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- 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: Economics of SL
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While it's great that Linden Lab swooped in to save the much-loved private sim of Tempura, there are still concerns as to whether that's the best way to preserve great virtual locations. Echoing thoughts from her own blog, longtime reader Nodoka Hanamura reflects on some of the challenges, citing an SL community project inspired by…
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Tempura, the popular and much-loved Second Life island, is now gone from the grid, with only screenshots and video to remember it by, another victim of SL's high monthly server maintenance fees. As when any other beloved virtual place meets a digital death like this, community members post well-meaning if belated ideas on how to…
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Well this is a bit of a bombshell for Linden Lab to drop on a Monday: The Wayfair Sales Tax case decision by the Supreme Court was when prior rules about sales tax really changed. Since then, we have done our best to shield our residents from these taxes as long as possible, but we…
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Now that Philip Rosedale's back advising Linden Lab, challenging modern metaverse platforms like Meta's Horizon, can he help fix Second Life's complex avatar system? I asked that question last week and a pretty amazing reader conservation ensued — culminating in this excellent rant by the excellently named content creator Allegory Malaprop, of the style brand…
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Good comment from Dee, one of many Second Life users welcoming back Philip Rosedale to advising the virtual world he founded: I am MUCH more optimistic than I have been for a while where SL is concerned. I hope that Philips' return will bring renewed enthusiasm and fresh ideas that are outside the Linden Lab…
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From ROBLOX’s 2020 IPO stock filing This passage from my podcast with Philip Rosedale last week seriously deserves its own post — where Philip is talking about ROBLOX’s S1 stock filing, and a passage there (above) stating that 1,050 community developers earned over $10,000 USD a year from their ROBLOX content. By comparison, Philip notes…
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How To with John Wilson is an acclaimed and quirky quasi-documentary comedy series on HBO — think a handheld video version of This American Life, but even more nasally — where John explores New York, attempting to accomplish various everyday tasks. (Not always an easy or non-ridiculous goal, since this is after all New York).…
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Here's another clue in the 40,000 people plateau mystery of Second Life, offered by reader lkosov: I sat there with the world map open and watched the green dots on Learning Island 1 for an hour yesterday, from 1235-1335 SL time. From what I can tell the player dots update once a minute, so it's…
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Really great comment from reader "Kyz", a 3D content creator who made an excellent living from the Second Life economy. Commenting on my take on Matthew Ball's analysis of payment options for Metaverse platforms (he basically lands on suggesting that blockchain-based payments may be the best or least worst alternative), Kyz says this: I don't…
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As of today, gachas are officially banned in Second Life (with some gacha fans going over to gacha-like games), but don't expect the legacy of gachas to disappear anytime soon. Checking the Second Life Marketplace now, nearly 900,000 items are still listed under the Gachas category (resales of various gacha items and collections, etc.) That's…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 