Day: October 14, 2019

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Halloween Costumes from COCO

COCO Designs is one of those Second Life stores which are extremely generous with their group gifts (all of which you can obtain if you join the *COCO* Update Group for free). Among the newest group gifts are not one, but two different rabbit outfits for Halloween (here’s the exact SLURL to the gift wall):

Here’s the first rabbit outfit—Jessica Rabbit from the cartoon movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit? All I had to do is add the free Sonnet pumps from Hilly Haalan, and I’m all set!

Please note that the purple gloves are not Bento-enabled, so you will have to alpha out your lower arms and hands completely for them to work. This outfit comes in sizes to fit Maitreya Lara, Slink Hourglass and Physique, and Belleza Freya and Isis mesh bodies (I am wearing it here with the Altamura Juliet mesh avatar, and as you can see, the Maitreya Lara version fits the Altamura mesh body perfectly!).

The second free rabbit costume from COCO is in a much spookier vein!

The package includes this complete outfit in two colours: white as shown, and black. It also includes just the rabbit mask in white or black, which you can wear with any outfit you choose. Note that you will need to completely alpha out your avatar, as this outfit attaches to your Avatar Center attachment point, and it is meant to completely replace your avatar!

There is a second gift wall at COCO, in a separate location from the first gift wall. Here is where you will find the older group gifts, all free! Here’s the exact SLURL to the second gift wall.

Here I combine four different group gifts to create a complete witch’s outfit for Halloween:

  • the Wednesday Dress
  • the Witch Hat
  • the Pumpkin Staff
  • and the Jester Boots with Thigh-High Socks

Jessica Rabbit picture taken at Disney Tribute.
Spooky Rabbit picture taken at Pendle Hill.
Witch pictures taken at Sacred Cauldron.

Editorial: A Blogger’s Biases

bi·as /ˈbīəs/ — prejudice in favour of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.

Oxford Dictionary (via Google)

Yesterday, I got into a debate with one of my blog readers on the RyanSchultz.com Discord server, who felt that I was being hypocritical for saying that High Fidelity was “doomed” when I was not similarly harsh on Sansar, which also has low user concurrency figures.

She does have a good point (she comes from VRChat, which is demonstrably whooping Sansar’s ass in that department):

Every blogger has his or her own biases, and those biases will shift over time. I will admit that I have a soft spot for the two platforms developed by Linden Lab: Second Life and Sansar. And, I will also admit that my bias towards High Fidelity has swung from positive to negative in the past year. Other bloggers also have their biases, whether they publicly admit them or not. For example, Wagner James Au, of the long-running Second Life blog New World Notes, sometimes seems to have an axe to grind when it comes to Sansar.

Am I being fair to High Fidelity? Well, I guess it all depends on your perspective. Yes, I have been very harsh towards HiFi, because I see them lurching from mistake to mistake, but I am not really saying anything new here; other observers have also criticized High Fidelity. Many current and former HiFi users have told me privately that I am writing about what many of them are thinking. And I will continue to praise the company when I see them doing things that I think are beneficial, like their recent create-an-personalized avatar app for mobile devices, which I think is an excellent idea that I would like to see more social VR platforms and virtual worlds adopt. But yes, overall I do think that the company is in quite serious trouble, and yesterday I used the dreaded D-word: doomed.

Does this mean that I am uncritical of Linden Lab? Nope. I can point to numerous instances in the past where I have been sharply (and, yes, even unfairly) critical of Linden Lab. And I have been similarly critical at times of many other virtual worlds. Because I tend to get accused of bias when I do aim criticism at any particular company, I will refer you to a quote I made when I was accused of bashing Sansar by criticizing its too-early launch on Steam:

I want to stress that this is only one person’s opinion, not an official Sansar spokesperson’s point of view. I still remain a strong Sansar supporter, but I would be neglecting my duties as an independent social VR/virtual worlds blogger if I simply posted nothing but “good news” about Sansar, as some people want me to do.

And the exact same sentiment applies to any other platform I write about on this blog. I visit and enjoy many different social VR/virtual worlds, and I have made some great friends and had some wonderful experiences everywhere I go, but I am not simply going to be a cheerleader for any platform; I want to be able to report both the positive and negative sides of all the social VR platforms and virtual worlds I blog about.

So, why do I think that Sansar is not doomed? The various sources of Sansar user concurrency stats, while still low compared to rival platforms like VRChat and Rec Room, are showing promising signs of growth. This is also borne out by a definite increase in the number of people joining and participating in the official Sansar Discord. Sansar is clearly attracting new people. While that pace of user growth might still disappointing to Linden Lab, it is clear to this blogger that Sansar is still doing better overall than High Fidelity.

And yes, I could be wrong. I have often been wrong before. I thought that Virtual Universe would be a success, too, and it failed. I thought that Cryptovoxels would fail, and it has prospered. So, what do I know? I’m just a blogger who spends way, waaay too much time exploring social VR and virtual worlds, and writing about my experiences from my own unique perspective. I have been fortunate to get a bit of attention from my blog, but I am far from a seer. Nobody can predict the future.

And I make you this promise: if I do f*** up—and I tend to f*** up quite often, both in real life and in virtual worlds—I will admit it (especially if I am called out on it, as I was yesterday), own it, apologize, and move on. That’s the best and surest way to learn and grow.

Sometimes, I will push back, and argue my stance on certain issues if I still think I am right. And, right now, I will forcefully argue that Sansar is destined to succeed, although I suspect it will take many years for that to happen. Ebbe Altberg and his team at Linden Lab are very wisely playing the long game: slowly and methodically building a next-generation virtual world that might, someday, surpass Second Life in popularity (even in the face of potential behemoths like Facebook Horizon). We’ll see if that prediction comes to pass or not.