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: ROBLOX
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Congrats to "Homemade Meal", who just won a Roblox Innovation award in the "Best Use of Tech" category for Tunneler, a full-fledged, fully functional game inspired by Valve’s classic game Portal – including the original’s groundbreaking physics and teleporting mechanic. I interviewed Mr. Meal earlier this year, who told me one motivation he had for…
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I owe finding this current Roblox job listing to the sharp eyes of Roblox_RTC, a Roblox-related news source — the massive metaverse platform is hiring a Senior Software Engineer, Web3 to complete tasks including "develop web3 solutions and integrate them with existing Roblox tech stack across Roblox", and "help decide the future of web3 in…
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Shelf under Could Be Coincidence, Could Be Something Else: Vice News has a fascinating in-depth look at Roblox's attempt to launch in China, including plans to accommodate the Chinese government's expectations around censoring content that suggests, for instance, that Taiwan is independent from China. Last December, however, Roblox abandoned China for mysterious reasons: [I]n July…
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Remember Chipotle's ROBLOX giveaway last month, offering free real burritos for the first people to play Chipotle's virtual burrito builder game? This one: Chipotle Burrito Builder on Roblox, a new simulation experience that will challenge players to roll burritos in the metaverse to earn Burrito Bucks, the brand's in-experience currency on Roblox1, starting on April…
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Checking in on Tunnler, the Portal-inspired indie game on ROBLOX I wrote about a couple weeks ago (to play click here), I was impressed to notice it's attracted nearly 1 million plays, attracting 30,000-60,000+ visits per day, with an average session length of over 11 minutes. (Which is quite impressive average, suggesting a large number of…
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Tunneler, that Portal-inspired ROBLOX game I wrote about last week, is playable: Click here to start tunneling. Since launching last Friday, it's already been played/visited nearly 350,000 times. Even more notable, it's also attracted many "Let's Play"-type gameplay videos which also have large viewer totals — this one above is approaching 200,000 views. But this…
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Update, March 4: Game is now live here. This really is a triumph. Playable tomorrow on ROBLOX — follow the creator’s Twitter for updates — “Tunneler” is a full-fledged, fully functional tribute to Valve’s classic game Portal, including the original’s groundbreaking physics and teleporting mechanic. (Watch above if you don’t believe me, or watch the…
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Rec Room's Shawn Whiting tweeted this tantalizing (and teasingly unmarked) concurrency chart as a response to ROBLOX's extended downtime last weekend, saying: "@Roblox goes down, @RecRoom concurrent players goes up." And quite a lot, to judge by that hockey stick! "Mostly mobile [users] but also console and Steam/PC," Shawn told me today, "not as much…
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Data via SimilarWeb ROBLOX enjoyed a breakthrough year in 2021, with a spectacular IPO last March and increasing talk that it's the leading metaverse platform, with growth to 43 million daily active users late last year. According to SimilarWeb, however, there's one thing ROBLOX didn't grow in 2021: Website visits. Since at least June 21,…
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This is a surreal and zany and ultimately fairly dark video by top ROBLOX YouTuber Ruben Sim. Based in the US but a passionate supporter of Taiwanese independence from China (he was galvanized by the recent Hong Kong democracy protests), Ruben employed a VPN to break through mainland China's "Great Firewall" to engage with Chinese…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 