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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Above: Radio Remembered How a Father's Lost Art From Second Life was Reborn in Fortnite Good points by "EmptyEyes", reflecting on how algorithms tend to homogenize metaverse platforms: Metaverses are weird beasts, outside of Fortnite, it feels like they refuse to compete with one another. They're like MMOs in that sense. They cater very strongly…
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Commenting on my post about the failure of Meta to grow Horizon Worlds, longtime reader/veteran technologist Martin K. offers a big picture view impacting multiple metaverse platforms, relating it to recent trends in US society. It helps explain, for example, why Second Life merchandise seems to be 80% fashion/home decor-related, and why VRChat seems largely…
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Originally published on my Patreon After writing about Meta’s highly misguided $50 million bounty for developers to create content in Horizon Worlds, a former software engineer at Horizon Worlds reached out to me. They had read my latest book, where I devote a chapter to Meta’s many missteps in trying to build the Metaverse. But…
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Why is Horizon Worlds floundering, with far less active users than Second Life, let alone VRChat and Rec Room, which are far more popular on Meta’s own Quest headset? After writing about Meta’s highly misguided $50 million bounty for developers to create content in Horizon Worlds, a former software engineer at Horizon Worlds reached out…
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I promised myself I'd stop picking on Meta after last month's "Make Horizon Worlds succeed or get fired" debacle*, but this latest announcement is too painful to keep quiet about: Meta has made some strides on content by attracting more and more creators to build for the platform and creating some of its own first-party games…
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Tim Hannan, an indie creator who's been doing some interesting experiments blending Second Life video/images with gen AI (as here), recently sent me these two fairly alarming — but actually not that surprising — images. The image on the left is the photo of high end basketball shoe. The image on the right is the…
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I recently saw someone on social media wondering whatever became of Blueberry in Second Life, and in case you missed it, I told that in-depth, highly personal story of Blueberry / KiwiCo creator Gizem Mishi Akin on my Patreon a few months ago. I continue to be grateful Gizem was so willing to share so…
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A story from Digiday has been flying all over the Internet since yesterday, because it basically suggests the long-awaited Grand Theft Auto VI will be more like Grand Theft Metaverse: Rockstar Games has been in discussions with top Roblox and Fortnite creators, as well as dedicated “GTA” content creators, about the potential to create custom…
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Meta is now laying off thousands of employees while all but announcing that staff working on Meta's Horizon Worlds is next on the chopping block this year. So it's important to note that Rec Room and VRChat — two metaverse platforms which have ironically thrived on Meta's own Quest platform — are currently hiring: Rec…
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With news breaking that Meta is now laying off thousands of employees to focus on its AI products, this comment from reader Martin K last Thursday sure seem sadly prophetic: Since Quest headsets and Horizon Worlds cannot succeed on the scale of Meta's ambitions (and certainly not in 2025), I'm reading [Meta CTO's internal memo]…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 