Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Author, strategist, virtual world reporter

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  • Today’s Flickr Pick: Richly Detailed Second Life Scenes by Ryohh Resident

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    Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

    Ryo [Ryohh Resident] has a blog which I would happily feature, but what excites me most is her photography. I love the scene she has created. Is she waiting for a bus in front of Grey Gardens? She could be a modern, chic Mary Poppins? That cat is adorable. Does it wait for the bus with her?

    I had a cat who met me at the bus stop at the end of the day. I worried she might be sitting there for hours, but my neighbor who lived by the stop told me she arrived less than five minutes before the bus. Cats, they are amazing. 

    For more of Ryo’s stunning scenes, click here:

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  • Watch: Practical Steps to Making the Metaverse With Raph Koster, Cory Ondrejka, and Author of Making a Metaverse That Matters (I.E. Me)

    Practical steps to making the metaverse from VentureBeat on Vimeo.

    As promised, here's video and the slide deck (below) from the recent Gamesbeat Next's "Practical Steps to Making the Metaverse" talk with game designer Raph Koster, Second Life co-founder Cory Ondrejka, and myself. Volume is a bit low in places, but the video has close caption and transcript buttons you can use to read along.

    I believe this is one of the first times Raph has talked publicly about Playable Worlds, his upcoming metaverse platform. In our chat, he contrasts its approach to Metaplace, his first startup some 15 years ago, which had trouble gaining traction until they pivoted to using the underlying engine to build Facebook games:

    Famously it took Roblox a decade to get one decent game on [the platform], it took a long time to get the flywheel going. My previous startup [Metaplace], we actually made the same mistake. Roblox had more money than we had, so they outlasted us.

    The minute we pivoted to just making games [with the Metaplace technology], we picked up more users in the first hour than we had over the entire previous five years.

    So [with Playable Worlds] we're building a game first and from there we plan to make it the first moddable MMO that allows players to actually start to take ownership of spaces and expand.

    In other words (talking about practical steps), start as a game first and then build out the metaverse features.

    Slide deck below!

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  • “What Would Keanu Do?” My Capsule Matrix Review for Jeff Yang’s The Golden Screen (Cut for Space)

    Golden Screen book Jeff Yang Matrix Review

    The Golden Screen is a new book from longtime colleague Jeff Yang, and it's a fun and inspiring tribute to the movies which help shape Asian-American culture, from acclaimed recent hits like Everything Everywhere All at Once and Crazy Rich Asians to influential international classics like John Woo's The Killer and Park Chan Wook's Oldboy.

    Jeff, who once hosted an SXSW panel on race and avatars I participated in, asked me to contribute some capsule review which were tragically cut for length. But because my Matrix capsule is pretty germane to New World Notes, you can read it here:

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  • Poe-try: Small But Mighty Flickr Group Creates Second Life Tributes to the Works of Edgar Allen Poe

    Whom the Angels Named Lenore

    Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

    Liz Saenz’ “Whom the Angels Named Lenore” is one of many striking pictures in what will surely be the smallest group I feature. With only eight members, nine since I joined, Poe-try is dedicated to the great Edgar Allen Poe. We’re still in the penumbra of Halloween, so it’s now or never to feature it. This above is one of many pics paying homage to his most famous poem, “The Raven.” 

    With the popularity of Poe, I found over 150 SL-based pictures honoring Poe, so there are a lot of people who should get busy, join the Poe-try group, and add their Poe pics. 

    For more Poe, click here:

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  • New Gamer Survey Data Helps Answer an Ongoing Mystery: Why Are There So Few Massively Popular Science Fiction-Themed MMOs?

    Star Citizen MMO Screenshot

    Above: Star Galaxy, the MMO with a passionate if niche following

    Nick Yee of game research firm Quantic Foundry has a fascinating new blog post which helps answer a mystery that’s been bothering me for roughly 15 years: Why do we rarely see any science fiction-themed MMO/multiplayer game become a mass market hit?

    It’s true: Sci-fi MMOs like Eve Online and Star Citizen have passionate but very niche user bases in the hundreds of thousands, whereas fantasy-themed MMOs like World of Warcraft and Elder Scrolls Online attract players in the millions. Even MMOs based on super popular sci-fi IP — i.e. Star Wars and Star Trek — have rarely (if ever?) succeeded at bringing in millions of users over an extended period. 

    One key reason could be based in demographics. Summarizing findings from Quantic Foundry’s survey data of 1.25 million+ gamers, Nick bluntly puts it this way:

    Sci-Fi is much more appealing to older gamers:

    58% of Strategy genre fans rated Sci-Fi as a “very” or “extremely” appealing thematic setting for a Strategy game. Here among Strategy genre fans, we do find a strong gender difference in terms of the appeal of Sci-Fi. Male Strategy genre fans are about twice as likely to rate Sci-Fi as an “extremely” appealing thematic setting compared to female Strategy genre fans (31% vs. 15%).

    [O]lder gamers (especially those 35+) are much more likely to rate Sci-Fi as an “extremely” appealing thematic setting for a Strategy game. This suggests that the Sci-Fi age trend is the more stable, cross-genre effect whereas gender differences depend on the specific genre.

    This particular Quantic Foundry data set focuses on player preferences with shooter and strategy genre games; but, Nick tells me, we could potentially apply those results to MMOs:

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  • Linden Lab Hiring Senior QA Engineer With Remote Work Option in 16 States

    Linden Lab Senior QA engineer help wanted

    Pays up to $168K, which is an extremely good salary, especially since you don't have to work at Linden Lab's San Francisco HQ:

    We are seeking a passionate Senior QA Engineer to join our Product team.  As a Quality Assurance Engineer, you will design, develop, and deliver high-level test strategies and methodologies while taking a hands-on approach to see that they are implemented efficiently…

    Our Linden Lab headquarters is in San Francisco, but we have embraced a distributed model of working to reach the best talent across the United States. Remote roles based outside of our office can sit in any of the following 16 states: AZ, CA, CO, FL, GA, IL, MA, MN, MT, NH, NC, OR, PA TX, VA and WA. We invite you to apply if you are able to live and work full-time in one of the states listed above.

    As noted recently, Linden Lab is among the tech companies which are bucking the "get back to the office" trend that Apple and other major Bay Area/Valley firms is driving. (That even includes Roblox, despite being a company building on a metaverse platform!)

    Also notable:

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  • Today’s SL Flickr Pick: Spookily Imaginative Images from CRUD

    Itch-it-a-cop-it-a-Mel-a-ka-mys-ti-ca

    Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

    CRUD’s “Itch-it-a-cop-it-a-Mel-a-ka-mys-ti-ca” recalls an epic moment in the movvie Hocus Pocus, and doesn’t he look like his bones are bending and twisting into a  new shape? He catches him mid-transformation. I love how he doesn’t try to look pretty, which is how you can recognize his work. It’s not pretty,, but it is emotional and powerful. His avatars are unique. He forges his own path. 

    For more from CRUD, click here:

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  • Sannyのおすすめバーチャルワールドニュース : 2023年10月 Sanny Reports For Virtual Japan

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    Sanny Yoshikawa が、New World Notesのなかから、毎月おすすめのバーチャルワールドニュースを日本語で紹介します

    Sanny Yoshikawa covers the monthly virtual world highlights from New World Notes for virtual Japan.

     

     

     

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  • With Fortnite OG Attracting 45M Daily Players, Here’s a Look At the Platform’s Continued Strength as a Metaverse Platform — And Advice for Brands Interested in Creating Fortnite Experiences

    Fortnite OG 45 million metaverse platform

    Huge milestone for Fortnite last Saturday:

    A little over six years after it launched, battle royale sensation Fortnite just broke its all-time one-day player record — by going back in time. The launch of Fortnite OG, a special season which brings back the game’s original Chapter 1 map, drew an incredible 44.7 million players on Saturday, Nov. 4, who between them racked up 102 million hours of play.

    I'm told Fortnite's daily/monthly user numbers have been trending down in recent months, but the clamor to play OG demonstrates the continued strength of the brand. Tens of million of people clearly still have it installed on their devices, or are perfectly willing to re-install, when there's a burst of new content. 

    This strength from Fortnite as a consumer brand is echoed by its continued strength as a metaverse platform:

    • Roughly fifty-percent of time spent in Fortnite is in creator-made experiences developed by the Fortnite community and third party brands (Epic tells me).
    • Nearly 1000 Fortnite Creative user creators are earning a decent part-time ($10K/year or more) or full-time income — with many earning more than most Epic employees, some more than everyone except Sweeney himself. 

    A substantial number of those players who returned to play OG will also go on to explore community/brand-made content. So here's some advice (featured in my book) from Mackenzie and Simon of Alliance, a studio which has created Fortnite experiences for brands like Doritos and, well, Joe Biden's 2020 campaign:

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  • Metaverse Memory: My Story of a Man Who Built a Virtual World Museum to Hold His Dying Father’s Art

    SL gallery Peter Vos art

    From "Sander's Villa: The Man Who Gave His Father A Second Life" (2011):

    As death approached, the artist’s son did an extraordinary thing: He began to build a place that would live on after his father, made with particles of light. That is to say, Sander Vos logged into Second Life, and made a gallery of his father’s work in digital 3D.  

    “I started building a 3D version of one of his drawings, ‘Villa Insight’ in Second Life, while he was ill, because building makes me calm in a way,” Sander tells me. “I had to think practical all the time, like: How on earth am I going to make this little ink bottle with prims? And I was busy with him at the same time, ‘cause it was all about him of course."

    Read the rest here.