This week Bromo Ivory, the owner of the Seraph City sim announced he had decided to close down the sim on the 21st of March.
Seraph was the brainchild of Pumpkin Tripsa, Tesla Tripsa and Kaylee Faulkner. It was a lovely build in that quasi science fiction setting of
Dieselpunk.
There were some great builds and people would always comment on the look of the sim. But other than the odd event, there were rarely any people about.
Pumpkin's SL business Chakra Nova was very successful and made up for any vacancies in the sim but then RL took hold and he spent less and less time in SL. Wanting to see the sim grow, I offered to take on management of the sim to try and update some of the infrastructure. Pumpkin eventually sold the sim to Bromo Ivory in 2013. Bromo also being very busy in RL, I again stayed on as sim Admin.
Starting a new sim is a hard task. Trying to blow the cobwebs off a sim that's been around for 3 years but never seemed to find its mark was no easy job either. I think initially Seraph had too many people renting in it who made their homes in Babbage. They'd come to Seraph for the odd event and then go back to Babbage for their socialising. It's also possible Dieselpunk is too niche a genre - even for SL. There are numerous sims who claim to be Steampunk. Each has their own take on it and each seems to be doing OK. When Seraph first opened, there was another dieselpunk sim also underway called Sapphire City (ironically enough being headed by New Babbage's former owner Shaunathan Sprocket). Sapphire was quietly pulled before it ever got completed. There are various historical sims set in the 1920s: 1920s Berlin, just added two homesteads to the group, Chicago 1920s seems to be doing well (though it's hard to tell with all the bots there). Swing Times came, expanded to a second sim, then folded.
I am a firm believer that if you get a solid community on the ground, residency number will usually look after themselves. Babbage and Berlin would be the two examples I'd cite. But for whatever reason, Seraph never seemed to be able to get that happening.
I decorated one of the Hawksmoor apartments to give people and idea of what could be done with a tight budget of 100 prims.
With the exception of the Scientific American issue, all the other magazine covers were real. The newspapers though, I took some liberties with.
The foyer of the Radio Riel HQ abounded with subtle out of place bits and pieces. Like the capstone off the Stargate.
Or some of the more interesting hieroglyphs. Can you spot the Back to the Future reference?
What about the Fifth Element? Or Star Wars?
Farewell Seraph City. I tried my best but it was not meant to be.
