Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Linden Lab Replies to Merchant Survey on Top Five Improvements to the Second Life Economy — Company Already “Very Focused” on the Top Two!

June 5, 2025

Originally posted on my Patreon

Just heard back from Linden Lab on your top five most requested improvements to the Second Life economy! Company spokesperson Brett Linden sent this reply:

Thanks for sharing!! Love that you are going to the community and getting these suggestions. Brad is very focused on the top two items.

We've also passed on your results to the development and product teams and we encourage the community to continue sharing their feedback, feature requests and suggestions in our Feedback Portal and/or they can directly speak to our product and development members by attending one of our many inworld community user group meetups. We also encourage creators who want to potentially partner with us to submit their proposals to the Creator Partnership Program.

There's much more to come and we appreciate hearing this feedback!

By "top two items", Linden Lab head Brad Oberwager means these:

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Cajsa’s Choices: Three Unique Pictures of the Same Shifuku Lace Dress, Which Just Went Mini-Viral in Second Life

June 5, 2025

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

ᴅɪᴀ posted this gorgeous pic showing off an outfit for the event Pride at Home. I love the picture and I love the look. I like that it’s in pastels rather than the usual saturated colors of the rainbow flag. After all, when you see a rainbow in the sky, it’s usually pastel. Now, when making a flag, check out Pantone’s Color Guide to the Pride flag. But for clothing, why not pastel?

As I was adding pictures to my gallery celebrating Pride yesterday, I noticed this outfit showing up over and over and over again. Sometimes something really catches on. People see it on Flickr and rush to buy it. It just captures the zeitgeist somehow. That must be what happened with Shifuku’s lace dress. So many people were wearing it, I decided to highlight some.

For more folks wearing this outfit, click here:

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Watch: Thief VR Teases Return of Garrett in Reboot of Immersive Classic

June 4, 2025

The cult classic Thief franchise is going VR! Courtesy Eidos (its original publisher) and Vertigo Games, creator of the award-winning creators of VR hits Metro Awakening and Arizona Sunshine, Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow is set for release on Quest, PSVR, and on Steam this year.

I'm only surprised a VR reboot has taken this long, because the original games from the early 2000s were all about 3D immersion (both graphically and aurally). By putting the player in the role of a stealthy cat burglar in a steampunk city, Thief made you so keenly aware of the virtual environment (light/shadow, the ambient noisemaking potential of different materials, bored/agitated guards), you felt truly part of the 3D world around you. Done well, it could be a masterpiece of the medium.

And yes, it sounds like Garrett, the franchise's grizzled but lovable anti-hero, is back in some form, and voiced by the original actor, Stephen Russell:

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Cajsa’s Choices: Joyous Pride Photos From Across Second Life’s Massive LGBTQIA Communities

June 4, 2025

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

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K4RIIM gives us “Happy Pride Month” in this joyful picture with his friend or partner. I love the joy of Pride but I know it’s a hard-won joy. It’s easy to forget how much it means 55 years after the Christopher Street Liberation Day March, the first Pride event. I’ve worked the booth at non-profit organizations at a dozen or more IRL Pride events and the joy is infectious. But LGBTQIA people are always reminded that their rights remain contingent, subject to the whims of a Supreme Court that is flirting with rescinding the right to marry and who knows what else.

But while many cowardly corporations are showing their true colors and backing away from Pride rainbows, Second Life owner Linden Lab steps forward and not just with user-organized events like Pride at Home but also focusing their monthly Spotlight feature on Tinker Hax (pictured at right) who, with his partner Coral Lacey, founded Pride at Home to compensate for the loss of Pride events during COVID.

SL embraces the LGBTIQA community and is so important to many people around the world for whom it is their only safe space. (Read my post on Second Life's large trans community here.) I decided to take a look at the first few days of pictures of folks enjoying Pride and created a gallery I will post at the end of this article.

Don’t worry, I will come back to Pride through the month so if you want to join my gallery, take a picture and tag me on Flickr!

For more from SL Pride, 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 : 2025年5月 Sanny Reports For Virtual Japan

June 4, 2025

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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What Merchants Want: Top Five Most Requested Improvements to the Second Life Economy

June 3, 2025

Thanks to everybody who participated in my Patreon survey based on suggestions from Second Life merchants on the key improvements to the virtual world economy that would most benefit them. 251 people participated, which is roughly 1 in 4 of my total membership list.

With 40 votes, this is the improvement most requested by far:

Standardize the SL avatar body/head/optimize mesh and provide a FREE development kit to all.

The runners-up received 29 to 22 votes, in this order:

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VRChat Officially Announces In-Platform Avatar Marketplace is Live

June 3, 2025

After an initial tease last month, VRChat just announced that its long-awaited in-platform avatar marketplace is live, and that the company has already received (and is now processing) 1000 applications from creators to bring their avies to it.

This is already a crazy number of avatar options to choose from, but company community leader Strasz notes that they're planning to add options to search by category and tag. Most VRC users will probably go window shopping for avatars in social experiences, since it's easy enough to inspect a cool-looking avie to find out what brand they're wearing.

I expect this roll-out will greatly increase VRChat the company's revenue, as avatars are key to expression among its estimated 10 million monthly active users. As noted recently, creators who've already joined the platform's creator economy in its early phase are already making way more money, even after the company takes a 50% revenue cut. As Charles Tupper, Community Manager at VRChat, put it:

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Cajsa’s Choices: Rileigh Reed Shows Off in Shadowy Fashion Shots

June 3, 2025

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

Rileigh Reed’s most recent picture “Watching in the Shadows” epitomizes her aesthetic perfectly. She likes the dark and, as you can see, the dark likes her.

I have mentioned before how a person who has since left SL long ago inspired my original “What I Like” posts on my own blog that eventually led to this column. She once dinged me for a fashion post, saying “Never wear clothes the same color as the background.”

Well, they were wrong then and are wrong to this day and you can see how wrong they are in Rileigh’s picture. She seems to be stepping out of the background, emerging if you will. And the details of her clothing are not lost. It’s a wonderful fashion pic.

For more of Rileigh’s power pics , click here:

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Top 5 Posts Including Stories on VRChat’s Creator, Second Life Overall Usage down While User Innovation is Up — And a Hilariously Infuriating Use Case of Gen AI

June 2, 2025
In SL Merchant Survey, 67% Want Gen AI Content Regulated or Banned Outright from Second Life — Sneak Preview of My Patreon Report on the Virtual Economy

May 30, 2025

I'm almost finished with my massive report on the state of the Second Life economy, which I'm planning to publish on my Patreon soon, but here's a striking sneak peek: In my survey of SL merchants, a massive majority of 67% want 3D content with Gen AI element regulated or banned outright from Second Life. (With nearly 1 in 3 choosing the strictest option of banning.)

This a very interesting contrast to my April survey of all SL users (not just merchants), in which, for example, 54% chose the option, REQUIRE merchants tag their content as having "No AI" or "Contains AI" — only 27% of merchants in the new survey went with that one.

Join my Patreon to be first to read the whole thing.