Gatcha!

September 8, 2014 by ZoHa Islands

As I am still tapping my foot impatiently, waiting for the next big MadPea event (I am so over the Green Mire; but then again I’m not a huge fan of the whole aliens thing), I decided to check out the Destination Guide for some inspiration. There, I discovered Gatcha, and I had to go see what all the excitement is about.

Gatcha, a wildly popular game in Second Life, is loosely taken from the real life Japanese “Gacha” games, where you pay a small amount of money to get an item at random, similar to purchasing toys from a vending machine. In real life, games that use gacha typically promise rare “grand-prize” items to players who can manage to amass a set of specific items, which encourages players to spend more money on randomized gacha draws in order to complete their collections.

In Second Life, you can get “rare” items but they are strictly random and have nothing to do with amassing collections or trading in order to complete a collection in order to trade up to rare items. In Second Life, Gatcha machines are designed similarly to real life old fashioned vending machines — sometimes they look like penny arcade games, sometimes they look like old fashioned pinball machines or arcade game machines from the 70s.

These gatcha machines have grown from being inside the stores at various merchants across the grid, to huge sims dedicated to nothing but gatcha. I assume that this mass exodus to gatcha only sims is in response to Linden Lab’s new rules on gaming, and that gaming is restricted only to gaming sims which have different rules and pricing structures.

I have never been a huge fan of gatchas; to me they are simply another way to suck Lindens from me, and while the gambling idea appeals to many people, I am simply not a gambler or risk taker in RL. Just like in RL gambling, you have to be smart. While the rare item inside the machine may be something you really want, make sure you don’t spend $1,000L on the machine to try and get a $50L trinket. You really have to weigh the value of the goods inside the machine against the return of the items you may or may not get.

I’m sure for some people, it’s the thrill of the gambling that makes it worth it, and the feeling of satisfaction of finally getting that rare item outweighs the cost. It’s just another way to pay for entertainment, just like in RL gambling.

I decided to visit a Gatcha sim, and see what all the fuss was about. I decided to visit The Arcade Gatcha Event, which is touted in the Destination Guide as “The Arcade Gacha Events presents the ultimate GACHA experience! Guaranteed to delight shoppers, The Arcade offers unique gacha prizes from 100 of the grid’s top designers! Proudly sponsored by Apple Fall, Boogers, Pure Poison, and Style Kingdom.”

Boogers? Okaaaaay….

When I landed at the Arcade, the visual appeal of the place was amazing. It was built very similarly to what I imagine a casino or arcade at the Atlantic City Boardwalk in New Jersey, USA would look like. I appreciated the time and effort they put into the minute details of the sim — the textures and buildings themselves were crisp and amazing. The windlight settings made you feel like you were at the ocean with a slight hint of fog in the air. You could hear the mournful fog horn (or maybe it was a ship’s horn) in the distance, along with the clang of the bell on a bouy, the sounds of the surf and the seagulls calling to one another.

As you approach the Arcade, you walk down a long boardwalk, and outside the arcade is a cute merry-go-round (which I decided to take a ride on) and some vendors where you can purchase cotton candy, hot dogs and other fun carnival-type food. There was caliope-music playing, and while that was cute and catchy for five minutes, after that it just got annoying and I turned down sounds.

Inside the building is a very visually appealing beautiful build that looks exactly like the inside of an arcade is supposed to look. The details are amazing, and the Gatcha machines are very well made. It is a very popular spot — there were 41 avatars on the sim when I was there, and more continued to arrive and depart. All the avatars, along with the scripty Gatcha machines, made for a lot of lag. But everyone seemed to take it in stride and be very good-natured about it.

Each Gatcha machine is labeled with the name of the merchant whose items are inside the machine, and each machine has different cost. The way a Gatcha machine works, is each machine is loaded with several items made by that particular merchant. Some are labeled “rare” and some are just ordinary. Often, the Gatcha machine will be loaded with several colors of one particular item, and you pay the machine and it will dispense one of the items. If the machine doesn’t give you the item you wanted, then you simply pay the machine again and hope for a different outcome. I have no idea if the scripts are completely random, or programmed to give a rare item every so many clicks, or what. Sometimes you end up with the exact same item several times in a row. Sometimes you end up with a rare item on the first ca-ching. As I cautioned earlier, you really have to decide how much you’re willing to spend to receive the exact item you were wanting. The cool thing is that some vendors had demo items you could purchase and try, before you attempted to get one of the items from the machine.

Wearing my Gatcha prize

One thing I observed is that many of the items in these Gatcha machines were tchotchkes (knickknacks or trinkets) and toys for children, and so there really wasn’t much that interested me, other than to wander around and watch the action, and to see what there was to see there. I did find one vendor that had a hair I really liked from Clawtooth. I decided to try for that. On my first click, I received an orange hair. Hmm. Not for me! This particular Gatcha machine was $75L, and I normally pay $250 for hair in SL, so I decided to give it two more tries, as I was looking for a brunette hairstyle. On the second pull, I received a very dark brown one, which would have been fine, but since I had given myself up to three tries, I did it again and was fortunate enough to end up with the exact color I wanted on the third try! I really like this hair; it is of excellent quality and looks good on me. I’m sure that in the near future I will be visiting that store; which I suppose is at the heart of these Gatcha games — future customers.

All in all, it was a fun experience, and worth doing at least once, especially if you like tchotchkes! There are several such Gatcha sims around, so I am sure each one offers a different experience.

I remain respectfully yours,
Suzanne Piers
ZoHa Islands Social Media Manager

Helping Amputees Virtually

September 6, 2014 by ZoHa Islands

“Second Life is the perfect place for amputees to overcome emotional trauma by sharing stories and realizing they are not alone!” says Sandra L. Winkler, assistant professor at NOVA SouthEastern University in Florida, teaching occupational therapy.

In a recent episode of the Drax Files, they produced a wonderful video about an amazing use of virtual worlds. Sandra Winkler created an online environment that brings people together from across the world who can then create a virtual support group. Sandra also goes on to say that not only can they find support to help resolve their emotional trauma, but also enables them to see how their bodies can do things in RL by watching their avatars do the same things.

In addition, it gives non-disabled people an opportunity to experience what it is like to have a limb missing by having a prosthetic in Second Life. Sandra also teaches her students in RL empathy by having them try to get around in a wheelchair for a period of time, or have them wear a blindfold to experience what it is like to be blind.

Sandra’s Virtual Health Adventures also has a prosthetic museum that displays various prosthetics from before Jesus’s time. It shows exactly how far we’ve come in just the last few years, let alone the last 2000 years.

This is very similar to Episode 13, where they featured how Second Life helped a woman with Parkinson’s disease be able to do more in real life by watching her avatar do them in Second Life. By interacting in a virtual environment, this creats new neural pathways in the brain to help people with disabilities — in this case, someone with Parkinson’s.

Sandra’s Virtual Health Adventures is part of her project “Dissemination of Amputation and Prosthetic Evidenced-based Medicine” is funded by a grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Here’s the video.

Once again, this just goes to show that Second Life is more than just socialization and virtual sex. It is bringing people together for emotional support, helping people with disabilities have better real lives, and educating others.

I remain respectfully yours,
Suzanne Piers
ZoHa Islands Social Media Manager

Giving Education A Second Life

August 13, 2014 by ZoHa Islands

One of the many great things about Second Life is how various organizations can utilize this platform for much more than socialization and virtual sex. Case in point: The University of Michigan School of Nursing announces that it is using Second Life to help medical students hone their leadership and communication skills, and to do so with some degree of anonymity.

According to this article on the HealthLeader Media’s website, “telemedicine isn’t just a cost-saving way to treat patients in remote locations. It’s also another way to train medical professionals.”

Medical schools are adding programs that emphasize teaching empathy and observational schools, and some use technology as a way to enhance the learning experience.

The University of Michigan School of Nursing has a virtual clinic in Second Life called the Wolverine Clinic. Medical students can log in with their own avatars and work through various scenarios at this clinic.

There is a slideshow of photos take at the clinic here. The avatars need work, but that isn’t the point of being in-world. The point is to develop realistic diagnostic situations to allow nursing and medical students to utilize skills in both diagnostic and problem-solving in a virtual environment. This simulation allows real life scenarios to unfold using roleplaying, and if a mistake is made, then no one is hurt.

A small grant was used to build the virtual clinic and is the brainchild of Michelle Aebersold, PhD, RN, a Clinical Assistant Professor at the UMSN and her colleague, Dana Tschannen, PhD, RN, a Clinical Associate Professor of the Division of Systems Leadership and Effectiveness Science at UMSN. Aebersold, also the Director of the Clinical Learning Center for the UMSN, started the program with nurses, and saw that training in Second Life had great advantages.

The clinic offers virtual acute care and outpatient environments where the students perform their trainings. “The nice thing about the virtual environment is that we can schedule training in there and students don’t have to be on site, they could log in from home,” says Aebersold.

In addition, in a virtual environment and role-playing situation, students can be exposed to scenarios that they might not typically experience. The scenarios can be as extreme as someone coming in to a clinic with a ball peen hammer stuck in their forehead, or other just as rare situations. “That’s critical in training a very safe practitioner,” states Patricia Abbott, PhD, RN, FAAN, who is an Associate Professor of the Division of Systems Leadership and Effectiveness Science at UMSN.

The virtual training environment allows students to be able to step out of the classroom and into hands-on training and experience, all within the safety of a controlled environment. These training focus more on interacting with patients and fellow health-care professionals, rather than the physical aspect of care. Students learn a lot about communication, which can be key in RL medical situations.

Aebersold points out, “If you want to teach nursing students how to delegate, how to practice their leadership skills, how to respond to an emergency situation and direct their team members, it’s a great learning environment.”

One example of an exercise in this virtual clinic is described as having the students assess a virtual patient by clicking on an object to view a notecard with the patient’s information. The students are then given choices on how to proceed, and how to communicate virtually with one another to determine how to prioritize care and assign tasks.

Doctoral studets in the DNP (Doctor of Nursing Practice) program also use the Second Life virtual hospital for interprofessional education.

This virtual project enabled nursing students, pharmacy students, and medical students to work together to run a role-play simulation based on disclosing a medical error to a patient.

Using TeamSTEPPS, an AHRQ (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a US Department of Health and Human Services agency advancing excellence in health care) program that specializes in interprofessional communication, the students learn teamwork and communication skills, then utilize their avatars to engage in a scenario to practice those skills.

This is how the role-play scenario is played out. The facilitator of the simulation plays the patient and their family. The nursing, pharmacy, and medical students play their respective roles. They receive a notecard with the information and then get together as a team to discuss the medical error, and how they will communicate it to the patient and the family.

Students who participated in this RP gave positive feedback to the exercise. “They seemed very satisfied with being able to do this, to role play this kind of disclosure,” said Aebersold. You can only imagine how difficult this scenario would be in RL, and being able to RP it would certainly give these students some skills to be able to work as a team to deliver such news.

As many have experienced in SL, the ability to role-play situations like these from behind an avatar is easier, there is a sense of anonymity. As Aebersold says, “There’s a sense of having a little bit of protection because I’m not putting myself out there. I’m not so vulnerable, so I’m willing to take more of a risk.” This is something every Second Life resident can attest to, in every day situations to RP situations.

At the end of the training, students are evaluated in different ways. One method has a separate observer use their avatar to watch the students’ behavior and scores them based on a standardized observation tool used to measure performance. Peer-to-peer feedback is another way to gauge performance.

Aebersold is taking the virtual platform to another level. She would like to develop a gaming type environment that would eliminate the need for a facilitator and give students the chance to receive independent or automated feedback.

Recent additions to the SL clinic include an electronic health records system run by Abbott. Using a training program similar to the patient disclosure exercises, interdisciplinary teams consisting of nurses, doctors, and pharmacy students come together to treat an avatar run by another student. The EHR at the patient’s bedside acts as the fourth professional in the team-building exercise. The purpose is to evaluate how the EHR affects team care, something that Abbott feels is not well understood in the healthcare industry.

All in all, the purpose of the virtual learning environment is to help students have a better learning experience, and to come out at the end of the training better prepared to handle today’s healthcare environment.

Please see the article in its entirety here.

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers
ZoHa Islands Social Media Manager

Protecting Against Hackers

August 11, 2014 by ZoHa Islands

While this article isn’t specifically about SL, it’s about keeping yourself safe from hackers on your computer, which is indirectly SL related.

I saw a news report this morning on TV from Mike Wendland who writes a tech blog called PC Mike. This caught my attention this morning, because he was talking about hackers. The news reports lately are full of the story about the Russian hackers who have hacked billions of websites, stealing logins and passwords. The solution? They recommend you change your login ID and password for every website you use.

Really?

I don’t know about you, but that is very, very daunting. I have a LOT of logins to a LOT of websites; I honestly don’t even know if I could find every single website for which I have a login.

One of the best ways to thwart hackers is to use long, complicated password like KQo=3oyB>VG^-6 or something like that. The experts tell us that in addition, we should have a different password for each site. I don’t know about you, but there is no way I could remember that many passwords, let alone a password like my example above.

So what do most of us do? We write down our logins and passwords, either in a document on our PCs or *gasp* a piece of paper in a drawer. Even though we know that is not a good idea and very unsafe, what else do you do? PC Mike reported on some online login and password managers on his most recent blog post.

PC Mike recommends that the first thing users need to do is use a password management program, such as Last Pass, Password Genie, and Dashlane.

Last Pass is an online program that manages all your passwords. It keeps track of your user names and passwords for you and logs in automatically with them. It creates passwords the way they would be… very complex. The program will generate these kinds of secure passwords.

Password Genie is another secure password manager. It stores and secures passwords on PC and Mac computers and Apple and Android smartphones and tablets.

Dashlane has a form filler, generates secure passwords and has a very easy to use interface. Like the others, there are free and premium versions.

Here’s a video:

PC Mike is a veteran journalist whose video “PC Mike” reports have been distributed weekly to all 215 NBC-TV stations since 1994, making him one of the most experienced tech reporters in the country. His tech stories and videos have appeared on MSNBC, CNBC, the Today Show, The New York Times, USA Today and in numerous national newspapers and magazines. In addition to the PC Mike tech blog, he also publishes the Roadtreking.com RV Travel Blog in which he travels North America in an RV reporting about interesting people and places.

My only question is…what if hackers hack into the login and password websites?? That way they would have instant access to every single one of your logins and passwords from one hack. PC Mike is a well-respected tech journalist, so I believe that he wouldn’t recommend something that wasn’t safe. But really, is anything safe online anymore? I would definitely do more research about how and why it’s safe to have a login and password manager.

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers
ZoHa Islands Social Media Manager

The Cornfield — Experience the Experience Keys

August 11, 2014 by ZoHa Islands

“For many years, the Cornfield was a region of mythological status, where once naughty avatars were sent to think about what they had done. Rumor had it that “The Cornfield” was a vast star-lit field of corn and was cut off from communication with the rest of the world. Over the years, rumors spread across the grid of this infamous region that everyone at one time had heard about, but hardly anyone had ever seen. It was thought to be nothing but a tale…that is until now…

Present day…

A group of young explorers set out one day to explore. They teleported to the farthest reaches of the grid, when suddenly their screens went blank and their shoes went where they should never humanly ever go. All of a sudden, their screens flashed bright, and they found themselves dazed and confused inside an old creepy barn.

The barn seemed abandoned. Creaks and strange noises startled them. They could not find a way out back to humanity. They saw some baskets laying on the floor, so they picked them up, and dared to venture outside. The air was thick, and everything to be seen was enveloped in a strange, eerie mist. A huge cornfield spread out wide in front of them. The corn rustled as if something was out there…something not quite human.

As darkness approached, the strange noises grew louder, and the rustling increased. They looked at each other, faces pale in the moonlight. One of them grabbed a plank for she knew something bad was about to happen. They looked at each other once more, knowing what had to be done, and one by one, they entered the Cornfield…”

Since the Cornfield was developed using Experience Keys technology, I decided to go visit the sim. I’m not too much into horror films or anything else, but I was curious. When you tp in you actually land at a Portal Park, where you can enter several interactive games including The Cornfield. Also at the Portal Park is the entrance to the Tea Party, Linden Realms, The Wilderness, Grid Hunt, Gnome Village and Social Area.

I walked down the entrance to The Cornfield. There were spooky sounds and rustling noises, a cawing crow. The lighting is eerie. As I arrived at the barn, which houses the entrance to the Cornfield, I kept looking around for the item giver to click, so I could attach the hud. I am so used to having to click and get the items I completely forgot it was using experience keys! It asked me once if I gave blanket permissions for attaching these items and after one click on yes, the rest just happened automatically upon porting through the door to the Cornfield.

When you walk through the barn, you see the door to the cornfield. All you do is walk through the door and it automatically teleports you (because you’ve already given it blanket permissions through experience keys) to the cornfield itself. Again, because of experience keys, you land on the ground and a HUD attaches to your screen, and a collector basket to your back and a weapon in your hand — a board.

There are several notecards that you would be wise to collect once you TP through the door that offer you tips on the game. I personally didn’t remove or turn off my ao; I don’t like walking around like a duck. I’m not sure how taking off your ao helps in the game, but I didn’t do it so I wouldn’t know. I do, however, recommend that you take their advice and turn off “double click tp” in your preferences. I always have the setting so that “double click” in a parcel will move me to that spot via teleport (which sometimes thwarts me when store owners or land owners have their settings set to landing point only, which means that double clicking will only teleport you to the landing point, resulting in great frustration on my part when trying to get to a specific spot. I like to cam around, pick a spot to go and double click to TP there. But that’s another post for another day). In this game, when you swing your weapon, you use a mouse click to swing it, so if you have it set so double click on land teleports you to that point, when you won’t be able to kill griefers because it will constantly try to teleport you. So a word to the wise — turn that off for this game.
Here’s how you do that:

* Go to the top toolbar and select “Me”, “Preferences”, “Move and View”, and set “Single click on land” and “Double click on land” to “No action”.

It also asks you to use the region’s windlight settings and not “cheat” by having your settings on daylight. In addition, it recommends using mouselook, basically like most combat sims do. It’s easier in some ways in mouselook, and harder in other ways. Part of the game play is to collect as many corn as you can, while beating off griefers (not real SL griefers; these are what they call the bad guy in this game and they are apparitions controlled by the scripting in the game; not by someone behind an avatar (at least I don’t think so).

The point of the game is you are to collect as much corn as you can and turn them in to the bin in the barn for points. The more points you get, you can use these points to purchase better weapons and better armor in the store. With better weapons you can kill more griefers. With better armor, you can better resist a griefer. If a griefer kills you, you lose the corn you’ve collected (not the corn in the bin; just what is registered in your hud) and teleported to the graveyard at the beginning of the game.

This is where the difference between mouselook and regular view come into play. In mouselook, you get a real immserive first person view of the game. In regular view, you can more easily see griefers that come up behind you.

While the gameplay is relatively simple, in reality it is more difficult than it looks. It’s a lot of fun, although a bit spooky for me. I think that the more you play the better you will get at it, and obviously the better your weapons and armor, the easier it will be to fight off the greifers.

Here is some of the information from the game:

HUD:
The HUD will show you all the current game information:
• Amount of Corn Bucks collected.
• Amount of Corn collected. Maximum is 20 pieces of Corn. After that, you have to empty your basket at the Corn Bins.
• Amount of Health you have, according to how much damage you have taken, and how much armor you are wearing.
• Weapons – Select from a choice of weapons that you have purchased from the Company Store.
• Help – Get a help notecard.
• Plus/Minus – Minimize/Maximize HUD.

And here is the instructions that are handed out:

GAMEPLAY:

– Use your arrow keys to move around.

– Left click to shoot your weapon.

– Go around the Cornfield, and collect Corn, and Corn Bucks.

– Walk over the Corn, Corn Bucks, or Moonshine to collect them.

– The HUD will show how much you have collected, and will tell you when your basket is full.

– Moonshine gives you extra Health, up to the value of the armor you are wearing.

– Once your basket is full, go back to the barn, and click on the Corn Bins to turn your Corn into Corn Bucks.

– If you are in Mouselook, press “ESC” to return to normal view to click on the Corn Bins.

– Your name, the amount of Corn collected, and Corn Bucks earned will be displayed on the Leader Board inside the barn.

– The Leader Board shows the current top 5 players.

– Take the Portal to the Company Store to buy prizes, powerups, armor, and better weapons with your Corn Bucks.

– Check back often in the Company Sore for new prizes.

– You can left click with your mouse to use your weapon, and temporarily stop the Griefers from getting you.

– If you hit a Griefer enough, you can kill it. It may even drop a Corn Buck.

– The HUD will show how much Health you have.

– The more armor you buy, the higher your health capacity will be. (The total amount of health bars you can heal up to).

– There are hiding places around the Cornfield. So if you are being chased, you can run to them, and click on them to hide.

– If you hit a Griefer a lot, they can die. If they get you, you will die, and appear in the Graveyard.

– When you die, you loose the Corn you have collected. That Corn will now be on the ground in the spot where you had died, and it can
be collected by yourself, or any other player.

– At night, a Moonshine Still rezzes randomly in the Cornfield. Sit on this to restore to full health.

The Cornfield is worth visiting…if you have the nerve! And the experience keys make it amazingly easy. Once you give permissions, you do not have to give it again. When I visited a second time, I didn’t even have to click once. Experience keys remembers your choice. Should you decide to do so, you can revoke permissions.

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers
Zoha Islands Social Media Manager

It’s A Jungle Out There!

August 5, 2014 by ZoHa Islands

“In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight…”

And giraffes, and crocodiles, and hyenas, and wildebeests, and monkeys, and zebras, and elephants, and orangutans. In addition, there is just about every type of exotic plant there is, including some creepy eyeball plants that make a clicking sound when they blink, and focus on you when you stand next to them! This entire ecosystem has been recreated in amazing detail in Second Life at a sim aptly named The Jungle.

I visited this location and it is absolutely amazing. The detail of the animals, the flora and fauna, the sounds — everything has been carefully crafted to make you think you’ve plopped down in the middle of the Amazon. There are many fun things to do here — explore by teleport, or by foot. If you explore by foot be careful! There are cannibals and quicksand, as well as predatory animals. Clearly, it is a bit of a fantasy, as some of the things found here are not in real life…such as the eyeball plants! But it is great fun.

You can also jump in an inner tube and explore by waterway, or climb up the rope and try the zip line! This immersive envrionment is well worth a first, second, or even third look! Bookmark it and explore it again and again. There is so much to see!!

You know what was cool… when I first teleported in to the sim, Ebbe Linden was sitting on the bench! How cool is that?? I thought it was great to bump into him out and about like that. 🙂

Here are some pics from my visit. Click on them to enlarge. If you click on the first one, you can see Ebbe in the blue shirt sitting on the bench! Enjoy!