It’s been a very long day yesterday, helping out at the launch event. Apparently the Belgian launch made such a big buzz that even the Japanese tv showed up at the press release. They thought it was the European launch event. Pretty cool. In the morning we met with the bloggers we had invited. Even though some bloggers aren’t pro-Microsoft at all, they were very glad we treated them as press VIPs with access-all-areas passes. Personally, I think it’s a very good move of Microsoft to not underestimate the power of bloggers and to place them on the same level as journalists. After the press conference, I went to the Atomium to help out a bit and to check on the stream that was supposed to go into Second Life. The guys from Rambla did a great job! Really! Thanks a million!
I met the Praga Khan / Lords Of Acid crew and we had a great talk about the virtual word and they were really enthusiastic about having the concert in there. Agreed, Second Life is still in an early phase, and it still has it flaws and unstabilities, but I do think it’s a wonderful channel to reach out to a specific audience, especially when you have something cool to offer as an experience like this concert. There’s still so much to discover and I don’t think we’ve seen the full potential of this medium yet.
I don’t think it was a wrong decision to go into Second Life with this initiative, even though some people seem to focus on the fact that some of the clubs were located on ‘mature land’. Second Life is for a great part a reflection of the real world, and that includes adult entertainment. One of the most popular and oldest clubs in Flanders, Cafe d’Anvers, is located in the heart of the Antwerp red light district, and I’ve never heard anyone complaining about that, even though a lot of official launches have been made there in the past years. Three quarters of Second Life is mature, or so it seems, popular clubs in this virtual world are very often located there, because that brings in a lot of traffic. Let’s not forget that Second Life has an age limit of 18 years, which obviously indicates that sometimes it happens that you encounter things that aren’t suitable for children, which implies you’re an adult if you play the game, and that you can deal with situations like these.
In the search for partnering clubs, I did try to select those that didn’t have explicit content on display, and that worked out very well. So what if there’s a dancing pole every here and there in some of the clubs? It’s just fun and entertainment. You’re still looking at game, at virtual characters. What do you expect from Second Life’s nightlife? Everyone in a tuxedo sitting on a chair, knodding their heads and tapping gently with their feet? I’m not going to stream a concert of a popular house/techno formation into a candy store or a car shop.
All in all, the virtual event didn’t go quite as planned. 4 clubs had difficulties to get the stream working and never got it fixed, which is weird because everyone received the same url. I wanted to travel there to help out but Second Life’s teleport service was down, so I kinda got stuck where I was. We’ve captured the concert though, and I’ll try to get it up for a rebroadcast to those clubs who’ve fallen out of the live event. So, with 6 partnering clubs in, we served 1125 stream requests to 375 IPs from over 17 countries. That’s not bad at all, but it could’ve been better, if everything would’ve gone as planned. I haven’t been able yet to check with the clubs that joined in too late to make it to the teleport billboards to get a status on the amount of people there, but I’m sure that those who’ve turned up enjoyed theirselves.
4 locations were maxed out and my sim owner came to the rescue and raised the limit of avatars allowed. On a certain moment, the Strawberry Estate had 70 avatars walking around, sitting in the spheres of the atomium or on the lawn in front of the big screens. My little chunk of land isn’t a well known club, but with a little help from Arnaut Sequent, who owns the Second Life Atomium and was kind enough to put a copy in my virtual garden, I was able to turn it into a temporary Atomium park. I didn’t think it would be necessarry to buy a strip of land to host just this event and then abandon it afterwards or leave it like a ghost area, like so many brands do. I wanted the event to be amidst the residents, and that worked out pretty well.
The feedback from those who were present in the game was great. Everybody really liked the fact that the singer (Maurice Engelen) kept greeting the people of Second Life through his entire set and the music was, as expected, awesome. A few people were protesting against Vista, sporting signs of ‘bad Vista’, ironically enough while watching a concert that was sponsored by Microsoft. I could’ve ejected them from the land, but hey, everyone is entitled to his/her own opinion.
The worst thing that could’ve happened that night, actually did happen, as the Lindens were having serious troubles maintaining stability on the grid. Throughout the event they’ve posted this message on their blog:
We’re seeing heavy load on the database servers, and the associated problems in-world with failed teleports and difficulty rezzing objects. We’re looking into the cause and will let you know as we get more information.
So it became quite impossible to travel around and help out those who couldn’t make the player work, and everything was loading really slow. Too bad. But still, it was a nice event, and quite big too. I learned quite a few things about setting up an event in the virtual world. Good things to keep in mind. Maybe there’ll be a next time, some day.
Thanks to One Agency for the professional approach. Bert, it was nice working with you. I had a great time :) Thanks for the ‘private’ internet connection too, I enjoyed that very much.
As for the event in real life, I had quite some fun, met A LOT of people and worked hard. I helped out everywhere I could. I’m not saying I made the difference, but all bits add to the total. I loved hanging around the streaming booth and I was very happy that the bloggers I knew showed up and had a great time. It was a very long day, with a lot of stairs and stress, but in the end it was so worth it. Here’s a video from Pieter that puts it all in context:
Here are some pictures from the Parioli Club at Virtual Italian Parks and Liquid Dreams, which both ran at maximum capacity during the entire event. I’ll update this post as soon as I get more images from the other club owners.
Buzz about the Second Life project and the event [good, bad and/or worse :) ]
Monuments.nu : 1 + 2 + 3 + 4
Mess.be (English)
Robin Wauters (English)
Blogologie (Dutch) 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5
Smetty (Dutch)
Het Pakket (Dutch)
SLForum.be (Dutch)
Asfaltkonijn (Dutch)
Clopin (Dutch)
Uberhaupt (Dutch)
Dominiek (Dutch)
Lichtgeraakt (Dutch)
Pietel + 2 (Dutch)
Past Is Prologue (Dutch)
eMich (French)
Denis Balencourt (French)
Bart De Waele (Dutch)
BVLG (Dutch)
Cute stuff from elsewhere:
The Second Life Herald (English)
Notizen Aus Der Provinz (German)
Kitten Lulu (English)
Gamer News Wire (English)
Second Life Blog (Italian)
Hunterstrat (English)
The Register (English)
On a side note for The Register’s attempt to dramatize the choice of the Vista launch event in a club like Liquid Dreams, and make it look like it is a place where naked people can reside freely, the naked person in the picture they’ve posted with their article is the one that took the picture, and asked the club owner to pose in front of a billboard, which she refused. That person got booted from the club. Things you do for a story, no? Nice try.
But hey, at least I got bashed by The Register. Not many Belgians can say that. I’m flattered.
