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 Gaming
-
When I wrote about the latest update to Star Citizen, Chris Roberts' highly-ambitious, massively crowdfunded MMO — with over $250 million pledged so far — I expected it to be received as some interesting insights into an online world that many people haven't thought about much lately. What I didn't expect at all was a…
-
If I'm being honest, the last time I paid any special attention to Star Citizen was when it was garnering breathless coverage by major outlets like Wired five years ago — and when it was also more or less dismissed with snarky headlines like, "Fans Have Dropped $77M on This Guy's Buggy, Half-Built Game". But…
-
Some good (and intriguing!) news during this era of pandemic-impelled joblessness: Raph Koster, veteran game designer and virtual world wise man, is hiring like crazy for Playable Worlds, his new MMO startup that's still under wraps but has been described as a sandbox MMO heavy on user-generated content and user community features. Among the most…
-
While everyone in games and 3D graphics are enthusing over the new tech demo for Unreal Engine 5 (see below), it's probably the fine print that's more important today. Specifically, its updated royalty agreement: "You may have missed it in all of the #UE5 excitement," as Epic evangelist Alan Noon puts it, "but my fellow…
-
Davigo is an upcoming multiplayer indie game for VR and PC which turns the relative lack of VR headsets into an advantage: The player with the VR rig plays as a giant, while the PC players are the little Davids scurrying around trying to defeat him. This via Road to VR, which has more details…
-
Lots of interesting reader comments to my post last week wondering if Half-Life Alyx has yet to make a profit for Valve (almost certainly not) including this one from Kent Bye, a VR podcaster very much worth following: How would you incorporate the fact that Valve makes 30% off of future XR games sold through…
-
Update, 8:50pm: In a VR community page conversation on this post, Facebook pal and veteran game designer Tadhg Kelly says my original estimate of average Valve salary is way off: "$150,000 per year per person forgets facilities, office costs, time off and social security etc etc. And Valve reportedly has a healthy bonus structure. Closer…
-
Must-read report from Road to VR, which estimates that Half-Life Alyx, despite my own assessment, might just be a bit of a killer app for VR after all: While Valve’s data is a useful way see which headsets are most popular on Steam, the trend of monthly-connected headsets has always been obfuscated because the data…
-
Somehow during its seventeen years of existence, "virtual concert in Second Life" has generally come to mean just that, and not much more: One or more avatars performing on a stage pretty much like they would at a real world show, with the possible bonus of synchronized gestures and out-of-sync mouth movement. Late last week,…
-
New revenue report from Nieslen analyst firm SuperData* has some very interesting data for people following MMOs/virtual worlds and VR, especially in the wake of Valve's first VR-only game: Half-Life: Alyx performed modestly by the standards of AAA games but was a blockbuster by the standards of virtual reality (VR) exclusive titles. A total of…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 