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
-
Commenting on Meta putting the new Quest/Roblox integration as a key to its metaverse strategy, VR expert "SkarredGhost" believes it was a rush job: Yeah, it's clear that Meta is betting a lot on Roblox. I tried today Roblox on Quest and it is so full of visible bugs that it is clear that it…
-
At right: Popular Fortnite Creative maps featuring Sponge Bob, Shrek, Minecraft without authorization Mackenzie Jackson, who leads a top Fortnite Creative development studio that's created Fortnite deployments for Doritos and other top brands, recently posted this viral rant about how companies like hers are having to compete against Creative maps with rampant IP violations. Pleading…
-
Above: Tunneler, an amazing first-person Roblox game I was prepared to be snarky in response to Meta's latest earnings call, but if you read the actual transcript [.pdf here], it's notably less eye roll-ish about its metaverse strategy than previously: The metaverse content and software vision continues coming together as well. We recently announced that…
-
For weekend reading/listening, here's the transcript of a new podcast interview with VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi for Making a Metaverse That Matters. You can listen to the whole thing above, and some favorite of my favorite are excerpts below — on the origin of the book's title, my problem with the "open metaverse" as it's usually…
-
This is a very fun loosey goosey chat on the gaming podcast Colette & Matt Have Entered the Chat, perfect listening for Friday and the weekend. Since we're all gamers, we get into many topics I haven't discussed as much in other interviews, such as (roughly in this order): How gaming's modding community brought me…
-
Nice upcoming integration for Roblox users who also happen to own a Meta Quest: Roblox, one of the largest 3D immersive platforms, will soon be available on Meta Quest, the leading VR headset. Roblox on Meta Quest is available for any user 13 and older. This opens up another opportunity for developers to create and…
-
Stream on Spotify above or get on Apple Podcasts here, I just did an incredibly fun episode bout Second Life’s 20th anniversary and its role in the Metaverse’s evolution for the 2 Girls 1 Podcast show devoted Internet culture. Content warning: We get into some weird and/or sexy areas, including a long discourse on TTP,…
-
In contrast to the "The Metaverse is dead, long live generative AI!" narrative you might have heard recently, here's some data strongly suggesting otherwise: On Google Trends, ChatGPT for all its recent buzz has never eclipsed general interest in leading metaverse platforms Minecraft and Roblox. (See above.) Even more notable, ChatGPT has been consistently trending…
-
Thanks to everyone who participated last week! Here's some of my favorite exchanges: Photo of Judge Richard Posner in Second Life by Sam Sellers Did you expect to be writing about Second Life and the Metaverse for 20 years? (bce13) The first few years I thought Second Life was a very interesting niche MMO. Then…
-
Above: Frontlines, a realistic (except non-gory) combat experience in Roblox Roblox is the most popular metaverse platform by far, with up to 250 million monthly active users — most of whom are kids. (Then again, with about 1 in 4 of the user base 18 or over, according to the company, that still means there’s…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 