Steamwhatnow?

Steampunk is something that neither myself, Fenella or Lia (It’s Lizzy writing the bulk of this) really got into. We had idea’s about what steampunk was about, you know the general idea, everything is generally brown and dark, and if you throw a tin of black paint around all of a sudden it turns Goth, but the general idea of Steampunk is something which all three of us have a different idea about. To nail it down I decided to ask Liandra’s cousin, Vic “Hoof’s” Mornington what it was since he’s one of the estate admins of the place I’m writing about, here’s what he had to say…

Steampunk is a classic “What If” scenario. What If…in the early Victorian age, the Steam Engine had progressed far beyond what we know it as today. What if, in the mid to late 1700’s when the age of steam first started, inventors like James Watt and Thomas Savory greatly expanded on the basic principle of steam engines, and the advances of Steam we seen in the Victorian age were instead seen in the reign of George the Second (1727~1760) and George the Third (1760~1820). What if the advances in Steam in the very early Victorian age led to advances in early flight technology, advances in clockwork and mechanical technology, and where would that 100 year leap-frog in technology have left the middle to late Victorian era?

Vic Mornington – Brunel Hall Owner & New Babbage Estate Admin

The City State of New Babbage

This is where New Babbage “sits”. The year, according to the various notecards I’ve read, is “always 1880…something” which locks down the decade that New Babbage sits in and also curtails the advance of New Babbage into the 1890’s and the Edwardian period which came after the death of Victoria. New Babbage as a Second Life city is now more than a decade old and is one of the oldest (and possibly THE oldest) continually running Steampunk-based cities in Second Life, with 14 regions making up the city, it’s also fairly large.

What originally brought the three of us to New Babbage, and ultimately set up “The Charlie’s Angels” main house (which is open to the public) is that air of the late victorian period which you just can’t seem to shake off when looking around the place. Since the city does take place in the middle of the Victorian era, a lot of the architecture and ‘feel’ of the place is based on period housing of that time.

However, this is also “Steampunk” so, now and again something pops up that just doesn’t quite ‘fit in’ with what we know as the Victorian age.

The City also has a long and storied history when it comes down to the RP side of it. Although New Babbage is not Roleplay “Enforced”, meaning that essentially you can walk around with modern clothing and not get into trouble, and you don’t HAVE to be IC (In Character) all the time, it does have a very, VERY long back story.

A Planned City, Or Not?

New Babbage was first thought up by Shaunathan Sprocket, more than a decade ago, as people from Caledon (a Victorian-themed city, not strictly steampunk) decided to go it alone and set up a full Steampunk city. More than a decade ago Sprocket decided to leave New Babbage and Mosseveno Tenk became the new city “Mayor” (basically owner) and things have been ticking along since. New Babbage is “planned”, but not in the way that most people think. When people think of “Planned” Second Life cities, we think of Cedar Creek for instance, where buildings have been put down by the land owners, and you rent those buildings.

New Babbage however does it a bit different and is a throwback to a much more “build-friendly” time in Second Life. In New Babbage, you rent the land itself.

It is up to the land renter what they decide to put on that land, however, all builds have to be approved by either Tenk or one of the land admins to make sure it fits in with the late 1800s theme and the theme of Steampunk.

So yeah, the city is “planned”, but it’s only the layout that’s planned, about 80% of the buildings you see when walking around New Babbage are owned or built by the individual renting that plot of land. It’s a way of doing planned city estates which died off more than half a decade ago in favour of the full planned city.

A Working Time Capsule

With a city this old, and with residents who have been living here for more than a decade, you get to see the entire gamut of the growth of Second Life…from full old school prim builds…

To partial “Sculpty” builds…

To full mesh builds and partial mesh builds…

New Babbage, when walking around the regions, especially the much older core regions, has a haphazard mix of the 3 stages of Second Life building, prims, sculpts and mesh. Although (according to Vic) the old prim builds are now vanishing with only a handful left, you can still see hints of the ‘original’ City Of New Babbage in among the newer mesh builds that have replaced ageing builds of the past.

Underground, Overground…Babbaging Free? *coughs*

*Editor’s note…thanks Lizzy, now I have the Wombles theme stuck in my head…*

There is no getting away from it. The city on the ground level is densely packed, very densely packed, which contributes to one of New Babbage’s major problems, graphics lag. If you have an older PC do not expect to walk around this place with ultra graphics with a draw distance set for over 300m because I can tell you now, that it just won’t happen. A lot of the New Babbage regions have “extended prim allowance” of the 30K region variety, and the renters of the plots took full advantage of it, packing their homes or buildings with all sorts of stuff.

There is also the question of not what’s on the ground level, but what’s under it. Yes, New Babbage has one of the most extensive sewer and tunnel networks underground that I have seen.

It also has very deep, like over 90m deep seas to its south…

A City of a different era, but on a slow decline?

With regular events on Wednesday and Friday by Ed Pearse and Dee Wells, a book club (yeah, they have a book club) and other events that go on throughout the month, the city itself is a living, breathing entity with hundreds of residents making up the land ownership. However, there needs more UK and EU timed events as well because right now there’s nothing for folks in the UK. There is no getting away from it though, the events schedule is a busy one. There is however a worry that myself, Lia and Fen see, the place is quiet…sometimes too quiet.

Most of the time in the city it’s just me, fen and Lia standing around in our mansion in Quarry Hill chatting away about shopping cause, well, we shop a lot, and in the other 13 regions there is no one, and it can be like this for hours on end. According to the City Hall land availability map, there are a fair amount of land parcels up for rent, but not too much that it makes you feel like the city could close any time soon.

New Babbage, like Steampunk as a genre, is on a gradual decline, however, like all genres this is not the first, nor will it be the last cycle of ups and down that steampunk goes through. Will the city vanish? I highly doubt it. New Babbage still has a firm bedrock of regular land renters, but what the city desperately needs is more events which cater to a wider audience to bring in more people from the outside of Steampunk to settle into, and then get into the genre of Steampunk itself. There’s also a problem with basic “marketing” for the city. In many of the clubs that we three visit regularly people in there end up saying “Ohhh, New Babbage is still around? I thought it closed years ago!”. Vic has tried to offset that by sharing the Muddys Music Cafe shop build with the Angels and taking the top floor as an info hub for the city, but there needs to be more planning for the future “new resident” influx for the city.

Online (outside of SL) New Babbage does have a presence, in the “Tourist Information” build by Vic Mornington there is a board to a Flickr Group, Facebook Group, and YouTube playlist (there are a lot of videos of New Babbage) and the main site.

It could simply be a case of New Babbage just not getting its name out there like the other planned towns and cities of Second Life due to little or no basic “marketing” which could be contributing to the lack of people in the city just exploring or having a wander around. However, even with the lack of a steady stream of visitors, New Babbage itself is still the go-to place for that taste of a “What If” era of Steampunk, and the community there (when they are around) are some of the most welcoming people I have come across in SL.

Visit New Babbage Town Hall (The available land map is here too) – http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Babbage%20Square/166/161/112

Visit the New Babbage Tourist Information Building – http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Port%20Babbage/174/197/106

Rent a room in Brunel Hall Hotel if you are going to explore! – http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Academy%20of%20Industry/49/83/109

Written by Liza Blackwood
Edited by Liandra Aries
Pictures by Liandra Aries