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!
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Category: Comment of the Week
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Responding to my post on VRChat's emerging new creator economy featuring the video above), longtime reader Martin K. has some provocative thoughts on the sociology of virtual worlds: One interesting thought that jumped at me in the context of monetization was this: When your world is Quest-compatible, more kids get in; it's just a fact…
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Last week's post on Dr. Ruth Diaz's new project to interview and better understand virtual world trolls helped provoke a pretty interesting reader conversation that's difficult to summarize, but here's one particular highlight — longtime reader Martin K. makes the provocative argument that trolls are somewhat necessary to the long term health of virtual worlds:…
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I had worried my story on OpenSim-based world Wolf Grid might be too niche for readers, but to judge by reader comments, many virtual world veterans are giving it and other OpenSimulator worlds a closer look. Soda Sullivan argues that more innovation is happening across OpenSim worlds for the very reason they're often developed…
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Image by Orion Octane from Crack Den's Flickr pool Crack Den, the long-running urban roleplay mini-MMO in Second Life, is like a version of Grand Theft Auto Online from an alternate timeline where the Hot Coffee incident scarcely elicited a shrug (if you know you know), and its user community was free to wildly build…
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Good points from reader Martin K., riffing off Skarredghost's design thoughts for creating powerful mixed reality experiences for the Apple Vision Pro: What each app needs to do is to establish what is known in the research on "Computer-Supported Cooperative Work" (CSCW) as a "shared workspace", e.g. a shared virtual 3D model, a shared virtual…
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Following up on a reader's comment to my rant about ChatGPT totally botching my writing, I went with their suggestion to try Microsoft's Copilot instead. I asked the same question, "What is Wagner James Au's definition of the Metaverse?" and got this output: Wagner James Au defines the Metaverse as a vast, immersive virtual world…
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Given the so-so reception to the launch of Convai/Linden Lab's AI NPCs, here's a great reader comment from Lucas Weymann (previously), a retired tech executive who spends much of his retirement hanging out in Second Life — and thus has a uniquely smart perspective on how AI NPCs could help grow the SL user base:…
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Given the so-so reception to the launch of Convai/Linden Lab's AI NPCs, here's a great reader comment from Lucas Weymann (previously), a retired tech executive who spends much of his retirement hanging out in Second Life — and thus has a uniquely smart perspective on how AI NPCs could help grow the SL user base:…
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Good points from Martin K. on my thought that Jeri Ellsworth's low-ish cost Tilt Five AR device could be a viable Spatial Computing competitor against Apple Vision Pro: I guess part of Apple's vision for Vision Pro is that it provides you with access to much of Apple's ecosystem (including your media library, e-mails, browser…
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Official Second Life App Optimized for Vision Pro? Here Are Some Pros and Cons (Comment of the Week)
Brian Aviator exploring Second Life in his Vision Pro while also reading New World Notes on the web While it's possible to run the iOS version of Second Life on Apple's Vision Pro, what would an optimized Vision Pro version of Second Life be like? In Comments, longtime virtual worlds developer/theorist/educator Gwyneth Llewelyn considers the…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 