Pixel to Pixel Closes: Statement From the Group

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven."
- From Ecclesiastes 3, but also from a very good Byrd's song from 1965.

The Bible causes strong emotional reactions in people, from those who fervently believe it is the divine Word of God to those who think it the most dangerous fraud ever perpetrated on humankind.  But no matter where you find yourself on that continuum, within the chapters and verses and poetry of the script can be found great truths.  Ecclesiastes 3 gives us one of those truths:  For every thing there is a season.  It goes on to list what seems to be an exhaustive list to support the idea, but there is one repeated theme throughout; everything has a beginning and an end.

It started with a need.  Jadyn Firehawk, herself a fairly new arrival to Second Life and inspired by the group, Virtual Ability, recognized a feature of the world that a lot of us missed - she saw the opportunity for those with disabilities to live a meaningful virtual life in ways they could not anywhere else.  She saw a chance for millions of people in the world to live and walk and laugh and love and....function...without their supposed disability being a factor in their relationships with others.

But Jadyn the dreamer is also Jadyn the realist, and she recognized that many of those same individuals who could benefit so greatly from what SL had to offer also often had RL limitations to resources.  There was nothing she could do for those with no access to the internet or a computer, but there was something she could do for those with access but limited financial resources to fully enjoy a regular life in Second Life.

Many of us know the Serenity Prayer and its plea to a Higher Power to help us know the difference between what we can change and what we cannot.  Though perhaps inspired by that, to our great blessing she didn't take it to heart.  No, her actions are better described by the words of Edward Everett Hale:  "I am but one, but I AM one.  I cannot do everything, but I can do something, and I will not let what I cannot do interfere with doing what I can do."

So, Jadyn founded the Pixel To Pixel Foundation to provide a weekly stipend for those with disabilities so that they could enjoy a more complete Second Life.  The dream became action, and the action became perseverance, and the perseverance became a foundation that worked with a network of compassionate donors and a list of grateful recipients who were able to update their avatars and purchase things to make their lives a little better and, in many cases, purchase things that they could use to create.  Jadyn created a gallery so that those who created artwork would have a place to sell their art...to earn their living in SL.  Through Jadyn's hard work, aided by individuals who believed in her vision and gave of themselves, she was able to grow P2P so that it was able to provide support to dozens of people and hundreds of stipends over the years.

It was not always easy.  There was a constant need for fund raising, and always, always, more people who needed help than could be provided for.  It was sometimes heartbreaking, but over the years, with dogged determination and unmatched fortitude, Jadyn pushed on.

It has taken a toll.  Nine years of constant fund raising drives, nine years of pouring over applications for aid, nine years of the joy of being able to help and the sorrow of not being able to help everyone.  It takes a toll.

And that brings us back to Ecclesiastes.  There is a time to begin, and there is a time to end.  The time for this great and marvelous and selfless act of compassion to come to an end has arrived.  The decision was not an easy one, and it was not taken lightly.  Something you may or may not know about Jadyn, she has her own disability.  She has struggled with it even as she provided for others.  But the scale has tipped, and it is time for Jadyn to take care of herself.

Now, this isn't going to happen all at once.  There are resources available to continue making stipend payments until the first week of January and those payments will be made.  But effective December 1st we will no longer be soliciting donations and we will be shutting down the donation kiosks that can be found scattered around Second Life.  We ask that those who use personal giving boxes deactivate them by taking them up into inventory.  Any excess funds we might have as of January 4th, 2019, will be donated to Virtual Ability, SL's main disability support group.

Of course there will be questions and concerns and grief.   There will be temptation to direct such things to Jadyn, but we ask that all such be directed to me (Sandi Glas) for now.

In closing, we want to thank our generous donors, sponsors and volunteers who have made this nine year journey possible and express our love for those who were recipients of that generosity.

With all our love and affection,
The P2P staff.

* * * * *

A heartfelt thank you to Sandi Glas for helping me to make my very difficult decision to close down the P2P Foundation. She's been an indispensable sounding board for me over the past several months, as well as having been a valued supporter over the years in a number of ways. Thank you, Sandi.

Jadyn Firehawk

Pictures from the Newser

The Sim The Lab Wouldn't Close

Bixyl Shuftan

Lately, there have been a number of sims either closed down, almost closed down, or slated to be shut down. But the Newser was recently informed of a sim Linden Lab wouldn't close, despite the wishes of the owner.

In late September, I was contacted by Annie Brightstar. She told me about the MIC sim, and the troubles it's owner was having. Known as Marina MexiLane Bellini, she posted about her problems on Facebook. Annie used a translation program for her post.

The seriousness of Linden Lab.

As you know I've asked, via the form on the website of SL, the offline the sim mic on 17 July, specifying that I could no longer support the sim card. After an exchange of mail on the part of the support, in which I was advised to "find the money", That much to put offline the sim we wanted to "15 days and also much more", I reiterated that mic would come only with a new project funded by the Italian institutions, because I could not afford to pay for that rata every month.

All this time mic was online and only a few days ago I found out that they were asking for 600 $ arrears, in practice for the instalments 18-July / 18 August and 18 August / September 18 . Not only. The month of August I paid the monthly fee avatar premium but was rejected. Now the account is suspended, gone, deleted, and I can't interact with them by the owner (meximic chant).

The sim continues to stay on, but at this point I think it is an embezzlement, given that the earth is my property as all the rest.

In my shoes, how would you behave?

Deciding to check things out, I looked around. The place was a well-designed island with  builds of Ancient Roman architecture among the rocks and trees. One building served as the location for a store, another as an art gallery. It didn't take me long to find a gathering of people, and I went over. I found a "Mexi Lane" chatting with a couple men in Italian. I greeted them, and explained why I was there. She explained, through a translator, "This is a place (for) cultural events, especially art exhibitions and museums of Rome. ... I apologize for the inconvenience translator."

Mexi explained that the place, "was always a sim quiet and very successful." It had been up for over five years, "I've SL projected on screens in Rome, Capitoline Museums, Congress Palace, Biblioteca Angelica, all of Rome knew." It was advertising and exposure for the artists.

But unfortunately her economic situation changed. She came to the conclusion she could not keep up the teir payments, "It could not be paid by July 18 and asked the offline (on the) 17. LL tried to convince me to stay and find the money, but if the money is not there you do not find on the street. And I said 'no, I want the sim offline.' LL closed the ticket, and two months later I found out that they asked me two months to charge and account owner deleted." Talking to her more, she explained the account deleted was an alt "used only for transactions and management."

"The sim is still on, and I do not know what they want to do." She mentioned, "MIC is among the 25 selected for the sim card with the oculus Rift." I asked if she thought that might be a factor in their not closing the place. "It can be one of the reasons," she answered, but she thought the real reason was money, trying to get as much off her as they could.

Despite her problems, Mexi continued to help out others, "Yesterday the owner of Fashion Week, I was responsible for making the video teaser of their event. I'm here to serve the community." But she was still working on her problem, "I must write to LL as a guest and specify my ticket. It was opened on July 17. ... if they offer a service (for residents) to request (their sim) offline, must comply with the requirements of users and not to be clever. I do not have $600 to give to them." She did say some Italian institutions owed her money, but "it is not known when they will give them to me."

It was about then that we parted. Some days later, she posted on her Facebook page an image of her sim on a map, tinted red meaning offline, "Biggies: They did it to put the MIC offline! 2 months and a half after my request." I sent her a message about it, and she reaffirmed the sim was still down. It was not yet clear whether her bill was also nullified, and her alt account restored, but she wouldn not be billed aditional money.

So the sim that the Lab wouldn't take down finally was closed.

Bixyl Shuftan

Massivley, WoW Insider, And Other Joystiq.com Websites To Close

By Bixyl Shuftan

Some sad news for gaming fans. Joystiq.com, the website that's the home of several caomputer gaming and computer websites, such as "Massively" and "WoW Insider," will be closing. Their final day of operations will be February 3, 2015. Joystiq was founded in 2004 as part of Weblogs, which was bought by AOL in 2005. It was AOL's primary gaming website, discussing MMOs and once in a while Second Life. It has been nominated for several awards for blogs of it's category and has been included in listings such as Forbes.com "Best of the Web."

Recode.net gave the reason as "part of an extensive house-cleaning of it's underperforming content properties." Editor in Chief Brianna Royce commented, "I would like to tell you truthfully that this is an equitable and just decision that makes some sort of logical sense, but the reality is that our overlords' decisions have always been unfathomable. ... a year ago ... a VP whose name I don't even know and who never read our site chose to reward our staggering hard-won 40% year-over-year page view growth by ... hacking our budget in half. There's nothing to do in the face of that kind of logic but throw your hands in the air." Royce had worked as the head editor at Massively for almost five years, "I came here as a geeky copyeditor, and am leaving with a fleet of good friends and a much deeper understanding of how and why my favorite genre runs the way it does, and it will forever influence how I play games and whose games I buy."

The closing comes just after hearing about the tragic news of their former editor Andrew Yoon drowning. He was 29.

Joystiq once had it's own Second Life newsletter, "Second Life Insider." Eventually, the staff was absorbed into Massively. Ciaran Laval on her blog stated when some gamers complained, they answered, "Maintaining editorial balance surrounding all of the many, varied games we cover is an ongoing proccess, and we've selected a suite of 'core games' based on many factors including subscriber/member numbers, overallbuzz and mindshare in the industry, and input from a secret algorithm I would love to call 'interestingness' if it weren't already taken. We are proud to offer in-depth Second Life coverage as one of those core current titles." Ciaran commented, "generally gaming magazines look down on Second Life. Massively ... most definitely did not look down on Second Life." The output did slow down over the years, especially after Tateru Nino stopped writing for them, but they never stopped entirely.

It's expected that the years of archived stories will remain online, at least for a while.

Ciaran concluded, "With a resurgence in virtual worlds likely ... having sites that will happily include that content in areas where such content may not be initially popular is important. Getting the concept of virtual worlds to a wider audience is very important. ... Joystiq played an important role in this the first time around. It will be a shame if they aren't playing a role when the new wave hits."

Sources: Redcode, Ciaran Laval, Massively.com, Wikipedia

Bixyl Shuftan

Holocluck Henly on Disney's "Toontown" Closing

 By Bixyl Shuftan

On August 20, the players of Disney's multiplayer online game "Toontown" got some unwelcome news. The game would be closing in a month. One of the more well-known Toontown players in Second Life is Holocluck Henly. I met up with him and asked him a few questions about the game.

So how was the game played? Holocluck told me, "You're a happy go lucky cartoon animal in Toontown, but humanoid robots called Cogs are trying to take over. They are based on corporate stereotypes and they are turning shops into office buildings etc. The toons fight back using silly slapstick gags. The cogs retaliate with corporate clichés and office supplies. It,s intended for all ages, and like a classic cartoon people of all generations each get something out of it. … There are things you can do beside fighting cogs. You can socialize, you can play golf, race autos, fish, and more."

"An account comes with 6 characters sharing an estate where each of their homes are." The various toon types "are more preference and what you like to look and sound like in game. When you type to friends or use the vast library of pre-written phrases, your character makes animal gibberish to word balloons, different sounds based on questions, exclamations, one or several words etc. Originally only friends who traded special codes received outside the game could text chat. Everyone else was via the phrases and you could purchase phrases. But a few years ago they opened it up to parental permission and you just had to verify on the site and the inworld accounts could talk to each other. Still some words are not in the vocabulary and become animal gibberish. That's the other thing. if you were to read it, you saw 'arf arf ruff' in the word balloon for a dog for instance."

Of the toon types, "Originally there were cats, dogs, ducks, rabbits, horses, and mice. They aded monkeys and bears eventually, and then pigs."

"The amusing thing about the game was that so many adults played. many of them were parents whose kid may have started and then the parent got addicted while the kid moved on to something else." Ads at Nickelodian and Nick at Night attracted both kids and adults, "This was the ad: ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCUTFd-ZRqM )."

Holocluck admitted he was "a great fan of the 30s-40s Warner Brothers" cartoons, "I'm a traditionalist." He stated he had learned animation "a few decades back. … I learned at a college owned by Disney called california institute of the arts. A few Disney veterans ran a character animation program. Toontown is 3D, I believe it utilizes Python. But it's the feel of a traditional cartoon, and some of the animation is just great. Going to Goofy's Speedway and watching Goofy walk around... to an animator it's very rewarding (laughter)."

"Being a Disney game, is that when you build your toon (when you first join the game) it can come in a combination of proportions. And each one moves differently. Same as the cogs, who have about three different basic physiques. they move different from one another in everything they do. That sounds a bit technical but I'm an adult and an adult cartoonist. I look at it a little differently. He smiled, "And then I drop a piano on the head of some lawyer robot."

I asked him about the attacks, and he answered you start with small ones and work your way up, "you start with a squirting lapel flower and a cupcake. These can be worked up to a geyser and a wedding cake." Attacks like the dropped piano need the help of another toon to distract the target first.

"Walking around Toontown is just great. there are several neighborhoods with themes. Obviously in the game you work your way in tasks and challenges from neighborhood to neighborhood. But the meticulous attention made to these, the names of the shops, the styles... and the last few years some things like hydrants and mailboxes have personalities and animate."

I asked Holocluck about the tasks, "They start off simple enough, a cog, fish something out of the pond. there is a narrative which flows through the neighborhood of some shopkeeper or other who was harassed by cogs or something was stolen etc. And as you achieve these you can carry more gags at a time, jellybeans at a time, get bigger, maybe handle many tasks at once. And eventually you fight the source of the cogs. Not for the faint of heart."

"There are four categories of cogs: the lawyers, the salesmen, the financiers and the bosses. Each has a headquarters and there's someone making them. (It's) Usually a behemoth of a robot in charge and up to 8 toons go in together to defeat them. There is usually a battle not unlike the ones in the streets or in buildings, a stream of four cogs at a time versus up to four toons at a time for about ten minutes. Then the special, direct fight with the one in charge."

"As an example, the cashbot CFO (chief financial officer) looks like a cash register for a head, a large body with dollar signs for the suit pattern, and the bottom half of him looks like tank treads. There are some toons who take to cranes (I do that) where we work with the other toons who disabled these special sentinels coming out from between the treads,. and we take large magnets and fling the things into the CFO in the middle. Then when he periodically gets dizzy we grab large safes and smack him." Holocluck laughed, "then we win! And we get some special perk. The fight itself may be different each type of cog."

I asked Holocluck what kind of perks did toons get for beating boses. He answered,  "Well for the CFO fights we get special phrases we can say which can endow anyone within range with jellybeans, more gags, or more laff. (Toons) don't die but our levels called laff can diminish in a fight."

For the lawyer cog boss battle, "in the case of the lawbot CJ aka Chief Justice, the CJ is blindfolded, love that one. After the cog battle there is a sequence where for a limited time the cogs are landing into the jury seats and we use cannons to shoot toons to replace them. When time is up the more toons means the scale in the center of the large room may be in our favor. There comes a sequence where once side of the room the cogs are lined up throwing evidence aka books at their side of the scale, and we throw on our side and run to restock etc from the witness. They occasionally skid their evidence on the ground to trip us. we gotta know to jump (grin). Oh and the giant gavels. gotta be careful where to stand." Holockuck laughed, "We win when the scale reaches down on our side."

One element of character advancement was deciding on what new skills to have, "as they advanced and added other types of gags … you had to leave one off. One gag was not for the cogs but for fellow tons: the toon-up." This move ranged, "from a tickle feather to a high dive act into a glass of water, making friends laugh during battle to being their numbers up."

"We had pets called Doodles which look like a 'Lil Abner' 'Schmoo,' and we could train them to do tricks and come out during battle for that. The animatons on those are marvelous and the personalities are very complex. That alone makes it a shame (Toontown) is leaving."

There were some special happenings during holidays. For instance, one could make a black cat character around Halloween. Besides those, "there are invasions, when a particular cog is everywhere at once. regardless of the type of building etc. when that happens everything is double value in your efforts."

That a major corporation like Disney  would make a game in which the characters spent much of their time fighting corporate stereotypes, Holocluck commented, "Well, there was an inevitable irony waiting to happen." Toontown would soon be closing.

"Last month, Toontown was hit by teen hackers and they closed it and the test servers, for about a week, to patch the game up. The test server never came back but they made up for things with free beans (money) and other perks to celebrate returning and for our patience." Holocluck sighed, "But face it, that's a resource. If they have to work on that, and if they're scaling down guess what leaves."

An article on CNN stated Toontown had experienced a "significant drop in user numbers." Holocluck admitted after ten years, things were not looking as rosy for the game as in the past, "Times have since changed. things have gone mobile, they lost many players in the past to sophisticated MMORPG like star wars or WoW." Although Disney promoted the game in the past with commercials on television, they weren't doing so now. With the public " looking to apps, etc., they just launched Inifinity and pushing that." Holocluck concluded that Disney felt, "Disney online is just in the way."

Holocluck stated Toontown wasn't the only game closing, "A friend in Second Life goes to 'Pixie Hollow,' another game. The third is 'Pirates of the Caribean.' All three are closing Sept 19.  I believe … Disney pulled the plug on the Disney Online project. There was news this morning of major layoffs at ABC as part of their downsizing plan."

So where might the players go after the game closed, Holocluck didn't have an answer, "Nothing will take the place of Toontown. It was a nice game for people who wanted light hearted entertainment and challenges, some funny mixed with getting back at the corporate world, and beautiful Disney animation."

When not playing Toontown for the next few weeks, Holocluck Henly manages the Starship Diner at Hydrangea (77, 173, 72). He also DJs for Relay for Life events.

One can check out Holocluck's Youtube stream for more Toontown videos, and his Flickr page for pictures.

Image credit: Holocluck Henly

Bixyl Shuftan

City of Heroes MMO Closes

There was some sad news in the world of Massive Multiplayer Online games. "City of Heroes," the popular superhero MORPG from NCsoft, is no more. At Midnight, Friday night on Nov. 30th, the servers powered down for the last time, disconnecting players from their CoH characters for good.


The decision to close the game was announced on August 31st, the official reasons being "realignment of company focus and publishing support." Following the announcement, players rallied to try to get the company to reverse it's decision, taking part in online demonstrations and even mailing the company capes and masks. But the company refused to change its mind, and on the last day, players gathered at a "final unity rally" at the town hall's city park across all the servers. Players talked about old times, in addition to taking on monsters, aliens, and other bad guys dropping in. One of Massively.com's writers, Beau Hindman, covered the event, until his screen read "Lost Connection" (link to the final hour and a half can be found Here), "It's unfortunate to see an MMO unlike any others shutting down."

"City of Heroes" was launched in 2004. The superhero game was hailed as a "gust of fresh air into an increasingly stale sword and sorcery MMO world," with an extremely flexible character creation system that allowed for a wide variety of appearances, notably the costumes. Despite terms of service forbidding characters that looked like or were named after heroes from the comics, Marvel Comics filed a lawsuit, saying the company was doing nothing to stop it. But the court dismissed some of Marvel's claims. The remainder were settled out of court.

NCsoft has several other games, including Aion and Guild Wars. Some Second Life residents commented to me they had enjoyed the game, and will miss it. Where the fomer CoH will go is anyone's guess. Perhaps many will make their way to superhero RPs in Second Life.

Sources: Massively, Wikipedia

Bixyl Shuftan

A Resident Looks Back at City of Heroes

For fans of the Superhero MMO "City of Heroes," there was some sad news recently. Paragon Studios, the makers of the game, announced their company, NCsoft, had decided to close them down. A short article in Massively stated the reasons were "realignment of company focus and publishing support."

To our Community, Thank you. Thank you for your years of support. You've been with us every step of the way, sharing in our challenges, encouraging us to make City of Heroes better, more than everyone else thought it could be. We couldn't have come this far without you. I implore you all, focus on the good things of CoH and Paragon Studios. Don't dwell on the "how" or the "why", but rather join us in celebrating the legacy of an amazing partnership between the players and the development team. 

Among the players of the game was Second Life resident Alexandra "Lexi" Tymets, also known as "DJ Sexy Lexi." She had a few things to say about her time at Paragon City. Of her characters, "I had a bunch actutally. Over the years I've played both sides, hero and villain. Have maxed out characters on both. ... CoH was really fun. You get to feel heroic as your little super hero,or super villian, (who) beats, blasts, or sends summoned creations after your enemies. It's really fun when you get a group, and you've got an Area of Effect Attack, like my Water Blast/Dark Miasma Corrupter did. She'd drop an AoE Debuff then slam the enemies with AoE attacks. There's nothing like watching a horde of enemies just fall over at once."

Of the gameplay, "Well you of course fought enemies, starting from street thugs, who will come at you with guns and baseball bats, and work your way up the villain chain. There were trainers you would see so you could level up your heroes powers. You chose two sets, which depended on your archtype. Like Corrupters, which was a Villain archtype, got to chose a ranged attack, and a ranged support set. ... As you got higher in levels, you'd face things that could throw nasty powers right back at you."

Describing the quests, "In the early days the quests were pretty repetitve, though they did give you some story to link them to help out. Go here... smack that around. Come talk to me again, typical MMO fare. As the game progressed they created new parts of the city with their own enveloping story. You could stay in one zone... and do the arcs from different contacts there, and it would all be all one continuing story as you worked your way to whatever was menacing that zone. That's really when City of Heroes got it's own flavor, and really started to shine.

"There was a zone called Croatoa. It dealt with Fae and supernatural things. Witches, Redcaps, Werewolves, Ghosts, and Plant monsters with Jack 'o lanterns for heads. It inspired me to make more than one character with roots in magic or connections to the Fae. There was even a Nessie-like monster in the lake called Sally."

"My Storm/Elec Defender ... I remade her as an Ice/Storm Corrupter. She's level 32, and still hasn't gotten her first debt badge. She still exists. When the Servers Close down on Nov 30th, I'll be on her, standing next to Miss Liberty. Probably bawling my little mousie eyes out."

As to why the game was closing, "Rumors run from. 'NCSoft is a bunch of asshats,' to 'They wanted to cut CoH and Paragon before it went into the red,' and 'They couldn't renew the CoH License.' "

"I've been with City of Heroes, on and off admittedly, since Issue 1. They're in Issue 23 right now, and were gearing to Issue 24. I played for 5 years. It was the best Super Hero MMO they ever released, and it pains me to see it go. I've cried twice now, all the friends I made, all the stories I told with my characters, and some that were just beginning to tell their stories. It was an amazing run, and I thank Paragon Studios for the years they put into it. The Love, the devotion, and the time. No other MMO I've ever played had that sense of family."

Lexi wasn't the only resident whom played the game. Ranchen Weidman explained she did too, "CoH was fun, still is. But I doubt I'll be playing any more of it (now) that it's closing."

Top image from cityofheroes.com 

Bixyl Shuftan