Brave News World a magazine with a point of view
	Spring 2007

G a m e s . . . Final Fashions crosses gaming realms by Dan Kelly as Dante Mersereau Second Life effectively removes the constraints placed on most video game worlds and offers many features that help it live up to its audacious title. This flexibility allows Second Life to actually enhance the average game player’s experience in numerous ways. Popular game franchises like Final Fantasy have definite presences on Second Life that allows players to express their fanaticism in new ways. It is primarily a “role-playing” community in which a player essentially acts out their role in Second Earth. The Final Fantasy series of videogames is an extremely popular series of role-playing games for various consoles created by the game company Square Enix. A quick search in Second Life will likely lead a person to the place called Final Fashions. Final Fashions is the creation of resident Cerulia Moxie who was initially dismayed at the lack of Final Fantasy presence in Second Life. “Well really it was just that when I joined SL I expected to see a ton of FF stuff, I mean it's so popular, but I couldn't find any at all,” Moxie said. Fans of the series will be amazed when they land on Moxie’s floating airship she modeled after one found in Final Fantasy 11. “It took me about 6 months to get to that one, I literally started straight off as soon as I joined SL and just worked at it on and off since then,” Moxie said. A crude object representing a moogle, a bipedal cat with wings, will also draw a smirk from fans. But the main attraction to fans will be the various character costumes that can be bought. Costumes of popular Final Fantasy 7 characters like Cloud Strife and Sephiroth are available in nostalgic low-polygon models. For higher prices, a resident can purchase higher-resolution costumes of classic archetypes like “Dragoons” and “Red Mages.” Oddly enough, Moxie had no previous experience with 3D modeling, but mainly started to improve her drawing. “Well I’ve been learning as I go…I'm still not great but I think I'm a lot better than when I started,” Moxie said. For the future, Moxie has few definite plans for new items in her store but she wants to improve her earlier work, like her diminutive Final Fantasy 7 avatars. “Those are so rubbish! I just made those as a fun little thing in about an hour each,” Moxie said, “Really need to fix the seams on those guys!” Thanks to Moxie and creators like her, Second Life doesn’t have to be a new obsession for new residents, just an expansion of their current one.