- Binge Watch: Someone Is Creating A Comedic Neo-Noir Detective Series Shot Entirely In Second Life — And It's Pretty Damn Cool!
- VRChat Peak User Concurrency Passes 40,000 — Up From 24K Last November
- Jazz Musicians Quarantined Across California Experiment With High Fidelity's Spatial Audio For Live Performance
- Second Life Officially Acquired By Holding Company, Ending Era As Aspirational Startup
- Grading My VR/Virtual World Predictions For 2020 — Two Out Of Three Hits?
Wagner James Au / New World Notes
Author, strategist, virtual world reporter
Making a Metaverse That Matters
Contact me — links below!
My Patreon Supporters
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.
The Virtual Museum Team hosts several museums in Second Life, Wolf Territories Grid and Roblox. Check out all the teleport links here.
Breedables CoOp, helping the SL pet community grow through shared resources. Go here to get started.
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
“Whisper Words of Wisdom” is a great blog for this week. We have heard too few wise words lately, but perhaps the tide has turned. Whatever the result, Sander Sunborne will certainly look his best with that fantastic hat.
- BONDI . The Idol Leather Cap @ FaMESHed (through January 27)
- [Deadwool] Peak suit (wool)
- [Deadwool] Oscar coat
Sander models a great idea for bloggers…
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VRChat had some technical troubles during the world's New Year celebrations last week, but it was one of those catastrophic success sort of things:
If you’re unaware, we had a bit of an issue at probably one of the most popular times to hang out in VRChat and traditionally where we set concurrent user records — New Years Eve, around the time that EST hits midnight. VRChat went down. Great timing, yeah? Let’s talk about what happened.
First off, before the issues started, we were chugging along with no problem. In fact, shattered our previous concurrent player record with over a mind-boggling 40,000 players online at the same time.
Notably VRChat's reported peak concurrency just last November was only 24,000. A lot of the user growth since then is likely attributable to new Oculus Quest 2 owners plugging into the virtual world over the holidays for the first time.
Also notable for longtime readers, 40,000 is roughly on par with median concurrency for Second Life. A veteran SLer who's recently transitioned over to VRChat tells me the new world reminds them of SL during its highly sociable glory years:
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Mara Telling’s “Escape Inside a Book” speaks to me. I am a reader and I love to escape inside a book. I didn’t know I could do it literally.
Some surreal fun ahead:
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2021 starts with an ending of some kind, as briefly mentioned at the tail end of a New Year announcement on from Second Life management:
Another noteworthy development for the new year is that Linden Lab has new owners! As announced in mid-2020, an investment group led by Randy Waterfield and Brad Oberwager signed an agreement to acquire the company subject to regulatory approval by financial regulators in the U.S. related to Tilia Inc.’s status as a licensed money transmitter as well as other customary closing conditions. We are pleased to share that the regulatory review has been completed and Linden Lab is now under new ownership.
Specifically Linden Lab is now officially owned by the Waterfield Group, which buys companies that make a decent profit and helps keep them profitable. Second Life is even listed on Waterfield's homepage as a network property (screengrabbed above), alongside a host of obscure/semi-obscure firms. (And, surprisingly, Goldman Sachs.)
And as the author of The Making of Second Life, I have to admit that this is not at all a future I saw for the virtual world. Twelve years ago, insiders (including myself) fully expected Second Life to enjoy a successful IPO, or perhaps as likely, to get acquired by a major company like Microsoft or Electronic Arts. Around that time, we saw Second Life becoming an integral part of the Internet's next generation, transforming multiple industries and mainstream culture itself, with Linden Dollars even becoming the world's most used electronic currency. Now, instead, it's listed as a portfolio holding beneath software companies specializing in contact center technologies and strategic solutions (Digital Data Voice Corporation) and cloud-based oil and gas software (NeoFirma).
It's an ironic end, but I don't mean to be completely downbeat: While Second Life didn't turn out to be the next generation of the Internet, it did pioneer the path for the many next generation virtual worlds that do stand a chance of becoming just that, and will continue being an inspiration for that goal.
Anyway, what's all this mean for the average Second Life user?
In the short term, likely nothing — for good and bad. As the announcement insists:
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![[ oh deer ]](https://wagnerjamesau.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/50734509078_c189166ab8_z.jpg?w=640&h=640)
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Randonee Noel’s photostream is a delight. However, she has a recent project I have fallen in love with. It’s kind of a Dictionary of Dog Life or perhaps Literal Metaphors. This is “Oh, Deer.” and I love everything about it. The dog, however, is a stuffed dog. It cannot be more wonderful.
More of her gentle humor ahead.
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One last look back at 2020 before it finally rots away like the leprous corpse it is, reviewing my predictions for the year I made on December 31, 2019:
- Magic Leap will fold.
Not exactly, but there were massive layoffs last April, impelled in great part by metaverse hubris, but the company has since pivoted to being an XR product for medicine and other enterprise use cases. No more "Wait where's the whale?" cracks from me, I hope the company succeeds with this pivot! Next prediction:
- There will be a major corporate transition by Linden Lab — possibly a change in executive leadership, a substantial round of lay-offs, or even a sell-off of Sansar.
Well, clearly yes. Not only was Sansar sold off to a company called Wookey, but Linden Lab itself was bought. And there were, sad to say, substantial layoffs.
My third prediction might be up for some debate:
