Montreal based Golem Labs released the beta version of their new game, 3DChat, on July 7th. Before the game’s beta was released, I was given the opportunity to view the game during a sneak-peek interview with 3DChat’s key team members. At first glance, it wasn’t a whole lot different than my experiences with Second Life; which, to be honest, isn’t saying much.

The lead developer gave us a rundown on what to expect from 3DChat. They’re mainly marketing their game to the 18+ age group with the option of verification of gender and age (if you’re into the dating aspect). They’re hoping that by marketing to the 18+ age group they’ll be able to market to players independent of parental guidance; younger players will require parental supervision or parental permission to access parts of the game that require extra money. The younger players won’t be disallowed but they will not be able access the more “adult” or premium content, like custom penthouses and dating other players in the game.

3DChat’s main focus is on building community that doesn’t have lingual or cultural barriers and although intimacy and other kinds of adult content is including, it’s not center stage. Therefore, all adult content is opt-in only. Players have the ability to direct their avatars to tell off other players for unwanted advances by physically reacting (slapping another avatar).

The avatar customization allows players to mould and shape their avatar’s face and body structure by using the built-in tools or by uploading your face. Players will be able to further customize their avatars by going to the 3DMall to buy clothes, tattoos, and hair styles. Avatar customization is “built into the game-play instead of everything appearing by magic”.

In the beta, players will have the ability to explore “Old Town”, which has a distinct likeness to Quebec City. Players can go to the movies (which will stream real movies); go to a bar, pub, or club where you can enjoy 35 different dance styles; attend university (3DU); attend art galleries, where you’re able to display your art; and build discussion groups or meetings in 3DMeetings conference rooms.

The membership is tiered and if you’re verified, you’re able to access all content that isn’t adult. Premium membership hasn’t been entirely laid out but you’ll be able to get things like your own penthouse, access to meetings, and possibly uploading your own art/music. Gold memberships ensure intimacy and the dating membership grants access to the full blown dating system.

Verification is .99 and players will receive a premium membership for the first 30 days of play as incentive.

3DChat is larger than just a game; it’s also a social network, chat client, and sophisticated verification process. It’s also a community of products that’s been in development since early 2008.

Although the graphics are high-quality, the specs aren’t as intensive as one might think. 3DChat’s specs require the mainstream computer of last year so if you don’t have a souped-up PC, you aren’t going to miss out. As of right now, 3DChat is PC only although there is a possibility of a Mac version sometime in the future.

3DChat is now in beta and the developers are welcoming community feedback.

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner (and no, it has nothing to do with the Second Life game) will be distributed in both digital and physical forms, but the latter costs $10, while the former…well, you can read it online. For free.

As a special “thank you” to her fans, “Bree Tanner” will be available as a read-only file for a month after its release, meaning no downloads allowed. (But we all know that won’t work.)

As an incentive to buy the novella, one dollar from each purchase goes directly to the Red Cross. So, if you’re the person who has to have the books lined up in a row on your bookshelf, at least you can feel good while doing it.

Gaming can be an activity where you follow the character’s journey and everything in real life goes away. But is the escapism so real that gamers wouldn’t even know if there is an emergency?

New York State is testing a way to send emergency warning to video game consoles. The goal is to reach younger residents who spend most of their time on Xbox 360, Playstation 3 or Wii rather than on Television or Radio.

Singleton, speaking Thursday at the Interop technology conference in New York City, said the plan makes sense, “considering the amount of time our youth spend on video games.”

Currently the Office of Homeland Security is using Second Life to train 700,000 first responders and are figuring out how to use Twitter to send out information.

Remember this is just a test.

[source via Information week]

A Guest Article by Joylia

Sometimes all we want to do is escape into a world that allows us to be who we want to be, dress how we like without reservation, and live without any limitations, including gravity. That very world that we wish to dwell in can differ just on a whim in regards to our mood and what we are looking to get into that exact moment. Perhaps as we wake for the day we may decide that we want to just hang out with friends, talk, shop, or spend a day on a beautiful beach even if we are hundreds of miles away from our friends or the warm ocean breeze. Or maybe we choose to enter a post-apocalyptic realm as we load our guns, sheath our swords and set out with a select few to assert just who truly rules the ruins and waste of land left from some war riddled back story.

Welcome to Second Life. Created six years ago June 23rd by Linden Labs, Second Life is a virtual world that allows you to create and customize avatars and objects in immense detail that no other game has been able to compare with. It is completely player driven and the world itself is HUGE and ever growing. Broken up into parcels called islands, or sims, the land is bought and owned and the purpose is up to the imagination of the land owner. On these very islands exists shopping malls, learning and education centers, spots set up as homage to for a variety of reasons, and even player created role-playing areas of every nature, genre, and type. Aside from this, Second Life has allowed people’s creativity to truly come to life. People have created amazing works of art, music, buildings, creatures, clothes and jewelry. Whatever you can imagine made, people have done or are doing.

This has become such a world-wide phenomenon that you can find people from every country, from every background, and from a wide age range entering this world and playing. In-world translators are constantly being worked on and updated in order to better help people who do not speak the same language, communicate with each other. This virtual world works on integrating people so that no one is left out. I believe that it does this so well because the people who work on creating tools, such as the translators, are the players themselves. Coming together has never been so easy.

And coming together has never been as life impacting. Second Life has given the gift of gathering and helping to many causes. Since 2005, the American Cancer Society has been able to successfully raise funds in Second Life for their Relay for Life®. On July 18, 2009, both Second Life and ACS hope to raise even more funds this year. Many events are being hosted, so it is something to definitely check out! So whether you are looking for new friends or experiences, come explore the possibilities. Come explore your Second Life.

Friday morning began with the keynote speech, which due to a few technical difficulties I wasn’t able to listen in on. There were several technical issues as people worked to use the Voice capability in SL which was not available last year. There was some time between the keynote and the first breakout session while everyone worked to figure out the the Voice Chat options.

Breakout session #1 was about the Intersection of Blogging and Second Life. The panel was led by Cybergrrl Oh (aka Aliza Sherman), and featured:
* Ana Herzog (aka Nancy Hill)
* Gidge Uriza (aka Bridgette McNeal)
* Queen Tureaud (aka Erin Kotecki Vest)
The women on this panel are somewhat famous both within Second Life and out, for their blogs. They talked about the different ways that blogging both about real life things and Second Life things takes a great deal of prioritization. They also talked a great deal about how to get into Second Life, especially for those that want to get involved with different womens groups or activists groups within Second Life, of which there are many. The session was pretty open between conversation led from the panelists and questions from the audience. For those that were new to Second Life, there was some discussion on why and how people would create blogs about Second Life topics, as well as the discipline it can take to create blogs with multiple topics versus multiple blogs each with their own topic. There was also a bit of conversation between the panelists and audience about how much more talkative and community like a virtual world can make us feel.

The second Breakout session was about Second Life and Security. The panelists were:
* Padlurowncanoe Dibou, formerly in charge of Hillary Clinton’s in-world HQ and co-Founder of MUVErs, LLC
* Patty Streeter (aka Jody DeVere from AskPatty.com)
* Daisy Beauchamps (owner of Santuary Rock in SL)

I really enjoyed this panel because the ladies really talked a lot of common sense about security issues both in Second Life specifically, as well as in dealing with any groups in-world or out. They talked a bit about trust and how this can effect who you decide to work with in-world. Because virtual words can create a closer sense between people, it’s often difficult to assess a proper level of caution when it comes to business dealings. The ladies talked about how to investigate people that one might consider working with – and I think a lot of the topics they touched on could be useful in the real world, not just Second Life.

After the two Breakout sessions on Friday there was a event led by Patty Streeter on Motorability Island where the guests were given their own race cars to run around the available tracks. Yours truly came in First on the first race, and second on the second race.

The Breakfast Keynote speech Saturday morning was live from the BlogHer conference in San Fransisco. Lisa Stone moderates this conversation with Redbook editor-in-chief Stacy Morrison, Essence Communications Director of Digital Development, Lesley Pinckney and Bravo TV’s Senior VP of New Media and Digital, Lisa Hsia. I found this session really interesting to listen to. The women talked about the differences in the different types of media and how their different companies have been trying to bring some of these technologies together. Like BravoTV integrating more audience interaction in some of their shows (like the questions during Project Runway last season) or the tons of different blogs they’ve integrated into their website for all the different shows. There was also some discussion about how difficult it is to get some of these media giants to use new technology, and how some companies don’t want to “use the media, they want to be the media” (quote from Lesley Pinckney, talking about Twitter). Check out the live-blog of this session over at here.

Breakout Session #3 was about Second Life as an Educational or Training Tool. The panel was:
* Lila iReport (CNN)
* Dannette Veale (from Cisco)
* In Kenzo (aka Evonne Heyning, Creative Director and Interactive Producer for Amoration)
* Padlurowncanoe Dibou, formerly in charge of Hillary Clinton’s in-world HQ and co-Founder of MUVErs, LLC
* Fleep Tuque (aka Chris Collins from the University of Cincinnati)

All of these women are involved in different aspects of Second Life, and are using it in different ways to either train people, or educate people about a subject. CNN has created a whole group of in-world citizen journalists, and use Second Life to train people on citizen journalism. Cisco has been using it to help bring together people in their business – help them create an avatar in-world, and then attend different presentations or sessions about their business. The ladies talk about how useful SL can be because of the graphic capabilities that can be utilized to demonstrate differerent conversations. And how the visual aspects can help people retain knowledge of real world subjects. They talk a little bit about how different schools (like the University of Washington or Cincinnati) have been using it as part of their continuing education departments. There aren’t any degree programs yet available, but there’s a lot of different classes that are available if you sign up with the participating schools. There was some interaction here with the audience as well with people talking about the different types of learning environments (like Language Labs) they’d been involved with or discovered in-world. Personally, I find it really intriguing how much more it could affect a learning capability to be able to be immersed visually into a subject that someone is trying to learn.

Due to some real life appointments, I missed out on the fourth Breakout session about Using Second Life for Good, and the evening Keynote from SF called . Overall though, I’ll admit having a good time attending the SL sessions. It’s not the same as attending a conference like this in real life, but it’s a decent substitute. I also really have to give a hand to the organizers of the Second Life events, the whole thing had a much more conference feel to it this year than it did last year. The exhibitors area was definitely more organized than last year, and had the conference feel because it was in a different place than the sessions took place.

If you want to know more about the real world sessions of the BlogHer 2008 Conference, check out some of the links to the live-blogging that happened in San Fransisco. There’s a good round-up here.