Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Author, strategist, virtual world reporter

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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.

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Second Life User Creators Were Paid Out $86 Million in 2021! That’s Decent Growth & Compares Well To Metaverse Leader Roblox

October 26, 2022

When I blogged about J.P. Morgan investing in Linden Lab payments spinoff Tilia last week, I missed this point from Forbes columnist and longtime Metaverse expert Charlie Fink:

Tilia is easy for developers to implement, and it’s simple and convenient for their customers to use. Transactions are instant and cost pennies, some of which go into the developer’s pocket. At Second Life, those pennies amounted to $86M last year.

Emphasis mine, because wow. I checked this with company spokesman Brett Linden who clarified that this $86 million is "the amount that was paid out to creators in 2021."

Yes: Second Life's content creator community earned $86 million from their virtual content last year.

This is notable for at least a couple reasons:

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WATCH: This Impressive Machinima With Amazing Fight Scenes Was Shot Entirely in VRChat — With One Actor Playing All the Fighters!

October 26, 2022

As teased back in August, here's S.Y.N.C., a short feature movie shot entirely in VRChat. Written, directed, edited, and performed by "Legend50210" (let's call him Legend for short), it's a fun sci-fi actioner with slick production values and impressive fight choreography — even more impressive, when you realize Legend plays all the characters.

"The loops are recorded animations of myself," as he explained over the Summer. "The FreezeFrame mod had a 'Sync' button at the time and it allowed me to line up all animations from the start when I started a new clone."

In other words, he recorded the fight moves wearing different avatars in a full-body VR rig, then synced them together in post-production. What's really amazing to me is that the fight choreography is so fluid and seemingly full contact. That wasn't easy, says Legend:

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Today’s Flickr Pick: Spine-Tingling Screenshots of Spooky Season Second Life Homes

October 26, 2022

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

“House on Haunted Hill” from My SL Reflections seems a perfect Halloween picture with its orange and black theme and the slightly decrepit old Victorian home with a wrought iron fence and the bare trees, their silhouettes black and menacing. There are even bat shadows cast on the moon! It’s so perfect it inspired me to look for other SL haunted houses.

For more spooky shelters, click here:

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Metaverse Platforms Infographic: Now Well Over Half a Billion Monthly Users!

October 25, 2022

Update, 10/26: Nic just confirmed to me that his official total is now 505 million monthly active users across all the metaverse platforms he's tracking.

Here's a core slice of the Metaverse Universe chart just updated for Q4 2022, from longtime virtual world analyst Nic Mitham. (Click here for the full version from his analyst firm, Metaversed.) When I blogged his Q1 2022 chart, the total number of monthly active users (based on publicly available data) was just under 500 million. Now, counting platforms which roughly fit the classic Snow Crash definition, it's over 505 million monthly active users. Those include:

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3 Spectacular Second Life Locations to Visit, Beautifully Shot by Pink Rayne

October 25, 2022

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

Pink Rayne’s “Fading” is a haunting picture of standing stones taken at Haraiki Bay [to teleport, click here]. I love the sky, the light breaking through the clouds to illuminate the stones and a lone bull. It seems as though it has just rained, with the blur radiating from the center as though we can see clearly now, the rain has gone.

For a vibrant cityscape, click here:

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Monday Memory: How Suzanne Vega Singing in Second Life in 2006 Helped Shaped the Virtual World’s Culture

October 24, 2022

When Caroline Mimbs Nyce of The Atlantic asked how much Taylor Swift is like the Metaverse, the question seemed pretty bizarre at first — but then got us talking about Suzanne Vega performing in Second Life, the first platinum-selling artist to do so in any metaverse platform. While's Vega's appearance did help inspire a rush of other real world brands appearing in SL, it also helped shape Second Life's culture going forward, cultivating it as a virtual world popular with women and indy creators. I have to think if another, very different artist had performed in 2006, Second Life would have evolved in another direction.

Relatedly, Taylor Swift's massively massive fanbase (229 million followers on Instagram alone) has many tens of millions of gamers/metaverse users. Which is why I said:

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Top 6 Posts Last Week Including: What Taylor Swift Gets That Most Metaverse Devs Miss, Plus a Post-Mortem on Decentraland

October 24, 2022
The Atlantic Asks Me How Much Taylor Swift is Like the Metaverse — Spoiler: More Than You Might Think!

October 21, 2022

Above: SL Cosplay Taylor Tribute by Kylie Quinn

“Weirdly, Taylor Swift Is Extremely Close to Creating a True Metaverse” is a totally random interview with Caroline Mimbs Nyce of The Atlantic I just did, and it starts with a left field premise that winds up with some fairly interesting ways of thinking about the topic. Some favorite excerpts:

Nyce: How important is VR in this? Is that “and”—as in “VR and other devices”—really operative there?

Au: No, no, no. That’s another thing that drives me crazy: the assumption that it has to be in VR. In the book, Stephenson even mentions that it’s mostly just the wealthy who use VR headsets, and regular folks just use a regular computer.

Metaverse platforms exist. The biggest one is Roblox, followed by Fortnite. To be a true Metaverse with a capital M, you would need, like, 15 million people or more in the same virtual world at the same time. And we’re not there yet. We’re close.

This is something that’s not discussed much, but think it’s worth keeping in mind: In Neal Stephenson’s original vision of the Metaverse, the Metaverse has an average concurrency twice the population of New York — i.e. about 15 million people. We’re close to that now. (Stephenson himself was surprised when I pointed that out.)

Then I get to compare Taylor Swift’s progress on the Metaverse against what Mark Zuckerberg is doing:

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Fashion Friday: Dramatic Virtual Décor Ideas from Bits and Pieces of SL

October 21, 2022
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Bits and Pieces of SL is an excellent decor blog by Alexa Maravilla. I am obsessed by this gorgeous post Smile You’re on Camera. The docks are from DRD for The Liaison Collaborative that opened on the 18th. It looks like a great place to party and needs thirty some people drinking, playing pool, dancing, and maybe a local cover band. It looks like a lake resort with the canoes, so they probably sell worms, minnows, and burgers and fries.
- DRD – Lake Dock – Dock @ TLC Event It closes November 10th.
- DRD – Lake Dock – Canoe – Blue
- DRD – Lake Dock – Canoe – Natural w/oars
- DRD – Lake Dock – Canoe – Green
- DRD – Lake Dock – Lamp
- DRD – Lake Dock – Locker
- DRD – Lake Dock – Shelf
For an elegant and striking set piece, click here:

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WATCH: Pianist & Video Artist Hypnotically Improvise Together in Real Time in The Metaverse

October 20, 2022

I just had the most fascinating if totally left field press interview about music in the Metaverse. Which makes this as good a time as any to share this video, depicting one of the more innovative and ambitious metaverse-based music performances I've seen in awhile: Tia Rungray (IRL Japanese musician Takayuki Noami) performing hypnotically ambient live piano in Second Life. And with an added hook: As he plays, his collaborator Hebeerryke Caravan projects video images into the virtual world space which accompany the music… in real time.

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