The object 'Rent-O-Matic 2.02 Des Mod' has sent you a message from Second Life:
Caledon Penzance (169,179,23) Your rent spot will expire in 7 days. Visit me and pay me L$ 475 per week to renew. Renewals will be added to time left, no reason to wait. You can also IM Desmond Shang to pay directly and save the trip
But...I sold Penzance...
Oh, DEEEEeeees....
Justin Webb from MMORPG takes on the new user experience for MMOs. Yet again, I think this is an important article in terms of all MMOs and online games, not just World of Warcraft.
I can't recall how many times the Labs have redesigned Orientation Island, I only know that five minutes in, we're still losing sixty to seventy percent of people. And eliminating the new resident experience altogether? Has only resulted in more trauma, more newcomer drama, than SL had before 2006.
This still kills me:
This is Lakhota Craft's cougar avatar. It is just out of range for comfortable purchase. But it has the best facework for a big cat I have ever seen that doesn't involve muzzle prims:
Even in my base shape, with no saved changes to accommodate the muzzle work, it still looks amazing. And don't take my word for it--the somewhat-lamented Katt Krap establishment (because really: lousy name, okay clothes, but for the time great catface skins) provided me with my first cougar:
See the difference?
But alas, Wanagi Itmutanka, lovely as she is, is L$2000. And honestly, on my best days, I get L$2000? It goes to rent. Tch.
Still, after everything, it's a very good skin. Least I can do is encourage anyone interested, since I went out and found them again and everything.
It's a good point--and a funny video--that there is a gender gap in gaming, between men and women. But I'm more with the author of the article in which that video is embedded--it's not about hiring more women, it's about understanding the games women want to play. Hiring women who already play the games that are out there, won't help in the long run.
Though me? Yeah, the breast physics get kinda old, and sometimes, running around Runes of Magic, all I want in the whole world is one single pair of pants...I still like the eye candy. And a lot of other women do, too.
I mentioned Dusan Writer's blog entry on linking SL to Facebook (and other social media conventions) yesterday; now Miss Dio gets involved. She links the original thread that gives me this PERFECT image comic to describe M and Wallace Linden. Digging through Mal Burns' Twitter posts on the topic also brought me Snicker Snook's take on things, wherein we find out where Wallace Linden, aka Walker Spaight, comes from.
So the Labs are hiring muckrakers and tabloid journalists to...what, stir up things on the forums? Maybe I should look into that Linden liaison position again...I have the feeling if they'll hire Spaight, they'll hire anyone...
Finally, some things you cannot unsee.
Just sayin'.
No, no explanation. It stands better without one.
on the steps of decision, it's revenge or forgiveness
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2 Comments:
Good point about the right and wrong way to go about attracting more women to gaming. (Whether that's really a good thing is a different matter.) As for eye candy, I think about two genres where the demographic skews heavily toward women: romance novels and soap operas. Sure, the cover of the novel has a hunky guy on it, and the men on soaps are nearly uniformly handsome, but the women are all gorgeous, too, whether in print or on the screen. Apparently attractiveness sells, independently of gender or sexual attraction. Go figure.
The beauty of the trick is when you start running the sociology behind it. Women are uniformly trained to respond to female attractiveness with praise and appreciation, so putting attractive women in video games works for both genders. Where women as a group step back and shake their heads, though, is less defined.
Many take that first step back if the female portrayed is aggressively sexualized; Lara Croft's fluctuating appearance has, nearly always, ridden that edge between what is accepted subconsciously by women, and what is rejected outright. Images of Chell are not overtly sexualized; she's a woman, yes, and everyone who plays Portal plays her, but part of Portal's huge popularity among all genders was that in essence, what Chell actually looked like didn't really impact the game. It wasn't about image, it was about movement, puzzle-solving, exploration.
(Whereas, for most women, the girls of Dead or Alive playing beach volleyball are too far on the other side of the spectrum--with their enhanced breast physics and secret game codes to render all characters nude, most women will dismiss the game entirely without merit and complain to men playing it.)
It's not that fine a line, but there is a line.
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