Community News from 2004

Community News from other years:
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005

Note: Development News were published in It's Pop until the introduction of the community news page on 30th may 2005.

Look what the carrier pigeon brought with it.

Popomundo Banking
Now you can store your har earned Popomundo cash at the nearest local bank. Or better yet, borrow the cash you need to pay for that brand new book you've been yearning for. Conrad Gardner and Michael Hopper are currently the two bank owners in the game. (Which incidentally are the same two people that own the only 2 CD factories… hmmm…. Can anyone say monopoly out there?)

More Band roles, Instruments, and skills
With the imminent arrival of the “Genre Grading Scoring System” we've found it appropriate to add some more Band Member Roles. In addition to the old ones we now also have items and skills for the following:

Pianist
Flutist
Banjo Player
Harmonica Player
DJ Turntable Operator

We will see more additions in the days to come in regards to this new system. More skills (divided into levels and branching structures), more instruments, and more genres of music.

Popomundo Calendar
Not content with merely adding seasons to the game we've now added special calendar events/holidays. We've already celebrated Saint Kobe's Day but the first major holiday in Popomundo will be Halloween which falls on December 20 this month. We all strongly encourage you to go out and buy a Monster Mask for the occasion.

First Class Tickets & Supersonic Flights
First Class tickets can now be purchased for a higher cost. Having a first class ticket will lessen the amount of damage to your health and mood when travelling.

Supersonic flights are now available as well. If you're willing to fork out the extra cash you can buy tickets for supersonic flights. These flights cut the travel time in half.

A first class ticket on a supersonic flight won't affect your health and mood nearly as much as a second class ticket on a regular slow flight.

Travel Times are now different depending on how long the flight is. Travelling between New York and Melbourne should take around 12 hours on a regular ticket.

Looking for Band Members in the It's POP
A new classifieds section in the magazine has been added that lists bands looking for new members. The list is divided up into music genres and only holds artists whose band leader is in the selected city and that's been active in the last week.

Forgot you Password
You no longer have to mail a member of the Popomundo staff to get this sorted out. Just click on “Forgotten Password” and you will get your login information sent to you. (Took us long enough right?)

What's cooking in the Popomundo Cauldron. Read this for the latest scoop.

Welcome Toronto
It had been a while since we added a new city. This time it was time for Popomundo to venture north up into Canada. It was a tossup between Montreal and Toronto, but the coin finally spoke to us and said Toronto. We hope to introduce more non-english speaking cities and countries later on when we have more players and when the game can be played in different languages.

Instruments and shows
We're now checking to see if you bring the right instruments and skills to your shows. Which instruments and which skills are good for you will be dictated by your role in your band. There's no section on this in the rules yet. But it's pretty straightforward. If you're a guitarist bring a guitar with you…

Your band roles will in turn be used to grade you on how much you appeal to fans of the music genre you're focusing on. This will be the next addition to the shows in the game. After we've implemented this “Genre System” we're going to update the scoring system for the shows again. This will be the last major update on this front for a while. Stay tuned… It's coming in a week.

New Chart on Top Record Companies
This is a small addition but I'm bringing it to your attention here anyway. In the charts section you can now browse through the top companies in the game. How many records have they released? who's signed the most artists? Who's the top record company for Heavy Metal bands? These and many more questions can be answered by this new chart. Take a look at it.

Find people to work for you more easily
CEOs and Company Owners can now find people to work for them more easily. Instead of searching for available people by their names they can now get available job applicants listed directly if they want to. This new function only list people located in the same city as the place of work though. So if you're looking to hire someone who's out of town you'll still have to look for them by name.

VIP Expiration Dates
Your VIP expiration date is now visible in your user information. If there's no information at all about this in your user information, then you're not a VIP.

Years and Seasons
The world of Popomundo spins at an accelerated speed. To make this more visible we've now added seasons and years to the game. Pictures of the cities will change accordingly. (Not all cities have different seasonal pictures yet though.)

Discard ALL Invitations
Another minor addition that will please most famous bands. It's now possible to discard all invitations instead of one at a time.

Promote your Staff
It's now possible to change which jobs your employees hold at their place of work. You no longer need to fire and rehire if you want to promote a person working for you. The salary will be adjusted if it ends up outside the limits of maximum and minimum wage for the job.

Nail biting drama to the end! Who could have guessed that National Theatre wouldn't win?

The odds were heavily tipped in National Theatre's favour. Everyone were ready to hand them first prize before the festival was even over. This was going to be the festival that imortalized NT's greatness in stone. For sure.

Instead we're amazed at how well Kissing Slits had formed its repertoire which won it FIRST PLACE. Song after song of well rehearsed top songs met the audience in Hyde Park as Lessie Cochran and Stacy Carr spellbound London.

The Unbroken Few also somehow managed to do better than National Theatre. In fact, had Michael Hopper kept himself from stripping naked on stage he might have won the festival!

National Theatre came in on third place. In addition to this disappointing place in the festival NT's lead man Frank Blomdahl shocked the world by announcing his retirement from the world of main stream music to the mellow sounds of Jazz. We all wish him and his former band members the best of luck in the future.

Mayor Melvin Stjärnblom has not been available to comment on the poor upkeep of Hyde Park which hampered the attendance of everyone's shows. National Theatre managed to attract 28377 people despite these conditions however which made them the most popular act at the festival. Melvin Stjärnblom's secretary promises that the next festival will be held in a much cleaner environment.

The most popular song played on the festival was Kissing the Frog which was excelently covered by Unjustified Dismissal. Worst song was by far Ya moist performed by RootDiggers which left the crowd howling for mercy.

Wyld Stallions pulled off the worst show of the week proving that Edgar Mansfield is all talk. The Stallions couldn't even set off their fireworks properly. Fireworks seemed to be problematic for BarbapappaZ as well. A rampant fire forced Peter Gottbo to turn himself into a fire truck, much to his fans amusement.

Awards will be handed out to the winners during the week when Melvin comes out of hiding.

These are the results from the festival:

1 Kissing Slits terrific (24522)
2 The Unbroken Few great (23691)
3 National Theatre awesome (28377)
4 BarbapapaZ splendid (20355)
5 The Knights who say Ni! splendid (18474)
6 x2 sweet (18825)
7 Fake Plastic Tree sweet (20325)
8 Dark Angel good (10335)
9 Counterattack good (10209)
10 Unjustified Dismissal good (15840)
11 Unlikely good (7742)
12 Phantasy good (15501)
13 TheTraktor good (12891)
14 Dr Prodigy pleasant (17673)
15 Paroxysm pleasant (15789)
16 RootDiggers pleasant (13770)
17 Melting Tree pleasant (3193)
18 DSPL nice (10692)
19 Charlotte Big nice (14388)
20 Serita nice (9672)
21 Les Claypool decent (4410)
22 Digital Divine decent (9747)
23 The Vanguard decent (6452)
24 Alex Osbourne decent (12075)
25 Martini Jean above average (13104)
26 Emma de Vine above average (12804)
27 AC/DC above average (10689)
28 Cameo in the night above average (6321)
29 seven's fallacy above average (11264)
30 Tepid Soul mediocre (10110)
31 Wyld Stallyns mediocre (9657)

Straight from Santas Workshop, here are the latest additions.

Employees and their Effect
Frank Blomdahl has been extremely busy reworking the way employees are handled by the game. He's written some extensive and helpful sections on this in the help section which all of you company owners might benefit from reading.

CEOs of Studios in full control
Attention company owners: CEOs in studios now have full control of the artists signed in the locale. This includes releasing records, ordering CDs, and dealing with contracts.

VIPs and the 2000 mark
As we mentioned way back the first 1000 who signed up to the game got a free life time VIP membership to the site. The second 1000 users who signed up got 6 months of VIP membership. We're now approaching this number and that means that new players will not receive the extra VIP functions in the game. This will bring with it a whole new set of issues to deal with in the game and the beta will continue some time more till we have plenty of non VIP players so we can see how the VIP/NON-VIP balance works out. Changes and alterations to things regarding this are bound to take place.

Eventually players will be able to purchase their VIP passes for a wee fee. Functionality for this is on its way. The cost of getting a VIP pass will be truly small and not at all in the same league as most other online games. It's more of a token of appreciation really… A small contribution to the game to keep the it running and developing into something bigger and better.

Changes to Shows
Bonus points are now scored in shows for playing a lot of your own material (Songs written by actual band members).

Date & Time Formats
We're currently making it possible for you to select how you want dates and times displayed in the game. You can select this in your user settings. Untill the system is fully implemented throughout the site you might see the date format switch. When booking events take a second to make sure you're using the old or the new system. The new system is visible at the airports right now. Eventually all booking functions will look like this.

Translation of Popomundo
The game is undergoing a fundamental change in how it handles the written texts in the game. When we're done this will allow us to publish the game in a whole bunch of different languages. We hope to have this system fully operational in roughly a month. After that we'll try and have our first version in another language out as soon as possible.

Pay Day has Moved
You are all gonna love it… We are moving pay day from Sundays to Fridays. It will happen shortly after midnight Friday morning. Don't spend it all on expensive drinks during the weekend though… the rent is still due on Sundays.

We are also moving Locale Quality updates/maintenance to roughly the same time of week. This is the main reason for this change: They should happen at the same time, to prevent some ugly tricks that were possible before.

This means that there will be no Locale update on Wednesday - it will be delayed until Friday this week. However, because the changes announced in the thread about DEV ANNOUNCEMENT: Employees goes live at the same time, this will give CEOs a few more days to adjust their employee choices.

Untill Next week… May the Bugs be with you!

Here are the artists that qualified for the festival in London.

Guitars were smashed, vocal cords busted, and fans fainted. The bands fought long and hard. The following were left stading and will return to duke it out in Hyde Park on November 15-19:

New York
1. Kissing Slits
2. Unjustified Dismissal
3. AC/DC
4. Phantasy
5. Counterattack
6. Seven's Fallacy

London
1. National Theatre
2. The Knights who say Ni!
3. RootDiggers
4. Dr. Prodigy
5. Dark Angel
6. Serita

Stockholm
1. The Traktor
2. DSPL
3. Melting Tree
4. Emma Devine
5. Alex Asbourne
6. The Vanguard

Melbourne
1. Unbroken Few
2. X2
3. Martini Jean
4. Charlotte Big
5. Wyld Stallyns
6. Cameo in the Night

Los Angeles
1. Fake Plastic Tree
2. BarbapapaZ
3. Paroxysm
4. Unlikely
5. Les Claypool
6. Digital Divine

Special Banner Award Entry Guerilla Girl

Invitations to the festival will be handed out by Melvin Stjärnblom towards the end of this week. DO NOT reject these as it might jeapordize your entry in to the festival. We all know Melvin is a busy man counting all his money and he might not take the time to invite you again.

The order in which the artists will go on stage will be based on how well they did in the preliminaries. The festival will start off with the underdogs then move on to the top contenders.

Some final advice to the competitors in the festival:
1. Take a look at the developments news concerning Original Songs. Although this change isn't great it could bump up the result of your show a notch.

2. Be on time and don't perform in London before the festival if you want to maximise your ticket sales.

Although this past week has been more about bugs and tweaks you still might want to read this.

Local Times
As of a couple of days ago, all the scheduled events you see in the game are based on the local time where the event is supposed to take place.

This means that if you read about or book a show at eight o'clock at the Red Lantern in NYC. The show will take place at eight o'clock LOCAL time in NYC.

The tickets for all your flights show the time of arrival AND departure in local times as well. Just like in real life.

Original Songs
The amount of original songs that you play in your shows has now been made more important to the outcome of your shows. So if you're on the fence about what songs to play. Pick the ones that have been written by band members. This has always been a good idea in the game, but now it's even more so.

The reviews of your shows now have little stars next to the songs you play to give you an idea how the audience. The more stars the better. A minor addition that was asked for a long time ago but somehow got lost in the pipeline. These stars DO NOT reflect the added bonuses from playing your own songs. Keep this in mind. The audience will most likely react positively to some swinging covers that they all know and love, but the “person” reviewing the show might look at it differently. We would also like to point out that it's not wise to play songs by artists that you're competing with.

Instruments
We're holding off on implementing the final stuff on your band roles and instruments till the festival is over. It doesn't seem fair to change things too much before the competition. So look for this as soon as the fat lady has sung in Hyde Park.

What's going on in the deep dark dungeons of the developers in Popomundo.

Band Member Roles
As of last week band leaders will be able to select what roles his or her band members will have. These roles will allow you to tailor your band to suit your tastes as well as help the game determine how well you do on shows. In other words… It's good if your guitarist brings an actual guitar with him on stage as well as having some good guitar playing skills.

You're only able to select one role for each band member. Some of you might argue that you should be able to pick more than one role as that would be more realistic. Bruce Springsteen was after all both the lead singer and a guitarist of his band. Phil Collins was both a drummer and a singer etc. But in Popomundo you only select your MAIN role. Don't forget about skills outside of your main area of expertise though as these contribute to the outcome of shows as well. To clarify: in this game Bruce Springsteen would be a LEAD SINGER with good vocals and quitar playing skills.

In the future we might allow you to select a secondary role for your characters as well. But for the moment there's no real need to. Time will tell.

Later on your band's music genre will help the game decide if you have a good setup of roles amongst the members. For example a Heavy Metal act would probably be well off with a combination of singers, drummers, and guitarists, perhaps with a keyboard player thrown in for good measure. We will allow for a lot of flexibility in this system to leave it open to your imagination on what you think your band should look like.

Discounts on Recording Sessions
From now on all your contracts come with a set discount percentage. This discount comes into effect when you book a recording session in a studio that's owned by the same company that owns the locale which have a record contract with. It's up to you if you wish to use it though. You're still free to record your tracks wherever you want.

The CEO of a Studio can set the discount anywhere between 0-100% when offering new contracts. This means in effect that your recording costs could be ZERO in case of a 100% discount. A discount of 0% obviously means that you have to pay the full price of the recording session.

Renegotiating Contracts
From the pen of Frank Blomdahl
It is now possible to re-negotiate a record contract: The compnay just offers the artist a contract as it normally would. If it is one of the existing artists, and the artist signs the contract, the old contract is simply expired and the new one takes effect. As before, it is not possible to sign a contract with another studio if you already have an existing contract.

A minor piece of bad news for record company owners is that it now costs 500 US$ to draft a record contract. It is those darned lawyers that will charge you for the contract writing…

Read up on the latest changes and implementations of the game.

There's a lot of stuff happening in the game right now. Please read the whole issue of the magazine to get more information on this as it's not only covered in this article.

Giving Money to Your Artist
It's not longer possible to transfer money from your character to your artist. We've implemented this change to stop cloners from laundering money through artists. Those of you with really high salaries (CEOs and such) might frown upon this change as you won't be able to force feed your artist with cash anymore. It does make for a more interesting challenge where the artist actually have to make it on its own. Plus it also lessens the the huge advantage of having CEOs in new bands.

To help out newbies in the game with cashflow problems. We've made it possible to pay for jam sessions with your personal wallet directly instead if the artist is broke.

Active Workers and their Presence
The Quality of a locale is now only determined by workers that are located in the city and have been logged on the last two weeks. CEOs should take this into account when spending money on workers. Workers who are in a different city or that aren't active will not benefit your locale AT ALL. CEOs are not subject to this rule however and can handle their job from wherever they want.

Changes to the handling of Contracts
We're currently undergoing drastic changes in the system handling the way contracts tie artists and companies together. Contracts will glue artists to specific studio locales much more than before.

To offer an artist a contract these days you have to do so under the locale management of your studio.

Also, there will be a discount system implemented that will benefit artists that record their stuff in studios that belong to the company they are signed with.

Salary Caps
Following the great debate on the existance of salary caps we've decided to make this an issue of game politics. Minimum wages and salary caps are now decided by the mayor in each city. Since Melvin Stjärnblom is the only mayor in the game right now. He's decided to increase the cap to 300% of the base salary level and heighten the minimum wage a bit also. As soon as other mayors are introduced into the game, expect this to change drastically.

An industrial breakthrough last week means that the first CD production factory has opened up in New York. This also means that CD supply will be mandatory for record sales, from next week (start of November) on. The factory, Imperialist Disc, is operated by financial magnate Conrad Gardener:

- The subquality CDs that records have been sold on until now have annoyed the public by breaking and sounding crappy. From now on everyone who wants to sell records has to have a supply of actual CDs or sell nothing, Gardener says smugly.

Worldwide Mayor Stjärnblom has announced that the past week was the last that the old crappy CDs could be used for record sales, so all Record Studio owners now have a week to ensure they have a proper supply of CDs. Fortunately, mr Gardener has kindly supplied roughly 5 weeks of free initial supply of CDs to all records being sold last week.

Record Studio owners should take a close look at the new more detailed list of Records that lists both how many records were sold the previous week, and how much supply they have.

It's time for the second Popomundo Festival.

It's now been a couple of months since the festival in Central Park, NYC took place. In fact, many of you who's playing now weren't even around for it.

Last time we selected a few of the top artists that registered early on and were active in the game. This time we're going to have preliminary competitions at a few selected clubs across the Popomundo Globe. The top contenders from each of these preliminaries will make it to the big festival.

The city of London will be the host of the next festival and the stage will be set up in Hyde Park. Keep in mind that the big outdoor arenas can do wonders for your cash flow in case you're somehwat known in the city!

Awards in the form of special items will be handed out to the festival winners. Any underdogs doing well in the festival can most likely expect a boost in their fame as well.

The Clubs selected for the preliminaries are:
New York: IndeRythm
London: The Funky Buddha Lounge
Stockholm: 7th Heaven
Melbourne: Sign of Gratitude
Los Angeles: The Lost Dot

The preliminaries will take place on November 1-5 in two weeks time. All you have to do as an artist is to book a gig at one of these clubs on these dates to take part in the qualifying round. You're only allowed to play at ONE of these clubs ONCE. Artists that play at more than one of these clubs will be disqualified from the competition. The ten artists with the highest rating on their gigs in each club will make it to the big festival.

The Hyde Park festival will take place two weeks later November 15-19.

More information coming in next week's issue.

What's new this week?

Inactive players
Characters are now retired after three months of any inactivity. The retired characters loose their jobs and get buried six feet under at the nearest cemetery. Players that log in to find that their character has been retired will have to create a new character.

Giving Items to Your Friends
Giving away items to other characters in the game is one of the cloners favorite past times. Hence, we've implemented a friendship check whenever characters want to give stuff away. Characters in the game now have to be friends in the game if they want to hand valuable items to each other. A valuable item is an item that costs more than 50 dollars for a store to stock up on. Don't forget that you have to be located in the same locale if you want to give someone an item.

Your Home Town
From now on we're keeping track of which city is your character's home town. This addition is needed for our political system which is under development. This means that all of you who has registered to Popomundo before we implemented this must select a home town in the game. You'll be automatically asked to select the home town when you get to your character's page. Anyone who hasn't picked their home town in a week or two will get their home town picked for them.

We will use your home city will be used to determine in which places you get to vote on political decisions and such. Other uses such as passports etc might also be implemented.

Fame and Popularity
From now on you can see every artists fame and popularity in the different countries and market segments of the game. The fame in a country is based on your fame in a all the cities combined. The Market Segment Popularity is based on how well you've catered to the specific market. The Market Popularities are very much in a development phase so you'd be best off not concentrating too much on them right now.

Banner Competition
The banner competition is coming along fine, although the entries have been slim to say the least. So get cracking all you artists out there! Don't forget that an EPS of the Popomundo logo is available for download in the media section when you first log on to the site.

Some important updates so take the time to read it.

Handing Money to Companies and Shares
Some players have used clones to donate money to their companies. For this reason we're withdrawing the possibility to donate money to any company in the game. You can now only donate cash to a company in which you own shares. (We've confiscated the money from the quilty companies.)

We know that a lot of you have used this option to help your friends out in order to get shares in your companies once the shareholding system is up. Shares will most likely be distributed through a public stock market thoughto prevent people from cheating as well as make for an interesting gaming experience. So this won't really be possible.

To make up for this we're offering you the opportunity to simply hand Jonas information on how you wish shares to be distributed amongst your friends and we'll take care of it. There will be a thread in the forum where everyone affected can do this.

Financial Aid and Jobs
We've made a change in the rules that states that in order to get a job or be recruited for a job you have to register yourself down at city hall. Your willingness to accept a job is also a requirement if you want to receive financial aid.

This new system allows for people to remain happily unemployed without being recruited against their will by companies in need of workers.

Travels
In order to stimulate travel in the game we've decided to move your characters to the airport automatically in time for departure. So now you no longer have to log on an extra time just to make sure you're at the airport.

Cheating Part MCXVI
As of late people have used clones to create bands, play one gig, take the money, then create a new band and play once more immediately afterwards thereby milking the system for som extra quick cash. Although this method is counter productive in the long run and will prevent you from reaching the real goldmines in the game, some of you found the temptation too great regardless. We've therefore made it harder to get cash from the first gigs for new artists. This added difficult wears off in a week or two from the first show so all you honest players don't really have to worry about it.

Dropping Items
Dropping items in public places will make the vanish from the game altogether. We're implementing this change in order to prevent people from smuggling stolen goods between characters without records in their diaries as well as keeping the world free from unimportant stuff just laying around. Dropping stuff at home works still works fine and is a good way to stockpile the stuff you can't carry with you.

Love Making
I'm sure we've all heard Mark Colchester brag about him being a Sex God in the forum already. It's now impossible to do that well in bed without proper love making skills first. Rush down to your local book store for a copy of the Kama Sutra. Why we're bothering to implement crazy stuff like this will be revealed some time in the near future.

It is now possible for companies to sell their locales to other companies. This property trading takes place as an open auction running for a week.

This change is part of the ongoing effort of making the Popomundo economy work as realistic and “self-supporting” as possible. if, for instance, a city gets more locales of a type than it can realistically support, then compnaies will be interested in selling their locales off and those who wish to get their hands on, say, a club to run on their own can buy that used local instead of crowding the market by buying a brand new locale.

Buying brand new locales will still be available as an option, of course.

To see locales that are for sale, go to the Company page (assuming you are president of one) and click the “Locales for sale” link in the right menu. if there are any forsale, click the BID! link to see the details.

All the details of this new feature has been addded to the Help section in a new chapter called “Selling Locales”.

Sex, Burglary, and Relationships.
Invite your friends to your place for some sweet loving. You can now enter the homes of anyone who you have a friendship of 80% or better. If you and your special friend are at home at the same time you can engage in some romantic activities. Don't forget to use some preservatives which is now available at your local shop. (Company owners should stock up on rubbers as soon as possible then.) This also means that your friends can pick up your stuff that you have laying around at home. Can you trust your friends? If not you might consider ending your relationship with them.

Company Sales
Those of you who have been owning companies have probably noticed a mysterious feature that has given your locales money even when no actual character has spent any money there. This feature has been called “imaginary sales” (at least by us devs). The money from this have been mysteriously conjured out of thin air, but oddly based on the number of characters present in he locale.

This has now been removed!

Instead, we've implemented a similar, and much more logical feature (I hope you can agree)… This is it:

All the money that are spent by characters on their priorities such as “shopping”, “exercise at the gym”, “partying” and so on will now be distributed among the relevant locales of the city the character is in. How much money each locale will get depends (obviously) on the number of competing locales and the amount of money spent.

The quality of the locale do matter, so the quality of shops will matter from now on (it didn't before).

While making these changes, we've made some minor adjustments to the costs of each priority: Partying will now, generally, be cheaper than before (although there'll be a minimum you have to spend, around 5$). Exercising at the gym will require a small cost of between 4 and 7$ per update (gym owners too must have something to live on…:)

Resting is still free - lying lacy in your bed watching the ceiling, thinking about our loved one or Sartre's philosophy is the last bastion not yet conquered by consumer capitalism

The purpose of these changes are:
* To make the economy more robust against cheating (under the old system, there'd be some ways of abuse not available in the new one).

* To make the economy more stable and controllable (the “what goes in must come out” principle instead of “money appearing out of nowhere” principle).

* To open up interesting possibilities for adding new locales in the future. Won't say more than that, except that it is indeed in our pipeline that cities should get a much richer variety of locale types.

One feet off the pipeline, two more added…

Rating Lyrics
We thought long and hard about what we should do with all those wonderful lyrics some of you players write. There's just no way of having the game automatically pick out the good ones. For this reason we implemented a player controlled rating function this past week. This way all of you can easily rate all the lyrics. The results of these ratings show up in the Player Top Lyrics chart. (The chart needs some calibration work done on it still since I underestimated the efforts some people go through in order to get their stuff up on the charts. When will I learn…?)

Personal information
For all those of you who wish to share some information about yourself with the rest of the community we've added this possibility. Go to your user information page and type in whatever you feel like. (Please remember not to write things about yourself that you don't want complete strangers to be able to read.)

Thievery
In the beginning people got cash when they started their game. This caused cloners to abuse the system. Now they abuse the system by registering extra characters they use as thieves in the game. Hence we've changed the system so newcomers can't steal anything at all. Everyone will now have to buy a very expensive book first if they want to become a thief.

Valid emails on Registration and Passwords
New people that wish to register on the site won't be able to play untill they've received an email with a temporary password handed to them. They can then go to their user information page and change the password to something they like better. (This also means that all of you who are already playing the game can also change your passwords now. I know some of you asked for this before.)

Firing people
When a company fires a worker the quality of the locale is instantly lowered by roughly 40% as punishment. (Both the customers and remaining workers are put off by the event and will need a few weeks to get back to normal.) This will force CEOs to think twice about firing people.

Last but not least
This coming week… Invite that special someone over to your place for some privacy. ;)

Have a nice week.

The end of the summer is slowly closing in on us. Soon there won't be ANY excuses for not sitting in front of the computer screen anymore.

New Genres of Music
We just added Jazz to the music genres of the game. Hopefully we'll have our own Louis Armstrong not too long from now. If you didn't notice it before Country and Western was also added a week ago. The observant of you might also have noticed that these new genres aren't represented on the radio in every country. Jazz for example is only on the air in the U.S. This is just a small step in making the Popomundo world a little different from place to place. We don't wan't all cities and countries to be carbon copies of each other.

More Money
Sales from records have been really low in the past. From now on the sales will increase a bit. This week the sales should have doubled for most of you. The coming weeks will show even greater income from record sales.

Freedom of Speech
The chat is now up and running. We've currently only opened up one room to chat in for the whole game. In the future when more people use the chat we'll add rooms for each city as well. When these rooms are filling up we'll consider making each locale in the game into a chat room.

The Coming Week
The coming week will see more additions to the company section. We're not quite ready to introduce the stock market yet but expect to finally be able to share ownership of your company with your friends. Among other things!

Tweaks and Additions

TWEAK 1: The punishment for performing back to back shows within the same week has been increased. It's also more sensitive to just exactly how many days have passed since your last show.

TWEAK 2: Companies can now link to their own company graphics as well as write a short text about the company itself.

TWEAK 3: Somewhat improved messaging system with a list of outgoing messages as well as incoming.

The past week was mostly dedicated to the company end of things but we managed to squeeze some other stuff in there as well.

As most of you have noticed, the addition of the CEO function in the game has brought a much needed boost to the somewhat stagnant locales in the game. We're already seeing more items on sale, more people employed, and higher quality locales.

The coming week we'll spend yet some more time on companies. Companies need a way to communicate with their CEOs and we'd like the possibility for you to set the salaries individually for your employees.

We're also expecting to see the birth of two new cities in Popomundo. Melvin Stjärnblom has once again agreed to make sure the most important buildings are set up, (A hospital, an airport, a city hall, and a prison.) but this time he won't set up any other locales. Those will be left to the players to create.

In order to prevent new players from starting their games in these ghost towns, only cities with a population of 150 or more will be made available to them.

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT RECORDING TRACKS:
We've recalibrated the code that determines the outcome of your recording sessions. The new code will look more at the quality of locales as well as give a more accurate influence from the producer. It will also make it easier to get decent results but harder to get excellent ones.

Almost all of you will benefit from this change. Although if you have a badly rehearsed song to record you might get poorer results than what you are used to.

TWEAK 1: The reviews of your shows now tell you how your bandmembers get along. ( If you're not a solo artist that is. )

TWEAK 2: Important addition to the song writing process: It's now an advantage to spend as much time at home as possible when you're working on your songs.

TWEAK 3: Your list of friends will now show you who's got you on their lists as well as linking directly to other's lists of friends. Check it out. It's not as confusing as it sounds.

TWEAK 4: Thievery made harder to prevent rookie thieves from getting away with theft so easily.

TWEAK 5: 20% discounts are now offered to all employees when buying products at their place of work.

TWEAK 6: Prices on plane tickets have been cut in half to make travelling easier.

TWEAK 7: The number of stars on your skill levels might have changed. This is just a cosmetic change and has not affected your actual skill level. All skills now begin with ZERO stars.

Despite killer cockroaches we're managing to squeeze some new stuff into the game.

This past week of development saw the release of the player controlled magazine which you're reading now as well as a whole bunch of tweaks to the system. The most important tweak that you should be aware of is that your song writing skills and Poetry skills now affect up to 20% of the quality of your songs melody and lyrics.

The company end of things is slowly improving as well… The woes of business megastars such as Erik Stridgren and Melvin Stjärnblom have finally been heard.

Everyone who's in charge of a major company in the game has soon realized what a daunting task it is to run a global enterprise. Hence we've decided to bump up the priority of CEO functionality in the game.

This means that all you lucky ones with the best job in the game will actually have to do some work to earn your money. As a CEO or Manager of a locale you'll be expected to hire people, restock products, set prices etc. In order for this to work, company owners will also be able to give Manager/CEO positions directly to characters of their choice in adition to advertise them openly in the magazine.

The CEO feature will be installed sometime this wednesday when this article is published.

Company owners now also have the possibility to write short descriptions of their locales as well as put up graphics in the same manner as artists and character graphics. Minor stuff, but we'd still like to mention it here for those of you who's missed it.

More stuff coming… so stay tuned.

Sick of BarbapappaZ hogging the top radio spots all over the world. Peter Gottbo has topped the charts long enough…

This week we're going to update and tweak the code that handles the radio charts. We hope to make the charts more alive and reflect the new songs that are being produced a bit more. We're also changing the game so that it's easier for the underdogs to overthrow the ruling acts in Popomundo.

However, the problem isn't just with the Popomundo code, we need you players to STOP playing the top contender's songs. Otherwise they'll NEVER come tumbling down. Picking the most famous songs isn't the answer anymore as it was before. You should pick one that has it's Fame as far ahead of its Wear. Hence there are many other songs to choose from than “It ain't easy being green!”…

Remember… don't ever play songs from you competition.

The first popomundo festival is over… here's the scoop.

The festival started out with two of the local favorites, and it's no real surprise that they drew the biggest crowds. Over 30,000 people showed up in central park to see BarbapappaZ and Mudlicker. Unfortunately they didn't perform as well as some of the other contenders and they'd better watch out if they're not going to relinquish their positions in NYC.

For a while it seemed like The Unbroken Few would put on the best show. But Melvin Stjärnblom had saved the best for last… National Theatre showed us all how to rock the leaves off the trees in Central Park and managed to put on a SWEET show. Apparently National Theatre's reputation did NOT preceed them however, and a lot of New Yorkers didn't bother to watch them play. Only 3960 people showed up.

These are the final standings, the number after the score shows how large the audience was:

National theatre ~ Sweet, 3960
The Unbroken Few ~ Pleasant, 4048
Guerilla Band ~ Nice, 1672
Barbapappaz ~ Above Average, 34135
Fake Plastic Tree ~ Above Average, 3160
Kissing Slits ~ Above Average, 5896
Soulgate ~ Mediocre, 2200
Mudlicker ~ Below Average, 30000
Nuclear Nutcase ~ Below Average, 3168
Sass ~ Below Average, 1056
Paroxysm ~ Poor, 638
Kermit for President ~ Terrible, 1936
Counterattack ~ Terrible, 1320
Rubber Bracelet ~ Dreadful, 2728
Depth Charge ~ Dropped Out, 0

One copy of the new “Book of Composing” will be awarded to each of the top three contenders. This book will not be on sale for another couple of weeks.

The consolation prize for smallest audience goes to Paroxysm and they will receive a copy of “Book on Showmanship” to do with as they please. Judging from their review they sorely need it…

All contenders get an honorable star in their careers. Except for the top three which get gold, silver, and bronze stars.

Regardless of the fact that National Theatre ended their gig with “Send Melvin to Prison”, Melvin Stjärnblom is happy with how the firt festival of Popomundo turned out. Rumour has it that another festival is already being planned.

Relationships are up and running in Popomundo.

This week's big news are definitely the character relationships. The relationship function will be tweaked over the next couple of weeks so if your think that they are too hard to maintain or too easy etc. please report so in the forum.

Take a moment to read about relationships in the rules and see how they affect the game. Actually, if you haven't taken a look in the help section for awhile, it might be a good idea to read them again as they are continuously updated.

We're currently busy with tanning ourselves in the pleasant summer weather as well as working on the clothing for your characters. The clothing part of the game is presenting a greater challenge than we anticipated… but hopefully we'll get it up and running within a week. The tricky part is creating a system that allow the clothing to affect your popularity amongst different market segments and genre popularitites.

Cheaters seem to have been the topic of the week… people register multiple characters and beg, steal, and rip other players off. This lessens the enjoyment for the majority of us who wishes to play the game on equal terms.

In an effort to make the game as fair as possible. We've therefore removed the possibility to give money to other characters and artists. We've also removed the possibility to launder money by trading items…

This makes things harder and less “open” for the rest of us. In the future when we won't hand out VIP passes to everyone, these functions might once again be available to the VIPs of the game.

The Relationship Feature we mentioned last week is coming along fine and will be available before the end of this week. The relationships between band members will be an important factor when deciding how well your performances turn out, so take care of each other and play nice!

As soon as the Popomundo Festival is over, we're going to update the engine that handles the performances. This will alter ( heighten ) the scores you receive slightly.

See you next week!

We've come the the conclusion that free life time memberships to Popomundo will no longer be issued to newcomers after we hit 1000 players. Players 1000-2000 will receive a six month free membership. From then on all new players will be “regular” members.

Regular members will still be able to play the game for free. Regular members will also be able to compete for fame and glory with the same odds as VIPs. VIPs will have no tremendously unfair advantages over regular members.

You can read more about VIPs and regular members in the EXTRA section.

The game now issues experience points to your characters which you can freely distribute between your character's attributes.

Experience Points are earned by doing all sorts of things in Popomundo. Certain things like putting on shows are obvious while others perhaps a litte more obscure.

The experience points that you collect while playing the game will be distributed once a week. When you've received them you'll be given the option to increase your attributes on your character.

Plan the distribution of your experience points carefully. You'll probably not get enough points in your character's lifetime to max out ALL attributes. ( HINT: certain attributes can probably be improved by other means… )

When we're not fighting bugs the size of killer cockroaches and trying to keep the players under “control”, we do manage to get a few enhancments into the game.

If you haven't noticed, prisons have already been built, and the first inmates are expected to “move in” any day now. To handle the legal aspects of the game we've introduced Sheriff's and judges to the game. Four sheriffs have already been selected to take track down and bust the criminals. The role of Judge will remain in my hands for the time being…

Items are ready to use… mind you that with the exception of books, alcohol is pretty much the only item we've had time to release on the market. More will be available soon however.

Within the coming week of Popomundo play we expect to have started up a system for dealing with relationships between characters. Keep your eyes open for this one… it should be a lot of fun.

The best of the best will gather in New York on July 12-18 for a musical showdown.

Since his release from the hospital mayor Melvin Stjärnblom has been busy arranging the first Popomundo Musical Festival. The festival will take place outdoors in the warm summer air in Central Park.

Prizes for best performances will be handed out as well as other treats for the bands participating. Melvin Stjärnblom hopes the event will be a huge success and wishes to arrange more stuff like this in the future!

The invitations went out on June 29th to the bands Melvin wished will attend the event. The following bands have been invited so far:

Mudlicker
BarbapappaZ
Fake Plastic Tree
Guerilla Band
Soulgate
Paroxysm
The Unbroken Few
Rubber Bracelet
Depth Charge
Oz
x2
Counterattack
Poutyblonde
Kissing Slits
sass
Abandon
National Theatre

Stay tuned for more information next week…

Due to one player's abuse of the “Crime of Cloning” ( registering more than one character ) we've decided to let every new player start the game with ZERO cash.

We want players to be able to register and start playing instantly without having to wait for us to approve them first. Unfortunately, this makes it possible for people to register multiple characters. By not giving any money to new players the Crime of Cloning will be less effective and tempting.

We're sorry. But the world is full of people like this that ruin good stuff for honest folk. Both Popomundo and the real world.

Eventually we'll have prisons in the game to deal with these culprits in an entertaining fashion. Untill then, we'll just keep track of them, or simply ban them from the game.

The Grim Reaper has finally made his way to Popomundo. Please stay away from him.

As of now there are cemeteries available in most cities of Popomundo. The Cemetery will be the final destination for your character in the game. Characters that are mistreated by their “owners” will most likely end up here sooner rather than later.

If you haven't noticed before, the timeline in the game is somewhat accelerated, so it's not at all impossible that you will actually witness your character die of old age. But don't worry… before this happen we'll reveal how to extend the game beyond your character's death.

Cemeteries will serve as our hall of fame. Here, the legends will gather and haunt us with their greatness.

More and more of you are beginning to reap the awards from selling records, please read about the following changes.

We've made the routines that generate the record sales much more sensitive and advanced. This means that some of you will make less money, while some of you will make more.

What determines the amount of cash you receive from record sales is this: The overall quality of your music and lyrics, the production quality and how well you performed the songs when recording them. Each city in the game will generate sales depending on how famous you are in that city and the popularity of the genre is also taken into account. The number of tracks on the album is also taken into account.

All this makes it kind of harder to produce top selling albums. But in the long run we're aiming for more rewarding game play.

The royalties from songs playing on the radio remain the same for the time being. You'll make most of your money here probably seeing as most of you will land pretty high up in the charts due to lack of competition. :)

Perhaps it's the winter season that keeps the Australians active on the internet. Perhaps Popomundo has that secret ingredient that attracts the people down under… We don't know…

What we do know is that the Australians have been the most active players in Popomundo and their input have already contributed to the development of the game. For this we are extremely thankful. In return we'd like to offer them something in return.

Thus we give you the CITY OF MELBOURNE!

Mayor Melvin Stjärnblom has built the essential stuff for the city and Jonas Holtenerberg has contributed with a club, a jam place, and a book store. Other than that, the city is pretty much abandoned.

We leave it up to you, the players, to make Melbourne a prosperous and wealthy city to play in. Start your own companies and command the future of Australia in Popomundo!

Playing with more than one character is not allowed in Popomundo.

Local Popomundo authorities have tracked down players that have more than one character registered. This something we do not allow.

Although we can understand the lure of having more than one character in the game it does give people an unfair advantage in the game and therefore we consider this cheating. This kind of cheating lessens the enjoyment of the game for those who play fair and by the rules.

The guilty will be punished! Jails will be added to the game and the culprits will be dealt with.

NOTE: The Popomundo Authories are aware that this information might have been unclear to its population and this will be taken into account on judgement day. The best thing to do for the guilty now is to quit playing with their extra characters and concentrate on their main one!

A recent Popomundo survey reveals which artists are the most popular with different market segments, read it and get a clue.

ADULT MEN favor Heavy Metal act Nuclear Tunes and electronica crazed Dr.Prodigy. It seems as if the men are stuck in the eighties. Perhaps it's time for Crocket and Tubbs of Miamy Vice to make it big in Popomundo.

ADULT WOMEN favor Heavy Metal acts Kermit the Rocker and Nuclear Tunes. Both of which had their lead artists hospitalized for poor health recently. It seems those ladies find the Rock'n'Roll lifestyle attractive!

TEENAGE BOYS seem to have a thing for Punk Rockers Mudlicker and the Rock act OZ. Both Mudlicker and OZ seem to get a hang of putting on good shows.

TEENAGE GIRLS like electric sounds of DR.Prodigy and DJ Kaiser. However, it seems as if the young girls would prefer to get down with some reggae beats, perhaps a new Bob Marley will take this place shortly!

Interesting facts my friends… For more information you might want to take a look at these artists repertoire to see how they've achieved these results.

Now's the time to grab the gold and get ahead of the rest.

One of the best ways of making money in Popomundo is by having your tunes play on the radio. Since the population in Popomundo is very low these days, it's not hard to produce songs that will place high up on the radio charts.

So if you haven't released an album yet, now is a good time. Don't forget to get that record contract first though. Without a Record Contract you won't get far in this game. ( If you can't convince the owner of your local record company you could perhaps find one advertiset in this magazine. When this is going to press there should be at least three contracts advertised… )

Globalization is here, and the music scene is no longer just a matter of Western music genres. The Popomundo Universe now includes the new music genre World Music. Right now, it still attracts very few record buyers and specializing in World Music sure won't attract any significant numbers of fans, but for the die-hard Diggeridoo fans, there is now an option. Perhaps in the future this genre will become more popular?

We've all seen it coming… the day one of the members of “Kermit” would be hospitalized.

Shortly after the inauguration of the new Hospital “Södersjukhuset” in stockholm, Linnea Almskog was rushed there in a brand spanking new ambulance. By the time she arrived at the hospital, her heart had almost stopped due to her poor lifestyle.

We suspect a new trend in hospital visits throughout Popomundo the next coming weeks. The New York City Medical clinic will at least have their hands full once they get their hands on their mayor Melvin Stjärnblom.

Get your own Record Contract here in the magazine. Local record companies have begun to distribute record contracts that are immediately up for grabs in our Classifieds Section.

The contracts are released locally. This means you'll have to be located in the same city as the record company which is offering the contract. So if these open contracts are all taken in New York City, take a look at the Stockholm edition of It's POP to see if there's any left there. If so you might want to consider taking the first plane out of JFK to Arlanda.

Remember that the contracts offered might not be the BEST contracts. If the contract offer you less than 30% of the profits you might consider getting in touch with the record companies personally to try and get a better contract! But then again… that's just MY opinion.

Greetings from the deep, deep vault of Popomundo Statistics. At the time of this article's writing these three newcomers have managed to separate themselves from the rest:

1 BarbapappaZ
2 DJ Kaiser
3 Hasse

What is the secret to their success? Blatant ripoffs of covers most likely. Superior song writing skills? we doubt it…

Regardless of the reasons, we congratulate BarbapappaZ who's managed to become the most famous newcomer this week. ( Disclaimer: By the time this article has gone to print other newcomers might have surpassed the efforts of these three bands. Check out THE CHARTS for more information. )

Are you having problems finding a place put on a show… Aren't there any open shows advertised in your town? From now on, you can book a show for your band at all clubs that allow this. It's up to the owner of the locale to decide if he or she wishes to let anyone book their locale for shows.

So what are you waiting for? Now you have NO excuses for not getting a gig for you band!

So what does the world of Popomundo look like? Take a look at the new map, you might see something you recognize…

This week saw the addition of a map function on the charts page of Popomundo. This map will grow and become more advanced with time. For the moment though, you can at least see some information on the amount of inhabitants of Popomundo, its growth and how many are logged in at the time.

Click here to view it!

You too can become a contributer to this online magazine for the Popomundo world! See that menu up top where it says “Submissions”. Click on it and give us the scoop on what's going down on YOUR Popomundo block.

The more the merrier!

Each article submitted to the magazine will be reviewed by the magazine editors and either rejected or PUBLISHED FOR ALL TO READ!

Do you have what it takes to become the Ernest Hemmingway of the Popomundo trenches? And remember… no cruel jokes about Bubbles and Michael and their new career. In Popomundo we're nice to people!