Book Review: “Ready Player One”

So far I have only done one book review on this blog.  I read more than that of course, I just stick to talking about books that echo the themes of this blog.  The novel Ready Player One by Ernest Cline does just that.

Ready Player One is one of the latest young adult dystopian books, though not as sick and twisted as the highly overrated Hunger Games.  It is set in the 2040′s when gas is so scarce that everyone abandons the suburbs for the big cities, but the cities don’t have room.  Oklahoma City comes up with the idea to build highrise trailer parks.  The books protagonist 17 year old Wade lives in the laundry room of a double wide, occupied by his aunt, her latest boyfriend, and two other families.

But Wade spends most of his time hiding in an abandoned van in a junk yard which he powers with a bicycle powered generator.  He jacks into a 3D Virtual World called OASIS, which thanks to technology allowing thousands of players to play in an area lag free, OASIS has become the 3D internet.  Wade attends a virtual high school, getting a better education than he would in an overcrowded school he lives in.

You can probably understand why I like this book so much.  The world is very similar to Snow Crash in that there are two worlds, a dystopian stink hole called the real world, and a utopian paradise everyone prefers to live in.  Ready Player One has a distinct advantage over Snow Crash, however, 20 years of hindsight.  Many of the conceptual ideas of the “Metaverse” in Snow Crash seem rather dumb with today’s technology.  OASIS, on the other hand, seems plausible if you take today’s technology and project it forward three decades.

A major theme of the book is the difference between the online world and the real world.  Our avatar personification vs. who we really are; Living in a fantasy world vs. dealing with the real world.  I have delved deeper than the novel has on these topics, but the novel does a good job dealing with them.

The central plot involves the creator of OASIS, a game designer turned multibillionaire  who upon his death wills nearly the entirety of his estate, including control of OASIS to whoever can solve the hidden puzzle he left behind hidden somewhere in the OASIS world.

With such a huge prize everyone goes out looking for it, but the puzzle is so well hidden, that 5 years go by before anyone manages to discover the beginning of the puzzle (which has 6 parts, 3 keys and 3 gates).  The person who discovers it is Wade.

I have mentioned a couple of times how different the world will get once energy starts to get scarce, and how gaming will become a welcome escape from that reality.  Here is a book that echoes that theme in a very entertaining way.

There is another interesting part I have yet to mention.  It seems that the mad gaming designer grew up during the 1980′s, and is obsessed with the books, games, comics, music and movies of that decade.  Solving the central puzzle requires expert knowledge of this material, and the players dedicated to solving the puzzle have to become experts on the 1980′s pop culture.  Lots of this novel is filled with references to  the ’80s.  Being someone who grew up in the 80′s as well, I got all the references and knew all the songs referenced in the novel.

This unfortunately may be the biggest negative of the book, there is too much 80′s references which are likely to get lost on kids who grew up in later decades.  Since this is a “young adult” novel aimed at teen audiences, I’m not sure how well it will go over with the target audience.  But it did go over well with me.  Ernest Cline created an “official soundtrack” here if you want to hear many of the songs referenced in the novel.  You might also want to familiarize yourself with the movies WarGames, Ladyhawke, Blade Runner, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail if you don’t already know them (If you don’t then shame on you, they are classics).  There are major references to the games Pac Man, Tempest, Joust, Adventure, Black Tiger, Dungeons of Daggorath and Zork, too.

Since this book seems like it was written specifically for me, I ran through it in a few days time.  General audiences may not be as well versed in these subjects as I am, though the author does spend a lot of time explaining things for the general reader’s benefit (mostly unnecessary in my case).

The book is currently available hard copy and e-book via links at the Official Site, paperback and cheaper e-books coming in June.

The Real Story from E3: Nothing New

I love reading Cracked.com. It has been on my links page for a few years now, and every time I go there I end up wasting a lot of time reading.  Recently they posted a list about video games that is so spot on accurate, everybody should read it:  The 6 Most Ominous Trends in Video Games.

The video game is at a major crossroads right now, and it is obvious the gaming publishers have no idea what to do.  Here are to me the worst trends in gaming:

1. Hackers and Crackers

The gaming industry has always fought hacking.  It started when people started copying game disks, and gaming companies answered back with copy protected disks.  The war between copy protection and copy protection breaking has gone on for decades now, until some companies (starting with Ubisoft) are to the point of forcing players of single player stand alone games to be online and logged on a server in order to play.  If that isn’t bad enough Nintendo’s new 3DS will become non-functional if it detects any hacking activity.

The real hacking stories this year have involved Sony.  It started at the beginning of the year when a hacker figured out how to jailbreak the PS3, to the point that you can pretty much run anything on it.  Sony of course did not stand back and let it happen, they went after the hackers, first with TOS threats then with big lawsuits.  This led first to an anonymous backlash attack against the PSN servers, which revealed weaknesses in the PSN security, which was soon followed by a very organized attack on PSN and SOE leading to data mining and subsequent shutdown of both services for a month.

The war between gaming companies and hackers have gotten to the point where the people in the middle, the players, no longer have much faith in gaming as a safe diversion.  Between threats of hardware disabling, identity theft, online security, DRM that can ruin our computers, standalone games requiring internet be connected, etc. Us gamers are starting to question why we should continue buying new games.

2. Nothing New Under The Sun

Which of course leads to the other really bad trend in gaming: The lack of originality.  Have there been any new categories of games in the last decade?  The last time a video game was so original that it became a new category of gaming was The Sims in 2000.  I believe the only truly original game that has become popular since then is Minecraft (which is just a 3D implementation of a genre of 2D mining games from back in the 90′s, so not really a new category).  Notice that both of these games are PC based games, though some lame attempts to port them to consoles have had mixed results.

The rest of gaming has been the same old-same old.  You have your RPGs, your RTSs, your “Sandbox” games, your “god” simulation games, first person shooters, third person shooters, PvP multiplayer, PvE multiplayer, side scrollers, puzzle games, adventure games, and probably  a few others I have missed.  Every game is just a repackaging of familiar formulas, with better graphics and sound.

E3 was a properly named convention this year.  Pretty much every game announced or on display was not only a sequel, but at least a third sequel.  I did not see any games with a 2 after them, they were all 3 or 4 or even 5.  So it is not just about reusing the same formulas and game categories, it is also about reusing the same titles and content and storylines.

3. Simplification Trends Make Cool Games Lame

It is not bad enough that games are unoriginal in both concept and content, but there is this trend in simplifying games to their bare essentials in order to attract more casual users.  This was the problem for me in Dragon Age 2 came out.  They took the complexity of Dragon Age Origins and stripped it down, getting rid of things they did not consider pertinent. The result is they essentially killed the “Role Play” aspect of the game.  To me Dragon Age 2 is not an RPG, but a third party shooter with a story line.  The sequel lost all of its replay value.

But that is not the only example. Sim City Societies was a simplified version in the Sim City franchise, they took out controlling water, traffic, electricity, etc.  All you do is build roads and place buildings. It was boring.  It is not just for sequels, the original concept of Spore was really cool, but it got “dumbed down” to appeal to a wide audience only to appeal to no audience.

Game balancing is a tricky thing.  Too hard and people will avoid it, too easy and people will tire of it fast.  Gaming companies have it in their head that easy games sell better, so the trend is to easiness, and lameness.

4.  The Apps

While the video game industry struggles to innovate, they are being undercut by cheap and free apps on mobile phones, tablets, and embedded in social networks like Facebook.  Some of these App games are fun and addicting, and good time wasters while waiting for other real stuff.  Apps are this generations arcade games,  Instead of munching on dots and avoiding ghosts, we are flinging birds at pigs.  Apps are often making more money than console games, so now all the major video game makers are pouring resources into app game development.  This is good if all you play are apps, but those of us that like immersive games on the big screen are going to wind up with fewer choices.

5. The Continued Lack of Sex in Games

If the trend in gaming over the last decade has taught us anything, it is that the best games are the ones that tell compelling stories.  Until recently, BioWare were the best at telling stories.  It seems to me that the torch has been passed to Rockstar.   Because of the stigma that games are for children, games are reluctant to go into adult territories.  For some reason, hard core violence is OK in games, but pixelated nudity is not.  This irrational bias is standing in the way of telling new more compelling and more mature stories.

Since no one seems to be inventing any new gaming genres, nor new worlds to play in, the only way to be innovative is in the story telling.  I’m not talking about hard core graphic sex in games, I’m talking about R rated “adult situations” to go along with the R rated violence which is already a staple of most games. Video games have become a story telling medium, so lets tell some stories.

Reality Is Broken: A Book Review

I have never actually done a book review before on this blog, but my previous two blogs I did them all the time.  After reading Reality is Broken, I felt compelled to write a full formal review, as its contents are perfect fodder for this blog.  In fact there is enough here to fill a good half a dozen blog posts, but then why would you need to read the book?  So for now here is a brief introduction to the themes and ideas contained.

Reality is Broken is a new book by first time author Jane McGonigal, a professional game designer.   She starts off quoting economist Edward Castronova, who said “We’re witnessing what amounts to no less than a mass exodus to virtual worlds and online game environments.”, then goes on to quote some amazing stats like, the total amount time spent in World of Warcraft by all players adds up to 5.8 million years, and 500 million people spend at least an hour a day in online games for a total of 3 billion hours a week, and the average child will spend over 10,000 hours playing video games before the age of 21, the same amount of time they spend in school from 5th grade to 12th grade.

While many people react negatively to such huge numbers, considering it a waste of time.  McGonigal insists that it is not enough, that we should have more people playing online gaming.  She believes the world is better off with more gamers.  Being a fan of ideas that defy conventional wisdom (as my last two essays demonstrate), I had to find out more.  I have a hard time figuring out if Reality is Broken is a book about games disguised as a book about social issues, or a book about social issues disguised as a book about games.  I guess if you are librarian trying to figure out where to put the book, this would matter, but for us average readers it does not.

There are basically three themes to this book.  The first is the one that resonates the most for me:  Games make us happy.

The emotional impact of games is something game designers are very interested in, and spend a lot of money researching, so it is no surprise that many modern video games are designed with making players happy.  Consider what I wrote about last week in regards to “finding a purpose” to our lives. The four types of purposes that bring us meaning and lasting happiness:

• We crave “satisfying work” or being immersed in clearly defined, demanding activities that allow us to see the direct impact of our efforts.
• We crave the “hope of success”, which is more powerful than the actual success.  We want to be optimistic about our chances for success in our endeavors, and even if we fail, we at least want to improve over time.
• We crave social connections, share experiences and build bonds with others.  We most often accomplish this by doing things that matter together.
• We crave meaning, or the chance to be part of something larger than ourselves.  We want to feel curious, awe, and wonder about things that unfold on epic scales.

Now consider these four categories of “purpose” in the context of playing video games.  Almost all games can hit 2 or 3 of those, and the MMORPG can hit all four categories.  From a positive psychologists stand point, gamers are some of the happiest people on the planet.

I know what some of you are thinking.  Is the happiness you get playing in virtual worlds just virtual happiness? frivolous, fleeting and temporary?  No, not according positive psychologists.  Dan Gilbert himself says there is no discernible difference between synthesized happiness and real happiness.

Which leads to the second theme of the book: Gamers are escaping from a broken reality.  McGonigal list 14 ways that gaming worlds are superior to real worlds.  She is not talking specifically about online video games at this point, but many different kinds of games that help us deal with reality.  The majority of the book is about these 14 “Reality Fixes”, and as she goes through each one she discusses two or three different games or gaming systems that encourage these reality fixes.  She discusses dozens of different games, some I am familiar with, some I’d love to play, and some I do not.

Anyone looking into game design should read the book if nothing else than for the various ideas that are likely to come to mind while reading.  I came up with an idea myself while reading, and have gone as far as researching some special programming I would need to do to get it to work.  More on that later, maybe.

And finally the third theme: Games can save the world, and gamers are our best resource to do just that.

Games can, and have been designed to help us focus on real world issues.  McGonigal is a game designer who works primarily on a category of games know as Alternate Reality Games, or ARGs, which are designed to form communities and tackle problems, primarily problems created by the game authors, but they can also tackle real world problems like “peak oil” which I discussed 2 posts ago.   In 2007, McGonigal was part of a design team for an experimental ARG called World Without Oil.  The original 1,900 players from all walks of life did not find any solutions, but came away mostly optimistic that people can come together in a crisis and adjust their lifestyles to fit new realities.  Since then McGonigal has been part of other socially conscious ARGs, and is confident that games like this can one day change the world.  But in order to make these world changing games to work, we need gifted people to play them.  Enter the “gamers”.

She discusses the fact that more than half of the students today spend 10,000 hours playing games before they turn 21.  That by definition, that makes them “virtuosos” at gaming.  The biggest question is what are all these “virtuosos” capable of?  She breaks down 4 qualities that long time gamers possess: 1. Blissful productivity — the understanding that happiness comes from hard work and not from passive activities like watching TV.  2. Urgent optimism — the desire to tackle an obstacle combined with the belief that there is a reasonable hope of success, or desiring the “epic win”.  3. Social fabric — the ability to form tight communities built on trust, like guilds.   4. Epic meaning — the desire to be part of something bigger than themselves, even if that bigger thing may just be fictional.  Notice that these four qualities correspond to the four “categories of purpose” listed above.

McGongal’s goal is to find a way to focus the talents inherent in gamers to tackle the problems the world face today and “fix reality”.

If you are interested in these ideas, but not up to spending $14 on the e-book, you can get a 20 minute summary from her speech at ted.com, or there is also a website realityisbroken.org you can read, or sign up to find out about the latest world changing ARG games.

Is it true?

I have not decided how true the thesis is.   Being a gamer, an amateur game designer, and a participant in ARGs, I at least understand the thesis.  I want to believe the thesis is true, but understanding the worlds problems and finding solutions is unfortunately a fraction of the problem.  Experience is that all new ideas that diverge from the “business as usual” tends to face overwhelming political opposition no matter how good or true they are.  The corporate powers that be seem to think that video games are a form of soma to pacify the masses into complacency, and I am not sure that they are wrong.

At the very least I accept the first theme: Games do make us happy, and I mostly accept the second theme: Games are an escape from reality.  I constantly hear complaints from politicians that video games are too violent and inspire more violence.  The evidence is not there to back that up.  As games have gotten more popular, violent crime has gone down, not up.  Places where sex games are common, like Japan, have actually seen a reduction of sex related crimes.  Maybe sex games should be more popular everywhere.  In these respects games have already changed the world for the better.

But there is another way that games can change the world and it is outlined in my last three blog posts.  From The Energy Situation, I pointed out that we are quickly running out of resources needed to grow the economy.  From Happiness 102 I pointed out that materialism, the driving force behind the running out of resources, does not really bring us happiness anyways.  And finally with Reality is Broken we learn one activity, gaming, can be a real source of happiness.  While gaming is not always a carbon neutral activity, it can be.  Thus gaming is a way to reduce our need for diminishing resources while still making life livable. Oddly, I previously posted this idea before.

But it is important to keep all of this in balance.  McGonigal concludes her book:

Reality is too easy. Reality is depressing. It is unproductive, and hopeless. It is disconnected, and trivial. It’s hard to get into. It’s pointless, unrewarding, lonely, and isolating. It’s hard to swallow. It’s unsustainable. it’s disorganized and divided. It’s stuck in the present.

Reality is all of these things. But in  at least one crucially important way, reality is also better. Reality is our destiny. This is why our single most urgent mission in life is to engage with reality, as fully and as deeply as we can.

That does not mean we can’t play games. It simply means that we have to stop thinking of games as only escapist entertainment.

Good games can play an important role in improving our real quality of life. They support social cooperation and civic participation at very big scales. And they help us lead more sustainable lives and become a more resilient species.

Games don’t distract us from our real lives. they fill our real lives: with positive emotions, positive activity, positive experiences, and positive strengths.

Games aren’t leading us to the downfall of human civilization. They are leading us to its reinvention.

Fun With Fantasy Roleplay

It seems there is a recent convergence of cool Fantasy Roleplay games all coming out now, and older ones making updates just to remind us they are still around.  The current FOTM in the MMORPG category is Rift, which finally got out of beta and available in stores.  For you non MMO fantasy fans, today is the release date for Dragon Age 2, which is the game I’m most looking forward to.   I will most likely be splurging for it this weekend.  More on that below.

Meanwhile, a surprising update arrived this weekend in Guild Wars.  It allows you to play with a full team of customizable Heroes instead of the usual, 3 Heroes and 4 henchies.  This part of the update is free, but for an additional price, you can turn your player characters into heroes, which will give you a supply of heroes available at any level, so you never have to use henchies again.  I splurged, and got the 8 pack, and turned all my characters into “mercenary heroes”.

This makes it possible to do group shots like the picture above.  From left to right is Ariane Brodie – Krytan Ranger, Ariane Bane – Tyrian Ranger, Ariane Divina – Krytan Ritualist, Aria Dawn – Tyrian Mesmer (my first character approaching 6 years old), Ariane Blade – Krytan Warrior, Dahlia Tam – Tyrian Monk, Aria Night – Krytan Necromancer, and Ariane Fire – Elonian Elementalist.  I’m planning to take the whole gang through a campaign.  I loved playing them all, and its fun having the whole gang together as a group.

Its nice to see ArenaNet continue to improve Guild Wars after 6 years, though I’m sure these releases are designed to hide the fact that  Guild Wars 2 is now in its 3rd year of development, with still no sign of an official release date.

Replayability: The secret to RPG success.

The thing I enjoy about fantasy RPGs is after I play a game through, I like to make my own variations, doing things differently just for the heck of it.  It adds to the replay value of a game. So many games are fun once through, but not so interesting the second time through.  Some games however allow flexibility and experimentation, and these are the ones I most enjoy, especially over and over.

Oddly, the two best ways to add flexibility are cheat codes and mod tools.  You are highly unlikely to see either in MMOs or console games, but for PC gaming they are becoming mandatory for long term success.  I know some of you purists out there do not believe in cheat codes or game modding, because it undermines the integrity of a game.  Whats the point of winning if you can just cheat?  Where is the fun in that?

The fun comes in creating your own scenarios, missions, and original character play.  In Dragon Age Origins, I invented a new character prototype called the “Arcane Rogue”.  This was an Arcane Warrior mage who (through cheat codes) accessed rogue powers, in particular the stealth line, and the dual weapon mastery line allowing the Arcane Rogue to wield two long swords which use the magic stats. The final skill in the arcane warrior line makes your character look partly invisible, and stealth makes her completely invisible.  Tradition dictates that invisible people are only truly invisible when they are naked, hence my character tends to be naked when playing on maps filled with enemies.  She wears clothes in all towns and settlements where she has to deal with NPCs, but does not use stealth.  To avoid instant death due to lack of armor, I created an “Arcade Rogue Ring” which she wears in lieu of armor. The ring has the properties of “+10 Armor” (typical armor level of cloth robes), “+30 Defense” (the stat that determines hit or miss, I figure if you are invisible, bad guys are going to miss you a lot), and “Reduce Hostility” (if they cant see you, they are less likely to attack you).

Yes, I know this is all really geeky sillyness, but its my geeky sillyness.

Which comes back to Dragon Age 2.  Bioware has stated that the focus of DA2 will be on the console versions, and while they have not said “absolutely not” there do not seem to be plans to release modding tools for DA2.  That being said, people have already figured out how to mod the free demo for DA2, so the likelihood of there being custom mods for the PC version of DA2 is 100%, even without the support of Bioware.

Mod-ability extends the life of PC games.  People are still playing Neverwinter Nights, All three versions of The Sims, and Oblivion years after their release thanks to a never ending parade of free player created mods.  I hope the makers of DA2 remember that.  If not, I’m pretty sure Skyrim (from the makers of Oblivion, coming in November) will definitely be releasing mod tools.

A Quick Peak at Dragon Age: Origins

With Guild Wars 2 looking at a 2011 date, I decided to quench my craving for new fantasy gaming content with a desktop based RPG game, the new Dragon Age Origins, which just launched last month.

I have played a few MMORPGs, but this is my first PC-RPG and it is quite the experience. There are advantages to desktop RPGs that you don’t get online. The obvious one is cheat codes, game mods, etc. If you get stuck somewhere these are options.

MMORPG requires eveything be balanced, while PC-RPGs actually thrive on imbalance. Finding power combos (like taunt and forcefield) that are way over powered aren’t going to get nerfed in the next update. It sets up a choice whether you want to go the easy way or the “pure” way, as nobody gets hurt from your “cheating”.

The biggest difference is the storytelling possibilities. MMORPGs have linear storylines which occasionally branch but eventually re-merge. PC-RPGs can be very complex, and because enemy difficulty can change along with the player there is no need for easy regions or hard regions. The path you take is fairly open.

The NPC’s have complex personalities, and keeping good relations with them is a part of the game. Some of them will even quit your group if you make decisions they are upset with. On the other hand, some can develop into sexual relationships. (One of the reasons why the game is rated M).

The first thing that amazed me was the first big battle cut scene. Hundreds of characters on the screen at the same time is something I have never seen in a video game before. Most “battles” I see are maybe 12 characters fighting 12 enemies, more of a skirmish than a battle. To see battles the size and scope you see in the movies is a new experience.

The world is immersive, the stories emotional and complex, the directions it could go are not open ended, but there is a lot of content here. Choices you make on the opening character creation screen can completely change the story that is told, making the game very replayable.  Many people in the know say this is the best RPG game ever made, and I see no evidence not to believe them.

New Nvidia Driver adds 3D glasses support

If you have an Nvidia card designed for DirectX 10 (8800 or better Windows XP or Vista), and you update to the latest drivers released June 19,2009, you might find something new in the NVIDEA Command Center: Stereoscopic 3D glasses support.

I have not seen this feature mentioned anywhere, not even on Nvidea’s own site. Probably because it is in the experimental stage. Older drivers supported it, but you had to hack your registry to enable it. Now you can enable it with a couple of clicks.

There are two methods that are supported. The first requires a special 3D ready monitor with two video inputs, a set of glasses that opens and closes shutters on either eye and an IR device that triggers the glasses, at a cost of $600 or so. Eventually this will come down, but it costs to be on the cutting edge.

The other method is to use a pair of red/cyan glasses, (called anaglyph 3D, or Nvidea calls it 3D Discover) which if you don’t have a pair lying around, you can get four pairs packaged in the DVD of Spy Kids 3D which you could probably find on sale for $10 or less. I have a few different kinds lying around and the ones from Spy Kids work the best.

The stereoscopic effect can be enabled or disabled with a simple key press (ctrl-t is default but you can set it to whatever you want) and works with any Direct 3D game with mixed results.

It does not work with OpenGL — Sorry Second Life and Google Earth fans!

I tried it in Guild Wars, and the stereoscopic 3D looked fine, but the text labels on the screen were not in 3D and looked wrong. Also much of the text is in bright primary colors that changes with the red/cyan glasses. I am sure there are other games in the same boat, so the system is not perfect.

I tried stereoscopic mode in other direct 3D games. Tomb Raider Underworld looks fantastic, race games are amazing fun in anaglyph 3D, even The Sims 2 and 3 work fine. Because all of this is handled at the driver level, no game has to be rewritten to work, it just has to use Direct 3D. Older games work wonderfully well without having to be rewritten.

There is a certain fatigue factor after long use, so you can’t play this way for hours, but it is a fun way to rediscover many of your older games, and enjoy them again. It also adds a new feature to PC gaming you can’t get on consoles.

Apparently once they get the bugs worked out, NVidea will be promoting it more and will be selling special anaglyph glasses anywhere video cards are sold.

A Quick Peek at Spore

I know what you are thinking, “Oh no not another review of Spore”. I won’t insult your intelligence by trying to explain the game, or do an in depth review like the hundreds of others that are out there. This blog is more or less dedicated to the social 3D web, and I want to focus on that.

I know someone who downloaded a broken pirated version of the game off the web. The problem with doing so is that you can’t get any of the online content. He hated the fact that once you reach the Civilization stage you have to make all your own buildings and vehicles, etc.

My experience is different. I bought the game, and created an online account (arianeb of course) and on the So There Forum that I frequent, many of the people have also bought the game and posted their online account name. I made them all buddies.

The upshot is this: Things my buddies make for the game are easily accessible via the “Sporepedia” (third button in the bottom left corner). I got through the Civilization stage without bothering to make anything of my own, I just sponged off my friends.

Every level of the game is enhanced with stuff your buddies make and do for the game. The other creatures you encounter, the planets you visit, etc are derived from buddy content first. There is also tons of Maxis content online if you don’t like your buddies stuff.

One of my buddies made a “star trek” like vehicle, and I saw it flying around while I was still at the tribal level. When I finally made it to space, I used it myself.

Maybe my second venture through the game I’ll make my own stuff, but for now I’m just learning, and content from the sporepedia is fine.

Surreal Places in SL: TV, Movie, and Game Worlds

The number of Second Life builds based on TV, Movie, and Video games is rather extensive. I could spend about a month researching it, like I did for the world tour, but I thought I would just post about the cool sites I know about now and later maybe I can add a few more.

Lets start with a classic. The Blade Runner Build at Devil’s Moon. This build has been around for a few years, and used to house a popular club. Now it only houses the main store of Abramations primarily, although the wet looking streets (the streets are patially transparent, and a mirror build of the streets can be seen underneath) are still there.

Less famous is a life size replica of Serenity, as seen in the TV show Firefly and movie Serenity. This is on a mainland server, and is fairly detailed. There are numerous Star Trek and Star Wars themed worlds including multiserver RPGs. A good place to start on the former is the Star Trek Museum. I have previously blogged about the incredible Battlestar Pacifica RPG sim.

Another incredible sci-fi build is the Privateer Space build. This server has multiple levels, each a different planet environment to explore.

While Sci-Fi is a very popular theme in SL, its not the only one. One of the sillier builds I have come across is one based on Bedrock from The Flintstones.

Speaking of silly, the ship from Mystery Science Theater 3000 has its own replica build as well. Turn on your media player if you dare to be subjected to a really bad movie.

Finally, if you are a fan of the game Vampire: Bloodlines, somebody has managed to build a decent copy of the first level of the game. Check out the Vampires Santa Monica build.

If the above picture looks at all familiar, you might have been playing my Dating Simulator, and reached this picture:

Yes I used the same game as a background for the Dating Simulator club.