New World Notes

VRChat on Hiring Spree Exactly One Year After Heavy Cutbacks!

Here was the news with VRChat in June 2024:

In brutal news for VRChat employees, 30% were laid off late yesterday -- though fortunately, with generous severance packages. In a refreshingly honest email to staff, co-founder/CEO Graham Gaylor puts the blame on himself, saying he over-hired while also taking too long to add management, making it difficult for the startup to reach profitability before they run out of funding...

With these layoffs, VRChat will now have the breathing room to achieve profitability. As I mentioned to one staffer last night, this reminds me of the time early on when Linden Lab also laid off 30% of its staff -- and then soon saw Second Life take off like a rocket.

In all honesty, I wrote that last sentence hoping it wasn't just over-optimistic pro-metaverse spin.

But now in June 2025, here's the news from Chandra Janakiraman, the Meta / Zynga veteran who took on the Chief Product Officer role for the company shortly before the layoffs:

We are hiring across a range of functions & positions. It's an exciting time to join us, as we write the next chapter of immersive social connection at scale!

Here's the current job listings, with 10 roles on display, including Avatar Marketplace Content Reviewer, to help grow that new feature which also went live this month, and Director of Product, New Audiences:

Message Me to Get Early Access to an Upcoming Minecraft Server Enabling Up to 100,000 Concurrent Users!

In case you missed it, a UK company called MetaGravity is developing a Minecraft server enabling up to 100,000 concurrent players -- up to 5,000 in a 100 square meter space. It's part of their effort to showcase the company's Quark engine, which uses "Causal Partitioning" to enable extremely high concurrency in virtual world. So if this Minecraft server project is successful, we'll likely see Quark adopted by other virtual worlds.

Anyway, the MetaGravity team is giving me some early beta access invites, so if you want to be first to try this out (surrounded by tens of thousands of others!), hit me up, an I'll add your e-mail to the list (space permitting):

Cajsa's Choices: Fantastically Composed Virtual Outdoor Fun Photos by Kirsten

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

Kirsten seems ready for hunting, with a camera in the off-season most likely as he’s not got the tiniest bit of blaze orange to protect him from getting shot by an overeager hunter. The only things that will fit in his backpack are his lunch and a camera, maybe a few lenses. Besides, huskies aren’t really hunting dogs. I like the picture and think it’s a good example of Kirsten’s photostream where he features pictures of him doing things, an active and lively person in Second Life. 

For more of Kirsten in action, click here:

Top 6 Posts Including: VRChat Partners with Immersive Marketing Agency, and Inside Second Life's Secret Shadow Mesh System

• Visit Bad Unicorn World, a Wacky New Theme Park in Second Life -- And a Promising Approach to Growing SL's User Base
• The Truth About Shadow Meshing, SL's Secret Subcontracting System (On My Patreon)
• VRChat the Company Working With Sawhorse, Major Immersive Marketing Studio Behind Big Brand Activations in Roblox & Fortnite
• Watch: MetaGravity Creating Minecraft Server With Up to 100,000 Concurrent Players -- Up to 5,000 in a 100 Square Meter Area!
• Cajsa's Choices: Stunning Second Life Photos of Somber Men by Spek
• About That Linden Lab Job Mentioning "Gambling and Crypto" Applications...

Visit Bad Unicorn World, a Wacky New Theme Park in Second Life -- And a Promising Approach to Growing SL's User Base

Click here to visit Bad Unicorn World, the new sim from Bhad Craven's Bad Unicorn, purveyor of zany items in Second Life -- and, I think, a promising new way of solving SL's first-time "what's the point of this world?" user experience problem.

Not just a visually cool sim, but as the trailer suggests, a whole fun theme park/party space, where you can play various goofy competitive games, win prizes, and get your name on the sim's giant leaderboard -- sorta Second Life meets Fall Guys. This is exactly the kind of thing SL needs, appealing both to new and returning users: an immediately fun social space with easy-to-play games, with enough challenges and goals to encourage return play. (Which thus encourages players to meet each other, go on other adventures together, etc. etc.)

There's early evidence that it's working:

Since launching last weekend, Bhad tells me, the sim's Mario-style coin collection game and leaderboard has amassed over 1200 unique players -- huge numbers for an SL sim, or for that matter, compared to new indie games on Steam. With well over 100,000 coins collected in under a week (by his count), that translates to roughly 10,000+ individual coin collecting play sessions.

"Even met a day one new user who found my store through the destination guide," Bhad tells me, surprised.

Bad Unicorn World was partly inspired after Linden Lab invited him, along with other select SL community content creators, to meet the company during the San Francisco-based Game Developer Conference in March:

The Truth About Shadow Meshing, SL's Secret Subcontracting System

"It's one of those behind the scenes 'everyone knows but no one says anything' parts of Second Life culture. So I'm glad she's brought it up." Now on my Patreon: "The Truth About Shadow Meshing: Top Content Creators on the Second Life Economy's Secret Subcontractors".

Cajsa's Choices: Fantastically Good SL Pics by Graves Ghostly

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

Graves Ghostly has such an exciting photostream as they explore all that Second Life has to offer from conjuring up concoctions in his cauldron in the library to…well, you just have to see for yourself. 

For more of Graves hijinks, click here:

VRChat the Company Working With Sawhorse, Major Immersive Marketing Studio Behind Big Brand Activations in Roblox & Fortnite

Above: VRChat's listing in the AWE exhibitor tradeshow

A small booth at last week's Augmented World Expo could herald a pretty big move for VRChat the company:

They are now partnered with Sawhorse Productions, a top immersive marketing agency that's done a number of brand activations in metaverse platforms Roblox and Fortnite -- including, most recently, a vampire game they created in Fortnite to promote Ryan Coogler's hit movie Sinners. (Trailer below.)

"Sawhorse is working with VRChat because we see it as an important UGC gaming platform for brands to activate on," CEO Nic Hill tells me, laying out his studios' upcoming plans:

"Our first phase is to build custom avatars for the new store. " (That was added to the platform this month.) "Then phase two is to integrate brands into game experiences and help them reach the VRChat audience and make impact there. We feel like brands looking to reach the more aged-up gaming audience of VR-first users should be leveraging VRchat."

He's right about aged up: Based on a survey I conducted with top VRChat YouTuber Syrmor, nearly 60% of the user base are in their 20s or older, with about 15% of them 30 or older.

Nic believes his existing clients could be a good fit for future VRChat campaigns:

Survey: Nearly 1 in 4 Second Life Merchants Make $50,000 or More a Year from the Virtual World

22% of SL merchants surveyed in my 2025 state of the Second Life economy report-- nearly 1 in 4 -- earn real life income-levels of revenue from their Second Life content. By "real life income", I mean they earn $50,000 or more per year, which generally qualifies as a decent or excellent living, depending on various contingencies (local cost of living, number of working people in household, etc.)

In other words, when you consider that around 1600 Second Life merchants gross $10,000 or more a year from their SL content (according to Linden Lab), that would translate to over 350 SL creators who can live off of their SL creativity. Notably, that's almost twice as many people as Linden Lab itself employs full-time. (182, as of last year.)

Subscribe to my Patreon to read the whole report, and to get ideas/data for building your own SL brand!

Politically Provocative Second Life Art Installations Created & Photographed by Penumbra of Carterville

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

Penumbra of Carterville may be doing a public service with “Toxic Tampons” as we are informed that they have found toxic pesticides in tampons at forty times the legal limit for water. Somehow I don’t think it is accidental that the tampons are shaped like rockets and march in a tighter formation than the U.S. Army did for Trump’s Dear Leader cosplay. You can see them at work in Penumbra’s short video:

She provides a link to the installation so you can see it for yourself.

For more of Penumbra’s activism in SL, click here:

Watch: MetaGravity Creating Minecraft Server With Up to 100,000 Concurrent Players -- Up to 5,000 in a 100 Square Meter Area!

Here's the latest demo video of the Quark engine from MetaGravity, which employs "causal partitioning" (more on that below) to enable single shard virtual worlds with massive concurrency. They're showing off that technology later this year with their own Minecraft server, which they say will be able to handle up 100,000 concurrent players. (You can sign up here to request early access.) 

Matthew Chuen, Head of Ecosystem at MetaGravity, says they're also able to handle high local concurrency, i.e. the number of avatars in your immediate vicinity:

"We have successfully handled 5,000 players within a 100-square-meter area with excellent performance," he says. "This is possible because our Causal Partitioning technology is fundamentally more efficient than traditional servers, avoiding the exponential lag that typically makes such high-density scenarios impossible."

Without diving too deeply into the technical details, here's how MetaGravity describes Casual Partitioning:

 

Cajsa's Choices: Stunning Second Life Photos of Somber Men by Spek

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

Spek posted this picture “Runner” today. He’s alone on a beach that seems set up for massive crowds with cabins for vacationers. This pictures feels very lonely. I think he may have deliberately created that loneliness by dressing his avatar in dress pants with a belt and a white oxford shirt. He is apart from the scene, not dressed for it and all alone. On one level, it’s capturing alienation. It reminds me of a Robert Frost poem about snow, of all things.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces

Between stars - on stars where no human race is.

I have it in me so much nearer home

To scare myself with my own desert places. 

For more from Spek, click here:

 

About That Linden Lab Job Mentioning "Gambling and Crypto" Applications...

Originally publisher on my Patreon

A recent Linden Lab job posting has causes some community grumbling (as here) because of how it might be interpreted:

We’re looking for seasoned BizOps Director to architect and build our operational framework from the ground up. Initially operating as an individual contributor, with the potential to build and lead your own team as business units scale. This role is pivotal to launching and scaling innovative business lines—including gambling, skill-based gaming, crypto applications, and virtual-world simulations. You’ll work cross-functionally to drive strategic planning, develop financial models, and build scalable processes that support hyper-growth.

Does this mean Linden Lab is actively planning to add gambling and crypto features in Second Life?

Not necessarily. I'm told by an insider that there are no active gambling or crypto initiatives going on in the company right now. (Indeed, when I asked Brad Oberwager about bringing gambling to SL last year, he told me:

Second Life Community Mourn Loss of Talented Machinima Filmmaker Tutsy Navarantha -- Watch His Acclaimed 2011 Short "Journey into the Metaverse".

I'm sad to read the news that the real life owner of Tutsy Navarantha, acclaimed Second Life-based artist, recently died. Many SL community members have already posted farewells and memorials on his RL Facebook account. 

He created until close to the very end, such as this poignant image, "Alone Against the World" on Flickr last March. (Cajsa's tribute to his SL photos is here.) My fondest memory of him can be watched above -- 2011's award-winning "Journey into the Metaverse", one of the best Second Life machinimas ever made. I interviewed him about it then, getting a glimpse of his artistic vision and a bit about his fascinating first life:

Spotlight Search: What Smaller, Newer, Lesser-Known Second Life Brands Deserve More Publicity?

Last week's open forum where readers recommended new-ish, small-ish brands for me to feature went so well, I'd like to make it a regular series.* So I ask once again:

What new-ish, smaller, lesser known SL merchants/brands deserve more attention and publicity?

To nominate your favorites, please go to Comments and post:

• Name of the brand
• Marketplace page
• Main social media channel
• Short description of why they deserve more attention/publicity.

There's no hard set guidelines for what brands qualify as "new" or "small", but here's some flexible ones:

To nominate your favorites, please go to Comments and post:

• Name of the brand
• Marketplace page
• Main social media channel
• Short description of why they deserve more attention/publicity.

Top Three Posts Including a Deep Look at the Second Life Economy, a Wayward AI-Meets-Nethack Contest, and Three New-ish/Small-ish SL Brands to Check Out

• Second Life Shopping Ideas: Neon Sign, Swinging Earring & Meme Tattoo from New-ish, Small-ish Reader-Recommended Brands
• Meta Challenged Top Devs to Build an AI That Could Beat the Classic Roguelike RPG NetHack. No One Came Close.
• Second Life Merchants Speak On the State of the Virtual World Economy in 2025 (Patreon)

Second Life Shopping Ideas: Neon Sign, Swinging Earring & Meme Tattoo from New-ish, Small-ish Reader-Recommended Brands

We're getting some good reader recommendations for new-ish, small-ish SL brands that deserve more coverage. So let's start now with some shopping ideas for the weekend! Beginning with this steampunk-esque, customizable neon sign from SIGNA*. 

"Two of the main artists built roleplay and art sims for over 10 years without doing anything commercial," says reader "Raincoat". "I've seen what they can do and some of the stuff that's in the pipeline, this marketplace is just the tip of the iceberg and a space to be watched for sure."

Two more recommendations below!

Meta Challenged Top Devs to Build an AI That Could Beat the Classic Roguelike RPG NetHack. No One Came Close.

Above: Most successful AI runs, character type (Wizard-Elf-Chaotic-Male, etc.) the level at which they died, and what killed them

Back in 2021, Meta (still Facebook at the time), sponsored an innovative challenge in AI programming: Create a bot which could win NetHack on its own. If you know the classic roguelike RPG, first created in the 80s, you know how hard that is. I know that from personal experience, because it was one of the very first games I obsessed over as a kid, and first inspired my interest in virtual worlds.

Though it was limited to ASCII graphics, the complexity and depth of the world made it seem real. Unlike say, a chess game, where each individual move is limited to a few dozen options, the moves in NetHack seem unlimited. I wrote about that complexity in one of my very first articles:

With every object, tool, weapon and creature imbued with a wealth of attributes, every situation has endless potential. The cockatrice, for example, could turn you into stone, but that is only the beginning. If you kill one, then pick it up with gloves, you can wield its body like a flail, instantly turning monsters to stone when you bash them with it. (Usenet wags dubbed this maneuver “wielding the rubber chicken.”) If you have a wand of Polymorph and also wear a Ring of Polymorph Control, you can actually turn yourself into a cockatrice, and explore the dungeon in that deadly form. You can even lay cockatrice eggs, too — usable as hand grenades of instant paralysis.

In NetHack, at any point, anything seems possible. Jean-Christophe Collet, a DevTeam member who discovered the game while working for a Parisian Unix company, says he was enthralled by “the sheer complexity of the situations you could get into, and the way that there was no ‘right way’ to get out of them.” Surrounded by Orcs, for example, you could incinerate most of them with your Wand of Lightning, but the blast would likely ricochet off the opposite wall and crisp you, too. You could wear your Ring of Conflict, which would magically compel the Orcs to start attacking each other instead — but then again, wearing it would probably also compel your pet Large Dog to attack you. You’d often get the eerie sense the game was anticipating you and all these uniquely intricate conundrums that no one could have possibly foreseen. Or could they? 

AI developers at Oxford, NYU, and other top universities participated. So how'd they do? One of the participants recently shared the academic summaries with me, but the non-academic answer would be:

Cajsa's Choices: Sari Makes the Second Landscape Look Like Paintings -- And Provides Teleport Links to See These Places Yourself!

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

Sari takes amazing landscapes as well as personal pictures of her avatar out and about enjoying herself in Second Life. “Path to Beauty” is a gorgeous picture with a sky worthy of an oil painting in the Louvre. It looks like she road a bike to explore along the coast and just had to stop and take a snapshot with the glorious sunrise making the sky almost as lavender as the flowers. 

For more of Sari’s fabulous landscapes, click here:

SL Merchants Speak on the State of the Virtual World Economy in Its 22nd Year - New on My Patreon

Image courtesy Razor Cure -- view larger version here

Second Life Merchants Speak On the State of the Virtual World Economy in 2025 is my new, in-depth report, available now only to Patreon subscribers, covering a variety of topics, including:

• How many SL merchants are making $100,000/year through their virtual content?
• What L$ price point generates the most sales? How about Marketplace vs. Mainstore?
• How many merchants use Gen AI in their products -- or want it regulated/banned?
• Has Second Life's mobile app or Project Zero helped drive sales at all?
• What is merchants' overall confidence in the leadership of Brad Oberwager and Philip Rosedale?

All that and much more, including detailed advice from Brett Linden on submitting proposals to Linden Lab's new Creator Partnership Program, and branding/marketing advice from me. Get it all here and join the conversation.

Cajsa's Choices: Completely Charming Second Life Photos by Azaria

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

Azaria posted this adorable picture of a cat cleaning its paws right next to a burger that ready to serve while other burgers continue cooking on the grill. It’s called “Chef’s Kiss” which may imply the cat cooked the burger or the burgers are just that good. It’s a cute picture, one that makes a person say “awww” unless they’re from Minnesota where they say “Ohfercu-ute.” The fun thing about Azaria is that she is a photographer in her first and second lives and, sure enough, she has a cat picture from real life, too. Awww. 

For more of Azaria’s gorgeous pics, click here:

Open Forum: What Smaller / New-ish / Lesser-Known Second Life Brands Deserve More Publicity?

One of the very top requests in my survey of Second Life merchants was this one:

Start promoting and supporting smaller/newer/lesser-known brands - not just "top" designers.

The suggestion was directed at Linden Lab, but that's also something that I'd love to do on this blog as well. But I need reader's help with recommendations!

Specifically:

What new-ish, smaller, lesser known SL merchants/brands deserve more attention and publicity?

To set some rough/flexible criteria: by "new-ish", I mean founded in 2020 or later, by "smaller" I mean less than 50 total ratings of items in their Marketplace, and by "lesser known", I mean "main social media channel has less than 500 followers". 

To nominate your favorites in that criterion, please go to Comments and post:

Connect With Me IRL at Augmented World Expo Tomorrow & Possibly Thursday

If you're attending Augmented World Expo in Long Beach this week, definitely let me know! I'll be there to sign books tomorrow afternoon (Wednesday) and possibly Thursday.* If you're reading this, I'd love to meet/chat in person. Connect with me on these various social media platforms and let's coordinate:

• Bluesky
• Twitter/X
• LinkedIn
• On Discord, I'm wja_hamlet

*I had to skip today due to various logistical cock-ups, one of which being I'm currently on the other side of Los Angeles.

Cajsa's Choices: Pensively Posed Avatar Photos by Mollie

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

Mollie posted “I Never Learned to Read Your Mind,” a fitting title for a picture of a woman sitting on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean while she thinks. The way she holds her head in her hands doesn’t seem sorrowful so much as puzzled, even a bit irked. There’s a bit of “What were they thinking?” about her pose that is so much more interesting than simply looking sad. As to reading minds, let’s all be glad we can’t. Seriously, do you want your every stray thought to be known by someone else? 

For more from Mollie, click here:

Vision Pro's Problems for Mainstream Adoption May Be Based in Neurology & Human Evolution -- Amber Case

While Apple Vision Pro is impressive technology, sales have been slow, and I've grown skeptical that it'll ever gain mass market adoption for various reasons. For one thing, sales remain slow, and for another, even most early adopters who have bought one aren't using it on a daily basis.

But my longtime friend and colleague Amber Case, design consultant and former fellow at MIT and Harvard, delves deeper than that, raising some fascinating points that never occurred to me before, citing a neurologist:

I asked my colleague Dr. David Sisson, a neurophysiologist, why XR adoption hasn’t matched media hype. He reminded me that audio and visual inputs—the primary senses XR taps into—aren’t the full picture.

Then there’s the matter of touch in XR. “Without touch, there’s no ‘intimacy.’ You’re not really interacting with what’s going on,” David told me. “You can hit a ball—and hear the ‘crack’ in VR—but you’re not feeling anything other than a little jerk in the controller that makes you feel like there’s some inertia happening.”

In short, headsets deprive us of the tactile and physical context that supports memory formation. 

In other words, XR devices like the Vision Pro may impede how we learn and remember, even on a neurological level. As Case puts its: