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.

The Virtual Worlds Museum. Click here to teleport to their Second Life hub with tribute to sunsetted worlds!

“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.

Breedables CoOp, helping the SL pet community grow through shared resources. Go here to get started.

Shock Stat: 1600 Second Life Community Creators Make $10,000+ Per Year from their Virtual Content — Despite Working on a Much Larger Platform, Far Fewer Creators on ROBLOX Make That Rate

January 26, 2022

From ROBLOX’s 2020 IPO stock filing

This passage from my podcast with Philip Rosedale last week seriously deserves its own post — where Philip is talking about ROBLOX’s S1 stock filing, and a passage there (above) stating that 1,050 community developers earned over $10,000 USD a year from their ROBLOX content.

By comparison, Philip notes this (at around minute 31:30):

I asked the team at Second Life to [research] exactly the same number — how many people in Second Life are making over $10,000 a year year [in 2021] — and the answer was 1600 people. So more than ROBLOX by a good bit.

More than 500 people. Which is notable in itself. It’s even more notable when you compare the active user bases of each platform:

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SL Flickr Pick: Fantastic Fantasy Photos by Skye McLeod Fairywren

January 26, 2022

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

Skye McLeod Fairywren cracked me up with this picture of a ticket-collecting plesiosaurus with no patience for fare-jumpers. “Listen kid, if ya wanna ride, ya gotta pay for a ticket, just like everybody else.” I did not know plesiosaurus had a Brooklyn accent, but there you go. You learn something new everyday if you’re paying attention. Skye certainly has a talent for role play.

For some kitty karaoke, click here:

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Today at 9am SLT: Live Chat With Philip Rosedale About Second Life Stories & Designing the Metaverse

January 25, 2022

Join me in my Space! https://t.co/gF7lSTxyzt

— Philip Rosedale (@philiprosedale) January 25, 2022

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

Update, 1/26: Listen to chat above (hopefully).

Click here to teleport into Second Life for a live chat with Philip Rosedale starting today at 9am SLT — along with Twitter Spaces, Clubhouse, and so other platforms. I’m hoping to join but am traveling in the material world, so we’ll see. Here’s my chat with Philip last week for background, and here’s my metaverse fireside chat with Philip and Adam Frisby in Sine Wave’s Breakroom last year. All the other links below:

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Today’s Flickr Pick: Dramatic Virtual World Images by Madame Reve

January 25, 2022

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

Madame Reve’s “Fade Away” feels like the end of a movie after our champion has cleaned up the town and dispatched the baddies. She is moving on. There are more towns that need her help. As she leaves she turns around and sees him. He wants her to stay, but will she? She knows the baddies are waiting in the next town and the town after that. The music she chose [Project Lazarus-Fade Away, click here.] for this picture does not bode well for their future.

For a perfectly balanced pic, click here:

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Sansar Wasn’t the Successor to Second Life That Second Life Needed (Comments of the Week)

January 24, 2022

Lots of interesting reader comments about my podcast interview with Philip Rosedale, including this reaction to my suggestion that a successor to Second Life running on a modern engine like Unity should be integrated as an option in the official viewer. For illustrative purposes, imagine two big buttons side by side on the log-in page, labeled "Click here to teleport into Second Life Classic" and "Click here to teleport into Second Life 2", or whatever it's called. Reader "0xc0ffea" thinks that's basically already been done:

The new grid new engine idea was Sansar. No one used it. It crashed and burnt.

This is true, but misses some important nuances. As "Pointer" writes:

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Top 3 Posts Last Week, Featuring the Flat Growth of ROBLOX & a Long Metaverse Chat With Philip Rosedale

January 24, 2022
Listen: Philip Rosedale & I Talk About Transforming the Future of Second Life & Making a More Humane Metaverse

January 21, 2022

Wagner James Au · Philip Rosedale & Wagner James Au on the future of Second Life & the Metaverse

UPDATE, January 21: Bumped up for weekend conversation!

On the day when Philip Rosedale announced his return to Second Life and his plans to compete with Big Tech's "ad-driven behavior modification" would-be Metaverse projects, he and I had a long chat about just that subject — listen above. This audio is actually a rough cut for an upcoming podcast series that Philip and I are developing, but he very coolly gave New World Notes readers this exclusive early listen sneak preview.

Here's some highlights from our chat:

0:00 – 2:45 : How I become Hamlet Au and Second Life's embedded journalist, and meeting the legendary hacker Catherine Omega in one of my very first visits. (Who Philip recently reconnected with in-world, as she still visits from time to time.)

2:45 – 4:50: Walking across the single-shard world of Second Life — and the missing opportunity of missing serendipity of metaverse platforms without a single contiguous world.

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Friday Fashion Blog: Luna’s Wardrobe for Fun & Sassy SL Style

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

Luna’s Wardrobe is a fun and sassy fashion blog by Megumi. I was drawn to her blog by her pictures. This outfit in Hypnotized is so spicy. The black and white top and stockings have a bit of rockabilly joining the very goth collar and shoes. Is that Rock-a-Goth?
- hoodie: Lunar – Demi Hoodie Jacket @mainstore by LunarStore
- boots: [Salem] Ezra Boots – Glass @kustom9 closes Feb 10th by SalemManager
- skirt: [[Salem] Roxy Skirt @anthem Closes Jan. 30th by SalemManager
- top: [Salem] Roxy Top @anthem Closes Jan. 30th by SalemManager
For more fun fashion, click here:

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Today’s Flickr Pick: Wry & Rousseau-Like Images Created by Bianca in Second Life

January 20, 2022

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

Bianca’s “Who’s Crying Now” is accompanied by Journey’s “Who’s Crying Now?” and she has the sassy, I-figured-it-out look that might ask that question. It’s a lovely pic with plants and a ladder shelf, and I like the bold, rich colors.

For more great pics, click here:

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ROBLOX Website Usage Has Been Flat Since Its Spring 2021 IPO

January 19, 2022

Data via SimilarWeb

ROBLOX enjoyed a breakthrough year in 2021, with a spectacular IPO last March and increasing talk that it's the leading metaverse platform, with growth to 43 million daily active users late last year.

According to SimilarWeb, however, there's one thing ROBLOX didn't grow in 2021: Website visits.

Since at least June 21, visits to the official site have remained flat at around 1 billion visits per month, give or take. (Which is, of course, an insane number of visits.) Unlike most other metaverse platforms, the ROBLOX experience is very tightly integrated with the website, with an online shop and a directory of popular/engaging/recommended worlds. So web traffic offers a pretty accurate insight into overall ROBLOX user activity.

And to go by that standard, ROBLOX usage is stable — but not growing.

Why? The likeliest answer is something I've discussed before:

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