Apparently, the company is planning on moving out completely; the “entire ground floor” is available, according to this brochure.
Is this a sign of a company desperately trying to trim costs? Is High Fidelity moving their headquarters to another, cheaper location? (Hey, Philip, have you ever considered Winnipeg? It’s one hell of a lot cheaper than San Francisco. The winters are brutal, though.)
Or is High Fidelity just going to eat their own dog food, and keep working on their social VR platform as teams in various remote locations? After all, what better way to demonstrate the value of a (repurposed) product for remote business teams than to use it themselves in their day-to-day operations.
The bigger question is: is High Fidelity in serious financial trouble?
Men sometimes find the pickings to be pretty slim when it comes to freebies in Second Life. Well, today I have news about some fabulous freebies that are just for male avatars.
First, did you know that it is the 2nd anniversary of the Man Cave shopping event? And to celebrate, there are free gifts available at most of the vendor booths, hidden in bunches of balloons. All you have to do is join the Man Cave group for free, and the gifts are yours for the taking.
As just one example of the many free gifts you can pick up, here are the Marcus dress shoes, which come with socks on which you can adjust the height, colour, and pattern using the included HUD:
You can also adjust the buckle, sole, and base colours of the shoe. It’s a fabulous freebie that will go well with any dressy suit or formalwear. Just head over to the Volver booth at this exact SLURL, and click on the leftmost set of balloons to get your gift:
And since you’re already there, why not pick up all the other wonderful freebies for men at the event? The Man Cave event ends July 11th, so don’t wait!
(In case you’re wondering, the suit I’m wearing in the top two pictures is a former group gift from Bakaboo, which is unfortunately no longer available.)
While we’re on the subject of great deals for male avatars, check out this wonderful summer outfit from Hoorenbeek. Everything this avatar is wearing—shirt, shorts, belt, beaded bracelet, sandals, sunglasses, even the shark’s tooth necklace—is included, for free! And check the details; they are all superbly done:
The unpacker HUD for the Hoorenbeek gift offers versions of this outfit for classic avatars, as well as for Slink Physique, Signature Gianni, Signature Geralt, and Belleza Jake mesh bodies. Happy shopping!
The following three-minute machinima (i.e. a video shot on a computer platform) was put together by a Second Life user named Luca, who says:
Second Life for me began with curiosity which turned into something really fun for me to express myself that I enjoy a lot, then it became a platform of creativity and self-discovery. And something that I didn’t realize or really think of until recently, is that how by allowing people to see each other for who they really are inside, it also helps unite people by shedding lights into people’s inner selves which would otherwise be shrouded in mystery, and dissipate our innate fear of the unknown.
I found her work captivating, and I felt it deserved a larger audience, so here it is. The final quote of her machinima is:
A bridge that gives way to the unknown content of one’s heart is a bridge that spans the dark chasm of divisiveness and fear.
Note that Decentraland (DCL for short) was originally supposed to launch in open beta at the end of June, but that has been pushed back. Instead, DCL is going to invite groups of users in successive waves over the next month in a closed beta test, before opening the doors to the general public. Creating your avatar is the first step to setting foot in-world (once you are invited into the closed beta).
Here’s a brief new promotional video from Decentraland, showing off the different ways you can style and animate your avatars:
You can start the avatar creation process at this page. The avatar creation module is pretty straight-forward, and in no time at all you can customize an avatar to your desire. You have a choice of a male or a female avatar (sorry, no non-human avatars yet):
But there’s a catch. You can style your avatar as you like, but if you want to pick a name for your avatar (other than “Guest”), well, that’s going to cost you:
The fee is 100 MANA, which is the name of Decentraland’s in-world cryptocurrency. According to this cryptocurrency exchange calculator, that works out to US$5.10 at the moment. Not to mention the hassle of actually having to set up a cryptocurrency wallet and buying MANA, which I really don’t want to deal with right now.
It usually costs 100 MANA to claim a name, but for the first 1,000 people claiming a name with cryptocurrency wallet, Trust Wallet, it’s completely free. What’s more, Trust Wallet and exchange partner Binance will stump up the gas fee.
Hey, free works for me! So, I downloaded the free Trust Wallet app onto my iPhone and set it up. Only to get hopelessly lost about how to actually connect the mobile-based Trust Wallet to use with the Decentraland avatar creation website on my desktop computer. It turns out that’s not possible (D’oh!).
Finally, I tried using the built-in web browser in the Trust Wallet app on my iPhone, but I only got as far as being able to select a name. The CLAIM NAME button at the bottom of my screen was still greyed out and unresponsive:
So, for a while confusion reigned on the official Decentraland Discord server as various people tried to troubleshoot my problem (thank you to everyone who offered suggestions!). Nobody seemed to know exactly how this promotion with the Trust Wallet works. Shouldn’t DCL have all this figured out before making the official announcement? Just sayin’.
Eventually, however, I was connected with someone from Decentraland who walked me through the process, step-by-step, through claiming my 100 MANA (a step they neglected to tell anyone about!), and then claiming my custom avatar name, all done using the web browser built in to the Trust Wallet app on my iPhone.
And finally, I got an email confirmation:
And checking my account, I now see:
Yay! Success! But it should not be this complicated. If a geek like me is having trouble with something as simple as setting up a username, you can imagine how confused the average Joe consumer is going to be. Hopefully, the team at Decentraland are rewriting their communications on the Trust Wallet offer, and providing STEP-BY-STEP instructions for other clueless cryptocurrency newbies.
Frankly, I think charging cryptocurrency for a custom avatar name is a significant stumbling block for many potential Decentraland users. I can understand needing to charge for land and goods and services, but something like a user name should be free to set up. DCL is setting itself apart from most of the competition in charging for a custom avatar name. I can only think of a few virtual worlds (IMVU, Twinity) that use this model. None of the major social VR platforms and virtual worlds charge you a fee to choose an avatar name. Decentraland might want to carefully re-think this policy.
UPDATE 2:50 p.m.: The following message was posted to the official Decentraland Discord server by toonpunk:
Anybody having issues with Trust wallet not being free please visit this link and it will work – https://claim.decentraland.org/ thanks.
You will need to visit this website in the built-in browser in the Trust Wallet app on your mobile device, then visit the avatar creation page.
