New World Notes

The Metaverse Can't Develop Like the Internet Since It Doesn't Have Open Standards -- But Metaverse Communities Can Help Change That. My Take On Matthew Ball’s Metaverse Primer, Part 6

I'm blogging Matthew Ball’s must-read, nine part metaverse primer over the Summer; my take on Part 1 is here,  my coverage of Part 2 is here, with Part 3 coverage here, Part 4 coverage here, and Part 5 here.

As with previous parts of the Primer, Part 6, "Interchange Tools + Standards and the Metaverse" delves into just how difficult making a Metaverse worth the name will be. Because while many say the Metaverse is the Internet's next generation, the actual Internet was launched by academics and government researchers who valued open standards. But the major companies/platforms which are likely to launch the Metaverse are very much closed, for the most part:

All of the video games console operating systems, which are required to use console hardware, have chosen not to support open or third-party rendering API collections, such as OpenGL or WebGL. Instead, Microsoft Xbox exclusively uses Microsoft’s DirectX, while Sony uses its GNMX for PlayStation. Mobile devices typically support multiple standards, but they often restrict (or outright block) access to many drivers, which helps drive developers to their proprietary offering. PC and Mac are more open, but they’re optimized for Microsoft’s DirectX and Apple’s Metal APIs. As a result, a developer’s software needs to be written specifically for each platform’s ‘standards’. Fortnite needs to use Microsoft’s DirectX for Xbox, and Sony’s GNMX for PlayStation, Nvidia’s NVM for Nintendo Switch, and Apple’s Metal for iOS. Only Google’s Android has built its solution around OpenGL, but one could argue its dominance with Chrome and Chromium controls these standards for the web.

GPUs also have their own flavor of these protocols, too. Nvidia’s drivers are effectively a ‘platform’ that developers utilize to access a PC user’s hardware, working in concert with Microsoft’s DirectX, for rendering.

But if companies like these want to keep their standards closed, their customers, unified, can demand otherwise. As Matthew writes, the runaway success of Fortnite caused gamers to clamor for the chance to play together with their friends on other devices -- and their clamor grew so great (as did their threats to take their eyeballs elsewhere), even proprietary AF Sony finally complied:  

Inside Horizon Workrooms: Oculus Vet Jim Purbrick on Mapping Real Offices to Virtual Spaces -- and How His Team Used It During the Pandemic For Their Own Meetings

Last week's launch of Facebook's Horizon Workrooms garnered a lot of guffaws due to its sheer Zuckerbergian much-ness, but beneath the VR-for-office meetings platform is some impressive tech.

On his blog, Jim "Babbage" Purbrick (who helped lead development of Workrooms)  goes into detail on a key Workrooms feature -- virtual mapping of the user's real meeting location/surroundings:

[Workrooms] shows you an entirely virtual environment, but asks you to indicate the position of real world objects like your desk in a process which feels like a more detailed guardian setup process. Workrooms then positions your avatar in the virtual world so that your real desktop aligns with your virtual desktop.

When you reach out and touch the virtual desk your hands touch the real desk. As long as the important virtual objects within arms reach are mapped to real objects, the virtual environment can be much bigger than the available real space while maintaining the illusion that every virtual object can be touched as well as seen.

Jim (who left Facebook late last year) allows that this is not the type of set-up you want to be strapped into for your entire day: "Currently you wouldn't want to use a Quest all day," as he puts it. "But you could easily attend several typical hour long meetings a day without feeling uncomfortable."

Throughout the pandemic, the Oculus group developing Workrooms would actually use their own platform to hold meetings:

This Artist Turns Second Life Into Frame-Worthy Art Photos With Witty Titles

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

Heidi Rewell gives her pictures the best titles on Flickr. I mean, even if they were not good pics, you would want to look just for the titles. But they are good pictures, so bonus! 

Take “Did you know that? Some unicorns like to dress up as horses.” She sets her horizon one-fifth of the way up, leaving the sky to fill the picture using the unofficial rule of fifths. The horses are nearly hidden by the tall grass but that seems appropriate when they are unicorns disguised as horses. 

For more beautifully illustrated facts, click here:

Sub-Orbital Galaxy Still Floating Above Second Life After 14 Years, Still Inspiring Virtual & Real Communities

Photo credit: Susietea Resident via Inspire's Flickr Group

Twelve years ago, Bonny Greenwood was floating in outer space on an asteroid doing tai chi to trance music when she struck up a conversation with a friendly passerby. (As one does.)

Then again this is a common thing to happen in Inspire Space Park, a suborbital galaxy that’s been floating high above Second Life since at least 2007 -- created, as the founders told me back then, “to make the perfect ‘chill’ place in SL that wasn't about sex, or ads”. (Watch me twirl above the galaxy below.)

It’s still orbiting above the virtual world, I am happy to report, and has very recently expanded to include an earthbound fantasy forest and steampunk-themed park. Click here to visit yourself.

It was co-created by Earth Primbee, and as a testament to the community that’s developed around Inspire Space Park over its lifespan, he is still after all these years able to cover land tier costs from donations:

“It is the feeling one gets when the music and scene combines,” Primbee muses to me. “Maybe you are dancing, doing Tai Chi, meditating, or orbiting and find that moment where it all comes together. It is a peaceful feeling. People need that and the people have insured it stayed. Became a home of sorts. A place where many have met for the first time. A shared place for them after.”

Inspire’s original co-creators have since moved on, and Primbee himself has largely turned over operations to three women. Which brings us back to Bonny, among the triumvirate of the galaxy’s new managers:

Upland Now Attracting Over 100K High Active Unique Players for Its Blockchain/Tilia-Backed Virtual Real Estate MMO

Last month I estimated that Upland, the blockchain-backed mirror world real estate trading MMO, probably had about low-to-mid six figures of active users; now here's a pretty good data point of users who actually play Upland long enough to buy virtual real estate in it. A very active Upland user sent me the data above,  drawn from up2land.com, a player-driven analytics site.

"[T]hese numbers reflect only the UNIQUE players making transactions each month," my source tells me, "Either Sales, Accepted Offers, or Minting properties. It does not reflect the total number of players -- there are many [who] might go months without making a transaction - and some players may be counted each month. But it does give an indication of the trend of the game."

 

So unique players defined on those terms have ranged from 54,000 to 102,000 in recent months. My source suspects the dip in May is attributable to less advertising during that month. But these numbers likely do not include a lot of new users just playing around with the free-to-play game's starting money:

This Artist Creates Some of My Very Favorite Second Life-Based Images

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

Tooku Fadlan’s “Amrun” may end up my favorite picture of the year. When I saw it, I just said, “Wow” before sitting there looking at it for I don’t know how long. I love the moody lighting from the moon through the clouds. Or should I say moony lighting? I love the shadow of the fence creating this parallel set of leading lines diverging as the land rises and falls. It is just magical. 

For more, click here:

Portrait of the Artist as a Young A.I.: Rude & Pretentious Art Magazine-Style Questions for "Alejandro"

Above: Art created by an AI called "Alejandro", and the AI-generated photo of "Alejandro" 

I told you last week about "Alejandro", an AI personality who is creating works of art, which entrepreneur August Rosedale is then selling as NFTs.

But just how much of a personality does Alejandro actually have? Skeptical that the Turing Test pretense would come crashing down pretty quickly, I sent several questions to August for him to ask "Alejandro". But rather than just pose random generic queries, I asked them as if I was a pretentious a-hole freelancer writing for a pompous art magazine, challenging the AI on his authenticity as artist, whether he's an AI sell-out, and, of course, about having sex with his human groupies.

Here's our unedited Q&A:

Watch: Profound Chat About Living With Cerebral Palsy IRL Via a Wailugi Avatar in VRChat (Syrmor's Latest)

"I think of this whole disability as one joke that God put on me... I don't think I would be the person I am now without this disability. It's helped my perspective on the world."

Here's the latest interview from Syrmor, the Toronto-based embedded reporter in VRChat, in a characteristically surreal and zany yet but also profound interview with someone who speaks about their real life through the safe distance of their avatar -- in this case, a wheelchair-bound British guy with cerebral palsy and a Wailugi avatar. After a good natured North American trolling (referring to football as "soccer" never fails to enrage a Brit), Syrmor's questions evoke powerfully honest answers from "benjiboi420" about his life online -- questions that would be socially difficult to ask or answer in another context. 

Dramatic Still Lifes of Virtual Hipster Bikes in Second Life

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

Vanka Machiavello’s “Art is in the eye of the beholder” caught my eye as I was browsing Flickr with its simple red, black, and white color story. I love how the red on the wall seems to bounce back and color the street. I love the grittiness of the textures in the brick and the bike. It seems to tell us a story without even having an avatar to convey the message. 

To see what other stories bike can tell, click here:

SL Gacha Creators Scramble to Create Gacha-Like Systems Without a Gambling Mechanic Before Linden Lab's September 1 Deadline

Image/system by dazai voom

With Linden Lab banning Gachas in Second Life at the end of this month, " irihapeti" and others have noted the rise of Gacha-ish systems like the one above:

Many professional gacha machine makers have developed conveyor machines ready for the 1 September rollout date.

Those that haven't will have to close down their gacha operations.

The basic conveyor machine will display an item from the set. When the customer purchases the displayed item, the machine will 'randomly choose' the next item to be displayed. Customers can buy it or not as they please.

The items in the conveyor machine can be NoCopy Transfer.

So basically systems like this are Gacha-like, except without a completely randomized reward aspect that made Gachas so popular, and also a form of gambling. (And also, for many, so fun.) It also looks like a direct response to a question fielded by Linden Lab in its original announcement banning gachas:

Top 7 Posts Last Week Including A ROBLOX Exposé, A Classic Virtual World Design Book Goes Free & Surprising Constancy of Avatar Gender Choices

• XR Pioneer Sees Facebook's XR Plans As Trojan Horse Threat To Society
• ROBLOX Exploiting Young Game Developers According To Startling Exposé
• Jim "Babbage" Purbrick Brings His Second Life-Based Work Experience To Help Develop Facebook's Horizon Workrooms
• Surprising Gamer Study: Avatar Gender Preference Remains Unchanged For Over 20 Years -- And Very Few Female Gamers Choose Male Avatars
• This Artist Shoots SL Avatars In Beautifully Minimalist Compositions
• Is NFT Art Created By An AI More Valuable If The AI Artist Is "Real"?
• Richard Bartle Releases His Classic Book Designing Virtual Worlds For Free Online -- Here's His Guide To The Sections Still Most Relevant Today

Second Life Meets The Sims: Roleplay System Makes Your Avatar Look Wet, Sleepy, Dirty, or Even Drunk Based on Your In-Game Behavior

Here’s a huge and fun new update (SLurl to check it out) from The Really Useful Scripts Corner, a proud sponsoring partner of New World Notes -- a major expansion to its Really Needy roleplay HUD (created in collaboration with top SL cosmetics brand Izzie’s):

Visible, physical changes to your avatar body based on how you interact in-world. (Watch the demo above!)

“If your avatar dives into water or goes swimming, he or she will emerge with water droplets on the face and body, and dripping wet,” says HUD creator Grace7 Ling. “If your avatar is tired or sleep-deprived (according to the HUD), they will get eye bags. Don’t drink enough water, your avatar gets chapped lips; don’t shower for days, your avatar starts to look grimy! Izzie and I think this will raise the level of realism for roleplayers who desire a truly immersive experience.”

So pretty much Second Life meets The Sims. Here’s all the details from Grace herself:

SL Style Blog: Tips & Tricks to Creating Your Dream Virtual Home

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

Skye Donardson has started a brand new blog called The Feathered Nest. She loves to buy homes and decorate them and decided to share her nest feathering adventures. The initial post, “Let’s Get Started” provides tips on buying homes so they fit on your land.

For renovation tips, click here:

XR Pioneer Sees Facebook's XR Plans as Trojan Horse Threat to Society

Here's some good weekend reading from Avi Bar-Zeev (previously featured here), an XR pioneer with serious cred who after working and consulting on XR projects with Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Linden Lab in the early years, likely knows about anything in the space worth knowing. And his forecast of what Facebook plans to do with its XR projects (such as the recently-announced Horizon Workrooms, not to mention Zuckerberg saying Facebook is becoming a Metaverse company) is decidedly Cassandra-ish:

We’re at a critical inflection point. This ultra high-tech ad-driven machine, epitomized by Facebook, represents a new kind of Trojan horse that we’ve only just recently welcomed into our world. Night is falling and the sacking has barely begun. In the future, we run the risk of being so entranced by our shiny new gifts that we lose the will to fight entirely.

On the other hand, if Facebook and others really become true privacy-first, consumer-first companies with business models that reinforce it, if they listen to criticism and welcome independent oversight, they could still become the core companies we depend on, with enough meaningful introspective data and the right protections to actually make our lives better than today.

I just hit up Avi to quibble a bit with his roadmap; while it looks roughly plausible to me, I spy some problems for Facebook's plans: For instance, Quest 2 sales are slow, the PSVR is giving them heavy competition, and Horizon (from what I'm told) is having development challenges; and now, a lot of people are laughing at that Workroom thing. Wouldn't all that change this roadmap?

ROBLOX Exploiting Young Game Developers According to Startling Exposé

I usually blog Matthew Ball's Metaverse Primer on Thursdays, but this new exposé by freelance UK journalist Quintin Smith (Wired, Edge, Eurogamer, Kotaku) is important viewing now -- and is just as important if not moreso for the future of the Metaverse, and whatever it becomes.

In his report (watch above on his People Make Games YouTube channel), Smith delves deeply into the ways ROBLOX monetizes user creators on its massively popular platform -- many or most of whom are minors -- with mechanics that he deems so exploitative, he compares them at one point to the infamous scrip that abusive companies used to "pay" its workers. 

"For me," as Smith puts it to me, "the most egregious part of the whole story is the platform's minimum withdrawal amount of 100,000 Robux, which equates to $350 US when a developer withdraws it. If you take into account Roblox's cut of 30% of every transaction on the platform, it means a developer needs to have taken 143,000 Robux from its users before they're allowed to withdraw it as actual cash." 

In practice, Smith goes on, this tends to lock ROBLOX creators into the system: "The cost for users to buy 143,000 Robux is around $1430. So your game needs to have raked in $1430 in Robux before you, the developer, receive so much as $1." (Also, a ROBLOX developer can only cash out if they have a $5/month premium subscription.)

As I've noted before, user creators in Second Life earn as much revenue in total from the platform as Linden Lab itself. And Second Life's user base is mostly adults, while ROBLOX's user base is primarily under 18.

"If you accept that we need to treat minors who are doing a job better than we treat adults doing the same job," says Smith, "that's just abhorrent. Especially when you consider the platform is encouraging kids to come and work for them."

He tells me he reached out to ROBLOX the company about his report, but received no reply.

Then again, even as ROBLOX enjoyed a speculator IPO earlier this year,  few if any reporters have explored the company's monetization policies:

Jim "Babbage" Purbrick Brings His Second Life-Based Work Experience to Help Develop Facebook's Horizon Workrooms

Facebook's new Horizon Workroom, a Quest 2-based virtual space for companies and organizations (just announced today) is the latest major project that's an unacknowledged descendant of Second Life: One of its lead developers was Jim "Babbage" Purbrick, who brought his own experience as a remote worker for Linden Lab who used SL itself as a collaborative space to Workroom. 

"Very happy to see it out after lots of lobbying that VR for work shouldn't just be an aspirational future dream for Michael Abrash keynotes, but something that could be useful now," as Jim puts it to me now, who left Facebook last year. "Something I was convinced about because Second Life had already been useful for work, as discussed here." (Jim last featured on on New World Notes here.)

The Facebook project was actually started before the pandemic, and enables up to 16 Quest 2 users to be in the same virtual space, with 50 others able to join by video streaming. Despite Second Life being a seed of its inspiration, Jim tells me he's most psyched by its mixed reality features:

This Artist Shoots SL Avatars in Beautifully Minimalist Compositions

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

Polvere Di Gesso’s “The Man Who Sold His Shadow” evokes such a feeling of alienation. He is leaning forward intent on the screen which seems to be melting, becoming disembodied. His reflection below is divorced from him and from what now appears to be a painting on an easel. His shadow leans back, not forward. How alien to your own life can you be when your shadow does not follow you? Blue is a cold color, the color of sadness, of the Blues. The empty landscape without boundaries or walls and the cold blue are all evocative of loneliness and alienation.

His inspiration was the song “Storia dell'uomo che vendette la sua ombra” which gives us the title. I listened to it and liked its creepiness. It reminds me, in a way, of Leonard Cohen who never tried to sound pleasant. Of course, in literature there is Peter Schlemihl who sold his shadow to the devil for lots of money but being without s shadow, society rejected him. Without our shadows we are alien. Though, The Inkspots used to tell us, “We three we ain't no crowd. Fact is we ain't even company. That's my echo, my shadow, and me.”

For more stark, yet emotionally powerful pictures, click here:

Surprising Gamer Study: Avatar Gender Preference Remains Unchanged for Over 20 Years -- And Very Few Female Gamers Choose Male Avatars

Here’s a fascinating new report on avatars and gender from longtime game culture researcher Nick Yee, based on a survey of nearly 3,000 gamers. Nick’s topline takeaway is that 1 in 3 men prefer to play as female avatars, which is more than many might assume.

Two other learnings stand out to me even more:

Avatar gender preferences among players have remained basically the same since Nick started studying questions like this during the peak of Everquest -- over two decades ago! This despite the fact that MMOs have become much more mainstream since then, attracting many millions of players where they once only drew hundreds of thousands.

“This implies that whatever is causing this to happen (for both male and female players) has been consistent for the past 20 years,” Nick tells me, “so it's a function of some stable sociological dynamic and/or how we've been making games/avatars for the past 20 years. 

“Back in EQ days, I think it was easy to imagine that this phenomenon was idiosyncratic to MMOs, because the genre was more niche back then. But perhaps the MMO findings were always pointing at deeper, stable findings given that much of MMO mechanics and the live services model is now everywhere.” (In other words, online games like Overwatch and Fortnite also have heavy MMO features.)

Nick’s other standout finding: Very few females want to play as male avatars. Seriously few:

Is NFT Art Created by an AI More Valuable if the AI Artist is "Real"?

Above: Art created by an AI called "Alejandro", and the AI-generated photo of "Alejandro" 

When last we spoke with August Rosedale, he was selling NFT art created by AI from artists also created by AIs. But as he writes now, the perceived value of AI-based art has hit a ceiling, perhaps, because there's no actual artist behind the art:

Once others heard about the money that was made off of this one piece, more individuals wanted to create A.I. art. While there was still some money made off of subsequent A.I. artwork sales, nothing came close to the $432,500 price point. [Christie's auction bid for an AI art work of - WJA]. This is due to the fact that the value (being the first of its kind) was not applicable any longer, and the story/artist’s history was missing.

Solution? Use AI to generate a whole biography for the artist, and also use AI so they can do interviews with art journalists:

Here's a Van Gogh Avatar Inside a Van Gogh Painting While Painting a Van Gogh Painting -- And Other Meta Metaverse Pics!

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

Panda Bandana’s “Frogmore 3.0 Photo Contest” picture is a great picture of someone painting in Second Life. For me, a picture of someone painting should show a canvas that reflects what is in front of the painter. Most of the Easel/Canvas/Pose sets allow people to change the canvas texture and it’s a sign people are thinking about the entire picture, not just snapping away. 

I have always liked pictures of people painting. There’s something so meta about the pictures. It’s an old obsession. When I went to El Prado, rather than rush through the museum, I spent over an hour looking at Las Meninas. I am a firm believer in seeing a few great things over trying to see everything and will never forget how huge and fascinating the painting is

Wow, the next picture feels like a painting of a painter painting, click here:

Richard Bartle Releases His Classic Book Designing Virtual Worlds for Free Online -- Here's His Guide to The Sections Still Most Relevant Today

Update, August 20:  Click here to download Designing Virtual Worlds as a .PDF file.

Designing Virtual Worlds is a milestone book in the history of the genre, relevant to basically anyone working in or thinking about online games/metaverses/MMOs/etc.; written by UK professor Richard Bartle in 2003, much or most of it is still relevant to today's technology. (Perhaps even more relevant now, as each wave of designers and developers insists on repeating mistakes made 10-15 years ago -- just on a much, much larger scale.) And Richard just announced he's offering it as a free download on his site:

It's held up reasonably well in some places but not so well in others. 18 years is a long time in virtual world development (the book predates World of Warcraft), but there may be something there of interest to people who haven't read the physical copy.

Click here to open Designing Virtual Worlds as a .pdf.

Professor Bartle, with characteristically wry self-effacement, just sent me his personal summary of the book chapter by chapter, noting which sections are still most relevant and which, not so much -- a handy cheat sheet for new/returning readers:

This Artist Makes Screenshots from Second Life Look Like Still Life Paintings

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

Alexandro Troublemaker is a genius with still life paintings from Second Life. His “Tenderness” is achingly beautiful. I love how the flower branch encircles and embraces the Golden Ratio. I love the gentle breeze that makes the curtains flutter just a bit. The quiet colors with the embracing persimmon red is so lovely and embodies the title, “Tenderness.” 

For more screenshots like paintings, click here:

The End of Second Life Gachas Will Hurt for Awhile, But Second Life Itself Will Recover (Comment of the Week)

From Chic's post "EPIPHANY GOODBYE GACHA"

Good analysis on the coming end of SL gachas from Chic Aeon, who's both an SL blogger and a sometime gacha creator, echoing my sense that their end will significantly impact the virtual world economy as a whole:

I rarely played gacha machines; only the ones with "no losers" enticed me; like twelve colors of a truck. After all you DID get a truck for 60 or 75 Lindens and that was usually a good deal. I sometimes bought at the old Seraphim Arcade Sale and recently bought from resellers on the Marketplace. But still, I PREFER copy items since I have lost a fair amount of gachas to the database fairy.

I also made a ton of money MAKING gacha items. So there is that... I am guessing that folks don't really understand just how much money many of the top gacha creators have already made. (Laughing here). I made some heart-stopping dinero on my most popular gachas and I was never a top creator, only second tier. The folks who made exceptional goods (and honestly some that weren't all that well-made) have already made plenty. We don't need to feel sorry for them.

While she lists the end of gachas as one of her historic moments of Second Life, she does think the virtual world economy will experience a temporary hit, but quickly recover:

What Neal Stephenson Told Me About His Metaverse Inspiring an Industry & Other Highlights Last Week

Image credit: Christopher Michel

• As Fifty Linden Fridays Launches Its 12th Anniversary Party, Its Founder Tells Me How An Internet Meme Led To One Of Second Life’s Largest Groups
• Games Like ROBLOX & Fortnite Have Made The Metaverse Possible... So Is The Metaverse For Kids? My Take On Matthew Ball’s Metaverse Primer, Part 5
• VRChat Gets A Gray Goo World. In The Form Of A Waffle House.
• Niantic Throws Down Gauntlet Against The Virtual World Metaverse -- But Making Its "Real-World Metaverse" Will Be A Challenge
• Second Life Not Only Has User-Created Railway Systems, Someone Made This Amazing Travel Map For Them
• What Neal Stephenson Told Me About His Metaverse Inspiring Oculus
• SL Survey: Over A Third Expect The End Of Second Life Gachas Will Hurt The Virtual World Economy
• Four Reasons Why Cloud Streaming Is The Best Solution For Making The Metaverse (Comment Of The Week)

As Fifty Linden Fridays Launches Its 12th Anniversary Party, Its Founder Tells Me How an Internet Meme Led to One of Second Life’s Largest Groups

Barb photo by Catalina Staheli, edited by Kreao Kujisawa

Click here to join the 12th year anniversary of Fifty Linden Fridays, one of Second Life’s largest in-world groups. Expect a massive crowd, however, because with 52,530 active members, roughly 1 in 10 of SL’s entire user base is a member of FLF. 

Founded and still managed by an SLer named OMGWTF Barbecue -- or just “Barb” to those who know her -- this celebration is quite a culmination for a young woman who, back in 2006, joined Second Life simply to have some rude fun. 

Hence her notably wacky avatar name: