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: VRChat
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Above: The home office of full-time VRChat employee (and former community member) "Merlin" Interesting new work policy from leading metaverse platform company Roblox, as reported by Vox's Jay Peters: Roblox — a company that builds a hugely popular virtual experiences platform, recently introduced its own spin on video chat, and even created an in-Roblox career center — is “transitioning…
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I keep saying VRChat resembles Second Life in its golden age, because in both cases, amazingly ambitious community-made inventions keep popping up like magic mushrooms when you weren't looking. Which brings us to this project by VRC creator Myro P: A theme park builder similar to the classic game Roller Coaster Tycoon, but in full…
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In case you missed it, VRChat launched the Alpha version of its Android mobile app last week. (User-made tutorial above.) It's already been downloaded 10,000 times, though to be honest — given VRChat's user base of 5-10 million active users — on first glance, I'd have expected a larger download rate. Then again, the Android…
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Watch a tour of the Recursive Room above at 07:32 I finally got a chance to chat with Thad Gyther, creator of the brain-melting Recursive Room of VRChat, which puts you in a room within a room within a room. (Watch above to see what I mean.) Since launching last January, it's been visited over…
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Quite the mind-bending VRChat world….World – Thad Recursive Room, by Thad Gyther pic.twitter.com/WsRNo4iHSt — Rcbif (@rcbif) January 19, 2023 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js The trouble with writing a book about the Metaverse is you end up too busy to write about what's currently happening across the best metaverse platforms. Which takes me to Thad Gyther's Recursive Room in…
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VRChat recently announced in-world monetization options for creators, and I've been wondering since then whether it's too little, too late. The founders' extreme caution around a creator economy is totally understandable, but the virtual world already has about 4-6 million monthly active users (by my estimate), making its population about the size of Los Angeles.…
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This is a pretty powerful tribute to the VRChat community and the creativity they’ve wrought on the platform thus far — and as created and narrated by Raergur, the video expresses the essential appeal of the Metaverse ideal too: Built by and for the community, by real people. This is the real Metaverse. I’ve…
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VRChat's latest developer update quietly includes details on its long-awaited mobile-app coming soon (watch above): To start, VRChat on Android Mobile will only be available to VRChat Plus users. We want to get you a build ASAP to try out and start working with, while also allowing us time to refine the UI and UX before…
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With news that Microsoft is shutting down its VR metaverse platform AltspaceVR, along with widespread layoffs across most of the major tech companies, you might assume the Metaverse as an industry is also feeling the string. Not so much. On a quick tally of leading metaverse platforms in terms of active users, along with promising…
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This is actually more of a milestone for VRChat than the Sony body trackers I mentioned earlier this week, and that was also huge — VRChat just launched a group function in open beta: Groups is a huge system that we think is going to change VRChat forever. Most of the features we’ve mentioned today…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 