Someday... a galaxy of metaverses

Most NPIRL'ers have a great deal invested in Second Life, be it in ongoing business concerns, acquired land, or inventories bursting with creations. While we all deplore the instability of the grid, we do keep a watchful eye for information regarding legitimate competitors to SL who might have the potential to render our virtual assets valueless... or perhaps improve our second lives.

There’s the new HIPiHi, now in commercial release... Wagner James Au (aka Hamlet Au of New World Notes), was just in China and met with Xui Hui, founder and CEO of the 16,000 member or so start-up.

IMHO, no matter how good the grid, content, what-have-you may get, of this and the just-around-the-corner English and Japanese language versions, the western world is not likely to embrace the politically censored environment of HIPiHi.

And then there is the happy talk of interoperability between Second Life and other metaverses… ^.^

So... it was with interest that we read the Sept. 6th article in Reuters about DeepGrid: "Rival grids threaten Linden’s monopoly on SL technology."

Adam Frisby (SL's Adam Zaius) confirmed via IM yesterday that while he may not be the fearless leader of DeepGrid, he has indeed teamed up with a dozen other independent developers to work on it. He added that DeepGrid is one of many grids that have joined the tumble, but pointed out that what we really should be looking at is OpenSim, a project to develop an Open Source Simulator.

Adam also said that OpenSim is still a good 18 months out from being competitive, and by then – he hopes – LL should have an open grid that DeepGrid can connect to.

HBO acquires machinima "My Second Life" - Molotov Alva's video diaries

HBO announced today that it has aquired a documentary that was filmed entirely in-world.

Our very own Orhalla Zander, founder and King of the SecondLife Hobos group (more of a tribe if you ask me, and I'm happy to say I'm one of them!), has been working for some time now as art director and assistant director on the 7-episode Machinima "My Second Life."

Here is a somewhat blurry version with Portuguese subtitles, so please do realize that it is best to view it directly from their website.


The virtual biopic narrates the story of Molotov Alva - played by Douglas Gayeton, director of the pixelated documentary - after he disappears from his home in Petaluma, California. You will all recognize many SL locations that have been used for the shoot.

Hamlet Au of New World Notes was the first to break the news, and subsequently Reuters has carried the story worldwide.

HBO is owned by Time Warner, Inc. and the piece is slated to air sometime in 2008.

We asked Orhalla today how he thinks the mainstream world will react to My Second Life, and he replied: "I'm certain the documentary is going to be very educational to people who know NOTHING about Second Life. It's not tutorial at all. It reminds me of a documentary about the culture of SL. And for the people who are already residents of SL, they will certainly love the film."

He added, "I think it is becoming fairly natural to have crossovers from the virtual to the mainstream media realm; they have already happened. You have Frogg Marlow and Jaycatt bringing their music inside SL. Then you have Anshee Chung who founded virtual real estate. They were the first of the firsts... and I think that while our crossover may not be the first, all sorts of people will find something tantalizing about the documentary. It just captures so much of Second Life's culture."

We're immensely proud of you, Oz.