Okay, this is just so wrong, but not entirely unexpected. Seems some creative types in the Second Life virtual community have got the drop on Perpetual Entertainment and produced their own Star Trek-styled avatars. (There’s quite a lot of Trek stuff in SL, actually, including Trek City and a Trek Museum, and there seems to be a lot of interest in comics and superheroes, too. But on a quick tryout, I didn’t see anyone running around in a V for Vendetta mask).

The sequences come as apart of a show posted on Blip.tv that forms a general reveiew of events in Second Life which includes the news that Coke are running a competition among SL residents to design a Coke vending machine.

I gather the commercialisation of Second Life isn’t an entirely popular development: although people are happy to design their own cars they’d much rather teleport around SL (because it’s quicker) or fly (because it’s cooler): so when a company like Toyota provides their latest models inworld, the take up isn’t that great. Toyota and other companies would, it appears, be better off, say, going off the wall and instead of creating something based on their real world product, invent something that was way out there — like a Toyota-branded jet bike — with minimal branding but just enough so as to be noticed if anyone was interested. It’s all about making constructive contributions to what’s become a very involved online social community, something I recall only too well from my time working behind the scenes on one of the earlier avatar communities, vzscifi, which was the UK arm of vzones.com.

John Freeman

The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.

He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.

Categories: Star Trek

Tags: Avatars