BBC Program Broadcasts From Second Life

Via GameSetWatch, the word that BBC program Newsnight recently broadcast live from the virtual world Second Life. The broadcast included a lead-in shot on a backdrop designed to emulate the real-life Newsnight set. From the article: "Because the virtual money inside Second Life is convertible to US dollars, and people who make things can keep the intellectual property, it is possible to run a real life business inside the game. I got in touch with Cory Edo - real name Sara Van Gorden - who runs a business in Second Life designing avatars - the idealised 3D personas that people use as their online identities."

Comments

3 questions

[heavy snowfall]

- What's the exchange rate?

- Does the dev studio exhange this money for you or do you have to sell it ala WOW?

- I guess you don't go around killing monsters that drop GP in this game.. right?

Second Life still sorely lacks UI scripting

[QuantumG]

Second Life is continually toted as a great platform for casual game developers to create interesting creations and, in fact, many games have been made in Second Life and the modelling and scripting available to every player is remarkably flexible. However, what is sorely lacking is the ability to script the UI aspects of a game. I read early last year that "viewer overlays" are currently under development, but to date there has been no progress. Without the ability to script the UI the kinds of games you can make in Second Life will remain limited to poor resolution puzzle games and gambling trivialities. With the ability to script the UI the possibilities suddenly become unlimited.

Another limitation of the current system is the third party tools required to make animations. These tools are expensive and/or hard to use. Building an animation editor into the game would make player interactions so much richer and encourage the creation of games that can utilize such richness (like fighting games).