Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Fun comment from Joey1058, reflecting on the NFT art gold rush, which has led to some NFT art galleries in blockchain-based worlds like Cryptovoxels and Decentraland:

In terms of broader community, I'm starting to see virtual worlds aligning into classifications. Cryptovoxels and Decentraland are similar to the richer cosmopolises, like New York. Here is where you'll find arts and culture. Museums, theaters, gardens, zoos and other venues. All based on an NFT foundation. Places like IMVU, Sinespace, and Second Life are the equivalent of "working man's" towns. Still cultured, but with an everyday foundation in "getting your hands dirty and doing it yourself". AltspaceVR is a corporate lifeline. And VRChat is pure relaxed social freestyle.

I get where Joey's going with the New York analogy, though as I noted in the post, both Cryptovoxels and Decentraland have very small resident user populations and seem to be focused more on financial speculation, than the arts. Maybe a better comparison is Dubai? (Then again, New York is also heavy with speculators.)

Any suggestions for "working man's towns" to compare IMVU, Sinespace, and Second Life?

Well, I once called Second Life the Portland of metaverses:

Portland, Oregon is a lovely, livable, mid-sized city with an excellent public transportation system and high property values; surrounded by picturesque mountains, forests, and the nearby ocean, it has thriving immigrant and creative communities, and consequently, is a relatively important center for high-tech business start-ups. Culturally, it shares a lot in common with Second Life, and with a population of 537,000, their community sizes just about match, too: official demographer Meta Linden just released SL's latest user metrics, and not counting users in the cordoned teen grid, Second Life now has an active user base of 538,400, in-world an average time of 45 hours a month. 

I wrote that in 2007 and the usage rates for SL are roughly the same today.

No virtual world-to-real city analogy is perfect, but it's an enjoyable thought experiment to play. Post more analogies in Comments!