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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Join my Patreon to read this free excerpt to Making a Metaverse That Matters, delving into myths around the necessity of VR and AR for the Metaverse. And while you're there, please consider subscribing for premium content and special bonuses, including free copies of my books and ads here on New World Notes!
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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 it difficult for the startup to reach profitability before…
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Here's a first look at Readyverse, the upcoming metaverse platform based on Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, with Cline himself helping guide development. What the teaser video actually depicts doesn't much resemble RP1 (neither the book or movie), beyond an avatar that resembles the lead character. What it does heavily focuses on is generative…
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Hypersonic Laboratories is a new startup which just got funding to build HELIX, an upcoming multiplayer role-playing sandbox platform for user-generated content (UGC). I got an early peek at what they’re building, and the ambition is pretty impressive. As David Chiu, Hypersonic’s head of business, put it to me: “Think of it as Garry’s Mod…
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Thanks to host Tim Verheyden, here's my segments on The Digital Dilemma, a TV series from Belgium's public TV network. Most of it's in Dutch, but hopefully the YouTube subtitle AI works. (Belgians can watch the whole thing here.) I'm at the start of the episode, walking on the beach in Malibu, comparing Internet dangers…
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Equimake is a new indie platform which enables live, multi-user collaborative 3D building on the web. Just launched in early beta, it's the passion project of Canadian developer Alexander Yevsyeyev, who recently gave up his day job in tech to create a new, delightfully accessible means of social creation online. (Watch the demo above!) "Over…
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This week we're seeing many stories marking the 10th anniversary of Facebook/Meta's acquisition of Oculus, with some wondering why the VR device (later rebranded as the Quest), hasn't changed the world as expected. Maybe I missed it, but none of these articles have mentioned nor even asked Meta about the vomitous elephant in the room:…
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Excerpt, Making a Metaverse That Matters: Interoperability continues to be a grail quest for many metaverse evangelists, partly spurred by the flawed assumption that the Internet should become the Metaverse. The World Wide Web is interoperable, the argument roughly goes, enabling us to leap from one website to another; so too must the Metaverse. In…
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Courtesy the lovely people of Remote Daily, an online talk show that launched during the pandemic (with live music and everything), here's my recent appearance with award-winning VR creator Athena Demos, where we talk about creating community within XR platforms. My favorite passage is around 17:00 minutes in, where I explain my argument for why the…
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"With Vision Pro launched, companies must talk about XR, nausea and gender" is a new Gamesbeat editorial that's an expanded excerpt of my new book, highlighting the most shocking thing I discovered while writing Making a Metaverse That Matters: Meta, from what I can tell — and I've brought this up with several senior executives,…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 