New World Notes

Nine Things Second Life Merchants Want Their Own Customers to Know

My report on the state of the Second Life economy in 2025 is almost ready to read on my Patreon, but meantime, here's an equally important report from my anonymous survey of SL merchants. One of my open questions to them was:

If you could tell your SL customers one thing, what would it be?

A deluge of heart-felt answers followed! Most of them shared common themes. Here they are:

Buy in our Stores, And Not Just on Weekend Sales

"Please support your favorite vendors by making purchases that are also outside weekend sales, as all profits go towards creating more new and exciting things to enjoy.

"We can't exist on weekend sales only. It's not worth the effort.

"Buy in stores where they have the in-world stores and contact the creator in case of problems."

Demo, Demo, Demo Before You Buy -- and Please Read the User Manual/Marketplace Info Carefully!

"Demo, demo, demo… demo responsibly!

"Always try the demo. Please support ORIGINAL creators who work hard.

"Please learn to navigate in the platform you use and try DEMOS.

"Read the Marketplace description before buying. No, seriously, read it. Be more critical in your purchase decisions.

"Read at least the 'quick start' [notecard] before contacting me for support."

Seven more after the break!

Inside Grow a Garden, the Ridiculously Popular Roblox Game Made by a Teenager That Could Be Making as Much as $5 Million+/Month

Gamefile has a fascinating story on the rise of Grow a Garden, a simple farm simulation game made in Roblox originally created by a teenager, which is quite literally one of the most popular online games in the world. Seriously:

This morning, the game’s official page on Roblox, the platform from which it is launched, stated that there were 2,044,359 people playing it. Right at that moment. That’s higher than the current top game on Valve’s PC platform Steam, Counter-Strike 2, which peaked today at just under 1.7 million. It’s also higher than any Roblox game before it.

But how much money is it making? I checked with a Roblox insider last night, and they gave me a figure that made my jaw drop:

At least $5 million a month, but quite likely a lot more. And yes, they mean $5M/mo net, after Roblox the company takes its cut.

Why is it so successful? Writing for Gamefile, Nicole Carpenter points to the game's social virality and the recurring appeal of farm sims in online platforms:

Cajsa Choices: Stunning Photos from Aquilonia, a Second Life Roleplay Community Set in Ancient Rome During the Rule of Marcus Aurelius

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

Uri Jefferson is “Pondering on Fate” in this well-named picture. I love how beautifully he captures the light sources and the naturalistic way light works in this picture. I guess we all should be getting used to beautiful lighting in Second Life, but sometimes when there are multiple sources like this I am still amazed. 

Uri cosplays Ancient Rome in SL and I first discovered him when I was looking for Easter pictures and featured his singular picture that captured the story of Easter without a bunny in sight. Since January this year, all his pics have taken place in Ancient Rome and they are wonderful.

For more Ancient Rome cosplay, click here:

All About Aperture: Why William Weaver Created a Whole New Way of Seeing Second Life

Originally published on my Patreon. Since then, Weaver tells me Aperture has been downloaded over 1500 times and has been added to Linden Lab's official Third Party Viewer Directory

What you're watching above is the birth of a new Second Life viewer -- but in a real sense, it's also the culmination of the creator's lifelong fascination with light in all its varieties. The video starts at a baseline, which is what every viewer (default, Firestorm, etc.) displays, then shows off 18 presets in this new way of seeing and screen-capturing Second Life.

It’s called Aperture Viewer (links below), and it's lead developed by William Weaver. Over a decade ago, Weaver became renowned within the Second Life art community for his exquisite images and astoundingly moving machinima like this one from 2012.

He largely left SL for many years, however, after a dearth of graphical updates -- "When the visuals feel static in a platform that’s really been about visuals for me," he explains now, "the fun just fades" -- but returned in 2024, curious to see how the release of physically based rendering last year had changed the world.After logging back on, he installed a PBR reflection probe.

"My jaw hit the floor," as he puts it now.

“Light was bouncing—something we’d never had in‑world. It felt like a whole new engine hiding in plain sight. I still think many people have no idea what this thing really does now.”

But after weeks of tests, he realized the existing SL viewers hadn’t fully adopted to this new PBR era:

“Phototools had been basically untouched for a decade and couldn’t expose half of PBR’s magic. We needed more tools, things that SL didn't have, to start complementing what it can now do."

Rather than explain what he’d learned in a tutorial, he went several steps beyond -- or rather, several thousand:

Since Sky Is Getting Its Own Feature Movie, Here's Some Insights from Lead Designer Jenova Chen on How the Virtual World Became So Huge

I feel like people in the game/metaverse industry haven't grasped how huge Sky: Children of the Light, the virtual world from Jenova Chen and his studio Thatgamecompany, has become. In 2023 it had over 50 million monthly active users and earned a record for most concurrent users for a live virtual concert; based on recent download/rating numbers, it's likely to have upwards of 100 million MAU now. (I'm checking that with Jenova.)

As a latest sign of its hugeness, the studio produced a feature film inspired by the world, and is debuting it inside the world itself. (Watch the trailer above.)

Speaking of which, I interviewed Jenova for Making a Metaverse That Matters, where he shared some design innovations which helped make Sky such a huge success. Here's an excerpt:

ChatGPT Improves Its Summary of My Writing -- But Still Adds Serious Errors!

In May 2024, I was boggled by how badly ChatGPT summarized my writing, especially my definition of the Metaverse -- even when it's online right here -- so last week, I checked back to see if ChatGPT had improved.

Yes, this seams like a self-indulgent ego stroke, but I promise there's an important point here -- especially when a majority of people use an LLM like ChatGPT instead of Google.  

Anyway, I first got back the mishmash posted above. So in my next prompt, I wrote, "That's not accurate."

ChatGPT apologized... then gave me another version of the definition that was still wrong.

But the next day, when I asked for my definition again, ChatGPT's response was markedly improved. It even included my picture! Look:

Cajsa's Choices: Amira Shoots Gorgeous SL Travelogue Screenshots & Frames Them Like Paintings

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

Amira or ·•° ᓚᘏᗢ °•· as she currently styles herself, creates darling sightseeing pics from her travels in Second Life. I am a sucker for a framed picture and these are delightful. I love the simplicity of this picture, just the house and the butterflies around it with some grass. She includes the original raw shot in a link so you can see her editing changes such as intensifying the colors, adding depth to the background, tossing in a bit of bokeh, and framing it. She also includes a SLurl, so you can teleport to visit the butterflies and see how they’re doing. I love how the simplicity of her pictures are so very beautiful.

For more of her beautiful simplicity, click here:

Top 5 Posts Including a New Second Life Viewer for Virtual Photographers & an Ex-Meta Director on What Went Wrong With Horizon Worlds

Stonelake presenting Horizon Worlds at a conference

• About Aperture: Why William Weaver Created a Whole New Way of Seeing Second Life -- New on My Patreon

• Ex-Meta Director Helps Confirm What Went Wrong With Horizon Worlds: "No One Loved the Product"

• VRChat Unveils In-App Avatar Marketplace As Expected; Here's Some Mixed-to-Positive Reactions from Creators

• Seed MMO Allows Players to Choose Their Colony's Governance System. So This Early Player Group Chose... Dictatorship.

• Deadpool & Wolverine Opening Dance Officially Available in Second Life

Important Fact Check Regarding Flying Whale With Tree on Back

New World Notes must issue an important fact check regarding our post of May 9 entitled, "This Weekend, Why Not Ride a Flying Whale With a Tree On Its Back?" Due to an attribution error, we incorrectly identified the land of the flying whale as being that of Nyx Onyx. The correct owners are Ziki Questi and Kinnaird Mainlander, and the original post will be updated to reflect that.

Ms. Questi kindly send along this flying whale riding photo of her and Ms. Mainlander (above), along with this background on their land:

About Aperture: Why William Weaver Created a Whole New Way of Seeing Second Life -- New on My Patreon

Now on my Patreon (free to read for all members), I talk with William Weaver about the Aperture Viewer, his attempt to completely reinvent how we see and screen-capture Second Life that shows off all the graphics features now possible in the virtual world -- even to SLers who don’t have a high-end PC.

Among other things, he tells me that he's already in the process of officially registering it with Linden Lab:

“Linden Lab emailed the TPV Contributor Agreement to the official Aperture inbox two days ago (I only just spotted it). I’m signing and sending it back immediately, so the listing is moving forward smoothly.”

Read it all here.

As for why so many SL content creators are excited about Aperture, well, here's a 2012 machinima Mr. Weaver made:

Cajsa's Choices: A Whole Flickr Group Devoted to Second Life Cows, Bulls, Bison & Buffalo is Udderly Amazing

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

It’s that time of year when my Facebook feed is filled with pictures of calves, colts, kids, lambs, chicks, and ducklings. That’s what happens when most of your real life relatives are farmers. It seems only fair to be checking out the farm fauna of Second Life as well, which led to to Siobhán Muintir’s Flickr group, Cows Virtual Bulls Bison Buffalo. 

So, I absolutely had to choose “Cows…of course” from Azure Bleu and not just because of the title. It was one of the few with a calf, the whole inspiration for this post. This is a lovely mother and child picture though we are always told we should not anthropomorphize animals’ emotions. I generally think those people haven’t spent enough time around animals or even watching animal videos on YouTube.  

For more virtual bovine pics, click here:

Ex-Meta Director Helps Confirm What Went Wrong With Horizon Worlds: "No One Loved the Product"

Originally published on my Patreon

Kelly Stonelake is a 15 year veteran of Facebook/Meta, who recently filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging a series of highly serious charges around sexual assault, denied promotions, and a culture of discrimination. 

While her lawsuit has been covered elsewhere, her last role at Meta included Director of Product Marketing of Horizon Worlds, which deserves special focus 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. 

Seen that way, her insights also addresses a criticism I've come across often in recent years: If the Metaverse is supposed to be so important, why couldn't Meta, one of the wealthiest companies in history, succeed in creating it?

Because, Stonelake suggests, few people at Meta ever actually cared deeply about the product that was meant to help build it. 

Asked to review and comment on my article, for instance, her point of view largely gels with what I wrote in March:

VRChat Unveils In-App Avatar Marketplace As Expected; Here's Some Mixed-to-Positive Reactions from Creators

As I blogged last week, VRChat the company just unveiled an official in-world avatar marketplace where creators can sell their avies. This is a pretty huge move by VRChat, which has been deliberately slow to expand its UGC player economy. There's already thousands of VRChat creators selling avatars on third party platforms. 

One of them, Krample (who I profiled a few years ago here) already has a successful side business of furry avatars on Gumroad, and is tentatively positive on this move:

"I just applied for [the program to join the marketplace]," they tell me. "I do agree with a lot of the points they make about how rough it can be to sell source files on Gumroad and having to walk people through the import workflow... if this really will offer a click-buy-wear solution, rather than needing newbies to work through Unity and Blender to get characters up and running, it'll be great."

A longtime VRChat player / content creator has a mixed opinion:

Casja's Choices: Astonishing SL Imagery by an Artist Called Starlight

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

Starlight is a Second Life artist whose pictures in Second Life are astonishing in their beauty. This headshot is stunning. She projects such strength and power. Authentic don’t mess with me power, like she probably kicks ass and takes names over breakfast. I mean, if someone gave me that look, I would listen. 

You can see more of her work at an exhibit in-world at the Ganadara Gallery on the Elmira Sim. Here is the teleport [Click to teleport]

For more of her astonishing work, click here:

Seed MMO Allows Players to Choose Their Colony's Governance System. So This Early Player Group Chose... Dictatorship.

Seed, the highly ambitious MMO long in development, was conceived as a high-minded "rebuild society from scratch" planetary colonization sim, with players even able to create their own constitution. (Pioneering Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig helped develop the political framework for them game, the first MMO he's consulted on since advising Linden Lab on Second Life's IP rights policy.) I even consulted briefly on the project for a time, blogging that Seed seemed to be the first interactive, playable version of John Rawls' Theory of Justice:

The Seed [player] community is the closest thing we have to people in Rawls’ hypothetical Original Position. Players have a very rough idea what the world will be; some probably have vague plans for what they want to do there, once the game is open. But none yet know what strategic and leadership talents they’ll need to succeed, let alone dominate or successfully survive.

So I was somewhat surprised to see that an early Seed player community, given the chance to choose their political organization, chose... a benevolent dictatorship.

Watch above, with one player insisting, "It's not as evil as people think it is." Well OK then!

Mundi Vondi, CEO of Seed developer Klang Games, tells me that this isn't necessarily because players want dictatorship per se, except perhaps in this early stage of gameplay:

Deadpool & Wolverine Opening Dance Officially Available in Second Life

As it turns out, the Deadpool dance from the opening of Deadpool & Wolverine is officially available in Second Life:

Nick Pauley aka "Dancepool" shares the moves he did in the opening scene of "Deadpool x Wolverine" movie. The dance is based off of the 2000 MTV video music-award winning choreography "Bye Bye Bye" by NSYNC's choreographer Darrin Henson. This dance went viral on social media, and now in Second Life, we are bringing you the actual Dancepool himself so your avatars can embody the real deal! 

Or to put it another way: Meta merc with a mouth meets the Metaverse. (Compare and contrast with the movie version below.)

As for how to get your own copy of the animations for your avatar, there's a promotional giveaway here from Paragon Dance Animations, the LA-based dance studio which has been creating/selling these RL mocap dances in Second Life for quite some time.

Cajsa's Choices: Rimgal Kirax's Pics Expand the Endless Possibilities of SL

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

Rimgal Kirax came back to Second Life last year after a thirteen-year hiatus. He blogs on Flickr with complete credits and SLurls. However his blog is not the ordinary kind of Flickr microblog. As he wrote on his About page, “There is no limit to creation on SL, and it's so sad just taking model pics while all our dreams can come true on SL.” 

And so he creates scenes that will make you smile, perhaps even laugh out loud, perhaps guffaw with pleasure. I mean, take a look at “Old Bathroom Full of Life” with the somewhat decrepit fixtures, the COVID-sized pile of toilet tissue, and a room full of critters. I mean, look at that cat fascinated by the scale, probably watching the numbers go back and forth before settling. Rimgal is fishing in a tub full of ducks - live ducks. It’s all so much fun.

For more of Rimgal’s antics, click here:

Patreon Member Survey: What Kind of Content Do You 1000+ People Most Want to Read/Watch?

I'm gratified to announce that my Patreon now has over 1000 members.

If you signed up recently: Thanks for supporting my writing, both there and here on New World Notes!

If you've been a member since last year: Thanks for sticking around!

If you're still thinking about joining, consider doing so to take this survey where I ask what specific virtual world topics you're most interested in reading. It will definitely shape the focus of future articles/content.

While you're at it, please consider becoming a paying subscriber with extra benefits -- up to and including business/marketing/media consulting sessions with me, and your virtual world brand featured here on New World Notes, where it'll be seen by tens of thousands of regular readers!

Top 5 Posts Including VRChat Adding Creator Economy for Avatars, Second Life Collaborating With Community to Grow World & a Sneak Peek at Stars Reach's Early Player Community

• Stars Reach: Why Raph Koster's Upcoming Sandbox MMO is Already a Wonder-Full Escape from the Internet's Gen AI Slop (Guest Post)
• Cajsa's Choices: Hilarious Retirement Home Group Photos By French SLers
• Linden Lab’s Creator Partnership Program Part of Company's Daring New Pivot to Grow Second Life With SL's User Community -- Here’s How
• VRChat Working on In-Platform Creator Economy for Custom Avatars
• Sannyのおすすめバーチャルワールドニュース : 2025年4月 Sanny Reports For Virtual Japan

This Weekend, Why Not Ride a Flying Whale With a Tree On Its Back?

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.

Click here to teleport to ride the flying whale yourself. It's the creation of Sasaya Kayo, hosted on the sims of Nix Onyx  Ziki Questi and Kinnaird Mainlander [see update here].

Hat tip to Garbage Princess, who shot a video of her own ride recently (video below), part of an art project she launched after a battle with cancer: 

Stars Reach: Why Raph Koster's Upcoming Sandbox MMO is Already a Wonder-Full Escape from the Internet's Gen AI Slop (Guest Post)

Above: Daly in Stars Reach

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. 

Let’s dive in:

Cajsa's Choices: Hilarious Retirement Home Group Photos By French SLers

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. 

For more versions of this group, click here:

Linden Lab’s Creator Partnership Program Part of Company's Daring New Pivot to Grow Second Life With SL's User Community -- Here’s How

Originally published on my Patreon

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:

Gacha Back: Second Life Re-Allows Gambling-ish Mechanic After Four Year Ban & Change in "Regulatory Climate" -- But Why Now?

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:

Cajsa's Choices: This Great Flickr Group Dedicated to Photographing Buddha Garden, an Amazing Second Life Sim

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

Tiger Studio Landscapes is the official Flickr group for Buddha Garden, a sim I visited yesterday after seeing Stina McGillivary’s pictures. There are so many fantastic pictures in this group, I was spoiled for choice. “Through Your Soul” from Emo Biedermann is special, though.

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: