New World Notes

Is Linden Lab Making an IMVU-Like Second Life for Mobile?

Over in last week's post on how Second Life might find a new audience on mobile, New World Notes' super savvy readers are picking up clues and speculating that Linden Lab is going to -- or at least should -- create what I'd describe as an IMVU-like experience for mobile.

Take it away, Pulsar:

They are making dedicated mobile-regions now (just instant messages, but they plan to add a 3D view later). Here is the opportunity to start a sort of new SL from ground up: mobile-avatars on mobile-regions; meanwhile you keep your account, friend list, chat, L$ etc, that keeps you on the SL grid. And you would still be able to use the old style stuff in the old regions as before.

Mobile regions may have a clear grand total upper limit in texture and polygon count, instead of an obscure and exploitable "land impact". And they could be on demand, cutting the costs.

A mobile avatar could be a single item or it could be customizable by replacing the body parts with dressed parts, as other games do. Not that pile of attachments on top of each other that you see in SL. You could still colorize the parts, change head textures etc.

This approach would also make sense from a technical perspective, as "0xc0ffea" explains:

Top 6 Posts Last Week Including: The Metaverse Needs an Elevator Pitch & Second Life Needs a Mobile Strategy

• Parthenoid 2.0: A Fascinating & Insightful Fashion Blog For Trans Avatars
• VRChat User Survey Results: Profile Of A Passionate Virtual World Community
• Virtual World Developers: Since Game Devs Already Solved The First-Time User Problem, Why Not Just Follow Their Lead?
• Upland, Blockchain-Backed Mirror World, Attracts Hundreds Of Thousands Of Players, Earning Cryptocurrency Worth Many Millions USD Every Month
• 30 Years Later, "The Metaverse" Is Still Struggling To Find Its Elevator Pitch
• Here's How Second Life's New IOS App Could Bring In A New Generation Of Mobile Users

LANG Season 3 Premieres on New World Notes Next Week! Watch the Trailer to This Ambitious SL Machinima Noir Comedy Series

I'm thrilled to announce that Season 3 of LANG, a full-fledged streaming series shot entirely in Second Life, will premiere here on New World Notes next Friday. Fresh from lead creator Zatch Ixchel, here's the exclusive trailer above.

"This season takes place a few months after the events of Season 2," Zatch tells me, "but we also get a few glimpses into the past, and where some of these people came from. Characters from Season 1 reappear, some as their younger selves. There is one character briefly mentioned by Teddy in Season 2, 'Jack', who is featured prominently throughout this story. I think this season will be a real treat for anyone who has been watching since the beginning."

So now is a good time to binge watch the first seasons -- they're embedded below. Easily among the most ambitious Second Life machinima projects ever made, LANG has great noir visuals and voice acting, and dialog with a wry Tarantino-esque wit. As you might have guessed, theses seasons take quite awhile to create, and involve a dozen-plus SLers along with Zatch:

Parthenoid 2.0: A Fascinating & Insightful Fashion Blog for Trans Avatars

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

Parthenoid 2. 0 is a blog by Sian who focuses on cyber-fashion for trans avatars. Sian’s most recent post “xx:xy tryouts” is a fascinating and insightful exploration of how Second Life offers freedom of exploration to individuals. They write, “one of the unexpected, unintended niches of Second Life has been its use as a testing ground for trans identity, for the sexuality of unaccustomed bodies, a relief from a dysphoria we might not even have known we had. We wanted to investigate another possibility of who we were, tried on gender in the cheaper off-the-rack way, the better to know what worked and what didn't.”

The fashion is interesting in its exploration of cyberkink, but secondary to the intriguing and deeply introspective writing as Sian explores trans identity in their first and Second Life. I particularly loved Sian’s plea for acceptance of making mistakes: 

“Whoever we are, however we are, we have to be allowed to trial who we are without harming anyone, with full consent, as messy and transgressive as that might be, because for many of us, in the worlds we live in, in the closets we inhabit, so often padlocked on the outside, a trial is the best we might get.”

• r2 a/d/e asanagi top, sasa gloves by Rei2 Aya
• out of order 80s geo earrings by DonnaCasta

For a meditation on baldness, click here:

VRChat User Survey Results: Profile of a Passionate Virtual World Community

Here's the key results of my VRChat user survey with beloved VRC reporter Syrmor, primarily drawn from subscribers of his YouTube channel and my virtual world blog New World Notes. While it's not wholly scientific and has a relatively small sample size of 165 respondents, it is (I believe!) the first public survey of the rapidly growing and evolving virtual world community. 

Which takes us right to the question above: Asked what they most love about VRChat, respondents overwhelmingly selected "Community":

"Personally I can say that VRChat has made life better for me as a whole," as user Fryman574 puts it. "I've had the ability to join communities I would have never known about if it weren't for VRC... [and] I've been able to meet so many cool people; like one of the best things to do in VRChat in my opinion is finding someone who has a story to tell and spend your day talking to this person. That's actually how I was able to meet my boyfriend of 6 months now."

Like this person and many others, VRC user Flamant says this community has offered social connections that have been difficult to find in the material world:

"I can be myself around other people in VRChat which is something i have always struggled with, with my social anxiety. And in that way it has helped me forge an identity as a person, now being able to be vulnerable and open myself up to others without fear. I have met some truly kind people in this virtual world that has come to feel more like a home than my actual surroundings..."

Next up: Avatar/ real life gender identity, how they first discovered VRChat, other virtual worlds VRC users play, VR usage, and much more:

SL Flickr Pick: Bento Avatar Fingers Impressively Used for Dramatic Effect

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

Chiaki Xue, recently posted a fabulous picture with a pose he created that really demonstrates the power of Bento avatar skeletons. This is an amazing picture that tells a story. It’s like a movie in one snap. We can imagine these young lovers separated by all sorts of oppressive reasons that would divide them. Technically, they could be on the inside and outside of a football field, but their desperate fingers touching through the fence suggests something more cruel. 

For the best picture with a ventriloquist’s dummy ever, click here:

Virtual World Developers: Since Game Devs Already Solved The First-Time User Problem, Why Not Just Follow Their Lead?

Remember that painfully funny YouTube video of Second Life's first-time user experience? I was thinking about it recently while playing Scavengers, the fun new sandbox/multiplayer combat game with a senior designer who's a former Linden. This is what Scavenger's first-time user experience looks like -- watch above. Because while it's in a very different genre from an open platform virtual world, there's some key learnings to draw from it:

• For one thing, it's fun -- at least as much fun as a tutorial can be.
• It gradually introduces important elements of the user experience to the player by presenting them as little mini-games/quests.
• It's immersive: The voice acting, the music, even the heads-up display itself, create a mood, get you involved in and curious about the world, even as you're learning how to navigate the user experience.

And while Scavengers has one of the better game tutorials I've played in quite awhile, it's pretty typical to how AAA game developers introduce players into their world: With fun, mini-quests, and immersion.

Why?

Upland, Blockchain-Backed Mirror World, Attracts Hundreds of Thousands of Players, Earning Cryptocurrency Worth Many Millions USD Every Month

San Francisco HQ of Tilia owner Linden Lab already owned by an Upland high roller 

Let's briefly check in on Upland, the virtual real estate acquisition game that's sort of Monopoly meets a mirror world, where virtual real estate is registered on the EOS blockchain, and is the first paying customer for Linden Lab's Tilia payment service. Since I wrote about it in June 2020 (shortly after launch), it's become an online world with a pretty large virtual community -- and some nosebleed-serious real cash flowing between its users.

According to Sensor Tower, the game's app garnered 100,000+ downloads and earned $200,000 last month on Google Play alone, but that's only part of the story. Upland's website (where the game can also be played) racked up over 5 million views last month, according to SimilarWeb; I'd estimate that as monthly active players in the mid-six figures. 

But the level of transactions already happening in Upland are even wilder:

This user-run site tracks Upland transactions and leaderboards, and they're fairly amazing. Last month, for example, the top 100 Upland players earned proceeds worth several million USD.

"You need to understand that they marketed to the Crypto and NFT guys," as Upland player Octavius explains, "many of which are a new fairly wealthy group of crypto money."

Second Life Landscape Photos More Detailed Than Most RL Pics

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

Sandi Benelli’s photostream is a stunning exploration of Second Life landscapes. She reminds me of one of my high school classmates who is a small organic dairy farmer who also takes amazing photographs. She loves to find beauty in the mundane like a crack in a fence post or in farm equipment, as in this gorgeous photo above, “Pic Taken at Perpetuity.” I love that you can see every blade of grass in gorgeous detail. She adds a judicious bit of blur heightens the reality of the picture. 

For something that’s better in SL than RL, click here:

30 Years Later, "The Metaverse" is Still Struggling to Find Its Elevator Pitch

I started reading this recent New York Times feature on the Metaverse with a rising sense of "Looks like we finally made the mainstream!" triumph... which rapidly decayed into frustration. Because the overall editorial tone struck me as: "We're not quite sure what the Metaverse is but some people sure are talking about it a lot, so I guess that's something?" For instance:

In fiction, a utopian metaverse may be portrayed as a new frontier where social norms and value systems can be written anew, freed from cultural and economic sclerosis. But more often metaverses are a bit dystopian — virtual refuges from a fallen world. As a buzzword, the metaverse refers to a variety of virtual experiences, environments and assets that gained momentum during the online-everything shift of the pandemic. Together, these new technologies hint at what the internet will become next.

While there is a lot of corporate interest in the metaverse, skeptics abound.

Strauss Zelnick, the chief executive of the game publisher Take-Two, said in a May earnings call that he was “allergic to buzzwords,” and suggested the metaverse could be all hype. “If you take metaverse, SPAC and cryptocurrency, in five years, will any of this matter? I’m not sure it will,” he said. Then there are those who wonder whether interest from the tech sector is simply opportunistic, or missing the point entirely.

Unsurprisingly, no one in the Metaverse business interviewed for the Times article is able to cleanly articulate a concept of the Metaverse that explains what it's for, and why it's better than the platforms we already have now. 

Having pitched the concept of the Metaverse in various contexts to many different kinds of people, I understand the suspicion that it's only a buzzword, liable to crash and burn when a skeptic's follow-up question is, "OK, but why should I care?"

In fact, I've learned over many years to only mention the word "Metaverse" to people (almost entirely in the tech industry) who are likely to know and love Snow Crash or Ready Player One. I had hoped the recent Spielberg adaptation of the latter novel would help mainstream the concept, but it was a modest hit at best. And in either novels' case, the concept still only makes sense and seems compelling within their dystopian context: The real world is so horrible in the future, most everyone spends life in the Metaverse.

Or to put it in contemporary terms: The Metaverse as an escape from the real world seemed pretty compelling during a global pandemic, but now as Summer vacation trips are overbooked (my home town in Hawaii is currently teeming with ransacking tourists), the power of that use case rapidly erodes.

My own solution to the elevator pitch problem? I'd rather be non-utopian about it and reference something that is working now. For instance:

How to Connect Your Kinect to VRChat for Full Body Tracking

Here's the latest clever hack for VRChat: An Xbox One Kinect connected to the virtual world, so the user's real life movement is tracked and mapped onto their avatar.

In this video above, VRCer "Zotteke" is using a Quest 2 to log into VRChat while dancing in front of a Kinect; Zotteke's furry avatar does the rest. The body tracking is fairly decent (especially for an older device that's likely sitting in your closet if you still have one), even accounting for its single camera:

This Artist Adds Dramatic Blurring Effects to Second Life Screenshots

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

Folgen’s photostream is at once varied and consistent. His subjects are exciting and different but his style is a consistent use of black and white with small pops of color and wild horizontal blurring. This is a great example, with the sunshine backlighting everything so it’s black with hints of gold from the sun and groundcover. There is the suggestion of speed from the blurring -- a hint of jeopardy. 

I admit I am not sure what I am seeing below, but if that’s okay, click here:

Here's How Second Life's New iOS App Could Bring In a New Generation of Mobile Users

Pictured: Pocket Metaverse, a third party iOS app for accessing select Second Life features from 2010

With the iOS app for Second Life coming soon, reader and blogger Devin Vaughn sketches out a fascinating vision for how it could transform the virtual world. While the app itself is launching with very limited features (the late-lamented Pocket Metaverse from over a decade ago was actually more robust), Devin sees a chance to bring in a new wave of mobile users:

[I]t might be a sneak peek into Linden Lab's strategy of bridging SL and SL Mobile. This is baby steps for now, it takes time to develop code and app. But I could see it working that there are SL mobile-only sims that enforce both avatar and environment efficiency.

Imagine this: You want to 3D chat live on the phone with your friends? Teleport to SL Mobile Island 1. Oops, you are not allowed because your avatar is bonkers heavy with scripts and complexity. BUT you forgot to switch to your mobile, low lag, fast avatar first. So you just go to appearance, change outfit, and teleport is accepted. You land in a beautifully crafted environment, perhaps created by a well known genius designer who excels at kickass and fast. Much good time is had!

.....And later, you want to meet up with your special friend after work in the posh main grid where you wear as much scripts and fancy mesh as you want, or decorate to max, because the maingrid is still the wild wild west of freedom and zero enforced avatar or sim limits (if you don't mind the lag).

VRChat actually does something like this, for users of the Oculus Quest, enabling them to teleport to worlds that have been optimized to run on the Quest. That way, VRC users are able invite their Quest-owning friends into the "kiddie pool" of VRChat. (That's how I first got to meet Syrmor in VRChat!)

"Imagine if SL had mobile-only sims for mobile style avatars," Devin muses:

Top 5 Posts Last Week Including an iOS App for Second Life, Tips for Virtual World Bloggers, and a Painfully Hilarious Look at SL's First-Time User Experience

• Fifteen Tips For Second Life Style Bloggers: How To Grow Your Readership & Keep Them Coming Back For More
• Watch: Talking The Metaverse & Demoing The Breakroom To Brian Solis
• Apple Approves Official IOS App For Second Life! But There's A Big Catch...
• Caltech's Second Life Campus Now Available As Free Venue/Hosting Space To Fellow Academics For Research, Teaching, And Socializing
• Watch: 18 Years Later, "Second Life Still Can't Communicate To New Players What They 'Do'"

Fifteen Tips for Second Life Style Bloggers: How to Grow Your Readership & Keep Them Coming Back for More

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

I like amplifying SL blogs I admire, and after doing Cajsa’s Choices for over three years now, I have discovered things I would do differently if I were actively blogging Second Life fashions today. I have seen some innovations by bloggers I really like -- and many things I don’t like. 

So here are some tips I have accumulated over the past few years, along with some additional tips from Hamlet: 

Provide information about how you can be contacted and links to your social media. This is usually an About Me page, though many people post a link to their Gravatar, a global avatar with links to all social media if you set it up. Your About Me should include your in-world/legacy name so readers can send you a message, or a creator can drop some samples your way. Some people also include their basic avatar information, the body, head, hands, and skin. If you wear the same in every picture, that makes sense. 

Let your readers get to know you. Too many fashion posts only display the creator credits, which makes for dull reading. It is also a loss for you, because readers don’t really form an attachment to a product list. Instead of just blogging the type of collar or waistline a dress has, you can write about how the outfit makes you feel. Like you can conquer the world? Does it make you feel sexy? Playful? Tell us why you like it so we get to know you. 

Include the creator’s SL name in your credits. That way, if they rebrand or move their in-world store, people can still find them. It also gives you a way for people to find items while complying with Flickr’s TOS for free accounts. I have never valued posting SLurls, because I really hate teleporting to a store that has moved and getting orbited by a hair trigger security device. But when the creator’s name is displayed, I can find their Marketplace and find their most up-to-date SLurls in their profile. (Unless they neglect their profile, and that’s on them.)  

Many more below!

VRChat Users: Please Take This Short Survey from Syrmor & New World Notes! (Use PC/Mac For Best Results, Include Account Name to Be Quoted)

Acclaimed VRChat reporter Syrmor is back after a short hiatus with a moving new avatar interview (watch above)... which is a good time to re-up this VRChat user survey that we're conducting together. Take below (use a desktop/laptop for best results) and include your VRChat name if you'd like your opinions to be quoted!

Hot Virtual Summer Shopping Tips from SL Blogger Aria Christen

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

I love the name of Aria Christen’s blog, Little Side Project. I also love many of her post’s names, including the one celebrating Independence Day last weekend, “Time to Get Star-Spangled Hammered.” And then there is all the watermelon. There’s nothing better than watermelon and burgers for a picnic. There are two pictures in the post with a ton of picnic foods and supplies, so click through for the complete list. 

• Junk Food – July 4th Burgers
• Junk Food – Hot Dog Tray (Red)
• Junk Food – Platters Plate
• Junk Food – Watermelon Platter (White)

For some hot weather fashion, click here:

Watch: Talking the Metaverse & Demoing the Breakroom to Brian Solis

Starting at around 27:20, going into a demo of Breakroom at about 46:19, futurist and digital marketing guru Brian Solis chatted earlier today about the metaverse, virtual worlds, and related topics with Sine Wave Entertainment CEO Rohan Freeman and myself:

Apple Approves Official iOS App for Second Life! But There's a Big Catch...

Linden Lab just announced that its long (long!) awaiting iOS app for Second Life has finally been approved by Apple, so expect that coming soon -- this mini scoop via sharp-eyed SL fan blogger Daniel Voyager, who took furious notes as staffer Keira Linden gave details in a recent meeting in SL itself:

[Linden Lab is] working on a whole set of new features into it and soon it will be on the Apple Store. There are around 40-50 users that have the iOS version of the Second Life app and more wide spread testing is still needed yet. Apparently those that use the iOS version of the Second Life app will be logged into new dedicated “SL Mobile” regions which will be primary be used for communications like IM/Group Chat. These SL Mobile regions will not be open to everyone unless they are using the SL Mobile app.

Unsurprisingly, Linden Lab just announced plans to create a user-driven social media campaign for both TikTok and Instagram, the largest social media apps on the iPhone.

This is all great news, even if it's painfully belated. Late Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg told me the iOS app was in development back in early 2019, and it was announced the previous year and... well, the actual right time to put out an official iOS app for Second Life would have been, oh, let's say 2010. (When as it happens, Pocket Metaverse, a third party iOS app for SL existed, and was pretty good.)

That said, I'm looking forward to it. However, there's a face-kicking caveat to the upcoming iOS app for Second Life. It doesn't have much Second Life in it:

Today's Flickr Pick: Sapa's Striking Avatar Images With an Edge

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

Sapa’s stream features striking cyber-pop ads her pose store and haunting portraits and other photos. This headshot is beautiful, but with the traces of tears and of life that has not been easy. There is a grim underbelly in the world and Sapa wants us not to look away. For those who like to see how much is raw shot and what is editing, she gives us a link to the raw photo.

Well, we can’t really move like that, can we? Click here:

Caltech's Second Life Campus Now Available as Free Venue/Hosting Space to Fellow Academics for Research, Teaching, and Socializing

The legendary Caltech University launched a virtual world campus in Second Life last year during the pandemic, and is now offering Virtech to academics worldwide who are interested in a free venue/hosting space for their research projects and educational events.  

"As the academic year ended, and as the pandemic restrictions end, we are transitioning to the next phase of of Virtech, as an experimental and educational space," Virtech director and Caltech astronomy professor George Djorgovski tells me. (His SL avatar is charmingly dubbed "Curious George".) 

Here's the kind of projects Virtech's team is most interested in hosting, and how academics can get in touch with George and his team, to apply for access:

Today's SL Flickr Pick: The Elegantly Framed Images of Amberly

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

“Safe” is a sweet picture. It speaks to me of the comfort that comes from looking at pictures of friends and family and sharing those pictures with someone you love. Pictures are such a powerful tool to make the past present, aren’t they. This is by Amberly, whose Flickr stream is also a micro-blog.

This next picture will be lovely and appealing to most of you, though it terrifies me -- click here:

With Amazon's Lumberyard Going Open Source, The Time is Now for a Metaverse Framework

I was right about to blog a good reader comment on my post about Matthew Ball's new metaverse framework for succeeding the mobile web, when news dropped about Amazon Lumberyard (previously on NWN here) which enforced its points even further:

Amazon is contributing its Lumberyard game engine to open source, and it will be known as the Open 3D Engine.

The Linux Foundation will oversee the project and form the Open 3D Foundation to accelerate collaboration with game developers to enhance the triple-A game engine. This shift could bode well for future projects like an open metaverse, the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, such as in novels such as Snow Crash and Ready Player One.

More on O3DE here. Reader "Kyz" writes about how platforms like these press the need for Matthew's big picture perspective:

Watch: 18 Years Later, "Second Life Still Can't Communicate to New Players What They 'Do'"

This recent video from gaming YouTuber Micky D is hilariously cringey but necessary viewing, shared by reader Lyndka Cochrane as a response to Second Life's new glitzy marketing video.

As Lynkda comments, "There's still an 'image' problem around what Second Life is and how to play it or live it", going on to observe:

Stunning Second Life Screenshots Made Moreso By Black & White

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

Nimue Green’s intense black and white photostream is filled with photos such as this gorgeous “Vintage” The lines of the street draw us into the picture. I know it almost seems real but it is on the sim Sobe (click here to teleport). The sun is bright, the shadows are crisp and black. The contrast is rich and intense. It’s marvelous. 

For more black and white intensity, click here: