Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Author, strategist, virtual world reporter

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  • FTC Action Against Meta’s Acquisition of Within Seems Poorly Placed When Meta is Losing Badly to Rec Room & VRChat

    Supernatural Oculus FTC Within app Rec Room VRChat

    Above: Within's Supernatural on the Oculus store with nearly 10,000 user ratings

    Fairly big bombshell just dropped:

    The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday filed for an injunction to block Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, from buying a virtual reality company called Within [producer of the highly popular fitness app called Supernatural], potentially limiting the company’s push into the so-called metaverse and signaling a shift in how the agency is approaching tech deals… John Newman, the deputy director of the F.T.C.’s Bureau of Competition, said the agency acted on the Within deal because Meta was “trying to buy its way to the top.” The company already owned a best-selling virtual reality fitness app, he said, but then chose to acquire Within’s Supernatural app “to buy market position.” He called the deal “an illegal acquisition, and we will pursue all appropriate relief.”

    Maybe I'm missing something, but Within's Supernatural is nowhere near "the top", even in the Quest 2's ecosystem of some 10-12 million headsets. With nearly 10,000 user ratings in the Oculus store, Supernatural likely has usage in the six figures.

    That's not nothing, but claiming that's "the top" misses the big picture: Meta is currently losing the platform war on its own platform. Compare Supernatural's usage with numbers announced by the metaverse platform Rec Room last April:

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  • VRChat Community Wracked by Protest Over Ban on Modified Clients

    VRChat user protest mod changes

    Above: Steam's VRChat ratings bombarded by protesters

    A Metaverse platform is nothing without a thriving community, but the flipside is portions of that community can seem to endanger the platform. VRChat is experiencing that now, due to an announcement that seems benign on its face:

    “Modified clients” are a large problem for VRChat in a variety of ways. Malicious modified clients allow users to attack and harass others, causing a huge amount of moderation issues. Even seemingly non-malicious modifications complicate the support and development of VRChat, and make it impossible for VRChat creators to work within the expected, documented bounds of VRChat.

    In order to prevent that, we’ve implemented Easy Anti Cheat (EAC) into VRChat. If you’ve played Apex Legends, Fortnite, Gears of War, Elden Ring, or many more, you’ve seen Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC)…  The integration of EAC means that all modified clients are blocked...

    Every month, thousands of users have their accounts stolen, often due to running a modified client that is silently logging their keystrokes as well as other information. These users – often without even realizing it! – run the risk of losing their account, or having their computers become part of a larger botnet. 

    Excuse me while I recover over flashbacks around various modified third party-made Second Life viewers which were banned for having dubious features. As with Second Life, a highly vocal number of VRC players have been protesting VRChat's move since it was made, include bombarding its Steam listing with bad reviews. Which as you can see above, is also an indicator of how small the protest is: Less than 10,000 users have recently posted a negative review. (Based on various figures, I'd estimate VRChat has about 5 million monthly active users, give or take.)

    Do the protestors have any legitimate points? Somewhat, in the sense that some mods include some features that provide text captions for deaf users, contrast for colorblind users, and so on. But then again, from VRChat the company's point of view, thousands of users are reportedly having their accounts actively stolen by modded viewers every month.

    Which side is right? Rather than weigh in, I'll quote a famed and highly respected member of the VRChat creator community, who requested I quote them anonymously, "due to the toxicity online" (their words), and provided great context on the situation:

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  • Flashback: Roblox Abandoned China a Month After a Pro-Taiwan US User Accessed the Chinese Version Through the Great Firewall

    ROBLOX China Firewall Ruben Sim

    Shelf under Could Be Coincidence, Could Be Something Else: Vice News has a fascinating in-depth look at Roblox's attempt to launch in China, including plans to accommodate the Chinese government's expectations around censoring content that suggests, for instance, that Taiwan is independent from China. Last December, however, Roblox abandoned China for mysterious reasons:

    [I]n July 2021, Roblox launched LuoBuLeSi, the Chinese version of its platform. Other documents show some of the mechanisms it had in place for complying with Chinese regulations, including a game “whitelist” and moderation features for display names in the country. 

    Roblox’s time in China was exceptionally short lived. In December 2021, the company closed down LuoBuLeSi without going into detail about why. Soon after it shut down, the company said that it was working to relaunch after making “necessary investments” to its “data architecture” but did not provide any additional information about closing.

    The Chinese market for online games is extremely large (as I saw first-hand a decade ago), so it's strange that Roblox would give up on it so quickly.

    As it happens, exactly a month before that (November 2021), a notorious Roblox user and popular YouTuber did pull this pretty cyberpunk stunt off:

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  • Today’s Flickr Pick: Ambre Singh Creates Comic & Conceptual Images in Second Life

    Sitting on the duck of the bay

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

    Can I love a Second Life photographer simply because her pictures make me giggle and sometimes even laugh out loud? Yes, yes I can.

    Ambre Singh’s picture is cute but when you add the title “Sitting on the Duck of the Bay” it goes from cute to hilarious and memorable. It made me want to do a deeper dive into her photostream. She’s not that fond of clothing, particular bras and shirts, and beach living gives her the freedom to live comfortably au naturel. However, being humorous does not take away from her artistry. 

    For a fabulous SL homage to a classic painting and more, click here:

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  • Top 5 Posts Last Week, Ft: Axie Infinity Loses 1M Daily Users, Linden Labber Teases SL Web Access, and Immersed in the Metaverse With Matthew Ball

    Matthew Ball in Breakroom metaverse platform

  • Matthew Ball Interview: The Metaverse Author On Government Regulation, Advice for Beginners Getting Started & Second Life’s Importance to Its Future (Part 2 Of 2)

    Matthew Ball metaverse book

    Update, July 22: Bumped up for weekend reading/conversation!

    Read Part 1 of our Q&A here. 

    In his book The Metaverse, Matthew Ball touches on Second Life and even speaks with the late, beloved CEO Ebbe Altberg about the dangers of breaking user-generated content through platform updates.

    During our Q&A this week we had a chance to chat about what Second Life can teach new metaverse platforms.

    “We're discovering so many things about virtual societies and communities, there's so many emergent behaviors, and many of them have been discovered or surfaced before," Matt tells me. "Second Life is such a great example. I was telling you the other day when I was asked that question, Is Second Life over or underrated?

    "I think it's underrated, because we and I for a long time underappreciated how many behaviors evolved that actually can’t really happen elsewhere that teach us a lot about what to build, what not to do, and how to speak to users upon which you rely on for an economy and user-generated content. Learning that history is important.”

    As to the future, much more of our conversation below: Advice for getting started in metaverse development, the important metaverse news announcements that have come out since his book was published — and what he'd say about government regulation of the Metaverse, if someone like Senator Elizabeth Warren asked:

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  • Friday Fashion: Fantastic Vampiric & Cyberpunk Style from My Dark Fantasy

    ✞Romanticide✞

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

    My Dark Fantasy is Yana Nightwich’s exciting and quite erotic blog featuring roleplay vampires, fairies, and warriors as well as highlighting intriguing places.  Romantique is a safe for Google post with a gorgeous avatar who is still a little bit spooky. For myself, I don’t wear tattoos or piercings in my first or second life, but I know they are popular. I think she looks gorgeous. 

    For more futuristic fare, click here:

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  • Linden Lab Bringing Back Second Life Cloud Streaming for the Web?

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Alexa Linden, director of Product at Linden Lab, just posted this casual but tantalizing question to Twitter: "What would you do if you could run #SecondLife in a browser?"

    Which is a great and highly specific question to ask!

    Second Life has actually done at least two official trials running Second Life through cloud streaming — first to the web in 2010, via Gaikai, and then (in a very ambitious rollout) in 2014, with OnLive. Look:

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  • Virtual World Images With Real Feeling Created by Eoleon Elcano

    2022-07-21

    Oh, Eoleon Elcano sure knows how to pluck the heartstrings. This is a picture full of pathos. The person who abandoned the dog did not even leave a dish of water. I’m sure even pixel dogs get thirsty. Eoleon included a link to Annie Lennox’s song “Why?” [Click here] 

    For more emotionally powerful pictures, click here:

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  • Matthew Ball Interview: The Metaverse Author on Mainstream Awareness, Negative Implications, NFTs & Blockchain — and an Exciting New Vision for Interoperability (Part 1 of 2)

    Matthew Ball metaverse interview Wagner James AuMatthew Ball's The Metaverse: And How it Will Revolutionize Everything is now available in bookshelves and online. (Get it on Amazon here, on Apple Books here, or on Bookshop.org here, which contributes a cut to indy bookstores.)

    I've been avidly reading my review copy of The Metaverse over the last couple weeks, and while I feel way too biased to write a full review, seeing as I'm now writing my own book on the topic, I will say this: It's an essential and indispensable resource to understanding the concept, and the key business, technology, and policy facets we need to comprehend now, to create a Metaverse that's truly worthy of the name. 

    I spoke with Matt earlier this week, delving into many topics from the book, beginning with what's been expanded on from his online Metaverse Primer (which I wrote about here last year):

    "The first and last thirds of the book are entirely new," he tells me. "The first third gets into the history of the Metaverse in science fiction and in virtual game worlds and platforms, why gaming seems to be at the forefront of this next generation of the Internet, defining the Metaverse as I see it, and why it is a successor of state to the Internet rather than just application for experiences on it… 

    "There are a few sections that are dramatically different; the hardware section in the Primer is about 600 words; in the book it's 12,000 or 13,000. It's fundamentally deeper and richer, part of which is to explain why the future we hope for VR and AR remains far outside of our grasp, while also looking at the other input devices that we might use, such as holography. The section on payments was dramatically changed to talk about the importance of regulation in the space."

    Speaking which, Matt also wrote an entirely new section about how much — or how little — blockchain relates to the Metaverse.

    "I don't believe that the blockchain is the Metaverse," he puts it to me bluntly, "I don't believe that it's a technical requirement. I think there are some interesting potential applications, but it is so relevant to the discourse that I wrote a chapter trying to explain why people think that, what the various perspectives are, and what may or may not need to change for those perspectives to clarify."

    Part 1 of our conversation below, including some of my reader questions about NFTs and negative effects of the Metaverse, and an intriguing new way of thinking about interoperability.

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