Wagner James Au / New World Notes
Author, strategist, virtual world reporter
recent posts
- Welcome to New World Notes’ 2006-2025 Archive!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
- Top Five Posts Including: Huge Rec Room Layoff & Meta Boots Neal Stephenson Off Facebook (Briefly)
- Four Glorious Second Life Sims to Explore — After Watching Sabina Valeska’s Machinima Tributes to Them!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
about
Category: Avatars and Identity
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting Tiago’s “Ma part d’ombre” was inspired by “My Dark Place” a stunning memoir by James Ellroy, an American author who invents language anew while he writes. I wonder how the magic of his language translates. I think this picture beautifully captures the…
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… because Linden Lab just announced new last name options (above). Whoever gets to be That's Amore gets their own damn theme song:
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Why do so many VRChat users look like cutesy anime girls, anyway? If you assume the snarky and simplistic answer is, "Because it's full of otaku geeks with a weird waifu fetish", watch this video which suggests the actual story is much deeper and far more fascinating than that. Created by "Strasz", who's becoming something…
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"How avatars change who we are" is my new article for Samsung NEXT's Component magazine, exploring some fascinating examples of how avatars (both in VR and on flatscreens) seem to influence the user, as much as the other way around. I talk with several top academics in the field who've been studying this under-appreciated phenomenon…
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting Jupiter Firelyte created a stunning homage to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, recreating the famed “Notorious RBG” in Second Life. She gives great detail on all the elements that went into it and I love her for it. She includes the original screenshot in…
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Pictured: In-game shot of an Elder Scrolls Online avatar from 2013 (video below) Adeon Writer puts it succinctly: For what it's worth, VRChat has a rating system of "Excellent, Good, Medium, Poor, Horrible" Any avatar above 70,000 triangles is considered Horrible. For reference, most Second Life avatars are about 200,000 to 300,000 triangles. Many Second…
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Avatar pic by Ella Pinellapin Continuing his blog series on what he's learned as a lead developer/consultant at Oculus, Eve Online, and of course Linden Lab, Jim "Babbage" Purbrick has a new post on the importance of avatar customization tools in open-ended virtual worlds: If you are building a Metaverse which connects every possible virtual…
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This is an epic, thought provoking new article in the latest SL-focused ECLIPSE magazine on real life Black people in the virtual world, reflecting on Black Lives Matter and their experiences in SL. It’s written by New World Notes contributor Cajsa Lilliehook. She interviews many Black SLers, who discuss racism in SL — everything from…
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Emuna Zamani, a warm and chatty virtual world YouTuber, recently posted this moving video where she starts by talking about her anxiety and anger over recent real life events — first the pandemic, and then the international uprising over the killing of George Floyd and other Black people, along with the systematic racism which contributed…
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Pictured: Arnno Planer's #SLBareFaceChallenge In the #SLBareFaceChallenge, as the hashtag suggests, SLers challenge each other to show the community what their avatars look like in a raw screenshot with no post-processing or other add-ons. Overall results, for the most part are surprising to me: They generally look more vivid and "human" than the usual heavily…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 