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: New World Culture
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SL image by Alsatian Kidd, who also has thoughts on the election When I briefly noted that Philip Rosedale had endorsed Harris/Walz during a recent YouTube livestream (watch below), some reader comments were somewhat surprising: Like Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner with family, politics really should not be discussed, and it really has no place in…
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Tomorrow at 5pm ET: 3 legendary VR/game developers join the Gamers for Harris live stream! Father of the @Xbox: @SeamusBlackley Founder of @SecondLife @philiprosedale And @chetfaliszek, writer for Team Fortress 2 and Portal 1 & 2! RSVP to join:https://t.co/AMYhwtOPvo pic.twitter.com/MTKQHh3gEQ — Geeks for Harris (@GeeksForHarris) October 15, 2024 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js RSVP here to join this livestream,…
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It's impossible to understand US politics or Internet/gaming/virtual world culture without knowing about Gamergate, the numerically small but highly coordinated online harassment campaign unleashed almost exactly 10 years ago. Fortunately there's a new oral history on the topic: The Hivemind Swarmed by David Wolinsky, and the book's summary puts it well: Gamergate holds the grim…
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting In early August, TikTokker Jools Lebron offered viral advice about dressing for work. She pointed out that her clothes at work were demure and she remained mindful of why she was hired. There might be a slight, deliberate contrast between her glamorous…
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Here's a whole huge list of real life video game museums compiled by my colleagues at the Virtual Worlds Museum. Featuring places across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, it's a handy reference for your upcoming travel plans. For instance, the SF Bay Area is home to The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment (in…
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If the Trump/Vance 2024 presidential campaign seems odd to you (to say the least), here's another bit of weirdness to contemplate: Without the early success of Second Life, it's very likely that the Trump/Vance campaign would not even exist. I'm quite serious. But to understand what I mean, we need to go back into ancient…
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Above: PKD with Ridley Scott after Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was optioned for Blade Runner (via Tim Powers) Author Philip K. Dick was an enormous influence on popular culture, including the evolution of virtual worlds/the Metaverse — both for writing the book that inspired Blade Runner and stories like "The Trouble With Bubbles",…
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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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In case you missed it, the latest version of ChatGPT (previously here) is now under fire from Scarlett Johansson: Johansson said Monday that OpenAI used an "eerily similar" voice to hers for their new GPT-4o chatbot despite having declined the company's request to provide her voice. Earlier in the day, OpenAI announced it would no longer be using…
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Acclaimed at Sundance 2024, put Ibelin on your Netflix watch list:
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 