Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Author, strategist, virtual world reporter

Contact me!

Bio / CV

My Patreon Supporters

Hypnotic Romance, an SL sim with secluded spaces for couples. Click here to teleport.

“TV POWWW!” by Tom Boellstorff & Braxton Soderman. Read about the first televised videogame here.

The Fitting Room: Try out new SL fits in a secure, private space. Click here to teleport.

  • LOOK: Incredible Images Inspired by Oppenheimer Created in Second Life

    Oppenheimer Tributes Second Life Flickr

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

    It is fairly easy to find SL-based Barbie pictures and friendly homages to that film, but there are far fewer for Oppenheimer, and even fewer for the portmanteau double feature Barbenheimer. Nonetheless, Second Life residents always come through with something worth paying attention to. 

    Take “Great Atomic Power” by Alsatian Kidd, He effectively captures the shock of the explosion, the massive white light, and the sense that life was changing in that moment. He also captures the time with the car, the man’s clothing, and the huge radiation monitor. The picture was taken at Mother Road Upper Level. [To teleport, click here]

    For more Oppenheimer pictures, including one incorporating the Bhagavad Gita, click here:

    (more…)

  • Roblox Stock Performance Misses Metaverse Platform’s Population Has Grown to 300 MILLION MAU

    Roblox stock 300 million MAU

    You probably saw today's downbeat reports of Roblox's stock after the company announced its last quarter earnings:

    Shares of Roblox closed down more than 21% Wednesday after the company reported second-quarter results that missed analysts’ expectations on top and bottom lines.

    The revenue figure is what Roblox calls bookings, a category that includes sales recognized during the quarter and deferred revenue. Bookings rose by 22% year over year. Roblox reported $639.9 million in bookings in the year-ago quarter. The company generates revenue from sales of its virtual currency called Robux, which players use to dress up their avatars and buy other premium in-game features.

    This despite the fact that Roblox also reported [.pdf link] strong user growth:  "Average Daily Active Users (“DAUs”) were 65.5 million, up 25% year-over-year.  Average monthly unique payers were 13.5 million, up 19% year-over-year."

    Roblox the company doesn't report monthly active users — probably because its MAU can fluctuate wildly from month to month, based on the free time of its core user base of kids and teens.

    That's unfortunate from a market perception point of view, because last December, Roblox was estimated to have 250 million MAU. And recently (this June), a leading Roblox analyst service RTrack reported that Roblox MAU had since grown to over 300 million:

    (more…)

  • Cajsa’s Second Life Flickr Pick: Virtual Décor Photos by Hitsu Ruby to Rival Dwell Magazine

    Summer Café 🌻

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

    Hitsu Ruby takes fabulous landscape and decor photos. Consider “Summer Cafe,” a pic of the patio tables of a coffee shop along a pedestrian-friendly canal’s edge. I want to be there right this minute with the fresh breeze and the lovely dappled shade. I want that pink lemonade and to sip it while reading a good book. 

    The book is the clue that there is a bit of a breeze, enough to flutter some pages. It’s a huge book, maybe it’s War and Peace. By the way, folks often don’t try W&P because they think it must be boring. It’s not! It’s got war, love affairs, incest, and all sorts of action. It’s really an exciting book, not dull at all, though Part III has too many battle strategy chapters from the war. My advice is to just skip them and go with the flow.

    For more lovely décor picks, click here:

    (more…)

  • Metaverse Artist AM Radio on Second Life as the First “Giga-Artwork”

    AM Radio Second Life metaverse art

    Image via AM Radio's Flickr

    Jeff "AM Radio" Berg was watching my recent interview with Philip Rosedale, and AM Radio being AM Radio, sent me this pretty profound thought:

    I wonder if what he created, when considered as a whole, is the first giga-artwork. An artwork so large it has an economy. An artwork as a grand experiment on the nature of our existence, as evolving typologies of identity and taxonomies of spaces, and communication. As if it was an innate instinct in each of us to reject randomness, a clamoring for order when we recognize something like Second Life as a well structured lattice designed to catch up with the unfolding entropy of the universe, find new ways of being, classify each discovery, expand our perceptions, and add it to our phylum of ways of being alive.

    He's saying "giga-artwork" as a play on "Gigafactory", a facility which manufactures electric engines. (Or more broadly, a factory which makes other factories.) Adding:

    Why couldn’t a whole meta world be a unique artwork, the artist as world builder. Maybe there is a specific set of qualifiers to define something as a giga-artwork? But qualifiers might get lost in semantics. So maybe a giga-artwork needs just one, and Second Life is the first one I’ve seen capable of it. Think of it as a sort of analog to Turing completeness, call it meta-complete, when a world is capable of spawning child worlds capable of emulating other worlds.

    Here's what he means, in terms of Second Life's architecture:

    (more…)

  • Cajsa’s Second Life Flickr Pick: Perfectly Provocative Pics by Brooke Portilo

    Screenshot (478)

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

    Brooke Portilo is a master at creating sexy pictures with subtlety. Rather than the decidedly graphic self-exposure of everything, she uses provocative poses, flattering lingerie or clothing, and lighting to imbue her pictures with passion. Take this picture “Interlude”, she’s wearing a full shirt that goes at least to her knees if not longer, but her pose that arches her torso suggests she’s not alone in that room. The out-of-focus bedknob in the foreground suggests immediate fulfillment. It’s suggestive as all get out, but it’s totally safe for work. 

    For more provocative pics by Brooke, click here:

    (more…)

  • Anti-Trans Concern Trolls an Ongoing Problem in Second Life (Comment of the Week)

    SL trans sim Russian bots

    While trolls recently griefing a Second Life flag with a trans flag may have the new-ish twist of adding pro-Russia propaganda, reader "yup" notes that antit-trans trolling is a constantly occurring issue in the virtual world:

    Sadly these anti-trans trolls infiltrate everywhere in Second Life too and they target trans places since awhile. They are also joined by US conservative activists and trolls, who pretend to be moderate or have common sense, but in fact they parrot unhinged far-right slogans. Interaction is often more subtle than rezzing prims. LGBT+ dating boards are targeted too, there is at least a known case.

    Often, though, it begins by private messages, starting slow, but in a manipulative way. The victims then let their guard down, then the trolls or "concerned trolls" do what they do. What at first may seem like a normal chat, then becomes something else. Depending on their target, the victim – even worse who was intending to just enjoy a safe space with like-minded people and feel understood – may end up with doubts or attacked and hurt.

    I've definitely seen this kind of behavior in SL-oriented sites and on Reddit. Writing about Second Life's large trans community, Cajsa Lilliehook recently noted that it often pops up on a popular avatar gossip site:

    (more…)

  • Top 5 Posts Including A ChatGPT Mystery & a New Second Life Avatar Setup

    Second Life starting avatar tutorial

  • Yes, You Can Barbie-fy Your Second Life Avatar Via BaiRBIE.me!

    Bairbe SL Gogo avatar

    With the world's theaters still painted profoundly pink, probably you've noticed people sharing real life photos of themselves that have been Barbie doll-ified via BaiRBIE.me.

    Turns out that, yes, you can do so with photos of your Second Life avatar. Here's Gogo's before and after version (above). Somewhat paradoxically, the SL avatar looks more human than the AI-generated doll version.

    Here's another, by Gidge:

    (more…)

  • New Gather & Nest Blog is a Good Guide to Second Life Homes & Land

    SL home tutorial blog

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

    There’s a new blog in town and it’s called Gather and Nest. It’s a group blog focused on Linden Homes that aims to reach beyond the blog and form a community of gatherers and nesters. The founders are Gorgeous Aurelia (Gogo), Teresa Firelight, and Malayaa Morningstar with more to come. 

    They plan for the blog to be useful as evidenced by this early blog post: Choose Your Linden Home is broken, but it doesn’t have to stay that way! This is an opinion piece by one of the nesters, Gogo of Juicybomb, with suggestions on how to improve the Premium Plus home selection perk as well as practical advice for people who might want to trade homes or address other issues. She also lists links to other home tutorials she wrote on her personal blog in the past:

    For more Linden Home tips, click here:

    (more…)

  • Second Life Finally Adds New Mesh-Based Avatars & Fun Web-Based Setup Experience for First-Time Users — But Lack of Non-Human Options is a Serious Mistake

    This has been hinted at for months and even accidentally popped up on the test grid recently, but Linden Lab finally launched new starting mesh-based avatars and a "customize your new avatar" mini-game-type experience (similar to what you get at the start of The Sims franchise) for new users right on the homepage:

    We're excited to announce the launch of our new Starter Avatars! These avatars, called Senra, are a fresh mesh take on the classic Second Life avatar, with a customizable modern and stylish look. These avatars will give new residents the opportunity to get started with a mesh body and personalize their own unique look the very first time they log in to Second Life and get a taste for the endless possibilities of avatar customization available to SL Residents.

    Go here to join.secondlife.com to try it yourself. You'll probably want to use a different browser than what you normally employ for logging into Second Life's website. These are very rudimentary avatars, so longtimers may understandably squawk, but the great thing is this gently leads new SL users into the virtual world in a way that's, you know, fun.

    Some other thoughts:

    • It's optimized for mobile! That alone is a huge leap forward for the first-time user experience.
    • Since these avatars come with a dev kit, expect a new burst of avatar fashion items in what's been a pretty static economy dominated by 2-3 mesh body giants.
    • There's a serious lack of non-human, non-standard avatars. This really conveys a false impression of the varieties of expression that Second Life makes possible — and will further distort the virtual world's culture around a "Malibu lifestyle" aesthetic. (See below.)

    See my Starting Avatar avatar below:

    (more…)