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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: Making the Metaverse
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I've been wondering what Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen thought about Meta's plans to make the Metaverse, and she finally aired her concerns with Time magazine: When I asked her about the metaverse, Haugen’s answer focused on the extra forms of surveillance that would be necessary for any meaningful kind of metaverse experience. “I am worried…
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This is a pretty jaw-dropping video for anyone following the Metaverse, a follow-up to an equally head-turning video from last Summer – both by freelance UK journalist Quintin Smith (Wired, Edge, Eurogamer, Kotaku). His first video report looked into the ways ROBLOX monetizes user creators on its massively popular platform — roughly half of whom are…
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Really great Kara Swisher interview with Neal Stephenson, who's now on tour to promote his latest novel, Termination Shock. Unsurprisingly, much of their chat focuses on Snowcrash and the Metaverse's white hot influence on current technology. As I wrote last Summer, Stephenson does not (contrary to common opinion), consider the Metaverse dystopian: Snowcrash is clearly…
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New World Notes readers all being brilliant, there's a good back and forth on the topic of using Metaverse platforms for real world meetings, both pro and con. First here's the Con case from Luther Weymann, who was a successful tech exec before becoming a virtual world fan in his retirement: People just want to…
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Now in open Beta if you have a Quest 2. I'm maybe cursed by too much knowledge (and don't own a Quest 2 yet), but it looks like Rec Room but with way less user-generated creativity or a leg-less VRChat without the utterly cool ecosystem of community-driven creativity.) But maybe I'm being unfair?
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I told you about Core hosting a live in-world viewing of Geoff Keihley's Game Awards show which streamed last night, so here's a pretty good data point on user interest right now: Based on the "total played" count of Axial Tilt (the Core experience where the show was streamed, which also has Geoff in the…
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting It’s not my place to mock anyone’s wedding photo, even if that photo is featured in the New York Times, but I certainly feel free to mock the New York Times’ Style section touting this particular virtual wedding service. (Pictured at right…
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Core, the Epic-funded "ROBLOX but built on Unreal" platform, is soon going to add a video streaming option for its creators, giving them (as a spokesman tells me), "the ability to stream directly into the games, worlds and events they create." It's being previewed tomorrow in a live, in-world stream of Geoff Keighley's widely watched…
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While there's way too much media hype about a putative "real estate boom" in blockchain-based virtual worlds, this isn't to dismiss these worlds out of hand. Recently I've been making some brief forays into market leader Decentraland (that's me, in front of the buff Doge) and it's pretty impressive (if graphically limited) for a web-based…
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Good conversation over Philip Rosedale’s pretty surprising comments last week, positing that the Metaverse may “never be for everybody”, and that in any case, Meta/Facebook definitely shouldn’t succeed at making the Metaverse. (Well, knowing Philip, that last point isn’t all that surprising.) “What a journey,” Alex D observes, then surveys the current state of things…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 