copper-robot
Latest
The Virtual Whirl: Community guide to Virtual Worlds
Welcome to The Virtual Whirl, a new weekly Massively column covering virtual environments generally. The term 'virtual world' is slowly seeing less use, being supplanted by the more general 'virtual environment', but the world term still has a fair bit of life left in it. Virtual environments covers a whole lot of ground. From William Crowther's original efforts in 1976 that based a game in a virtual version of the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, virtual environments have been a part of gaming, artificial intelligence and behavioral research, modeling, telemetry and process control and more. Nowadays we're seeing Second Life, Blue Mars, There.com, IMVU and others trying to find places in non-game contexts, like content-development and prototyping, publishing and performance, entertainment and social, education and business; efforts that are met with varying amounts of success.
The Guild in Second Life on The Copper Robot
Our friends at The Guild made an ingame appearance the other day, but not in our game -- they showed up as avatars in Second Life as part of a talk show called the Copper Robot. Felicia Day, Sandeep Parikh (Zaboo), and Jeff Lewis (Vork) all stopped by to talk to journalist Mitch Wagner (whom I met on the TUAW Talkcast last night), and you can watch video of the proceedings over on their blog, or just listen in to the audio if you'd like. And there's news about season 3 in the interview -- it should be happening, though Felicia says they haven't gotten "an official pickup" yet, and she hasn't started writing yet. The season 2 DVD is also coming soon.What's perhaps most interesting about this interview is that the Guildies all used custom-made avatars to appear in the game. Second Life, if you've never played it, is more of a sandbox MMO than the strict rules and design of World of Warcraft, and players have mostly complete freedom to make themselves look like whatever they want. And so a few fans from a site called World2Worlds actually made some avatars for the Guild folks, and they based them off of the (also fan-made) art of the characters. We've never seen footage of "the game," as the characters in The Guild call it, so this is the first time we've seen these avatars represented in any game. Very interesting. The show has a Flickr group, so if you want to check out more shots of what they looked like in-game (including some nutty Vork antics), check that out as well.
Felicia Day, Lewis and Parikh to appear in Second Life tomorrow
Felicia Day, Jeff Lewis and Sandeep Parikh, three multi-talented stars of hit Web sitcom, The Guild are to appear in Second Life tomorrow evening as guests on Mitch Wagner's popular podcast, Copper Robot. The hit series, The Guild, has charmed a huge audience with its witty sitcom tale of misfits who all represent a guild in a mythical online game. Rissa Maidstone, COO of Words2Worlds Inc, has prepared avatars for the guests that combine their MMO personas with their atomic appearance. Above you'll see Codex Alchemi, Codex's alter ego. All three will appear in Second Life for the recording of Copper Robot at 6PM US Pacific Time, tomorrow (Sunday 5 April) at the Seaside Theater on World2Worlds Island. Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.
