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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With news that Microsoft is shutting down its VR metaverse platform AltspaceVR, along with widespread layoffs across most of the major tech companies, you might assume the Metaverse as an industry is also feeling the string. Not so much. On a quick tally of leading metaverse platforms in terms of active users, along with promising…
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This new Time Magazine cover is so utterly wrong that it’s a perfect example of a problem that’s been festering for the last three years: Mainstream media stories about the Metaverse which are prominently (often exclusively) illustrated with images of people in VR headsets. There’s so many other interesting and original ways to illustrate a…
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It's a common misconception that virtual worlds are a safe escape from our offline prejudices. This is sometimes true but often not the case. In fact, the anonymous nature of metaverse platforms and other virtual worlds can make expressions of racism worse – especially when avatars are based around a realistic human model. Our best…
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Above: Lobby Cam in Steam/Unreal. See below for the SL version Lobby Cam by Bryn Oh is a free new game experience on Steam, and like the name suggests, it's actually created by famed Second Life artist Bryn Oh. Since publishing it to Steam last Friday, it's garnered 7,2000 downloads — quite a lot, for…
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I noted how Meta's Reality Labs conspicuously didn't mention "the metaverse" even once in its "Why We Still Believe in the Future" update post last month, and now there's some new data which might explain its absence. According to a survey conducted last month by Blind, the popular anonymous messaging app for company staff, confidence…
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Excited to reveal the cover of my upcoming book cover and its new title: Making a Metaverse That Matters: From Snow Crash & Second Life to A Virtual World Worth Fighting For. Set to publish next June — Second Life's 20th anniversary — I hope you consider pre-ordering now. (Lovely stocking stuffer for the holidays?)…
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In case you missed it, Meta CTO and Reality Labs' head Andrew Bosworth recently published the company's vision of the future: Meta began 2022 with a new name and a new vision for the future, and at Reality Labs it’s our job to bring that vision to life. We never thought it would be easy…
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@phia.sims I’m Gonna Dance Dance Dance! 🔥 #secondlife #phiasims #fyp #wednesday #wednesdayaddams #addamsfamily #netflix #wednesdaynetflix #wednesdaydance #goth ♬ original sound – heyy https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js Remember that Wednesday dance I blogged last week? Turns out there's more to that story, and it's a smart way of leveraging and bridging social media and metaverse platforms. "The dance I…
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Above: The procedurally-generated No Man's Sky With the growing popularity of AI-driven 2D image generators, it's no surprise that we're starting to see many people speculating about how AI-driven 3D image generators may soon transform games and metaverse platforms. (For instance, well, AM Radio and me.) However, veteran game industry artist Aura Trilio just hit…
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//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js Above: Standard Iron Man with Watermelon-Flavored Iron Man and Duck Head Iron Man (via Torley) I had forgotten about this until Linden Lab veteran-turned-guru VC Hunter Walk reminded me when we chatted for my upcoming book: There's free copies of an official Iron Man outfit in Second Life, part of the promotion for the…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 