Wagner James Au / New World Notes
Author, strategist, virtual world reporter
Making a Metaverse That Matters
Contact me — links below!
recent posts
- Warning: LLMs Able to De-Anonymize User Accounts on Reddit, Hacker News & Other “Pseudonymous” Platforms; Report Co-Author Expands, Advises
- Want to Go On-Together? A New Virtual World for Real Life Coworking
- All the World’s Avatars (1 Billion & Counting)
- Gamers Overwhelmingly Hate Gen AI in Games, Major Industry Report Finds — Here’s Why!
- Why Do Gamers Generally Prefer Fantasy Virtual Worlds Over Sci-Fi MMOs?
about
Category: Uncategorized
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This year I finally had a chance to play Return of the Obra Dinn. When it premiered in October 2018, created almost single-handedly by acclaimed designer Lucas Pope, no game quite like it had ever existed before. Six years later, it still remains a uniquely quirky masterpiece — the Moby Dick of immersive indie games.…
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Lots of interesting conversation around Coffee Pancake's guest essay on the decline of user activity in IMVU, including this one by an anonymous commenter: In general as people age, they become less social. This has been observed multiple times, and has studies, if you care to look them up. IMVU has an aging demographic, and…
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Coffee Pancake, co-host of the largest Second Life-themed group on Reddit, recently noticed an odd trend in her subreddit related to IMVU users, and began investigating. Her findings coincide with some data points I've been wondering about myself — IMVU has shed millions of monthly active users in recent years, with even website traffic from…
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Update: Philip, Seamus, and Chet's segment starts at around 1:04:15 after somewhat stumbly introduction, making some unique and inspiring endorsements of Harris/Walz from a virtual world/game developer perspective! Live on YouTube! Click through this link to comment live on the stream, or feel free to comment (civilly!) below. And please sign up here for future…
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When Julian Reyes of the Virtual Worlds Museum asked me last January to help him launch a project, his goal was so ambitious, it actually made my head hurt: To create the best and most comprehensive online resource for information on virtual worlds, while also preserving virtual world history. I've been writing this blog since…
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting Ashley Carter is the creator of Voidar, a world within the world of Second Life, one created by pictures and storytelling. Each story is presented as a Flickr album. Voidar is populated with her many friends who volunteer to be part of…
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Second Life Pro Tips: Expert Advice & Insights from Full-Time Creators is now free to read for all Patreon members, bringing together insights of two successful SL brands: Cold Ash and Bad Unicorn. Here's a sample, first from ColdAsh, on the importance of customer service: "I think my goal has always been to resolve the…
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Primfeed, the new social media platform for Second Life users (positioned as an alternative to Flickr at launch) is seeing some pretty impressive user activity since launching in June. By July, according to SimilarWeb, it reached nearly 1 million total visits for the month (938K, to be more exact); then in August, traffic fell only slightly,…
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Update, 9/6: Just heard from Brett at Linden Lab: The combat sims are a showcase demonstration for a system upgrade: "This is our expanded/improved combat system that is rolling out on the grid. Here's a wiki page that discusses it in a bit more detail." When Linden Lab posted this video about an hour ago,…
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After digging through reader suggestions, here are the first five new-ish Second Life brands to check out this weekend — and if you like nominate favorites in my reader straw poll! In alphabetical order, they are: Aardvark (Marketplace) “Aardvark makes some pretty funny stuff. Their items always makes me smile. I was riding around on…
