The Second Life Herald : the virtual tabloid that witnessed the dawn of the metaverse /

Online or virtual worlds are becoming increasingly popular every year, and online worlds such as There, The Sims Online, and Second Life are hosting millions of virtual personas, known as avatars. Ludlow (philosophy and linguistics, Univ. of Toronto) and Wallace (freelance journalist) have been involved with MMOGs (massively multiplayer online games) since the arrival of online gaming environments. This book traces the development of two such online games, The Sims Online and Second Life, through the stories that appeared in the online newspaper Second Life Herald. As virtual journalists for the Herald, Urizenus Sklar (Ludlow) and Walker Spaight (Wallace) explore what happens within an online gaming environment or virtual world after the game objectives have been met. The Alphaville Herald and later the Second Life Herald provide much more than a how-to about MMOGs, exploring the interpersonal relationships, social communities, economics, and even governing factions that arise when players push the limits of the gaming environment and structure. This excellent book provides fascinating accounts of avatars and the people behind them, and provides insights into the current and future uses of virtual environments. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers/libraries. A. Hollister State University of New York at Cortland

It shouldn?t be a surprise that the online virtual communities like Second Life-where, recently, the how?s and why?s of having a "unicorn baby" were all the rage-have their own virtual newspapers and blogs. The very real world constraints such organs have come under, however, may surprise more than a few readers. University of Michigan philosophy professor Peter Ludlow has written and edited various monographs on language and cyberspace; under the name of his online avatar, Urizenus Sklar, Ludlow muckraked within The Sims Online community and was later publisher of SL?s The Second Life Herald. He here teams with freelance journalist Wallace, who has had his own adventures covering online virtual communities, to give a blow-by-blow account of how Urizenus Sklar?s writings caused a big stir online, with ramifications that are still unfolding. With wit and a real sense of suspense, the two dramatize the "killing" of Urizenus ("Uri") in late 2003, and then work backwards, giving a history of online multiuser environments, providing a vivid sense of what it is to participate in them, detailing the larger forces at work in the conflicts that killed Urizenus, and urgently raising still-very-unresolved issues about law, censorship and cyberspace. Anyone with even the slightest curiosity about online virtual communities will find it engrossing. (Oct.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.