after a few hours of still no log-in and "no connection to server," I was getting perturbed.
So I tried that other standby, changing my log-in from "last place" to "home" or to "Ahern" or whatever. That's because the "last place" could be some crashed sim that still isn't up or who the hell knows.
But that didn't work.
OK, now it was time for surgery in my folders. I don't fear digging into the innards of game folders -- 13 years ago, The Sims taught us how to become absolute aces at folder digging, deletion, changing, editing.
So off you go to first USERS on Windows Vista (it will be something like this on other versions of Windows -- you'll have to play around).
In USERS, find your name folder.
Inside NAME, go to APP DATA. To even see *this* APP DATA folder, you have to check option "show hidden files".
Make sure you don't go to that *other* APP DATA that is on the same level view as USER. Make sure you go INSIDE USER.
Now in User/Name/AppData you look for ROAMING.
Then find SECOND LIFE.
And now you're ready for the surgery.
Find the folder user_settings. Accept no substitutes.
Inside user_settings you'll see a bunch of stuff. But the appendix that you will want to remove is called settings_xml
In Vista's view of folders, you will just see "settings" without the xml. In Windows XP you might see xml.
But it's this "settings" file you want to DELETE.
Fear not, because reloading Second Life generates it anew, minus whatever was buggy about it.
Make sure you don't delete other stuff in there. I don't know if "ignorable dialogues" is something that you could really do without, but leave it.
settings_xml is your thing to delete.
Close folders, go back and click on SL to load it again. Should work again.
If it doesn't, try turning off you modem and computer and also re-installing SL, after saving your chat log folders under your avatar name, as these can be wiped out by re-installs.
So, continuing on in my alternative virtual worlds adventures.
As Kitely developer Ilan told me -- or rather admitted in a roundabout way after he was drilled on this -- Imprudence isn't recommended for Kitely (despite being recommended by one of his top sim designers!) because *the search doesn't work*.
Here's what he said in response to my complaint:
As stated previously, please stop evaluating Kitely using old viewers. Use Firestorm, Catznip, Dolphin, Exodus, Kokua, Nirans, RLV, Teapot, or even a relatively modern version of Imprudence (1.4 b2). Insisting on using an old v1 viewer that has problems loading the world map or doing searches on OpenSim-based grids says nothing about the quality of those grids. Evaluate us using Firestorm (which is currently the most popular viewer in SL) then judge.
OK, as I said, I refuse to load anything made by Emerald/Phoenix/Firestorm on to my computer -- ever -- and only reluctantly use these other ones, but you have to use the TPVs, now that SL does not work on alternative worlds anymore since August 2012 when the Lindens closed them off for various reasons.
In fact, I had the latest Imprudence download that I went to get after the Heresy dev said to use that for seeing her world on Kitely (she also has some other interesting worlds).
Since Kokua is merely an offshot of Imprudence, and since Teapot, which has a cute name, does not have a clear download link (its wonkly page at that link has lots of other downloads and remarks but does not have a clear download link *for the viewer on Windows -- oh, unless it's only for Linux), I went to the first one on the list, Catznip, although the loathsome Trinity Dejavu was involved with it.
So Catznip is basically just the viewer 3 from Linden Lab -- same interface, same stuff.
So I load up the search -- which has the Second Life Destinations in it which of course won't work -- thinking -- because Ilan said so -- I'd at least get it to search Kitely.
It doesn't.
It gives you Second Life locations. For example, if you search "starship" you will find C3 -- but in SL, not on the Kitely grid.
So I tried plugging in the exact name of a sim I knew to be only in Kitely and not SL -- Heresy of Intimacy -- and it wasn't there.
As for people searches, I got this strange "Unknown grey person" result. I IM'd it -- thinking maybe Cube3 inside Kitely might get it. But these dopplegangers are odd -- somebody's going to have to get them sorted out.
It really seems inconsiderate and stupid to have your search load up with SL Destinations and other SL stuff -- and not work with the world you're in.
I visited the lovely Myst-like world Eoliah mindful that I was going to turn into a pumpkin any minute -- I should have a pumpkin head on this grid as my minutes run out.
This world loaded lots, lots more slower than worlds did on Imprudence. It wasn't just this sim -- which, like all Kitely worlds I've seen now didn't use a fraction of its prims. It was the viewer. I tried visiting several islands, they all loaded grey and you had to wait. I really don't mind. But I see now why the Heresy designer recommended Imprudence.
Lovely world of Eoliah, after viewer loaded for five minutes.
Search is a mess -- it's giving me Second Life's search. How can it even draw that data from SL servers, I wonder?! I mean, it's a separate grid, no? I don't get this...
I'll say this about Catznip -- it's showing worlds on the grid -- a string of them -- that Imprudence didn't show at the full zoom out. BUT that may only be a function of the location of Eoliah on the grid -- as distinct from the other related worlds or as distinct from C3's starship world where there may have been no nearby sims.
Island hopping is not for the faint-hearted -- most of them say "You are not allowed" or "Invalid". I finally to a place called Fantasy OAR. Now that's a lovely poetic name for a world, eh? Fantasy OAR. No boats included LOL. Here's the SLURL I grabbed from this world. Oops, that probably can't work. Because a SL obviously goes to SL, right! So that automatic URL grab isn't from Kitely. That's how all these viewers mislead you, I've discovered, all over the Knock-Off-Verse -- they all load up stuff from SL that isn't "there". Geeks tune this out as noise as they develop their nerdy stuff. But it's a huge obstacle for ordinary people.
Heresy, which exists only in Kitely, isn't there. CATZNIP SEARCH DOESN'T WORK IN KITELY.
So Ilan is incorrect. Search doesn't work on the first viewer on the list he said it would work in. I think he means it only works with Firestorm because he likes that best and a lot of customers already have it from Second Life viewing. If so, he should say so and stop misleading customers.
I don't know if this grey stand-in for cube is cube in SL or cube in Kitely? I wonder where/if/when he will get my message?
Lovely Fantasy OAR build...but to be honest? I don't know how to get you back there as the SLURL is a SLURL and not a KURL.
So let me go back to that lovely Public Worlds search page at Kitely *cough*.
Hard to tell which one is Fantasy OAR because there are a number with the same name, but it's this one by Atlanta Campese I recall the name. Put pictures on your public worlds, people! Or you won't get as much traffic!
She even has a Facebook profile. If I "like" her world on her page, it shows up in my Facebook stream.
You also want to be careful in Kitely landmarking, it landmarks things generically as they are all named, oddly, YOUR PARCEL. Maybe they will take you back to where you were with the coordinates, but good luck finding it again by name. It's like Object being named Object in your inventory. You have to manually rename it.
There's a lot to wrestle with at Kitely. Even so, the performance of the sims is good, better than the half dozen other worlds I've been to lately. It's like SL, so the transition isn't so hard. The price is right. But how I would find interesting content, friends, and most importantly, customers -- well, that's a crap shoot.
Everyone knows that when you look at your browser and click in the upper left-hand corner you find a tab called "History" which is a record of your past web site visits. The tab is NOT on the top view -- you have to click to get it.
Everyone knows that when you use the PayPal site, the top view before you've logged in doesn't contain a tab called "history," this comes after you log in, and is in a context where you *expect* your transactions to be shown somewhere when you click "my account," not the company's history.
But when you go to a corporate site or a news site, you don'to see a tab called "history" that describes all your past articles read on that site:
That would be just plain odd -- getting a history of your articles read or places visited on that site in a "history" tab *on that site* and not in the browser.
When you go to a web site of a virtual world -- let's take Open Sim, which is the competitor to Kitely, and you see HISTORY on a tab on the web site of that world, it means "history of that corporation" or "history of development" in the case of the open-source sim:
So I rest my case.
Open Sim's "history" tab obviously means "history of development". Many ordinary users who aren't geeks aren't even going to bother to read some boring development history. Their *expectation* is that they will see history history, not "history of my travel throughout worlds" in a tab called history. That's how it works in the community of virtual worlds that Kiteley is in.
There is nothing on the Kiteley front page to tell you that the "free" thing you're going to get is in fact a meter of 114 minutes that is already ticking the minute you visit a "free" world. You won't pay in money; you will pay in time, and the record of that time will show on your "history" as if it were a PayPal account.
But this is the top view of the site, not a second view after you click my account.
Before I even log in, I'm getting a "history" tab:
Nothing on the top view of the world, or in the immediate view of the pricing plan, prepares me for the fact that the meter is running on my account with a certain amount of free minutes.
This is an unusual pricing plan for a world, and the entire interface has to be re-done.
Everybody knows what "history" is in your browser. But that's *in your browser*. This isn't a browser; it's a web page. And everybody knows that on PayPal or Second Life, there is a *history* of your transactions, but it isn't called "history," it's called just that: "past transactions" or "my account" or "bill history". It's never just called "history" since that is AMBIGUOUS.
If you don't know already that a virtual world has a system whereby it will give you a free 114 minutes, then debit you as you visit each world, then how can you POSSIBLY know that a tab called HISTORY is going to have a record of all your world visits (!), and isn't just the *corporate* history of that company?!
And there is nothing on here to tell you there will be a meeting running on time in worlds, with the free account. Nothing to explain that "history" tab is a record of all the worlds you've visited -- and the metered time you have in this world.
This is all you can see on the map.
You can't really find anything by scrolling on the map. You can try it for minutes on end -- not a solution.
Since I know there are sims named "fun" I will try to find them in search -- because search just doesn't seem to work at all!
New SL knock-off worlds, old Linden trees... Anacortes Harbor, a Kitely on-demand world.
There's been a fair amount written on Kitely, another world, or rather, another virtual world program.
It's supposed to be better, cheaper, faster, and I suppose it is, although that isn't everything, as we may come to see.
But it's not all there, so to speak. That is, it's "on demand" -- not there 24/7 and contiguous and that's suppose to be its advantage.
You can read about Kitely here, and see the hype about Kitely here and here. It has just recently moved from a model that had pay-per-use to now unlimited use.
A Kitely world that I now have to try to find again to credit...
I'm well aware that when you undertake to criticize the technically-experimental niche alternatives to SL, you open yourself up to fierce attacks by the devs who tell you that you can "never understand enough," and the fanboyz who tell you that you missed this or that obvious positive feature. I don't care. The point is to get beyond these clutching cliques and see if there is a there there.
Some think so. Rivers Run Red, one of the former "Big Six" metaversal developers of Second Life, has left SL and moved to Kitely. There's a reason for this: it now pays $600 instead of $100,000 a year to maintain its sims for clients. Long-time readers might recall my original friendliness to RRR and its CEO Justin Bovington, who I originally thought of as one of the more friendly and "democratic" developers in the FIC, if you will.
But I should have remembered my very, very first impression of an RRR sim in 2004, when Barnesworth Anubis, who had been quickly befriended by Justin who had an eye out for (then) new talent, tried to TP me to Justin's sim Avalon, which was mainland, yet just off the coast on an island, like a kind of proximate private island. I couldn't get there -- it was a sim with an access list or a group-only or something.
Eventually I got there to see the sneakers that I believe Barnubis was involved in designing, Sonic Kicks or something like that, I still have them. That kind of closed sim issue was exactly what then years later proved the grounds for a quarrel with Justin, when he advocated having closed, special stores for the enterprises who would be using the Nebrasks sims, and expressed that he felt the content of Second Life's marketplace was generally tacky. We argued and argued about that, with him and his defenders constantly claiming he never said this or never met it, but I didn't buy it. There was no question he wanted to big buyers of Nebraska to have special stores. And I felt that was wrong. Well, wrong or right, now Justin has simply left SL as too great a business cost in the era of declining virtual world work, and that's that.
Kitely's CEO Ilan Tochner is obsessed with the push to the web and "being in the browser". Hamlet ne Linden Au also obssesses about this all the time. They believe they have to get virtual worlds into the browsers, and not have downloads that they run from their machines and only navigate with browsers. They think that the user doesn't like downloads and that eventually worlds will be better and load faster if they are all in a browser.
The dirty little secret of the browser worlds, however, even some silly Facebook game, is that the load time is merely displaced to sessions in-game. Maybe you don't have some download to wait and install and try to trouble-shoot, but the wait time then comes elsewhere, within the game itself when you lag out or wait for things to happen, for scenes to load or when you teleport to some other scene or whatever. The load time has to go somewhere -- if it isn't in the front end for 20 minutes or something, it comes later if in the browser in wait times or load times or 'grey squares' elsewhere.
The funny thing is, to use Kitely and go to the worlds "on demand," you will still need to load another piece of software that enables it anyway. And I honestly don't care. Load times aren't the issue for me and lots of people. It's more about the world you get after the download, and whether you keep having to have wait issues and grey issues. Once you load the Kitely software and the Imprudence or other third-party browser to view its worlds, there don't seem to be any scene-loading issues (you can no longer use the SL standard view for viewing alternative world ostensibly because 1.23, which they are all based on, is now being deprecated --a story that nobody buys as the 1.23 knockoff browsers don't seem to have had trouble adding mesh, unless I missed something.
But the hidden "load time" for Kitely is in having to go back to the website to find other worlds.
I went to the Kitely web page, that still has that bare bones look of geek non-design, and browserd around the worlds. There are a bunch of them that people have made and posted with public access for free. There's a billing system with different options that puts the price for us on the maker of the world -- he can evidently be charged per visit or number of avatars instead of having to charge those avatars (although he could likely displace the cost to them if he liked but I didn't see how that might be done).
On the web page are various worlds, you pick them, you install the other module, you wait for it to load, and then you go there -- and for this, I had to go download a third-party browser -- I ended up getting Imprudence, even though I don't like the developers' philosophy (forcing features on the public in the believe that they are backward) and the idea that "revolutions" are needed to be imposed on users.
I expected the lonely planet I visited on Kiteley to have some completely different feel to it -- different as in the way There or Tale of the Desert. But it was exactly like Second Life -- with the only difference between something like 100,000 prims on the sim. The reality is that the worlds I saw made with this product in fact didn't seem to use up their prims. Maybe you just can only have so many prims!
For example on the NEW Anacortes Harbor (John Ledden), you find our old friend the Eric Linden Pine, here named the Ponderosa Pine without attribution to Eric Linden -- a common problem in these knock-off worlds -- and we also find our old very much missed Viewer 1.23 interface with things "where they're supposed to be".
Decent avatar, hair and freebies in a Kitely world.
Kitely's use cases are probably things like educational sims, where closed classes of students and professors need a sim, or perhaps some kind of other closed project for work, and then art sims, where people want to put up an installation, but then not have to pay an arm and a leg for it. And maybe Kitely is the place where big Second Life builds should go to die, as they are too expensive to keep going forever at $295 a month and $1000 set-up fee in SL.
I personally just can't get used to the idea of the "on demand" sim that isn't asychronously "there" all the time. That is, obviously somebody could go asychronously access it and travel to it and see it while I don't happen to be online. But it wouldn't be "always on". And of course, it wouldn't be next to anything.
Heresy of the Intimate
Karima Hoisan is one of the people using Kitely for creative endeavours; one of the sims is called Heresy of the Intimate. I winced at the title and the clutter of bright spinning balls and such that make up the typical SL art sim. Don't get me wrong -- I have a high tolerance for SL amateur-to-professional art, as a low amateur myself. But sometimes it takes some endurance.
But despite the traffic jam of the bright orbs, Hoison was able to create the sense of atmosphere that I always value in a sim, taking the usual assortment of SL exotica Arab/Asian kitsch and putting together a nice place. It was enough to go check out her other works, and find that she is a competent machinamist with films like Tar Pit, although for me, dramatically-read poetry that runs like this: "Another day without you, just more tar pits, where before, there was a dinosaur" -- well, doesn't work. Hoison and her film partner Natascha Randt won 2nd prize for a film Seek Wisdom in the University of Western Australia machinima contest. Maybe my problem is simply that I"ve been seeing ethno art beat stuff since the 1960s and have grown jaded.
Continue reading "Is Kitely Alrightly or "All the World Is, Is a Stage"" »
Here's a series I hope to do from time to time like a "man in the street" interview only "avatar on the grid".
I constantly meet interesting people in SL and people who aren't the usual visible SL types who form the media stereotype or participate in the blog dramas. I want to work at getting more of a sense of what goes on in SL and what it means to people.
I was flying around this morning looking at the abandoned land in Grote and seeing I could now buy a parcel because I sold another parcel underwater in Duck. And I saw that a long-time neighbour had her land up for sale for only $1.5/m in this gorgeous area that formerly sold for even $10 or even $20 a meter in the old days, on a little Linden pond and creek with an old-style waterfall.
The owner turned out to be Ludo Merit, and I recalled hearing her name and read her profile and saw all the interesting groups she belonged to like the Society for Creative Anachronism and the Avatar Repertory Theater along with Builder's Brewery and Kalway Order of Jedi Apprentices. She writes:
I came here to develop Hero Walk, a role playing game (see picks). I'm finally getting a web site and holding regular meetings. Unfortunately, I'm getting sicker all the time.
If I am set busy it often means I am afk and won't be back for hours. If you IM me, I'll see it when I get back unless my IMs get capped. If you send me anything it will go in my trash. If you send a notecard or object, send an IM saying that you sent it so I can dig it out of trash.
Thanks for understanding, Ludo
Interests
improv acting Interplay playwright Society for creative anachronism (sca)
East Coast US. Age 71 F. Interests: Interplay, SCA, Campbell Foundation, church, RP, improv acting, playwright, writing, life coaching, game design, SF/fantasy, myth, serious discussion, more. Married 49 yrs. Housebound.
"Hey, I learned something."
Here's our conversation -- which repeats and rambles mainly due to my fault in lagging, having work messages blinking urgently in the other windows, and needing to get the hang again of the SL spliced chat conversation where you are really talking to the other person's every other line. (I also need to turn off that damn date-stamp on viewer 3!)
But rather than take a lot of time to edit this now, and delay it indefinitely, I want you to learn about this fascinating person in SL! This is "as is," although without the chat of her game cards so as not to have a "spoiler" -- it's really better to go and experience it yourself.
Prokofy: Hello, I see you are my neighbour in Grote and you have an interesting biography. I wonder if you would be interested in doing an interview for my blog about your SL work and interests.
[07:59] Ludo Merit: Ludo Merit (busy response): People are my highest priority, but my health should be. I go into busy mode when I am afk, and sometimes fall asleep afk. If I'm not back in 15 min, send me a notecard. My IMs get capped. Please don't try to talk to me after 5 pm. Thanks, Ludo
[08:00] Ludo Merit: Hi, maybe. You sound like the interesting one, eight year-old
[08:00] Prokofy Neva: Yes I am eight just recently
[08:00] Ludo Merit: I'm trying to sell the grote land.
[08:00] Prokofy Neva: it could be short and be almost just your existing profile, not to take up your time
[08:00] Prokofy Neva: yes I saw
[08:00] Prokofy Neva: I don't have the tier for it right now or I'd get it but I may be able to
[08:00] Prokofy Neva: I have to get another one across the river
[08:01] Ludo Merit: I have two waterfront parcels that I have to sell before the end of the month. Let me look at your blog.
[08:01] Prokofy Neva: I want to have a series called "avatar on the grid" which is like "man on the street" interviews that seek out different experiences in SL that go beyond the usual round of characters
[08:02] Prokofy Neva: and you are perfect!
[08:02] Prokofy Neva: http://secondthoughts.typepad.com
[08:02] Ludo Merit: Thank you, I agree!
[08:02] Ludo Merit: I wrote a song with that title
[08:02] Prokofy Neva: really!
[08:02] Prokofy Neva: why are you selling your land?
[08:04] Ludo Merit: Because I found a better parcel for my purposes and can't afford to keep it all.
[08:04] Ludo Merit: sure, I'll give you an interview.
[08:04] Prokofy Neva: ok, I wondered if you were one of those folks going to Open Sim
[08:04] Prokofy Neva: well we have already started it! And five more minutes and we could be done right now : )
[08:05] Prokofy Neva: I saw you were developing a game. Have you found the new Pathfinding tool relevant?
[08:05] Ludo Merit: Aw, don't you want to come over and see the Hero Walk?
[08:06] Ludo Merit: No, because it's not that kind of a game. It's most like live action rp and doesn't require SL to play, and can be played in conjunction with other games and other rule sets
[08:06] Prokofy Neva: Is it a unique game you invented?
[08:06] Ludo Merit: The time was not my concern,. Your name reminded me of someone else that starts with P. You probably know who that is.
[08:06] Ludo Merit: Yes.
[08:06] Prokofy Neva: Someone else with a P?
[08:07] Prokofy Neva: Did you chose your name in SL as a reference to the idea of "ludic" or play, homo ludens?
[08:07] Ludo Merit: Yes, I think of him as Provocateur because he was one.
[08:07] Prokofy Neva: oh but that's probably me : )
[08:07] Prokofy Neva: I'm infamous : )
[08:07] Ludo Merit: Yes, because I came here to develop that game. Ah, it is you! That site doesn't seem too horrid, though. Want a tp to the Hero display?
[08:07] Prokofy Neva: Is the sim with the game already open to visit?
[08:08] Prokofy Neva: ok
[08:08] Prokofy Neva: You are in SL after all these years. Do you find it frustrating at all?
[08:08] Ludo Merit: Who can afford a sim? The display has been evolving for six years.
[08:08]
[08:08] Ludo Merit: Of course it's frustrating. So's life.
[08:08] Prokofy Neva: True that
[08:09] Prokofy Neva: I noticed you said you were 71 on your profile. I thought I was an oldster at 56. Do you find young people today outrageous?
[08:09] Prokofy Neva: or do you feel the social life of SL is not for you?
[08:09] Ludo Merit: This display is an interactive illustration of Joseph Campbell's Hero Journey.
[08:10] Ludo Merit: I find young people stimulating, and I love to dance. However, I have this need to create and that takes a lot of time.
[08:10] Prokofy Neva: Is this the Enneagram?
[08:10] Ludo Merit: No, the Hero Journey has twelve steps.
[08:10] Ludo Merit: If you start at brown and go around to blue you experience the life of a hero
[08:11] Ludo Merit: By touching the pictures and reading the chat and answering the questions for yourself
[08:11] Prokofy Neva: It seems similar in some of its ideas
[08:11] Ludo Merit: If you have time I'll touch them so we both see the chat. The owner can do that.
[08:11] Prokofy Neva: I think I'll head to the Provocateur spot : )
[08:12] Prokofy Neva: Fascinating
[08:12] Ludo Merit: You don't get to be a provocateur until you've paid your dues as an elder
[08:12] Prokofy Neva: Is this your art work too?
[08:12] Prokofy Neva: Ah, I see!
[08:12] Prokofy Neva: can I take a screenshot?
[08:12] Ludo Merit: Most of it is Jesz Murakami, also old and weird. Four are Sky Carson, and one is Bau Ur.
[08:12] Ludo Merit: Sure.
[08:13] Ludo Merit: But of course, Prokofy, you've paid your dues as an elder irl.
[08:13] Prokofy Neva: well that I have
[08:13] Ludo Merit: I like provocateurs. I am a less intense one than many.
[08:14] Prokofy Neva: Bau Ur I recognize
[08:14] Ludo Merit: Yes, I really like her. She helped me design one of the most artistic hero walks. This design has been evolving.
[08:15] Ludo Merit: Jesz has art on the NE corner of this sim, in a castle that I think is still purple
[08:15] Prokofy Neva: Ok
[08:15] Prokofy Neva: Do you get many people coming to the sim?
[08:16] Ludo Merit: This display is a tool in the game, something like dice. I just own this corner of it, and there are hero walks on other sims as well.
[08:16] Prokofy Neva: I will have to come and take some time to walk through it
[08:16] Ludo Merit: The heroes meet Tuesday at noon. We took a flyabout to Gianfar Peaks last Tuesday.
[08:16] Prokofy Neva: Are you affiliated with the Campbell Foundation?
[08:17] Ludo Merit: Yes, I believe you'd enjoy it. I'm a member but not an active one, and I'm trying to find SL Campbellians to help me found a Campbell Round Table here. I have the group name, but not the experience.
[08:17] Prokofy Neva: I'm not that familiar with Joseph Campbell but I will read up on it, it looks interesting.
[08:18] Prokofy Neva: What were the challenges you faced and overcame to make this RP sim?
[08:18] Ludo Merit: I keep getting distracted by other things, but I've finally got regular hero meetings going.
[08:18] Prokofy Neva: and is this a grandfathered sim?
[08:18] Ludo Merit: It's not my sim, I rent the SW corner
[08:19] Prokofy Neva: Okay, well it makes sense to share with the cost of tier.
[08:19] Ludo Merit: And there are a lot of interesting people here. For your interviews, I recommend Marly Milena
[08:19] Prokofy Neva: Do you prefer mainland or islands?
[08:19] Ludo Merit: I prefer estates if I own the sim, otherwise mainland is lower tier. I don't trust anyone but me to run a sim that has low lag.
[08:20] Prokofy Neva: Yes I hear you
[08:20] Prokofy Neva: Did I ask you and not see in the chat, is your name based on the word "Ludic" or as in "homo ludens"
[08:20] Prokofy Neva: I will follow up with Marly
[08:21] Ludo Merit: Yes, I chose Ludo because it means "I play" and I came here to develop this game so it seemed appropriate.
[08:21] Prokofy Neva: I love the term "Flyabout"
[08:21] Ludo Merit: She's a character and she does really great playshops - she's an art therapist irl.
[08:22] Ludo Merit: well, we heroes are going through the hero walk and as you can see from the prims, we're all on gray or purple now. And purple is the time of the flyabout, just as in Australia teens do a walkabout.
[08:22] Prokofy Neva: Interesting, yes I see the connection.
[08:23] Prokofy Neva: I see you are in the repertory theater, have you acted in SL?
[08:23] Ludo Merit: But we haven't been able to do the walkabout in the traditional manner, alone. So we're doing it together.
[08:23] Ludo Merit: More fun that way.
[08:23] Ludo Merit: Yes, I was with SLSC back when it was legal to name it that.
[08:23] Ludo Merit: And I've done a few other plays and movies.
[08:24] Prokofy Neva: let's see what did SLSC stand for?
[08:24] Ludo Merit: But I don't have as much time to act as I'd like. I'm really more of a playwright than an actor.
[08:24] Prokofy Neva: It seems terribly hard to put on a play in SL
[08:24] Ludo Merit: Second Life Shakespeare Company, the one with four sims with a Globe theater on them
Continue reading "Avatar on the Grid: Ludo Merit and SL as "Playground, Not Game"" »
