Cranial Tap opens virtual business showcase

I'm not sure if I or Aleister Kronos noticed the presence of Cranial Tap last year, but they've been around a while. The first time I ran into them was with the Things To Do group (Good old days) when we visited the Cyberextruder in June 2007. Another one of their projects has been 1-800 Flowers, blogged at KZero. These were pretty cool projects and when I received a press statement today, I didn't have to take long before putting it up. Here's the introduction.

Cranial Tap, Inc. today launched a business solutions showcase geared specifically towards 3D online virtual worlds. Located on Cortex Island in Second Life®, businesses and organizations can now connect remote teams, conduct
research, offer training, recruit candidates and conduct meetings. These solutions are aimed at increasing productivity while reducing operating expenses.

The four showcase areas provide working technologies that demonstrate the benefits of Teleworking, Virtual Meetings, Training and Presentations. Visitors are encouraged to participate in the featured solutions. Upon arrival, visitors are greeted by Tia, a computer driven character (bot) that provides information related to Cranial Tap and their services. She serves as an example of an automated character that can be used in place of human hosts.

Read the full press release here.

Folks over at Cranial Tap are doing pretty slick things at the moment. Go check out their website and visit their showcase in Second Life:

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cortex/27/231/5

The Vesuvius Group

A little while ago I blogged Google in Second Life, which was created by the Vesuvius Group. I hadn't run into them before, but today I ran into their Executive Director, Jeroen Frans. I've known Jeroen through twitter and other sites for ages, but never knew he was part of the Vesuvius Group. Here's a little slideshow of their portfolio:

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1st Metaverse Meetup - Amsterdam

At exactly 0.00 I returned from Amsterdam where I attended the first Metaverse Meetup (Amsterdam Edition) in "De Balie" which was initiated by Joja Dhara and Ze Moo.

As this was a first meetup, apropriately themed "Meet the Avatar", the most timeconsuming event was the introduction round, but on the other hand it was nice to know who was who. We saw representatives from several MDC's such as Jeroen Frans, Executive Director of the Vesuvius Group (the guys that brought us Google in SL), Damian Simmons of Lost in the Magic Forest (Content, Essent, Aegon) and Up the Vortex (blog), and on the corporate present there was 'moi' for Sogeti, and people from ING (Our Virtual Holland), KPN and Philips Design, researchers from EPN, bloggers like Roy Cassini from Digado and excellent freelancers such as Ollie Kubrick from Unreal Design.

And off course, Bart DutchX, Founder of the Dutch Echange was present. I seem to run into him at about every metaverse related event these days. The Linden Lab banking ban doesn't seem to affect his business, as it is still expanding and they're hiring new people and adding new payment methods continuously.

As it was the first meetup I won't do an assesment of the contents of the meetup, as it was primarily a networking event tonight. I hope we'll get to discuss hot metaversal topics in the future.

More Forecasting on 2008 (part 2)

Two days ago I din't get beyond answering the first of the five questions that the Virtual Worlds News site put up.

To avoid clicking to an fro, here are the questions once more:

1. What are your top 3 trend predictions for 2008?
2. What business goals have you set for 2008?
3. What challenges do you expect 2008 to bring for the virtual worlds industry?
4. A number of new platforms are launching in 2008. What are the biggest impacts this will have on the industry?
5. How will the above changes affect your specific segment of the industry in 2008?

Here are my answers (from q2 onward)

2. What business goals have you set for 2008?

• Have total commitment inside the company I work for (right on schedule)
• Write a book on NVE's (if my co-author finds time to brainstorm)
• Organise several techmeetings in Second Life
• Transfer 10% to 20% of our corporate training to a virtual environment
• Completing 5 real immersive projects.

3. What challenges do you expect 2008 to bring for the virtual worlds industry?

As more and more companies will be disappointed in the 1st wave results it will be up to the industry to find true business integration. The biggest challenge for 2008 will be to get the metadiscussion on the metaverse going. By this metadiscussion I mean the discussion on the underlying principles of the metaverse.

We need to find suitable businessmodels. In this discussion we should find answers for the economy in virtual worlds, hardware and other infrastructure, portability and interoperability, international or metaversal law and identity management.

4. A number of new platforms are launching in 2008. What are the biggest impacts this will have on the industry?

I'm not sure which impact it will have. Half of the industry will still be on the first upward curve of the hypecycle, while others are on their way down in disappointment and a few will already start in the 3rd stage of gaining maturity.

Of the new arrivals I expect a lot from Football Superstars, but on the whole I'm not exactly impressed by the latest additions.

5. How will the above changes affect your specific segment of the industry in 2008?

Both question 4 and 1 (previous post) and to a lesser extent 2 and 3 read more or less the same: The impact it will have on my segment of the industry is simple: Native MDC's will loose their headstart in projects for the metaverse and more traditional companies with long term relationships and business analysis skills will have to step forward to mature the industry of Virtual Worlds.

More Forecasting on 2008

In my previous post I already did some forecasting on 2008 and 2009 in terms of where the NVE industry is going. Today, Virtual World News (the guys from the VW Conferences) released a survey on the trends for 2008. In this survey some 45 industry leaders participated.

For a good overview of the contents of the 36 page whitepaper visit Fleeep's blog. My general observation is that each of the respondents is very positive about the developments of the industry. 2008 will see explosion this, massive growth that and so on. Since the majority of the respondents are either from MDC's (Metaverse Development Company) or from MSP's (Metaverse Service Provider) this positive view can be expected. I'm not sure it's fully safe to base your investment plan on their opinion.

The Questions

The questionairre is simple, it's not a long list to pick and choose, but 5 open questions which makes it possible for all of us (not among the 45 chosen) to ponder them ourselves. The questions are:

1. What are your top 3 trend predictions for 2008?


2. What business goals have you set for 2008?


3. What challenges do you expect 2008 to bring for the virtual worlds industry?


4. A number of new platforms are launching in 2008. What are the biggest impacts this will have on the industry?


5. How will the above changes affect your specific segment of the industry in 2008?

The Answers

1. What are your top 3 trend predictions for 2008?
   At this moment I don't have a clear top 3, I see a number of scenario's and trends emeriging this quarter though, here they are:

• In 2008 we're going to be disappointed in Virtual Worlds. As I've pointed out a few times in the past weeks on this blog the current setup is it's Dozens of Them (which by the initials DOT is probably heading for another dot-world crash). What I mean by this is that we've seen about a hundred big companies immerse in Second Life, all with pretty much the same content: Information stands, auditorium and some entertainment stuff. While these are created with great skills by the MDC's it's pretty much the same stuff over again. Right now, most of these virtual enterprises are Marketing & Communication department babies and they're going to be disappointed as they don't bring USP's and ROI's. From this angle we have to differentiate between type of immersion, like:
  - mere presence
  - branding
  - crowdsourcing
  - engagement
  and forget about Business Development.
• As a result of this disappointment, more MDC's will have to cut down capacity like ESC, or bring in different expertise. 2008 will see a slight shift from the current MDC's to more traditional IT companies like Sogeti or Capgemini who have longterm relations with their clients and a proper supply of Business Analysts who know their clients core business and have the ability to translate that core business to IT and VW solutions.
• The former means that 2008 will focus on integration, creating API's and mashups, providing data-mining tools etcetera.
• From a social point of view there will be disappointment in Virtual Worlds as well, mainly produced by lag and hardware power. 2008 will be a good year for NVidia, Intel, AMD and other hardware producers as both the Gameverse and the Metaverse will require a boost in sheer graphical and processor power. Another fundamental part of this new univerese will be the availability of bandwith as worlds like Second Life use streaming technology and are producing over 8 Gbps in data traffic. It will be up to Internet2 / Lamdarail to put their 100 Gbps network into full production (which will probably be beyond 2008) to service this bandwidth need.
• The Metaverse in general will concentrate in general on the Extraverse, the branded or themed worlds. Since we do not have the ability (in most cases) to translate our core processes into virtual representations, the NVE industry will still be an instrument in marketing media in 2008.
• As far as extraverses go, they will get more and more aimed at specific groups, for instance girl worlds like Barbieworld and GoSupermodel will grow rapidly. 4th quarter 2008 might see it's first VW specifically aimed at 50+ agegroups in beta.
• The majority of funding will be coming from governemental organisations exploring virtual worlds in serieous gaming ventures.
• Social Worlds will lean heavily on the gameverse to find the key to upgrading registered users to active users. This will mean that more and more storylines will be implemented in the Metaverse and offer new handles for interactive media (convergence with television a.o.)
• Another challenge for Social Worlds will be the mashup with social networking sites like linked-in, Facebook and the likes. This also brings in the all important question of Identity Management (and in its wake interoperability and portability).
• On the part of Second Life we will see improvement in stability as Aric Linden's QA team will be finalising their tests on the new Windlight client in January, making it the most stable release Linden Lab has ever produced. Havok 4 will be implemented somewhere mid 2008 as physics engine.
• Aside from taxlaws and other governmental regulations the industry will gain some significance for retirment funding and insurance companies as more and more people will earn their living in virtual environments.
• A huge issue will be the "What if I die" scenario: What happens to my second life and my virtual assets when I'm no longer there. When I'm gone, who owns my identity, will there be successionrights?

Okay, past bedtime now, the other questions will have to wait.

Massive lay offs and the future of NVE's

Today Massively made it into my RSS feed. There's really a couple of cool Second Life residents blogging over there now. This time it's Moo Money that brings up some juicy gossip from Second Life as she writes on the ESCapists:

In a shocking blog entry today, Jeremy Flagstaff noted that the Electric Sheep Company has laid off approximately one-third of their staff, or about 22 people. It has been previously noted that ESC had to cut back on the number of islands for CSI: NY, and now both AOL Pointe and Pontiac are pulling out of Second Life. This news should come as no surprise, but it's still heartbreaking to hear that it
happened so close to Christmas.

While it is not known at this time exactly why the layoffs occurred, Jeremy speculates that they will be focusing on technology like OnRez. Joel Greenberg, whose job status is unknown at this time, announced on Twitter that ESC is shutting down their virtual ad network project. In a prophetic blog entry written last week by Rez Menoptra, he speculated on how long builds will last in virtual worlds and who will remember them.

Massively will update you with the latest news on this topic as we hear it. Stay tuned!

Most of these people we will never know, but we've seen Jeremy himself move away from the Sheep earlier this year as well as Jerry Paffendorf. Is the negative trend for Second Life we've seen in Europe now crossing to the US as well? Are we close to a dotcom-burst in the virtual world industry? I don't think so.

In november I quickly mentioned AOL's departure from Second Life, now Pontiac is joining the list of departing companies. How should we read these signs: Is it true that Second Life has proved itself unfit for business? In the case of Pontiac / Motorati I think it surely didn't.

The thing I keep saying to our clients is this: Right now Second Life is the ideal platform to experiment. It is open, and it's present, which means you can start up exploring the metaverse at relatively low cost. Try to get a feel for the technology, explore opportunities, chase ideas. Second Life makes this possible because it's free to sign up and you can put in almost any kind of data. Second Life is as open as the gates of heaven to whom believes. The feeling I get now is that most of the departing companies are not going out of business, they're moving. It's just as much tribal migration that we see in social networking sites. You explore, then find a site that better suits your needs. A lot of these companies gained experience from Second Life and are now preparing for dedicated themed worlds, based upon enterprise technology on platforms like There.com

It is a moving business we're in. The past year has seen an extreme usergrowth in Second Life, and an enormous commercial / PR drive for companies to enter virtual worlds. Now it's time to check the balance. All in all, as I wrote in my previous blogpost on the Millions of Us venue for Splenda; "It's Dozens of Them" meaning right now it's just too much of the same. We're creating presence for companies. There's an occasional immersion that goes beyond simple presence and really adds something to the industry.

Millions of Us, Lost in the Magic Forest, Electric Sheep Company, Virtual Italian Parks, and many many other MDC's have mastered the skill of building in Second Life. What they haven't got is the skill of Business Analysis.

It will take skilled consultants to translate core business to virtual representations. It will take experience and time for us to be able to build virtual venues that are fit for business and will form an extention to our daily operations. 2007 has been a year in which Second Life and virtual worlds have been a toy for marketing and communication departments, 2008 will probably see NVE's as a playhouse for IT departments and 2009 will probably be the year in which the NVE potential really sinks in, the time when the Business takes over and will use it as a medium for its core processes.

Greenies out, purrsnickety in

A few months back we saw the alien arrival of the Greenies in Second Life, which was a very cool experience by Rezzable. One of the strong points about the Greenies is the avatar marketing bit. Avatar Marketing is mobile marketing as the avatars spread around the grid bringing your brand to the community instead of you having to organize event that will bring the community to your sim. Another cool MDC (Metaverse Development Company) which understands the value of this is the V3 group which brought us the hovering Orb and the Transformer avatars.

Avatar marketing is one, lifestyle is another. We've got some pretty weird people walking the face of the grid. Many subcultures like Goths and punks are present in Second Life and then there's the furries. Furries are animalish avatars, often furry skinned with long tails. These might be rather funny and adorable to the general public, but gets a little twist if you know there's quite a bunch of people out there in the Real World that have a furry fetishism too.

The Second Life Herald reports a new race has entered Second Life; the Purrsnickety's. Here's the SLH report:

"Yesterday Second Life witnessed the birth of a new race of virtual critters – Purrsnicketys. Their basic design is due to Phoenixxx Dragonash, who in RL is Ashley Speranzella-Evans, a free-lance fantasy artist.

They are built and scripted by our good friend and uber-elf Wayfinder Wishbringer. Below the fold are some screenshots and the purrsnickety propaganda."

(Pictures also from SLH)

From the purrsnickety note card...

WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF PURRSNICKETYS!

(To give a Purrsnickety as a gift, please read at the bottom of this notecard)

In a world that has forgotten magic and rushes time, they live above the clouds. Dragon-kitties once chosen to be Guardians of the Earth and magic, they failed to protect it from man. They have become jaded and skeptical, and definitely have attitude. But they have not given up! They have returned to the earth to try one last time to bring back what has lost. Are they the scourge of the skies... or destined to become heroes? Purrsnicketys... adorably wicked.

Purrsnicketys are some of the most complex, heavily-scripted (but very low-lag), fun, tiny avatars ever!

INCLUDED:

• Purrsnickety Avatar (copy/nomod/notrans... copyable so you can pull a new one out of the box in case of inventory loss!)(To give a Purrsnickety
  as a gift, please read at the bottom of this notecard)



• A special Purrsnickety toy (an extra item specific to your Purrsnickety)



• Scripted wings open when flying



• Swishing tail* 72-function HUD, including...



• 68 custom sounds (no freebie sounds here!)



• 14 all-original animations (even the "tiny" animations themselves are new and tweeked), including:* Scripted tongue for cleaning



• Cat-like "run"* Fun "jump"



• Improved "sit" and "groundsit"



• Dance synchronizer (dance in time with your Purrsnickety friends!)* Cute. Real cute. (never underestimate the power of cute. Fells strong dragons and ogres and melts the hearts of warriors).

PURRSNICKETY CHARACTER INFORMATION:

PURRSNICKITY STORIES:

1. Baby Ree: Calico, curious, and pudgy.
   Don’t be fooled by the cuteness of this little baby she will sneeze fire on you
   if you aren’t careful. Likes buttercups and fireflies and her stuffed toy “Remmy”.



2. Bitters: Black, skinny and Melancholy. Always seems to have a rain cloud over his head. Loves,well he dosent’t love anything.. except for a rainy
   day and only because it spoils everyone else’s fun, maybe mud puddles. Older
   brother of Chitters.



3. Chitters: Pink, happy and talks a lot, though only the other purrsnicketys can tell what she is saying. Loves lollypops and unicorns and baking pies for the gang. Kid sister of Bitters and has a crush on Jeepers (but don’t tell him).



4. Creepers: Large, green and agitated. Loves dark damp places and mushrooms. Oldest and Leader of the Purrsnicketys, big brother to
   Jeepers. Arch nemesis: Mr. Wiggles the very elusive and clever mouse dragon whom Creepers can never catch.



5. Critters: Brown, sweet and earthy. He loves all kinds of creatures and can often be seen playing with the mice in the castle (in a friendly way) Likes walking in the clouds and strawberries.



6. Flitters: Yellow, scattered and artistic. He creates beautiful rainbows in the sky and paintings for the castle. Constantly looses everything because he is so focused on his art. He can be seen covered in paint muttering to himself in his room. Likes new paint brushes and dragon flies.

Advanced Content Creation

Two days ago I remarked on this blog that I hadn't heard a lot on Alyssa LaRoche a.k.a. Aimee Weber lately. Almost instantaniously she proved me wrong. Here's the comment left on the blogpost:

"Thanks for the interest in Aimee Weber Studio. I've actually been so busy, I haven't had time to update my website. Since the last entry on the AWS website, Aimee Weber Studio has done the following:

• Worked as Project manager for NBC's treelighting ceremony along with Bedazzle and Electric Sheep.
• We built the House of Horizons build for IBM.
• Created Bild-T's island for the SL tabloid The Avastar.
• We created the Yak Shack for the charitable organization Save the Children.
• We are currently working on the in-world press kiosks for PR Newswire.
• We are also working on several projects that we are not yet able to announce including a major automotive company and restaurant chain.
• Finally, I'm the lead author for the Official Second Life Advanced Content Creation textbook entitled "Creating Your World" due out in October and I have been speaking at shows such as Computerworld.

Aimee Weber Studio has never stopped growing and has recently been hiring full time employees and providing health and dental.I hope this is enough. If I did anymore I would collapse. :D But I will be sure to add a website update to my daunting to-do list!!"

Following on this post I had quite a long IM session with Aimee. On this blog and other blogs there have been lots of comments on old style media that are currently in a negative swing on Second Life. In the regular 'print' the current reading is that companies are getting out of Second Life, have second thoughts, or are very much disappointed. This certainly is not the case for Aimee Weber Studios.

"Not on my end. There are certainly lots of inquiries. I am sure the bubble burst will happen eventually. Which I don't think I mind. I enjoy projects that use SL as an educational platform as much as the advertising stuff. Not that a bubble burst would indicate the irrelevance of SL as a marketing platform."

We were quite in agreement right now SL is offering more freedom than any other platform. Maybe in 5 years SL will be overtaken, but for now it's the ideal environment to explore the Metaverse.

One of the projects Aimee has been working on is a new book on advanced content creation, titled "Creating your World" which will be available at Amazon shortly. As far as I could tell from the previews the book is completely in style with the official Guide to Second Life, giving it that familiar touch and will be an interesting insight into virtual creationism.

"I tried to avoid simple "how-to" explanations in favor of providing a deeper understanding of what is going on behind the scenes. Not just how to build with prims, but WHY different kinds of prims act the way they do." says Aimee.

Butterfly cocooned?

2006 must have been the year of Weber, obviously. It seems virtual butterflies don't live much longer than their RL counterparts since it's been ages since I've heard something of importance on Weber.

By the end of 2006 Aimee Weber was seen as one of the leading content creators in Second Life, mentioned as one of the virtual millionaires and founder of the Weber Studio's and said to be part of the infamous FIC (feted inner core), the clique the chique of Second Life.

Looking at her portfolio once more to see if there's anything new coming up, 'turned out to be quite a disappointment. Weber made name and fame during the first boost of Second Life, but now seems to be marginalised and seems to live a quiet life in the Stylehyve, showing off some good pieces of furniture.

Anyone knows what happened? Any good projects coming up?

Sim in a Box

Building a proper sim takes time, a whole lot of time, unless you are a master builder like Lordlfy. But if you're just that average kind of bloke who barely scraped together the money to buy a complete sim and you want to make money from renting out property, you'll want it up and running smooth and (especially) fast.

So your sim is in and you want to rent out as soon as possible, since you don't have Anshe's wallet to be able to leave it unused for a year or so. Monthly tiers can be a killer to many starters. For those the Sim in a Box might be a very good solution that can jumpstart your sim.

The Things to Do group got a demo today of how to build a sim in 5 minutes. Well, it works.

Though I'm not really charmed. I like mine with a little more labour-of-love touch than what this instant-sim HUD does.

However, from a technical point of view, I think this is a big step forward. Predefine content and make it rapidly deployable, auto rezzing your inventory might be huge timesavers.

SL takeover

Today the Design Corp Brain Gaime (with clients like BNN) has been taken over by Lost in the Magic Forrest due to rising demand in design expertise. The Magic Forresters have been working hard on succesful immersions like Nextstrategy, Essent, Talpa and Content.

Dobre vanBrugh, CEO of [Lost in the] Magic Forest explains that they want to guarantee maximum creativity for their clients, which makes Brain Game a logical choice in their strategy to become one of Europe's leading virtual branding agancy and cross-reality campaigners

Beta Technologies

Beta Technologies is another of the early Virtual Contractors in Second Life. They've got a wide range of skills to help build your presence in SL, ranging from 3D content design, real architecture, programming, web and logo design, video and audio production, production of textual content, project planning and management, as well as consultancy, marketing and promotion.

Among their builds are Xerox, the Scandinavian Saxo bank, Cleveland Heart Clinic and Sunbelt Software. This list reminds me that I have to visit the Xerox build, as I've already blogged the other ones.

Beta Technologies is one of the many succesfull projects by Eggy Lippmann who joined Second Life in 2003. One of the feats on his palmares is the foundation of the Second Life histori wiki. For more information on the various projects of Eggy, you might wanna look at his wikipage.

Wishfarmers

After I visited the Kelly Services Island, I thought to take a look at the website of Wishfarmers, the builders who did the Kelly gig to see what they're about and what they've done so far. Below is their own introduction...

Wishfarming is an art: The art of re-inventing creativity in a new space called the metaverse. The Wishfarmers offer our proven ability to design and implement groundbreaking solutions for projects in SecondLife and other virtual spaces.

We’re natives, and we’re restless. We know and protect this “new internet” as well as you know your own business. And we denounce works which fail to enrich them both.

If it doesn’t push the envelope, if it doesn’t blow minds, then we won’t do it. That’s a fact.
We’re re-visionaries: If you just want to replicate your product in a 3D medium, we’re probably not for you. But if you know that this isn’t quite like anything else, then together we can re-think, re-design and re-purpose virtual reality to serve a bold new vision.

Wishfarming is our mission: We sow wishes, and grow them in a brave new world.

Aside from the Kelly Services Island I didn't see many business contracts in their portfolio, just a number of events and contest entries. Their style seems explicit though, so they might be recognised easily.

Rapid Architectural Prototyping in Second Life

was the title of an article on the 3PointD blog. The contents of the article were no news to me, but since they say nice things about our Guestwriter Lordfly, here's the full score:

"Second Life architect Lordfly Digeridoo has posted a great video of the process of designing a site plan in Second Life for a real-world site in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Because of “massive procrastination,” LF says, he had only a week to do it. His video compresses that week into less than 10 minutes of high-speed SL work, and it’s pretty compelling to watch. There’s even a great sense of suspense in wondering what the finished product will be like. An excellent look at the methods of a master builder."

Read the article and view the video at: http://www.3pointd.com/20070406/rapid-architectural-prototyping-in-second-life/

Aimee Weber

Aimee's one of the sexiest names in virtual content creation. She's a social butterfly that traverses the grid with grace. She entered the metaverse early 2004 and rapidly became one of the top designers.



Being very mediable, the web is littered with articles and blogs about her, but she's been a very prolific builer in Second Life as well. She rocketted to stardom which does seem to take its toll:



Some jobs are done quite sloppy and like big time celebs she's very much into charity right now with projects such as Second Life Relay for Life from the American Cancer Society, The United Nations Stand Up Against Poverty and (very Gorish) National Oceanic & Atmospheric Association.




What remains is the fact that she comes up with original ideas, contrary to Rivers Run Red and the Electric Sheep Company, and it's the ideas that keep SL in motion. She's been active in the fields of clothing design, virtual education and simulcast events (such as the 2006 solar eclipse)

SLUC: Second Life Under Construction

A number of corporations have sims under contruction

Millions of US

• Microsoft (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Microsoft/128/128/0)
• ComCast (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Comcast/126/116/23)
• Warner Brothers (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Warner%20Brothers/85/130/23)

These sims are not accesible yet, but at least Microsoft and Comcast look nearly completed.

Electric Sheep

• Too many half finished sims makes you wonder if they can finish anything soon.

Rivers Run Red

• Heineken (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Heineken/128/128/0)
• Channel 4 radio (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Channel4Radio/128/128/0)

Lost in the Magic Forest

• Content, job agency (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Content/128/128/0)
• Aegon, insurance (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Aegon/113/109/23)

SLionhead

• According to the CEO they've recently started working on some major projects. I'' try and scoop them.

Nemesis CC

Nemesis Content Creation enjoys creative collaborations with companies and individuals which enhance Second Life. In the Netherlands they're probably best known for their work on the Amsterdam Arena. They've done a few other things though.

Numbakulla, the Pot Healers Mystery

One of these fine things is the Pot Healers mystery. The Pot Healers mystery has been available as a free-to-play immersive questing game for over a year now. Originally due to close after a few weeks, the players then, and many players since, donated to keep the game open and alive.

Creju, BBC Demo

In early 2006, they developed a sim in six weeks to provide a demonstration of the possibilities of the Second Life platform. Some of the innovations included a "follower pet" by Oclee Hornet which triggered explanations in chat of the surroundings, a trampoline game and bash-the-mole game.

Rivers Run Red

Rivers Run Red was the world's first agency to establish a working presence within a virtual world. RRR has been active in Second Life since 2003. In meatspace the company has offices in London and San Fran.

Projects include Vodafone, Philips, ING, Reebok, Adidas, Calvin Klein (CKin2U), Heineken, BBC, Channel 4, Penguin, Duran Duran and Radio 538. It's surprising to see how many Dutch client the company has. Since 2007 the RRR faces serious competition with new native Dutch virtual builders such as [lost in the] Magic Forest, Damanicorp and SLionhead.

Aside from their corporate website RRR runs the Space Think Dream thingy as an extra outlet of their works.

Electric Sheep Company

The Electric Sheep Company is the largest company in the world dedicated to designing experiences and delivering add-on software for 3D virtual worlds. Our Professional Solutions team delivers strategic, creative and technical insight and services to global organizations. Our Software team is building a suite of information services to enhance virtual world experiences, such as trending and measurement tools, e-commerce, and social networking.

Projects include "The L word", AOL, Virtual NBC, Major League Basebal and Reuters




SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Sheep%20Island/128/128/0

FIAT scoop

While searching SL's grid I stubled upon 3 sims, Fiat Brasil, Fiat Adventure 1 and Fiat Adventure 2. The first wasn't accesible, but the adventure sims were open, so I dropped in hoping to see what FIAT was doing in SL.

There wasn't much to see, just plain wooden boards and colored beams. Yet there were a few people working on the island. The construction team is called "vj arquitetura" and they were quite shocked I dropped in... somehow the restriction had disappeared.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Fiat%20Adventure%20I/194/87/64

Another roaring Dutch Lion

Another team of excellent designers has bonded together and formed a new SL Contracting agency: SLionhead. The Slionhead sim has some telling Dutch treats, such as the (apparantly) unavoidable windmill and orange details.
The last picture is one of the SLionhead projects, the "Cirque Mystique", a nice bar -bounty style.




SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Slionhead%20Island/128/128/0

Dutch Design

Some of my foreign friends are getting tired of all those new Dutch companies entering SL. It appears that the Dutch are early adapters in Second Life. Right now the Netherlands is one of the most represented countries in this virtual world.

Where the earliest of entries for Dutch companies were crafted by overseas agencies like Rivers Run Red or the Electric Sheep Company, more and more businesses have discovered that we have a number of excellent builders in the Netherlands as well

The leading SL builders in the NL are [ Lost in the ] Magic Forest and Damanicorp. DMA is starting to gain momentum as producer of Streaming Media in SL.

[Lost in the] Magic Forest & DMA Studios


Damania by Damanicorp

Sloppy performance by Weber

When one of SL's design guru's, Aimee Weber, was asked to participate in the built of the sim of one of the sexiest SL companies, Millions of US, one thought it would be one big showcase for SL architecture. Well, the auditorium is awesome as you can see on the pic below.




An insider at MoU however told me there was sloppy work involved. When closely examening the structures on the island.... well, you be the judge.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Millions%20of%20Us/123/97/56