I first spotted it on Flickr years ago, and it's been my Peak Metaverse mental image ever since. So I finally just did. Ride the whale, that is, while chilling out to a phonograph down below playing old timey 1920s music.
Matt Daly's early first-person explorations of Star's Reach, the sandbox MMO from Raph Koster and his company Playable Worlds, have been so intriguing (as featured here last week), I asked him to expand them in this guest post! - WJA
The whole reason many of us work in Games and Virtual Worlds is because of early experiences with wonder.
I grew up deep in the Quake 2 modder community (Loki’s Minions whereya at). As newly minted teens, my childhood BFF and I weren’t hanging at the mall as much as leading guilds, going to war, and fletching arrows or whatever in Telnet MUDS and M59.
Considering we had just been literally playing in literal sandboxes only a few years before (as literal children), this came quite naturally to us.
We didn’t need or care about revenue models or acquisition funnels. All of that sterile product science would come later in our careers and begin to hide some of the original wonder. But, spoiler: hyper-efficiency, liquid content and AI are creating an allergic reaction amongst player communities that’s bringing wonder back, baby (you won’t believe what happens next! 😲)
When Ultima Online launched in 1997, while we worked on haranguing my dad into buying us a 56k connection, BFF and I would sit at my kitchen table and pore over the cloth map of Brittania (right) that came with the UO guidebook. Our master plan (when we had proper internet and could actually play the game) was to overthrow the isle of Magincia, based only on a couple paragraphs about animal taming (which included dragons). Obviously we inevitably hit the reality of constraints that would prevent two children from taking over an entire island in a game millions would play.
The wonder, however, remained. It's followed me almost 30 years later to a pre-alpha MMO called Stars Reach, where I found a team and community who are leaning into the sloppy, undeniably human imperfection of an actual literal sandbox in search of their wonder.
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Mathilde De Cyriac shared this great group shot “les beaufs à la maison de retraite” (The Rednecks at the Retirement Home). I love these collaborations because it is so much fun to see how people looking at what is essentially the same thing come away with such different versions. It’s a useful reminder that we don’t all see the world in the same way and may often describe what we see very differently.
Within a day of Second Life’s new Creator Partnership Program being announced, over 300 people signed up with proposals (as the description goes) “to co-create content and experiences that delight both new and existing residents”. It's the brainchild of Marketing VP Brett Linden and Steeltoe Linden, Manager of Product & UX Design, and Brett tells me the program “represents a major pivot in how the company collaborates with the SL community”.
“Honestly, it really came out of a conversation that we had with Brad,” he explains to me in a Zoom call last Friday, “and I think that we have just recognized it's long overdue… there's a desire, I think, from the community, to try to find ways to work with us.”
Among the first fruits of that effort that SLers probably noticed is the Avatar Welcome Pack (pictured above), featuring high quality mesh heads, bodies, and clothing from some of the community’s top fashion brands.
My own immediate reaction there, I’ll admit, was skepticism: Not only do ultra-realistic human avatars come with a number of negatives (as I explain here), how will new users even be able to figure out how to put them on?
That challenge, it turns out, has been fixed. After the call, Steeltoe shared a screenshot of the simplified user interface he helped create. It's the one that new users signing up via Project Zero streaming will see, to easily choose their first look from this Welcome Pack:
Gachas, a vending machine game of chance to win valuable virtual goods, were banned by Linden Lab from Second Life in 2021 "due to a changing regulatory climate", but now, apparently, the winds of change have brought gachas back:
The decision to prohibit Gacha in 2021 was following regulatory guidelines emerging globally at the time. We have continued to evaluate what steps we can take to support creative freedom while also ensuring compliance with evolving legal frameworks, which led to the recent changes announced in 2024.
Since then, the regulatory landscape surrounding Gacha systems has further shifted to the point where Gacha can be confidently reintroduced under current prevailing guidance.
No specifics on how that "landscape" has changed -- and Linden Lab won't comment on the record, when I asked -- but I'm looking for recent court rulings in pending litigation against other companies with similar online gambling / loot box cases that might have had something do with it. For instance, maybe a recent ruling in Antar v. BetMGM had something to do with it:
It made me think of the ending of “Planet of the Apes” even though I don’t think she will be screaming, “You maniacs, you finally did it.” Sea levels are rising and it need not be the kind of epic disaster in the movie, but I do wonder why the Buddha has been toppled and deep in the water. There’s a story I want to know.
For more great pictures of and teleport link to Buddha Garden, click here:
As I wrote back in March, a former Meta developer speaking on condition of anonymity described a workforce for Horizon who were mostly disinterested in virtual worlds or even VR.
Kelly Stonelake, speaking on the record with me, is able to shed more light on what went wrong with Horizon Worlds -- once touted as Meta’s early entry into the Metaverse, which the company even promoted with a Super Bowl commercial.
I'm once again signing books at Augmented World Expo in Long Beach next month (June 10-12), and am excited to say that's where I'm also introducing a new 2025 edition of the afterword. Hope to you see there!
If you are interested in coming, here's a special 10% off discount code:
Enter SPKR25D during sign-up. Save money on entrance fees for more fish tacos.
A sharped-eyed Redditor recently noticed VRChat's tab for “Granted Avatars” had been changed to “Purchased Avatars”. Which, yes, means VRChat the company is actively working on an in-platform creator economy for avatars (I can confirm after talking with insiders). That the user interface has been changed suggests it's coming soon (i.e. this quarter or next), but I haven't been able to get a specific launch date.
In any case, this does mean talented VRChat avatar creators like "lackofbindings" (who created the avatar above) will soon-ish be able to sell their works on the platform, instead of doing so on Gumroad and other third party sites.
Speaking of VRChat, Wired has finally a huge feature on the virtual world's burgeoning rave dance club seen, something that's fascinated me for years. Excerpt:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Stina McGillivary has a knack for spotting the unique and unusual on her Second Life journeys. I mean do all visitors to Buddha Garden notice this little mouse when the totality of the sim is so overwhelming? A lot of people who go sightseeing, here in SL or in RL, walk through the sites, making sure to look at everything. A few people, however, are less concerned with looking at everything and are interested in a more intense kind of seeing. She sees both the macro and the micro. She beholds the sim.
This is a fantastic capture. It’s adorably cute, but it’s also really quite beautiful. I love how she gets the spokes of the umbrella to perfectly align with the tree behind it along the right side where the moon shines down. The way the tree and umbrella come together is sort of magical. I just love everything about this picture. p.s even looking for the mouse, I could not see or behold it.
For more of Stina’s fabulous travel shots, click here:
Seeing that Sweeney saved the Metaverse from Apple this week, this ridiculously long interview he just did with Lex Fridman is worth a watch. Seeing as it's four hours and twenty five minutes, you'll probably want to watch in parts. I'll pull out highlights when I can.
Please share your own favorite points they discuss in comments!
Click here to take it. I know people on mobile were having trouble with the embedded version of this survey, so hopefully this direct link is easier. I'll close the survey after this coming weekend (probably).
Stars Reach, Raph Koster's highly ambitious upcoming galaxy sandbox MMORPG, had its successful Kickstarter a few months ago, but longtime virtual world developer Matt Daly writes that a thriving player community has emerged -- even before the crowdfunder. Groups are already evolving and building in fascinating ways:
Stars Reach keeps subverting my preconceived notions of player/community motivation in metaverse / sandbox / MMO spaces.
This is GUNC guild’s little enclave - a communal effort of a bunch of players (guild members and not), terraforming, creating land bridges, planting trees, building (including a GUNCies restaurant), over the course of less than 2 full days… and all of this will be wiped in a week or so.
And they've done many versions of this before, across various planned pre-alpha testing server wipes, for months, before the Kickstarter bandwagon etc, just for the love of building, together.
There isn't even an in-game currency yet, or really much FUNCTIONALLY to do in these built cities yet… so it’s like a little product study trapped in amber, worth observing, because those systems and more will come, and by that point it's a product manager’s job to sort signal from noise, but for now the lack of those systems paints a pretty clear picture.
And it’s not due to the official Discord live chat either, as there are countless builds that have sprung up since the last wipe that have usernames on them I don't even recognize.
It’s been motivating me to document and curate a bit. It’s like the best of the modern artists like Lozano-Hemmer whose work is often designed to decay or disassemble itself.
In a time dominated by product management funnels and bottom line predatory Skinner box monetization models, and on the opposite end metaverse graveyard platforms that have no central thesis, this is pretty refreshing.*
Again, this social building is happening despite (because of?) Stars Reach being in pre-release, and all these user-created builds are regularly wiped from the world servers.
"People still going HARD in the paint building and refining, even though the wave is about to erase their sandcastle," as Matt puts it to me. "It's amazing."
Especially impressive because Raph's world isn't a traditional leveling MMO:
"Games like Rust do periodic wipes. Dune awakening will follow suit I think. Conan has them. But [Stars Reach] doesn't even have the mechanics to buttress that pain -- it's currently just pure building. So its just kind of awesome to see how intrinsically powerful that loop is to certain player types."
Matt tells me Stars Reach user creation is similar to worlds like Rust and Second Life, by the way:
Seemingly everyone in tech is talking about a huge ruling in the long-running Epic Games v. Apple dispute:
[J]udge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers just ruled that, effective immediately, Apple is no longer allowed to collect fees on purchases made outside apps and blocks the company from restricting how developers can point users to where they can make purchases outside of apps. Apple says it will appeal the order.
As part of the ruling, the judge says that Apple cannot: Impose “any commission or any fee on purchases that consumers make outside an app... interfere with consumers’ choice to leave an app with anything beyond “a neutral message apprising users that they are going to a third-party site”.
Epic head Tim Sweeney has called his dispute with Apple (and Google) a battle for the Metaverse, since most metaverse platform users access the virtual world through their smartphone -- but because Apple and Google charge a 30% cut on in-app purchases, and metaverse platform companies are hugely hobbled.
Now, the mobile version of Epic's Fortnite -- and Roblox, and VRChat, and Rec Room, and yes, Linden Lab's Second Life -- can enable in-app purchases without that huge 30% fee, or even encourage users to buy virtual currency from their website.
Reached earlier today, Linden Lab head Brad Oberwager is cautiously optimistic:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Varosh SantanaMiguel’s photostream is like a shot of adrenaline for your eyes. They are full of this wild energy that demands our attention. Take “The Last Rays,” his most recent work, I have to look closer to absorb what I am seeing. In his own words, from the description:
In the shimmering waters, where the last rays of the sun meet the darkness, Lysmaro reigns. His skin is adorned with perfect shades, and his back is crowned with crystalline fins — sharp as blades, yet as beautiful as the stars in the sky.
His staff, topped with a living pearl that pulses like a fragment of a long-lost star, he wields like no other. Surrounded by fish that swirl around him like liquid silver, and songs so hauntingly beautiful they could steal one’s sanity. Accompanied by magical currents, his voice echoes through the seas, both warning and promising in equal measure.
I keep learning more about how Meta, one of the most powerful and profitable companies in human history, has been unable to grow its metaverse platform Horizon Worlds. Part of that story is told in my book (plug!), while another part of the story I wrote about here, in which Meta leadership decided to develop Horizon Worlds with a VR version of Meta's React code of mobile apps, called "ReactVR" -- leading to a team of 2D app developers driven by engagement metrics and retention numbers, but little experience in virtual worlds or VR.
There was, briefly, an acknowledgement that "The Metaverse" would require learning. Horizons started out as an experiment alongside Rooms and Venues then grew and sucked all of the oxygen out of the room when it was decided that Meta needed a platform to compete with VR Chat.
Yes: VRChat, the social VR virtual world first created by a tiny startup, grew organically with little marketing, but still far outpaced Horizon Worlds in terms of active users, even (and especially!) on Meta's own VR platform. So Meta pivoted to catch up.
A core goal (as I see it) of the Creator Partnership Program is to grow the Second Life user base through a collaboration of Linden Lab development and grassroots community creativity. You can see that in another company/creator collaboration which also addresses the first-time user experience. Longtime SL game developer MadPea created a HUD that will be seen by some select new users, giving them a set of daily adventure Great Heist quests and rewards...
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Sophie D takes pics of herself and her travels around Second Life. She’s new-to-me, someone I discovered today while searching for pictures of trees. Portland’s Friends of Trees celebrated planting its millionth tree this Sunday which led me to wonder about tree planting in Second Life. Of course, it’s much easier to plant a tree in SL, no messy digging, watering, pruning, and hoping it survives. Plop, and there it is! All grown up.
While searching for trees I found a lot of pics by Sophie, in fact if anyone deserves to be the SL Virtual Forest Ranger, it is Sophie. This is her most recent picture and it just happens to be a tree. In general, framing the main element toward the center is a mistake, particularly if it’s asymmetrical, but she accounts for that with the leading lines that draw our eyes, making this a successful picture.
"I Spent 30 Days in a Dead Game" at first seemed like a mean snarkfest against There, the virtual world that went defunct in 2010 then relaunched as a subscription-based platform in 2012. Homepage here.
But longtime virtual world denizen Cube Republic convinced me to keep watching:
"I was prepared for another troll video and I thought in the end it was well put together," as Cube puts it. "And the interview with the players were lovely, and them describing losing their friends that had left or died raises a lot of questions about virtual worlds and what they mean as communities and spaces that people live in."
So I kept watching, and Cube is correct! Also notable how expressive There avatars are, despite (because of?) the rudimentary graphics. It does make you appreciate how amazing it is that you can still meet both newbies and oldbies in Second Life:
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.
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.
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.
