Brandon Boyer

Virtual vinyl: the Second Life toy/art gallery that never was

This was going to be, at first sight, the first thing that made me immediately jump back into Second Life since those long, lonely stretches several years back wandering vast empty expanses of its virtual space and wondering where, exactly, the party at.

Then I realized it'd never got off the ground. But, either way, cheerfully obsessive fan-site Doodlesplatter -- dedicated to all things Jon Burgerman (he of the recent LittleBigPlanet sticker pack) -- features a gallery of this gallery: a "quarter square mile" art space with "a solid chunk of real estate devoted to Burgerman" that was being officially developed by London-ite Cris Rose.

Above are a selection of Burgerman's prints and, even more wonderfully, larger-than-life-sized models of his Burgerminos toy series from a year or two back, and, at very top, at far back, you can spy an additional print by also-Offworld-favorite design duo Tado.

Doodlesplatter has many, many more images of the gallery that apparently wasn't able to launch before "third-party funding... fell through" (from Kidrobot, perhaps?), though Rose himself left a chin-up "maybe in the future!" response to the post earlier today.

Xeni Jardin

BB Video: John Gaeta on "Ninja Assassin," and Hybrid Entertainment Merging Film and Games.

In today's episode of Boing Boing Video (sponsored by WEPC.com, in partnership with Intel and Asus), Academy Award winning visual effects guru John Gaeta (Matrix, Speed Racer) offers a sneak peek inside his newest project, Ninja Assassin.

Along the way, we explore a broader realm of questions about the future of games, movies, and interactive entertainment. Will movies become more like games, offering new ways for us to insert ourselves inside the stories? Who will create them, using what tools, and how will the experience be different? Will computer-generated actors replace human actors, or stunt persons -- or will the two realms overlap in ways we can't yet predict? All of this we ask of the guy who invented "bullet time."

Due in theaters this fall, director James McTeigue's Ninja Assassin follows the story of Raizo (played by Asian mega-popstar Rain), one of the world's most deadly assassins. As Gaeta explains in this video, the movie merges blindingly badass Bruce-Lee-esque martial arts stunt work with tastefully integrated post processing work.

Below, and after the jump, a partial transcription of the longer conversation we had about the future of interactivity and "hybrid entertainment" -- and why Hollywood is, in Gaeta's words, "like a mule."

This interview took place during our live coverage of the 2009 Game Developers Conference, and many of the questions I pose were taken directly from our live chat audience.

Xeni Jardin: John, your involvement in "Ninja Assassin" was a little different than in "Speed Racer" and the "Matrix" films, where you were the lead visual effects designer.

John Gaeta: Ninja Assassin was directed by James McTeigue, who directed "V for Vendetta." It's sort of a family tradition of the Wachowskis to help James in parallel with other odd films. After "Speed Racer" was completed, we went back to Berlin and decided to make this super psycho horror ninja movie. Supremo stunts and martial arts. We're friends with the action design firm 87eleven, they've worked alongside Wu Ping for many years, after the "Matrix" Trilogy they did "Kill Bill," "300," they're fantastic. It was really their show. They were told they could be very creative and so they were. Lots of inventions!

Xeni: What was your role?

Gaeta: I didn't want to miss it because it seemed like it would be very fun. I was only helping out with some special unit directing, but no visual effects for me personally.

"Ninja" is surprisingly invisible on effects work, and intentionally so. No virtual humans in this one. The only real post processing comes from heavily stylistic color grading, think graphic tones like "Se7en," compositing and some CG weapons and blood augmentation. But this film shines brightest for the martial arts team. To put it another way -- it's old school.

There is far more going on in this movie with respect to "stunts technology" and innovation with respect to specialized and "next gen" rigs and flying machines.

Xeni: You are known for visual effects in motion pictures, but every time you and I have spoken, there's this idea of hybrid entertainment that comes up. Can you tell me more about what you're doing there?

Gaeta: I'm curious about possible destinations where there's crossover with regard to simulation cinema, "sim cinema," ways of creating elaborate trapdoors and portals between different mediums. Also, over the years, there are strange subgroups from the visual world like Douglas Trumbull -- I used to work for him many years ago -- their passion went beyond cinema to immersive content. Virtual reality, perhaps games, are a step toward that -- so are other methods of surrounding people with an experience. There are a lot of interesting progressions going on with immersive cinema, immersive entertainment, hybridizing the two.

(Interview continues after the jump)

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Brandon Boyer

Post-GDC: Robin Hunicke's 6 easy ideas to fix PlayStation Home

Richard Lemarchand's microtalks turned out to be one of the finest and most inspiring sessions of GDC, and the one session archetype I hope will turn into a new long-lasting tradition. Taking its cues from the Pecha Kucha tradition of '20 slides auto-advancing every 20 seconds', it was a rapidfire series of speakers giving rapidfire ideas on the concept of "play."

Of all the speeches, perhaps the most practically focused was Boom Blox producer Robin Hunicke's series on "Simple Game Mechanics for Real and Virtual Play Spaces," or, put more simply (and reduced maybe a bit unfairly), what Sony can do to fix their PS3 virtual world Home.

Hunicke was disappointed to learn, she said, that her assumptions about the space -- that, coming from a game publisher, this virtual world would "blend the best of free expression, openess and structured activity" -- were quickly stymied when she found that by and large the most prevalent pastime in Home was "dudes... harassing any female avatar," and attempting to create their own emergent "fun" by exploiting collision physics to do things like standing on benches and sitting on railings and other avatar's shoulders.

So, imagining herself as queen of Home for a day, she came up with easy ideas to bring her overarching "4 C's" of game design -- Creativity, Collection, Competition, Community -- to the space and imagined new ways for people to interact.

READ THE REST

Brandon Boyer

The humanity of LucasArts' virtual world forerunner Habitat

As if I needed another excuse to get my hands on Rogue Leaders, the visual history book on the golden age of Lucasarts I mentioned in December, Gamasutra has run a great excerpt not on any of the usual Monkey Island or Grim Fandango suspects, but rather Habitat, the late-80s Commodore 64 virtual world forerunner which ultimately failed for its beta trial's overwhelming success.

The article explains of its creation:

Development began in 1985 and sketched out a virtual world where each player had an in-game "avatar" -- a word defining a player's online representation (and still used today). These characters could interact with other players, connected in a massive online world composed of 20,000 "regions" -- essentially individual screens connected to as many as four additional regions...

Despite the apparent advantage of not having to program artificial intelligence for in-game characters, given that all the players were real people, creating rules for player interactions required the developers to broach subjects never before considered in game design.

Remarked Chip Morningstar in a long treatise on Habitat's creative process: "A special circle of living Hell awaits the implementers of systems involving that most important category of autonomous computational agents: groups of interacting human beings."

Book Extract: 'Rogue Leaders' On Lucasfilm Games' Habitat [Gamasutra]

Previously:
Chronicle holding LucasArts book signing - Offworld

Brandon Boyer

MUD history going down Wiki's memory hole

MMO news outlet Massively points out a growing controversy with a number of Wikipedia entries on various classic MUDs coming up for deletion and disappearing despite majority votes to save them, and the support of MUD creators and supporters like Richard Bartle, Raph Koster, and Scott "Lum the Mad" Jennings:

What makes this whole discussion so frustrating lies in how the MUD community has preserved their own history. Many of the facts and tales of the games comes through something akin to the oral tradition -- many users who have written about, blogged, or related their thoughts to others via community sites. Because of this, there is no main verifiable source to connect these MUDs with. Without a verifiable source, one of the main tenets of Wikipedia, all of these articles can come under fire. With the MUD community in decline, many of the older articles can't even be linked to or referenced -- providing only more problems with keeping these entries in the system.

MUD history dissolving into the waters of time [Massively, via Margaret]

Brandon Boyer

Displaced Lively users finding new home in NewLively?

Via Metaplace's Raph Koster we learn that a China based company has founded NewLively, a VMRL replacement for Google's recently shuttered virtual world that's quite, err, brazen in its interface, down to X-Ray Kid's character art on its familiarly-sparse login screen. The company claims, however, that its platform was rebuilt from the ground up:

After the closure of Lively, there is no greater happiness than to duplicate Lively for the sake of the Lively users. We understand that this activity would generate a certain degree of legal risk. However, whenever I remember the disheartenment and disappointment of that many Lively users, this risk is worth taking and the users will support us...

We are not using any codes whatsoever from Google Lively. The entire platform was created new from scratch. Only the concept and the interface remained as Google Lively and the amount of work involved in doing this was quite insignificant in comparison to the creation of the entire system. Moreover, in our understanding of the kinds of platforms, copyright privileges should go to the content providers. As long as these content providers are willing to transfer the platform to Newlively, there will be no issues.

Raph’s Website » Newlively!

Previously:
Google shuttering virtual world Lively - Offworld

John Brownlee

World of Nothiredcraft

According to one crackerjack source — a random yahoo on an Internet message board — recruiters may very well be discriminating against MMO players:

I met with a recruiter recently (online media industry) and in conversation I happened to mention I'd spent way too much time in the early 2000s playing online games, which I described as "the ones before World of Warcraft" (I went nuts for EQ1, SWG and the start of WoW, but since 2006 I have only put a handful of days into MMOG playing - as opposed to discussing them - I've obsessed over bicycles and cycling instead).

He replied that employers specifically instruct him not to send them World of Warcraft players. He said there is a belief that WoW players cannot give 100% because their focus is elsewhere, their sleeping patterns are often not great, etc. I mentioned that some people have written about MMOG leadership experience as a career positive or a way to learn project management skills, and he shook his head. He has been specifically asked to avoid WoW players.

I wouldn't say there isn't a lick of sense to this, but it's simply the distinction between the addict and the normal, run-of-the-mill gamer. You might as well not hire people who admit to liking to have a beer once and then because they are clearly jactitating alcoholics.

Should Employers Discriminate Based On World of Warcraft [College OTR]

John Brownlee

Warhammer Online to carve statuary of the top players

The problem with MMORPGs is the ubiquity of heroes: the world's just maggoty with them. Nothing particularly feels epic, evil is never defeated and the greatest heroes only differ from the level one milksops by the rarity of their clothes and the visible smell waves oscillating off of their avatars. In largely static game worlds of unevolving lore and unfluctuating threat, there is no capacity to feel like a legend. Which, when you think of it, is very much at odds with the spirit of Tolkein that largely informs games like Everquest, World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online.

At least the latter game seem to recognize it, though. Mythic's introducing a rather cool little addition to Warhammer Online, aimed at making outstanding players feel more like ineluctable legends of the game lore. Starting with patch 1.1, Mythic will reward the top ten players on each realm with statues of their characters in the main city centers.

I think it's a nice little touch. MMORPGs need more of these sorts of gestures to the player, incorporating their deeds and heroism into the fabric of the game lore to both inspire and garner the jealousy of their fellow players.

Dev Diary: Player Statues [Warhammer Herald]

Offworld Crew

Only on Offworld: Be one of the first to join virtual world Metaplace

From Offworld to the virtual world: Offworld and developer Metaplace have partnered to bring the first 250 readers a chance to get an early jump into the company's web-embeddable and fully user-created new software.

Headed by MMO veterans Raph Koster and John Donham, Metaplace counts itself as the world's first open platform that harnesses the power of the Web to allow anyone to create, build and live in their own unique virtual world, and build a network of those worlds, creating, they say, "an ecosystem where they collaborate, socialize and conduct commerce forming new societies and economies as we do in the real world today."

And, as Koster explained in September, Metaplace is also jumping ahead of the pack in modeling the software's Terms of Service around his 2000 manifesto “Declaring the Rights of Players", which gives creators "freedom of expression, ownership, including earning money & running their own world, privacy," and the ability to develop their own individual terms of service. Users, too, get "freedom of speech & assembly, privacy, rule of 'law' and due process," and full ownership of their own IP.

To start building your own brave new world, visit Metaplace and use the invite key "OFFWORLD".

UPDATE: Though all of the keys have now been used up (quite quickly, actually!), you can still sign up at Metaplace's waiting list to get in line - new applicants are accepted weekly.