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: Making the Metaverse
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Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
Originally posted on my Patreon Courtesy my metaverse pal Neil Barbour, research analyst with S&P Global Market Intelligence, here's some pretty interesting virtual world user data infographics, based on a survey that the top intelligence firm recently conducted. Over 4000 consumers participated. And while the overall sample was demographically diverse, Neil notes, "respondents were heavily…
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Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
Now on my Patreon for subscribers: Courtesy my metaverse pal Neil Barbour, research analyst with S&P Global Market Intelligence, I'm publishing some pretty interesting virtual world user data infographics, based on a survey that the top intelligence firm recently conducted. With over 4000 consumers participating, it's pretty valuable overview of the market, especially for millenials…
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Bad news for Rec Room, a metaverse platform with impressive user growth across multiple platforms. (For my book's new afterword, I'm tracking it has having around 40 million monthly active users, mostly on mobile and consoles.) Despite that, the company co-founders announced they were laying off half the staff. The stated reason in the announcement…
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Update, 3:02pm PT: Stephenson's Facebook has been restored within the last 1-2 hours. (I've been checking.) But the irony remains forever. Neal Stepheson, author of Snow Crash, tweeting yesterday: Today in “you can’t make this stuff up,” Meta has suspended my Facebook account because they suspect me of impersonating someone noteworthy I could write a…
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Thanks to Bloomberg's Cecilia D'Anastasio, people in tech are belatedly beginning to grasp how huge Roblox is as a metaverse platform — or as she describes it, a "popular gaming platform", which doesn't quire capture why and how Roblox has become so huge, but anyway — yes: Roblox Game-Buying Frenzy Is Turning Teens Into Millionaires.…
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Here was the news with VRChat in June 2024: In brutal news for VRChat employees, 30% were laid off late yesterday — though fortunately, with generous severance packages. In a refreshingly honest email to staff, co-founder/CEO Graham Gaylor puts the blame on himself, saying he over-hired while also taking too long to add management, making…
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In case you missed it, a UK company called MetaGravity is developing a Minecraft server enabling up to 100,000 concurrent players — up to 5,000 in a 100 square meter space. It's part of their effort to showcase the company's Quark engine, which uses "Causal Partitioning" to enable extremely high concurrency in virtual world. So…
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Here's the latest demo video of the Quark engine from MetaGravity, which employs "causal partitioning" (more on that below) to enable single shard virtual worlds with massive concurrency. They're showing off that technology later this year with their own Minecraft server, which they say will be able to handle up 100,000 concurrent players. (You can…
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I feel like people in the game/metaverse industry haven't grasped how huge Sky: Children of the Light, the virtual world from Jenova Chen and his studio Thatgamecompany, has become. In 2023 it had over 50 million monthly active users and earned a record for most concurrent users for a live virtual concert; based on recent…
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In May 2024, I was boggled by how badly ChatGPT summarized my writing, especially my definition of the Metaverse — even when it's online right here — so last week, I checked back to see if ChatGPT had improved. Yes, this seems like a self-indulgent ego stroke, but I promise there's an important point here…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 