By DrFran
Babcock
I am not an
oldbie, but I have been in Second Life™ long enough to have witnessed many ideas
sweep the grid. Some come and go, and some stay. Right now gacha madness is in
its ascendance, and few residents are without at least some awareness of what
it’s all about.
What is Gacha?
The main gacha
event is the Arcade Gacha ( http://thearcadesl.com
) held several times a year. Major content creators are asked to create a
series of items, and place them in a machine where residents pay a fee to get
the prizes that have been placed within. Most creators make one or a few items
RARE, in that the odds of getting them are more difficult. The real coup in
designing this event is that the items in the gacha machine are no modify, no
copy, but transferable. This means, if you don’t like what you got in the
machine, you can trade it for something else. An entire Gacha Culture has
sprung up with residents running yard sales to sell their extra and unwanted
items. In addition, some items that are RARE, especially items from earlier
gachas fetch prices of several thousand Lindens! There is even an entire sim
devoted to the sale, auction, and display of gacha items: Gachetopia.
I am fascinated
always by the content creators with consistently innovative, detailed and improving
work. For the first show Morbid Templar interviewed the genius behind O.M.E.N.:
Damien.
Damien and O.M.E.N.
A sampling of
the wise words of Damien is below. Damien was very measured and wise in his
responses, and the crowd was clearly eating out of his hand. He even got a
marriage proposal from someone in the audience by the end.
I found out that O.M.E.N. actually stands for
Ominous Meaning Elude No one, that Damien created as a comment on all the
business names in SL that actually mean nothing.
Creative
inspiration that might be saleable is hard to come by, and Damien admits that
he does rely upon his manager, Aarin Jennifers, to help him with his creations.
He has several ideas that were rejected by his manager (farting tacos ), but he has held on to them
for the future. His personal favorite gacha creation of his own is the Panda
Sushi (http://www.flickr.com/photos/
Morbid bodly
brought up the subject of the odds on the machines. My own experience has been
that some RARES in the machines are harder to get than others, and my visits to
yard sales have confirmed that certain objects are much harder to find. Damien
felt that no RARE should be impossibly hard to win, especially if someone plays
a machine very often.
He was asked
what other creators he admired and he mentioned two of my favorites, Apple Fall
and Anya Ohmai (Nu’ville), and one I didn’t know: Rose of Olive. Of great
interest was the fact that all of the designers in the Arcade Gacha Group get
free copies of the gacha items. This tidbit had the crowd murmuring in
jealousy.
However, no
matter how much the crowd begged, Damien would not let people know what would
be in his December 2013 Arcade Gacha, but he had sage advice for new content
creators: Be willing to embrace being small to be big.
FREEBIES!
A big surprise
was announced after the show. Each person who had attended was treated to a
detailed globe made by Luke Templar that was only for this show, and would be
retired. In addition, Damien promised a free gift to the attendees of this
first Gacha Show.
The next guest
is already lined up, and is Contraption, who makes…well, contraptions. It is
set for November 30th on the sim of Templar, and if it is run as
professionally and welcoming as this first show, it will be a hit.
If you are
interested in joining the Gachatopia group, you can teleport to the sim here: http://maps.secondlife.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment