Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Cajsa’s Choices: The Emotionally Resonant Avatar Portraits of Jawhara

April 29, 2025

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

Jawhara caught my attention for a few reasons. She’s a Flickr micro-blogger who wears clothes more often than not. She has a consistent look with her delicate and refined features, her strong cheekbones and brows, and the tenderness in her eyes. I don’t know if it’s the eye-maker or her use of pose expressions, but even her simplest pictures have emotional heft. In “LaRosa,” the picture is turned on its side which normally would irritate me, but she is positioned so her head is not perceived as sideways, making it a far more dynamic picture.

For more from Jawhara, click here:

//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

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Top 5 Posts Including: A Massive Minecraft Project & Linden Lab’s New Strategy for Growing SL Through a Creator Program

April 28, 2025
SL Creators: Please Take This Short Survey on the State of the Second Life Economy in 2025! (Use Laptop/PC for Best Results)

April 25, 2025
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4/25: Bumped up for weekend!

As promised, here's my anonymous brand/merchant survey for my upcoming report on the state of the SL economy. Asking such questions as:
- How has the SL mobile app impacted your sales or activity around your brand?
- How much money in USD do you typically gross from your SL content sales and services per year?
- Do you use Generative AI programs in the promotion and/or creation of your SL content?
- Do shopping events increase your overall revenue from SL?
- What's your confidence in the future of Second Life as led by Brad Oberwager & Philip Rosedale?
And much more! Use a laptop/PC for best results (you need a mouse to scroll on the embedded window), or click here to take it directly on Google Sheets.

I will definitely feature highlights and the full report on New World Notes here, though if you want to be among the very first to read it, please join my Patreon for free.

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Watch 100,000 “Players” in the Same Minecraft Server & 5000+ Onscreen Using Quark Multiplayer Tech

April 25, 2025

I just had a fascinating chat with Rashid Mansoor of MetaGravity, who told me about this seriously cool demo project using their Quark Multiplayer technology: A Minecraft world server that's playable (with low lag) by 100,000 concurrent avatars, versus the usual 20-100!

In the video above, you're mostly seeing bots to stress test their tech. (Up to 5,000 bots can be rendered on one screen, he says.) MetaGravity is planning to make this Minecraft server publicly available soon, when they're aiming to reach 1 million concurrent users.

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AltspaceVR, Microsoft’s Sunsetted Virtual World, Attempting Reboot

April 24, 2025

I'm late to this party, but thanks to Julian of the Virtual Worlds Museum for flagging this to me:

AltspaceVR, once a Microsoft-owned social VR platform with a pretty active community before the plug was pulled in 2023, is attempting a rebirth:

My name is Danny Mac, and I’m the owner, CEO and Refounder of AltspaceVR. After Microsoft sunset the platform and dissolved the business, I was able to reclaim the marks and form a new company dedicated to bringing this incredible community space back and ensuring it's here to stay.

To be clear, Altspace was never just a platform or a product to me. It was always about the community, the vibe, and the creativity. The connections that happened because a safe, non-toxic space existed for them to happen in.

That’s my north star moving forward, to rebuild AltspaceVR as a community-first, open source platform, with sustainable models to keep it alive for good.

Here's the revival website to get involved. I'm reaching out to Mr. Mac and hope to get more info when I can.
Cajsa’s Choices: Sparkle Skye Photographed & Also Created These Amazing SL Landsscpes

April 24, 2025

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

Sparkle Skye takes landscape photos in addition to vendor pics for her hats, headbands, and accessories. She doesn’t shoot a lot of landscapes because she’s shooting the landscapes she builds. This one caught my eye with its spare beauty. I love a landscape that isn’t overdressed. Landscape design should follow the advice of fashion stylists, accessorize, then “remove one thing.” Skye isn’t beset with the common problem of too much everywhere all at once. What really makes me fall in love with this picture, though, is the small detail of the rain falling on the left side of the scene. Look in the foreground where the rain is falling by the desiccated remains of a fallen tree and how it’s pooling a bit as it does when the soil is dry and hard. It runs off and pools rather than soak in because the soil is too hard. There is such verisimilitude in this tiny detail.

For more of Skye’s landscapes, click here:

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Linden Lab Launches Creator Partnership Program to Help Grow Second Life — Including Creators Outside SL Ecosystem

April 23, 2025

Another piece of Linden Lab's strategy to grow the Second Life user base was just revealed:

We’re excited to unveil the Creator Partnership Program, a new initiative that invites our talented creator community to play a central role in shaping the future of Second Life. This program is all about collaboration—between Linden Lab and creators like you—to co-create content and experiences that delight both new and existing residents…

[We] invite creators of all types to help us build and improve the next generation of Second Life new user experiences and beyond. Whether you’re a fashion designer, avatar builder, home goods creator, experience developer, or just someone with a standout idea—we want to hear from you…

Work hand-in-hand with Linden Lab to shape the future of user experiences and improve Second Life. Help define how new users experience Second Life—from their very first moments to long-term engagement.

The announcement doesn't go into this detail, but "creators" refers not only to SL-centric creators, I can confirm, but includes creators who work on multiple platforms:

"We are hoping for it," Linden Lab head Brad Oberwager tells me, when I ask about that point. "And we are going to do something big with creators in May through December."

I'm glad the company is encouraging creators outside the SL ecosystem, because they'll be solely needed to actually grow the Second Life user base beyond the existing core. Linden Lab has recently partnered with SL brands like game developer MadPea and SL shopping site Seraphim, but these are already well-known creators in the community, and are inevitably architected only to serve the established community. Which is totally fine, of course, but with growth remaining flat, even after the launch of the mobile app, creators how also have non-SL experience are desperately needed.

Likely candidates? Creators more familiar with Roblox, for one, because Second Life's new scripting language, SLua, has the same basis as Roblox's Luau. As Signal Linden (Bennett Goble) told me recently:

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ROBLOX Overwhelmingly Remains a Mobile-Centric Metaverse Platform Despite Quest / PC / Console Option

April 23, 2025

Here's some new Roblox stats which caught my eye:

Roblox reached 82.9 million daily active users in 2024 with 80% of those playing the popular game on mobile devices, according to Roblox's annual report.

PC was the second most popular platform at just 17%, followed by consoles at 3%.

Emphasis mine! Lately the company has been pushing premium PC/console-centric content like Frontlines, a AAA-quality multiplayer game and Tunneler, a fan-made tribute to Portal, not to mention going on Quest headsets in 2023. Despite that, PC/console usage remains small, while Quest usage is 2% or below. (I can't even find a VR usage number in the full report.)

Disappointing that Roblox hasn't been able to diversify usage much beyond mobile, which would also lead to a more diversified user base. (I.E., not just mostly kids on their parents phones/tablets.) But by the company's own data, that hasn't happened yet.

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Cajsa’s Choice: Great SL Landscape Photos by Mark Mirror — With Teleport Links to Visit Yourself!

April 23, 2025

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

Mark Mirror is a landscape photographer and captures some of the most beautiful scenes in Second Life such as this glorious picture of “Midnight in Paris.” Where else can midnight be so beautiful? As with all his pics, click through for the SLurl to this spot!

For more landscape beauty from Mr. Mirror, click here:

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WATCH: Learning Virtual World Community Building Lessons from Palia, the Popular Cozy MMO

April 22, 2025

After blogging about Palia's design mechanics for growing community earlier this month, and Dr. Ruth Diaz's thoughts on them, I got a chance to join Dr. Diaz on an embedded journey into Palia. Watch our tour above! Though you won't hear me speaking due to a technical glitch, I'm interviewing Dr. Diaz as she explores the world, with our core focus being: What Palia features should open non-MMO virtual worlds learn and try to emulate?

To that question, Dr. Diaz points to the Flow Tree Grove ritual (at around 52 minutes in), where players on the same server meet to harvest these magic-infused trees.

"The Flow Tree Grove Ritual is the most impressive feature in many ways," she tells me. "It takes building a generous culture in the rest of the app, during the rest of the time people play, to make that a regular phenomena, work."

As she notes during the video, Palia players have come up with their own social principles around how to harvest these trees so that they may be shared: "[Palia development studio Singularity 6] have designed this game so cooperatively, that the community has built their own collective rule on how to enjoy something together with delayed gratification."

She even thinks the harvest ritual has become core to MMO's long-term success. "It's like a fruit of the whole Palia tree," as she puts it. "If this gets toxic their game is going under."

For myself, I was impressed by the cooking game (around 18 minutes in) where players are rewarded for working together to cook a single recipe within a certain time frame. That in itself encourages cooperation and community, and then at the end — well, everyone knows the most fun and the best conversations at a house party happen in the kitchen.

More about that on her blog, such as how Palia's narrative informs the user community building:

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