New World Notes

Why Virtual World Gamers Will Want to Try Once Human, the New Cozy Crafting Combat World

A thrilling trend I'm starting to see in popular new games is a mash-up of multiplayer combat with virtual world gameplay, where customizing your avatar, crafting your home, raising/caring for pets, and casually hanging out with friends and exploring the world together is just as emphasized as the face-shooty aspects.  

Once Human is among the latest examples, and it comes across like a zany mash-up of Fortnite and Palia, the cozy MMO. I'm even tempted to coin a new subgenre name for it: Cozy Crafting Combat World.

Sparkle and Gogo, who largely spend their virtual world gameplay socializing/creating content around Second Life, are now fans of Once Human. So much so, they created a channel of their Second Life Cafe Discord devoted to Once Human, and even have an affiliate code for the game: This one right here. 

"I am trying to earn points for a snow globe," Sparkle explains, laughing. "I am giving a gun for people to use in their as well, they also get gifts.

"I'm not a gamer at all," Gogo allows, "I've only played Second Life for the past two decades. So what I found interesting about [Once Human] is that it's fairly easy, soft grinding, but there are lots of rewards too. And you can play with friends, that's important to me. I hate playing games by myself."

"You can play solo but as you progress it encourages people to work collaboratively," Sparkle adds. "Everyone gets different specializations and contributes resources to the group. Or you can sell or trade with other players for in game currency."

More on the virtual world/cozy aspects of Once Human:

Second Life Combat 2 Development Tips from Linden Lab's Creator Tools Product Manager

Since Linden Lab recently unveiled Combat 2, a major update to Second Life's combat system, I got in touch with Kyle Linden, the company project manager under the Avatars and Creator Tools initiative. A Linden since 2007, Kyle's also a longtime gamer and even owned a roleplay region in SL before joining the company. "[O]ne of the things I have always wished for Second Life is easy to enter combat situations to enhance role playing games our residents create," he tells me.

While there are many impressive user-made game systems in Second Life, the platform's streaming architecture is not immediately optimized for high speed, physics-based combat out of the box. So I asked Kyle for some tips for community developers getting started with implementing Combat 2:

Cajsa's Choices: A Whole Flickr Group Celebrating Autumn in Second Life

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

Rawnie Lane’s “Foggy Woods” seems the perfect picture to open my exploration of Autumn in Second Life, a Flickr group exploring the wonders of the season in our metaverse. This is a beautiful forest with a path meandering through it and leaves falling to the ground. Yes, it is raking season, but I want to make a pitch for leaving the leaves in your yard rather than burning or putting them out with the trash. Why? Because lots of little critters need the leaves for shelter and they also add nutrients to your soil. We are losing butterflies, so let’s leave the leaves and help save the butterflies. Butterflies would love this forest. 

For more from Autumn in Second Life , click here:

Resonite Update: One Year After Launch, Patreon-Sponsored Virtual World Has 10,000 Monthly Active Users from 60,000 Installs

This report brought to you by the Virtual Worlds Museum, now creating digital hubs across many virtual worlds. Contact the Museum team here to get involved!

It's been almost exactly a year since the launch of Resonite, the free-to-play virtual world/metaverse platform that was spun out from a prior project (read about its history here) by lead developer "Frooxius", who supported its creation from his Patreon, which currently brings in $18,000+ per month.

Since then, the indie project has seem some fairly impressive organic user growth. Here's some recent Resonite stats:

• About 10,000 monthly active users
• Almost 60,000 installs/user accounts total
• About 60-75% of users are on VR headsets, versus the PC client
• 45% of Resonite users are from North America, while 23% are in Western Europe; 13% are located across Asia

I got this data from Resonite's finance officer (known as "bobthegood" on Discord/in-world), which is another indication of it's evolution into an actual business. (The platform is slowly selling education and enterprise/government SaaS licenses to organizations.)

As for the culture of the current user community, Bob shares this (along with the pic above and some influencer videos):

Second Life Mobile Updates: Experimental Voice Chat Added, Access Expanded to All Subscriber Levels Including Plus

Linden Lab just announced some pretty big updates to its Second Life mobile app (watch above, featuring a celebrity cameo) chief among them being these:

• Voice chat is now available in mobile on an experimental basis in some regions
• Mobile access is now expanded to all subscribers levels, including Plus (i.e. $5.50/month)

The announcement goes into detail on how all areas of Second Life are accessible, regardless of content rating -- something I discussed a few weeks ago:

Cajsa's Choices: Gorgeous Historical Cosplay Pics by Niely Atheria

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

Niely Atheria has a wonderful stream of historical cosplay pictures like “Fairytales Dream” above. The prince chasing Cinderella looks like he has a chance of catching her, though. I love the ornate carriage almost out of the frame, but you can see how fancy it is. The dress is also exquisite. I love that it’s not too frilly, just gorgeous. 

For more of her great cosplay, click here:

Read an Excerpt of The Hivemind Swarmed: A New Oral History of Gamergate, the 2014 Online Harassment Campaign That Changed Everything (Plus Get a Special NWN Discount Code!)

It's impossible to understand US politics or Internet/gaming/virtual world culture without knowing about Gamergate, the numerically small but highly coordinated online harassment campaign unleashed almost exactly 10 years ago. Fortunately there's a new oral history on the topic: The Hivemind Swarmed by David Wolinsky, and the book's summary puts it well:

Gamergate holds the grim distinction of being the first modern online harassment campaign. It arguably served as a model for the alt-right movement that would help propel Donald Trump to the White House. And it highlighted a toxic media culture—not just in gaming, but in film, TV, journalism, and more—in which leaders, through their passivity, took the side of the oppressor. Now, 10 years later—in the wake of #MeToo, Charlottesville, the Trump years, and the January 6 insurrection—the questions discussed here are more important than ever.

I was honored to be one of the many people David interviewed for the book, a highly readable and engrossing first-person account of that period, and what we've (hopefully) learned since then. Thanks to him and his publisher, New World Notes is featuring a lengthy excerpt (below) and a special discount code:

Click here to order the book from Beacon Press and used SCHOLAR25 as the code for 25% off the list price, along with free shipping.

Here's the excerpt, featuring indy pop star Jonathan Coulton, journalist Clive Thompson, virtual world pioneer Richard Bartle, and others (including, well, me, very briefly piping up here):

Cajsa's Choices: Imaginative Tributes to Nostalgia & Outdoor Adventure by Brian Werefox

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

Brian Werefox created this fabulously imaginative picture picturing himself back in earlier years, called “I wish that we could go back in time to those days that made us who we are.” It was taken at Mall Paradise, a place that must have reminded him of the thrill of renting a movie back when videotapes were new. I do remember how my friends and I would wander the aisles trying to pick a movie. Maybe when it is as easy as clicking a button online, the thrill is not so great, especially since Netflix won’t run out of copies. That reminded me that there is still one last remaining Blockbuster and it’s here in Oregon. There’s even a movie about it. 

For more of his delightful pictures, click here:

Added a $2/Month "Prim Level" Tier to My Patreon for Early/Exclusive Articles!

Speaking of "primitives", that's the name for a new $2/month tier on my Patreon -- perfect for people who just want to support New World Notes and get early/exclusive feature length articles, along with other special benefits. (The Creator and Partner levels are designed for readers interested in actively promoting their virtual brand/content.) Go here to check out all the tiers and benefits.

The Prim level just gets you  the juicy juicy content, including my latest article featuring popular brands Cold Ash and Bad Unicorn: Second Life Pro Tips: Expert Advice & Insights from Full-Time Creators

Fact Check: "Primitives" Preceded Second Life With VRML from the 90s!

Important fact check from longtime reader Joey1058, on my rant about Zuckerberg talking about adding "primitives" to Horizon Worlds, a term I suspected he lifted wholesale from Second Life:

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but 'primitives' isn't new to SL either. We'd been using prims in VRML for half a dozen years before SL left the lab.

Joey is right -- pictured above are primitives from VRML, the early 3D web coding language from the 90s, as noted here:

Top Five Stories Including the Rise of the Metaverse Generation and the Incredible Story Behind Hanna's New Second Life Shoes

• The New Second Life Shoes of Hanna Lindberg Tell Two Amazing Stories
• The Limits of Gen AI, the Immersion Divide, and The Rise of the Metaverse Generation
• Tiny Glade, Procedurally Cozy Indie Sandbox Game, Already a Hit One Day After Launch. (First Step to a Tiny Glade Virtual World?)
• Cajsa's Choices: Marvelous SL Images & Midjourney Experiments by Madoka Kawabata
• Watch: Zuckerberg Unveils Horizon Worlds Updates: "Improved" Avatars (Except Not), and Hyperlink-Like "Primitives" (Sounds Familiar!)

Cajsa's Choices: Friday Flickr Fashion Ideas from Jasminlu Breil

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

Jasminlu Breil not only blogs high fashion in her Flickr microblog, she does it with verve situating her avatar in venues that make sense with her clothing. I mean, how often do people get to wear sexy, sinuous gowns like this? But a singer? Then the clothing makes sense. She’s probably a torch singer. 

• Gown: Dernier: "Jennifer" Gown

Maitreya (Lara), Legacy (Original), eBody (Reborn and Waifu) and Kupra (Original).

For more of her elegant style, click here:

The New Second Life Shoes of Hanna Lindberg Tell Two Amazing Stories

When I first saw these new shoes by Second Life creator Hanna Lindberg, I had to lightly gasp. After she had told me how she made them, I had gasped several times more.

The first story of these shoes, you can discern by looking close. Among her first creations using PBR lighting, the detail in the shadowing and reflection, evident down to the fine texture of the leather, is amazing. Since Linden Lab launched physically based rendering to Second Life last Summer, content creators have been frantically working to update their product line with PBR to stay ahead of the competition. The market for avatar fashion is massive across numerous platforms, and dominates the Second Life economy in particular. (And not just clothing items like shoes: A creator of customized virtual feet, for instance, earns six figures a year.)

To modernize her mesh-making skills to create in PBR, Hanna watched tutorials like these. It took her 1-2 days to understand the basics.

"Starting to learn something new and unusual is always difficult and scary," as she puts it to me.

So that's one story about the Second Life shoes of Hanna Lindberg.

The second story is possibly more scary:

Watch: Zuckerberg Unveils Horizon Worlds Updates: "Improved" Avatars (Except Not), and Hyperlink-Like "Primitives" (Sounds Familiar!)

Courtesy the eagle eye and video capture skills of Rhiannon from Avacon, here's Zuckerberg at this week's MetaConnect announcing "improved" avatars and HTML-like building blocks for the Metaverse, which he calls... "primitives".  

Someone should write a book about this one sentence!

RE "improved" avatars, the problem isn't Horizon World's avatar graphics quality, but their fundamental conception:

Nick Yee and his QuanticFoundry firm, by the way, about 1 in 3 men prefer to play as female avatars. (With about 1 in 10 females choosing male avatars.)  

Why did Meta design avatars to look like their real life owner, when 1 in 3 males don’t even want avatars that share their real life gender?

As we’ll explore in later chapters, the popularity of non-realistic avatars reflects the internal motivations of people who most enjoy metaverse platforms -- especially the very young, who comprise their core user base: They are in virtual worlds where they can explore and create and experiment with identity, which they are still developing and in their own lives. 

As for "primitives", that's been a core term for building blocks in Second Life for over 20 years*. But then again, Zuckerberg probably heard the term in a Facebook presentation.. from founding CTO Cory Ondrejka:

Cajsa's Choices: Marvelous SL Images & Midjourney Experiments by Madoka Kawabata

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

Madoka Kawabata;s “Staring at the Sea” thrills me for several reasons. The first is how her flat lighting, placid sea, and symmetry remind me of the artist René Magritte. Certainly, this is not a surreal picture, but this is one of those if you see it, you see it, and if you don’t, you don’t, situations. The second reason is she provides SLurls so you, too, can stand on a dock. 

The third reason I love this is she counters it with a similar picture she produced with Midjourney:

This is one of the more interesting ways I have seen people in Second Life employ generative AI picture-making. It might be fun to describe an SL photo and see what AI produces. I would like that better than the current trend of people who have done such great work in Second Life abandoning it for doing all AI. After a while, I just quit following since my focus is SL. 

For more of Madoka’s great pics, click here:

The Limits of Gen AI, the Immersion Divide, and The Rise of the Metaverse Generation

Above: InTrance and LAGurlz, creators of Starving Artists, a game approaching half a billion visits

If you accept the common Valley wisdom, the Metaverse is “dead”. As recently as 2022, tech conferences and startup pitch decks were awash with the term, first coined in Snow Crash; now, you scarcely see it anywhere, as if wholly supplanted by generative Al.. The backlash is so profound, it almost has the feel of an intellectual purge. 

So what I’m about to say may seem totally deranged, but I assure you it’s completely defensible:  

Metaverse platforms continue to grow in mass market adoption and revenue, far outpacing even current darling OpenAI in terms of actual user numbers. (More on those numbers down below.) This growth is happening while sustainable, scalable use cases for generative AI still seem far away or niche, and sober analysts are already pointing to the category as likely being an overhyped bubble.

Why is the business world missing this? The answer, I’ve discovered, speaks to deeper cultural and generational biases that can even obscure sound financial analysis.

The Metaverse by the Numbers 

To level set our references, the Metaverse as originally described in Snow Crash is roughly this: A vast immersive virtual world simultaneously accessible by millions of people through highly customizable avatars and powerful user creation tools which are integrated with external technology and the real world economy. Not coincidentally, that also happens to describe the core features of highly popular platforms like Roblox and Fortnite. That’s not a surprise, since both of them (and many others) were directly and avowedly inspired by Snow Crash.

Most of the leading metaverse platforms I tracked in my book Making a Metaverse That Matters in early 2023 have since seen strong growth. According to analytics firm RTrack, Roblox in December 2023 reached 354 million monthly active users; it counted 400 million MAU this July, and currently has 380 million MAU, 

In other words, not only does Roblox already have more users than the entire United States has people, it’s in striking distance of reaching half a billion MAU fairly soon. And that’s just one of many successful metaverse platforms.

Overall, total monthly user growth tracked among the leading metaverse platforms -- including Roblox, Fortnite (100 million MAU), Rec Room (23 million MAU), Avakin Life (14 million MAU), and VRChat (10 million MAU) -- has increased by about 140 million people since 2023, for a total global audience of an estimated 690 million active users.

To be sure, this is incremental growth to existing platforms; but surely generative AI represents a transformational, categorical leap?

Maybe, but that’s still far from proven. And setting aside the rhetorical jazz hands of AI evangelists, the actual numbers are not quite convincing.

Metaverse v. Gen AI: Some Hard Contrasts

The top generative AI platform by far, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, only has some 100 million monthly active users -- far less than Roblox. This is obviously not an apples-to-apples comparison, but in basic terms of “activity that many people regularly do on the Internet”, metaverse platforms still dominate over gen AI.

A revenue comparison is also not an impressive win for the AI narrative. OpenAI is on track to earn $3.4 billion this year… which is almost exactly the figure Roblox is forecast to earn in 2024. And what revenue AI earns comes at tremendous losses: as Sequoia Capital recently reported, AI companies will have to earn about $600 billion per year just to cover the costs of their computing infrastructure. Which might be justified if a compelling scalable killer app had already emerged, but as Goldman Sachs firmly noted, it has not.

So why has attention shifted so thoroughly away from the Metaverse towards such a profoundly unproven technology? Valley flightiness for the latest buzzword is part of the explanation, as is Meta’s uniquely floundering metaverse strategy, desperately centered as it is around its own line of VR headsets. (Despite Neal Stephenson himself frequently insisting VR is not a prerequisite for the Metaverse. ) 

But I’m convinced something deeper is at work.

Watch: Developer Turns Blender Into a Multiplayer World

Programmer Damjan Minovski created a seriously impressive add-on for Blender which turns the 3D modeling software into a multiplayer experience. (Watch above.) It's part of his Omnistep project, which gives Blender game engine/virtual world qualities. And if you're wondering if multiple users can create in Blender running Omnistep, Damjan replies that's possible in the future:

"This is only a proof of concept showing a small userscript," he told me on X/Twitter. "In the future maybe, but that probably would be a different product."

If you want try the demo, I've embedded the link below, but like with everything, downloader beware:

 

There's a Whole Huge Flickr Group Devoted to Taking Thousands of Photos of Virtual Cats in Second Life!

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

My cat is determined to sit on my arms so I can’t see the keyboard or the bottom half of the screen.† I am determined to get this column done. So, I decided to focus on the cats of Second Life. I found a group called Feline Fellowship SL organized by Samsara Capalini. The very first picture was this fabulous capture by Panda Banana with a brave feline fighting a wooden dragon. It made me laugh because my cat is also very brave when fighting anything that can’t fight back and threatening critters on the other side of the window. I love that he includes a link to his raw shot so you can see how he edited it to make it more vibrant. 

For more feline fotos, click here:

Tiny Glade, Procedurally Cozy Indie Sandbox Game, Already a Hit One Day After Launch. (First Step to a Tiny Glade Virtual World?)

Tiny Glade, the ridiculously adorable procedural indie sandbox "doodling" creation game from PounceLight, launched yesterday on Steam (with a 15% early bird discount), and it's already a runaway hit. With  over 2000 Overwhelmingly Positive ratings, it's fair to estimate Tiny Glade's likely sold over 100,000 copies on Steam in its first 24 hours. 

I played a bit of Tiny Glade last night, and can personally confirm its adorable ridiculousness. Unlike other sandbox building games, where you're directly (and painstakingly) connecting/adjusting objects, the procedural generation seems attuned to your mouse movements, delightfully filling in your design choices as you go. Create separate segments of a wooden fence, for instance, and without you having to ask, Tiny Glade helpfully connects them together, then turns the fence into a stretchable "fabric" you can pull across your glade. (You'll probably have to play the game yourself, to experience what I mean.)

As luck would have it, Tiny Glade comes at a time when "generative AI" continues to be a siren buzz word in tech, encouraging enthusiasts to imagine that gamers will want to text prompt virtual worlds  into existence. The success of Tiny Glade shows how procedural generative-assisted creation is preferred by actual gamers. As I wrote a few months ago: 

Tiny Glade puts the emphasis on user choice and creativity. The goal with the AI here is not to replace human creativity, but to make it easier, more delightful. It also seems robust enough that very dedicated people could, with enough practice, create especially amazing worlds.

To judge by all the wildly varied user-made castles on Tiny Glade's social media, that last part is especially true. It's also contributed to Tiny Glade's immediate success. Over the last year or two, PounceLight has been demoing their game on TikTok and YouTube, generating tens of millions of views -- while encouraging influencers to run with castle building on their own social channels. For instance:

Cajsa's Choices: Wonderfully Relaxed Avatar Portraits by Jena

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

Jena really knows how to relax, or at least her avatar does. Look how chill she is in this picture. I love the composition as well, how she divides the image into two diagonal sections, the one with the avatar and the one with the light. It’s simply enchanting. 

For more of this most relaxed avatar, click here:

Second Life Economy Report Now Free to All Patreon Members

My Summer 2024 report on the Second Life economy is now free to all my Patreon members here.

Bringing together responses from one hundred and eleven SL merchants, this overview of the Second Life economy goes in-depth on current/future trends and summarizes their sales results on topics like the best price to sell an SL item (see above).

Other topics include:

• How much realm money SL merchants are earning
• Where most of their sales originate (Marketplace, mainstore, etc)
• Their overall outlook on the current state of the SL economy

Join my Patreon and read it all for free here!

Top 6 Posts Including: Meta's Community Support Problem with Horizon Worlds & a Look at OpenAI-Powered NPCs in Second Life

• NPC Companions With Long-Term Memories & Evolving Relationships Powered by Llama & OpenAI, Now Available to Meet in Second Life
• Horizon Worlds Has Powerful Features, Says Former Meta Dev -- But Meta Isn't Giving the Platform's Creator Community Enough Visibility
• The Subtle Power of PBR in Second Life is Much More Than Mirrors
• What Virtual Worlds / Metaverse Platforms Now Have Between 10,000 - 200,000 Monthly Active Users?
• Perfectly Composed SL Landscape Photos by Natalia Corvale -- With Teleport Links to Take You to Them Too!
• Meta Could Be Turning Horizon Worlds Into a Cross-Platform Virtual Machine (Guest Post)

NPC Companions With Long-Term Memories & Evolving Relationships Powered by Llama & OpenAI, Now Available to Meet in Second Life

If you want to meet the latest in AI-powered NPCs, there's a sassy Southern sorority girl in Hathian you can chat with today: Click here to teleport to them. 

It's the latest in NPCs denizens of Crack Den, the long-running mini-MMO in Second Life. (Read my free Patreon story on Crack Den here.) Created by Alterscape Studio, lead developer Nadir Taov added basic NPC-driven gen AI tech to the MMO in July.

The new update this month, NPC Companions, is much more ambitious: 

"These aren’t just static characters," Nadir tells me. "They have distinct personalities and access to specific knowledge. For example, a police NPC can pull from the criminal reports maintained by players, while a nurse NPC can reference medical charts submitted by players." He's expanding the roster of these NPCs to 20 characters this weekend.  

And he really means "Companion" NPCs:

"They now have both short-term and long-term memory, retaining details from their interactions with players. These NPCs track relationship status, moving from stranger to close friend, based on how players interact with them over time. Attributes like kindness or hostility matter, shaping evolving relationships over time." Nadir tells me they can even recognize continually cruel behavior, and may exact West World-type revenge on their bullies.

And as I just discovered, they even interact with you when you physically bump into them:

Horizon Worlds Has Powerful Features, Says Former Meta Dev -- But Meta Isn't Giving the Platform's Creator Community Enough Visibility

Above: A Horizon Creator Community jam that Diaz managed

Is Horizon Worlds a more powerful platform than we give it credit for? Social scientist Dr. Ruth Diaz, who was formerly a Community Design Developer for Meta, recently shared some user-made Horizon Worlds builds with me (above), arguing that the platform has several features which do make it worthwhile. (More on that below.)

The problem, she tells me, is that Meta hasn't given the user community enough visibility -- or even engaged with them enough to begin with.

"Get to know the community," as she puts it in form of advice to Meta, "and focus your programming not on popular worlds, but enriching worlds. To me, this reflects that Meta's developers are still struggling with actually spending time in the LIVE app with those creating in it."

We've seen reports of Meta telling its staff to "dogfood" Horizon Worlds, but to Dr. Diaz, the company's standard doesn't go far enough: "When they say 'dogfooding', they mean using a separate app to try out new features."

In Meta's absence, she tells me, Horizon Worlds has become "an influencer-focused culture" -- "versus investing in genuine community building, which would mean up-skilling and investing in community leaders, instead of burning them out until they are canceled or leave on their own."

This might help explain why the last report of Horizon Worlds activity was only 200,000 users from 2023. But while Meta may not be supporting the user community as much as it deserves, Ruth tells me there is (or was) a community of engaged user creators on the platform expressing themselves in profound ways to the best of their abilities:

"A rich world doesn't have to be a complex world or a profoundly eye catching world," as she puts it. "It just has to have a story in it, that gets you in a really deep place. It rips open your heart with grief or joy. You know you are in the middle of someone's wound and/or rebirth. Some of the most heart-opening worlds that I've mentored into existence are made by people who still do not consider themselves creators. They are stories of severed limbs, severed relationships, hopes, and secret dreams, all woven into metaphor in a way where the emotion bursts through the people experiencing it... Influencer culture changed everything."

I've heard related things from other veterans of Meta who worked on Horizon Worlds. It's certainly a stark contrast with, say, VRChat, which is highly community creator focused, and is vastly more popular than Horizon Worlds even on Meta's own VR headsets.

Anyway, I asked Dr. Diaz to tell me about Horizon Worlds' advantages, and she shared this mini-essay: 

Sesi Shoots Second Life Shots of Sadly Quirky Aching Beauty

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

Sesi is a Second Life explorer who has a knack for finding the enchanting and adorable side of SL life. This picture is the epitome of adorable. I don’t recommend standing in a boat, but those two are short enough, they can get away with it. This is so adorable that I actually said “Ofer cute” even though I have lived in Oregon which boasts similar watery views for decades.  

For more of Second Life through an adorable lens, click here: