Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Over the Summer I'll be sharing highlights of my new in-depth, voluminous (over 4000 words!) Patreon report on the state of the Second Life economy in 2025. If you find my coverage of Second Life and other virtual worlds valuable, I hope you consider subscribing so that I can, well, keep covering Second Life and other virtual worlds.

That said, here's three surprising (at least to me) findings from the report, based on anonymous interviews with over 100 veteran SL content creators:

Combined, Brands Selling Pets & Breedables and Home Furnishings are about as Common as Fashion Brands

[I]n terms of content types, a majority of SL merchants surveyed (nearly 60%) sell products in the avatar style and home decor categories: This strengthens my view that most SLers enjoy the virtual world as a kind of turbo-charged online version of The SIms of inZOI that's mainly focused on social / life roleplay. (Further strengthened by the fact that the third most popular category at 19% is pets/breedables.)

Two more findings below the break!

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Here's twelve highly useful tips from veteran SL creators, taken from the survey for my report on the state of the Second Life economy in 2025 (Patreon subscription required).

I framed it in the form of the question, "What are some important lessons/tips you wish you'd known before starting out as an SL creator?", and got a slew of valuable answers, some of them running along the same theme which I then stitched together.

Excising the snarky replies ("try VRChat instead lol"), here they are, running from the highly practical to the somewhat philosophical:

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