James, Mal, and Nara
#Opensim,  Random

Opensim Has Lost Its Anchorman

On InWorld Review with the great Mal Burns
From the left: James Atloud, Mal Burns, Nara Malone

Mal Burns passed away last week. The Opensimulator community is sharing their grief over this loss.

I met Mal Burns when the Nook team did their first presentation for OSCC about a dozen years ago. He was our moderator. We’d done a hypergrid stories project showcasing stories from several Opensim authors and artists. My avatar name is Nara Nook and Mal always pronounced it Nara Nuke. Probably because my projects had a way of nuking things. That first presentation was no exception. About three stories in our dragon shapeshifting NPC crashed the region. I was frozen in Panic. Mal just had this big cheerful personality that smoothly chattered on while the Nook team was scrambling for solutions. Our conversation stayed live on the air even though our in-world presence was gone. Shannan logged into another conference region, dressed up like a dragon, Mal kept having a mostly one-sided conversation with me that I occasionally contributed an “um” or an “ah” to. By the time the region came back up Shannan was able to log in and replace the conference nuking NPC, flying around in a dragon avatar and the show went on. Mal had pulled us all through what looked like barely a hiccup to viewers.

In the years since then we’ve done lots of OSCC presentations together and I’ve been on Mal’s InWorld Review show many times. There were lots of nuclear hiccups, like from an NPC audience he asked me to make him, or when the NPC cat I gave him decided to take over the show walking over his guests and meowing pitifully. At our most recent OSCC presentation Mal happily joined in when I asked him to be one of our voice actors. He wanted to use a filter to make his voice sound more suited to the character he was playing. But I said no, we asked you because we love your voice.

My friend, Neo Cortex said, he feels like, “Opensim has lost its anchorman. Mal was the voice of Opensim.” I agree and would add that he helped so many of us find and have a voice in Opensim. Mal, buddy, losing you leaves such a big hole. I wonder how to deal with it. All I can think to do is to honor your friendship by doing what you always did when things blew up. Smile and keep going, keep doing crazy projects, keep sharing and help others do the same.

~Nara

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