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
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Meela Vanderbuilt is one of Second Life's top YouTubers and she recently expanded her fun, chatty, seriously glamorous brand of videos into the world of GTA Online roleplay. (Watch above.) Here's her expert take on the similarities and differences between roleplay in GTA versus SL: "The general concept is the same. GTA is more focused…
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Gloomwood, the new steampunk-themed indie sim game now in Steam Early Access, consciously evokes the classic Thief PC games so much, the publisher Newblood Games even got a special URL to promote it: ThiefWithGuns.com. It is very much Thief with steampunky guns — but as with the original Thief games from the early 2000s, the…
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At long last, Dual Universe has officially launched on Steam for PCs. While on the surface it may seem mainly like a sci-fi MMO of the Eve Online/Star Citizen variety, the breadth of its creative possibilities and scale does make it a contender for arguably becoming the Metaverse. Originally crowdfunded and developed by Novaquark ("Building…
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Despite all the dune buggies in the teaser trailer, it's not There, but Everywhere. However, detailed information about it exists nowhere — except, that is, in the studio of Build A Rocket Boy, founded former Rockstar North head Leslie Benzies. The montage video shows glimpses of many environments and some Fortnite-type combat, and from what…
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Above screengrab taken from the Axie Growth Data spreadsheet When we last checked in with Axie Infinity, widely touted as the model of "play-to-earn", NFT/blockchain-based games, it had dropped from 1.3 million daily active users in April to under 600,000 in June. That's a huge drop, but 600K DAU is still quite impressive, ranking it…
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Dual Universe, the single-shard MMO that some experts say is the best candidate to become the Metaverse, just announced a huge expansion to their beta release, code-named Mercury. (Teaser above.) That includes a new first-time user experience, so this long weekend is a good time to give it a try, or a revisit. "Take time…
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The Washington Post recently ran this great article on the power and influence of the YouTube channel People Make Games, which ROBLOX reportedly "pressured" to make a retraction when it started looking into serious allegations about the metaverse platform. The Washington Post confirms that the company did request a retraction, and gets what People Make…
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Via VR scout Adeon, here's a very good case from YouTuber ThrillSeeker to keep an eye (and a haptic finger in the wind) out for BONELAB, from indie studio Stress Level Zero, creator of the unexpected VR hit BONEWORKS from 2019. Like that game, BONELAB has highly responsive physics and avatar customization, with this new…
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Bundle for Ukraine is an epic sale of indie games with all proceeds benefiting the International Medical Corps in Ukraine and Voices of Children, a Ukrainian NGO which helps kids in the region. The Bundle comes with nearly 1000 games valued at $6520, all for a minimum donation of $10. (But you can and should…
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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…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 