New World Notes

Famed VRChat Reporter Syrmor Seeking to Interview Users of Long-Running Virtual Worlds

Syrmor, who quickly became VRChat's best embedded virtual world reporter last year, just let me know he's interested in expanding his interviews to include users of older virtual worlds that (as he puts it), "have managed to survive despite lack of new players." So that could include (among others): Active Worlds, Ultimate Online, and There.

If you're still an active denizen of a world like that, send him a direct message on Twitter, or e-mail him at syrmors at gmail dot com.

And no, I don't think he's looking to interview Second Life users with this specific outreach. For one thing, Second Life is still taking on new users (or returning old ones).  For another, I hope to do an interview with him soon, and start that prim-shaped ball rolling.

Anyway, here's Syrmor's latest interview so you know what brilliant wackiness you're in for when you chat with him:

Real Life Health Worker Creates Stylish Second Life Avatar As Tribute to Colleagues Treating COVID-19 Patients

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

Jang Sungyoung’s self-named blog is usually fun and cheeky. But as a healthcare worker in real life, she took the time to create this image to reflect on her occupation. In the description of “Reporting for Duty”, she reveals that people have been rude to her for being a healthcare worker. She does not ask us to call her a hero or glorify her work, but just to remember that healthcare workers are at risk and so are their families:

“While we are busy taking care of our patients, we are away from our families and we are putting our very own health at risk. A simple smile, gratitude and appreciation is all we need. Stay safe everyone!”

• HAIR: I209a by tram
• GLASSES: #STOPCovid-19 Protective Glasses by The Owl at Cyber Fair
• MASK: Japanese Face Mask by Insomnia Angel

Here's another, more lighthearted fashion pic by Jang:

Cryptovoxels Evolving Into a Creative Community, Says Virtual World Veteran

Pic from HiveMind Collective, a Cryptovoxels creative community

Cryptovoxels is a WebGL-based virtual world running on the Ethereum blockchain -- and to be totally honest, not something I'd find immediately interesting, ever since the blockchain-based Decentraland, after much excitement from from people like, well, me, more or less went sideways.

Juergen Hoebarth, however, who I've known back in the Second Life boom days when he was creating professional SL content for agencies, insists that Cryptovoxel has brought some of the old virtual world magic back.

Blockchain-based virtual worlds, I tell him, mainly seem to be driven by speculators but with not much actual users.

"Speculators are riding it back," he allows, "only thing is in Cryptovoxel's core community is evolving around crypto and digital art scene which has a nice size and a potential to grow into something sustainable."

The collaborative creation tools seems to be a big draw:

Somber & Beautiful Tribute to Quarantining in Real Life Created in Second Life

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

Goodcross’ photo “Quarantine” is a beautiful example of how by taking away an artist can add something magical to a picture. Here the range of colors is limited, but the contrast and intensity is powerful. The interior is all in shadow and forms a frame for the avatar who looks out on New York City. It was fun to see his inspiration and how his picture differs while drawing from the original. 

More great photos below:

Wall Street Journal Features Sinespace's Breakroom in Story on Virtual World Offices for Remote Teams

"Miss Your Office? Some Companies Are Building Virtual Replicas" is a new Wall Street Journal story from Katie Deighton featuring NWN media partner Sinespace, creator of Breakroom:

Stay-home orders and the shuttering of workplaces have given corporate employees some respite from getting dragged into time-wasting water-cooler conversations.

But some companies and their employees don’t want to leave everything about the office behind, it turns out, and are replicating their offices in “SimCity”-like simulations online...

Sine Wave Entertainment Ltd. last month introduced Breakroom, a virtual-world product for remote workforces. It can accommodate all-hands meetings, secure one-on-ones and document sharing. Clients of the product include Virgin Group Ltd. and Torque Esports Corp.

Many customers initially assume they will recreate their offices, then realize they can make tweaks that would be impossible in the real world, said Sine Wave CEO Rohan Freeman.

“We spend our lives wishing we were working in open, sunny campuses with butterflies outside,” Mr. Freeman said. “Here you can realize that dream.”

Read the rest here. Speaking of which, here's a new video showcasing Breakroom's use for virtual world-based conferences and events:

Why Do So Many Gamers Passionately Want Star Citizen to Fail?

When I wrote about the latest update to Star Citizen, Chris Roberts' highly-ambitious, massively crowdfunded MMO -- with over $250 million pledged so far -- I expected it to be received as some interesting insights into an online world that many people haven't thought about much lately.

What I didn't expect at all was a religious war.

But a text-based one more or less broke out in Comments, the first wave led by Star Citizen apostates unleashed by an online community devoted to hating Star Citizen. (Yes, that's a thing.) Some of the milder comments:

lol scam citizen. How much Chris paid you to publish this bullshit?

Scam Citizen the list of excuses why they keep missing their own deadlines continues. But fortunately the Roberts Family and his friends are now millionaires for selling you your own dreams and changing it last minute...

Well I never heard of this blog until now, and based on this article I can see the blog is shit...

I wonder how much Crobblers paid for this disinformation... It will never be released, because if it ever is, the money stream from fleeced rubes would suddenly end and the game would be publicly reviewed as a finished product, which is something the Crobblers will never allow...

"Crobblers", I guess, being a portmanteau for "Chris Roberts promoters". Which is witty! But it's the level of conspiratorial rage that's totally fascinating to me. Why do so many gamers actively, hungrily want this one indie game project to be a sham, and fail? 

"I'll be the first to say I've had and continue to have frustrations with Star Citizen," my colleague Joshua May told me, after reading the responses to my interview with him on the game. "That's just life. Things I want got delayed, things I didn't care about got implemented instead, everyone wants something different out of it. Everyone has a different idea of what the final game should be and gets disappointed if they don't think [Roberts' company] Cloud Imperium Games is going in that direction."

An indie game developer himself, May speculates that some of the anger is based confusion over what's required to publish an online world so ambitious.

"It can't make everyone 100% happy, because everyone disagrees on the end product," as he puts it. "That's the nature of any video game, especially MMOs. People just aren't accustomed to seeing the sausage made and most of them don't understand it."

Surely many Star Citizen detractors are angry because they've pledged money to Roberts' project over the years, and now feel buyers' remorse, because it's still far from complete. But last year, crowdfunding increased, while more and more content has been added to the project. Despite that -- or perhaps because of that -- many detractors still insist it must all be a scam.  

"Skepticism is healthy, but it's increasingly getting far enough along in development that the skepticism is less and less warranted," notes May.

But if Star Citizen has its detractors, it also has its defenders -- for instance, this reader comment that apparently came in via a pro Star Citizen community:

Cajsa's Flickr Find: Mr. Godard Makes Second Life Screenshots Look Like Old Real Life Photos

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

After a long absence, Mr. Godard has returned to posting his work on Flickr which is a good thing for all of us. He makes photos that seem so real even though they are taken in Second Life. One of the ways he does that is by adding age, wear, and tear to his pictures. For example, this snap of a motel sign and water town is given an aged look through the use of a light leak overlay that lets us imagine the picture comes from a different era. 

Mr. Godard also enjoys a visual pun. See below.

Linden Lab Changes Second Life's Logo But Still Needs to Change Second Life's Name -- Here's Why

In case you missed it before the long holiday weekend, Linden Lab recently rolled out a new look to the Second Life logo:

Second Life has seen a surge of interest from people new to SL, longstanding residents, and groups and businesses seeking a uniquely interactive place for gatherings and special events. With this renewed attention we decided it was time to update a key part of how we tell the world what SL is all about... The new logo uses clearer, bolder type to communicate our optimism and confidence in what the future holds for SL. We retired the soft green color in favor of bright blue to reflect the boundless energy of our residents, who create amazing content and experiences. When it comes to what you can do with SL, the (blue) sky’s the limit!

It looks good, and the company's logic for the change makes sense -- but also seems far too conservative to me.

If you really want to update the logo, why not also update the name itself, too? As a brand, "Second Life" has always been problematic, and is probably key to the reason SL failed to grow the active user base despite tens of millions trying it out at least once. (At minimum, calling it Second Life certainly doesn't help with retention.)

Why? Short answer is the one any SL user is painfully familiar with: Calling a virtual world Second Life makes it too easy for a skeptic/cynic/troll to say, "Oh it's just for people who want to have virtual sex/parties/style/etc. because they can't get it in real life." An utterly dick-ish remark, to be sure, but an unavoidable one when that very implication is baked into the name.

Longer answer: The name "Second Life" was based on an understandable but ultimately flawed assumption about how the  Internet would trend made back in 2002. Here's how early Linden Lab team member Hunter Walk, who started the brainstorming of the name (which the leadership team subsequently iterated on) explains it in my book:

Cajsa's Second Life Flickr Pick: "Magic Marker" Makes the Virtual Look Real

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

Light and shadow is everything in Magic Marker’s work. Take “Influence,” for example. Without the shadows cast by this would be a nice headshot, but with the shadows, it has a moodiness and drama. It goes from a still picture to a story. 

Shadow and silhouettes can express emotion so powerfully, as in the picture after the cut.

Top 6 Posts from Last Week Including: A Second Life for Star Citizen & Philip Rosedale's New 2D/3D Virtual World

• Couple Who Met In Sinespace Now Quarantined Together In Real Life Create Virtual World Hangout For People Who Want To Socialize Beyond Zoom -- Including Themselves
• Philip Rosedale Launches His New 3D Audio-Driven Virtual World -- Come Join Him At His Pool Party Now!
• Notes From Star Citizen, The MMO You May Have Forgotten About It While It Became A Thriving Galaxy
• How SLer Nova Frankenstein Created This Cool "Matrix Glitch" Look In GIMP
• Watch: Sneak Preview Of Stömol, Feature-Length Cyberpunk Thriller About The Triumph Of "Fake News", Shot Entirely In Second Life -- Coming This July!
• Second Life's Virtual World Unable To Grow Further, For Now -- Pandemic & Cloud Migration To Blame, Says Linden Lab

Couple Who Met in Sinespace Now Quarantined Together in Real Life Create Virtual World Hangout for People Who Want to Socialize Beyond Zoom -- Including Themselves

The Localhost Connection Cafe is a gorgeous new cyberpunk-themed hangout in Sinespace, and it’s amazingly detailed and sumptuously, stylishly lit. It was created by Carsten Stark and Artemis Bane, who also host “Geek Weekly” get-togethers there. And it would probably not exist, at least in its current form,, but for two occurences: 

An unexpected romance. 

A global pandemic, quite frankly.

First the romance: It also started virtually, and wasn’t part of either creator’s original plan.

“We just happened to start talking about projects we wanted to do in Sinespace,” as Carsten puts it. “[We] just really hit it off… It was totally unexpected. Neither of us was looking for anything.”

They made the trip to meet each other in person last Summer -- back in the olden days, when people could still fly, and go on first dates -- and things proceeded swimmingly from there.

“The spark we had translated really well into real life and we both felt like we've finally found our other half (soulmates if you will),” says Carsten. “She moved up here in January so that we could be together.“

And then they were really together. Because shortly after she moved in, the quarantine was imposed in Carsten’s home state. So now they were also in lockdown together,

But being creatively and technically compatible (along with the relationship part) helped inspire and drive a new collaborative project:

“Immediately Carsten and I had synergy and the brainstorming on localhost just blew up,” as Artemis puts it. “He’s a coder and I’m a texture artist. We both model in 3D. There was pretty much nothing stopping this idea from happening.”

A virtual traveler who has explored many online worlds, Artemis once owned a version of localhost in Second Life:

Philip Rosedale Launches His New 3D Audio-Driven Virtual World -- Come Join Him At His Pool Party Now!

Go here to create an account and then click here to join Philip Rosedale in High Fidelity's public pool party. You can also DM Philip on Twitter to invite him over to your own High Fidelity server. This is the "audio plus 2D world" (as Philip describes it) that uses High Fidelity's highly spacial audio and has already been tested (and embraced) by top musicians like Thievery Corporation's Rob Garza. (Currently runs on Chrome web browsers and Safari on iOS devices.)

I just tried it out (see above), and the spacial audio is quite impressive -- Philip clicked-and-dragged his avatar around me and listening through my headphones, it sure as hell sounded like Philip himself was walking around me. I would love to see (hear?) ambient audio in these experiences, to make it truly feel like a virtual world -- in this case, splashing in the pool, sound of a beatbox blasting, tinkling of ice cubes in drinks, etc. -- but perhaps those will be added in future updates.

Anyway, jump in now while Philip is by the pool and share your reactions (and HiFi servers) in Comments!

Friday's Fashion Finds From: Second Life Style Blogger Linda Reddevil

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

“First One to the Finish Line” is a recent post at Linda Reddevil’s Blog and demonstrates why her blog is set apart from so many others. This is a post evaluating and comparing two mesh heads, Genus and Lelutka and explaining what she likes about both of them. Most bloggers do not do this because they fear blowback from designers. Linda shows how it is done, though. Pointing out things she likes about both and what she does not like. She also distinguishes between objective and subjective opinions. 

• *COCO*_SatinMules(Black)+FishnetSocks
• –Pixicat– Aerial Top
• LaGyo_Celia Choker
• LaGyo_Celia Earrings
• Modulus – Leif Hair
• UNA. Salt Trousers @Uber
• [Fetch] Karter Glasses @Uber
• [LWL] Taxidermy Poodle Purse (unavailable)

Another stylish post below:

Chris Nolan World Premieres Next TENET Trailer In Party Royale, Epic's New Combat-Free Virtual World Expansion to Fortnite

A lot is riding on TENET, the next movie from Christopher Nolan, because it's the first big budget major studio movie that will open in theaters after the lockdown is eased, in mid-July -- meaning its success or failure at the box office will greatly shape the future of the film industry. So it's also notable that the world premiere for its next trailer will be in a virtual world: Today at 5pm PT in Party Royale.

As the name suggests, Party Royale is the new, non-violent virtual world expansion for Fortnite Battle Royale:

Shows at the Main Stage are just some of the many attractions at Party Royale. In this new experimental and evolving space, there are many things to do and places to explore. For example: take on aerial obstacle courses at Skydive Rift, participate in boat races at Fishsticks’ Boat Race, and grab items at The Plaza such as the new Paint Launcher. There are no weapons or mats in Party Royale — it’s all about just hanging out and having fun. No Sweat. All Chill. Let’s Party!

Let's all watch the trailer to Party Royale before watching the trailer to TENET in Party Royale:

Cajsa's SL Flickr Pick: Watch Trixie Live Her Best Virtual World Life

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

Trixie is living her best life. She’s shooting pictures full of love, friendship, and most of all joy. While jumping off a waterfall is not advised in your first life thanks to the churning turbulence that creates the tempting plunge pools that life below, you can leap off anything in Second Life and land safely, if not gracefully. 

More SL good times after the break.

Notes from Star Citizen, the MMO You May Have Forgotten About It While It Became a Thriving Galaxy

If I'm being honest, the last time I paid any special attention to Star Citizen was when it was garnering breathless coverage by major outlets like Wired five years ago -- and when it was also more or less dismissed with snarky headlines like, "Fans Have Dropped $77M on This Guy's Buggy, Half-Built Game".

But a funny thing apparently happened while the world looked away: Star Citizen kept on growing, evolving, and expanding. It now counts over 2.6 million registered users (i.e. "Star Citizens who have joined the universe"), while its homepage garners about as many monthly visits. Based on both figures, it's a safe bet Star Citizen has active players in the low-to-mid six figures, possibly more.

My colleague Joshua May, an indie game developer for Second Life and other worlds, has been avidly playing since 2016.

"It was playable, but sparse. A few space stations, planets that you couldn't land on, a couple missions," he says of it back then.

"Now it's missions all over the place, a ton of planets and moons and stations everywhere, so many ships."

The missions aren't always typical to what you'd expect in a persistent space sim. For instance: “They just added prisons recently, to help discourage people being dicks. But the prisons themselves have their own gameplay loops.

"It gets a little better every quarter," May adds, "they do a big patch every quarter. Basically think of it as an Early Access game at this point. A lot of game systems are in, but there's a lot of bugs, and some systems are missing or unfinished, or a first pass implementation that will get more complex later."

As it happens, Star Citizen is launching a free-to-play event starting May 22, so if you're intrigued, read my chat with Mr. May (along with copious images he's taken during his adventures) -- effectively, his notes from a new, new world:

How SLer Nova Frankenstein Created This Cool "Matrix Glitch" Look in GIMP

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

When I saw Nova Frankenstein’s “A Glitch in the Matrix”, I just had to ask how she did. It’s such a compelling self-portrait. In the description, she wrote, “Because I'm frustrated with all of my current photo ideas, I'm uploading this photo I did as a test edit for something else.”

As she explained it, It was one of those serendipitous moments where it all comes together. “When I did that photo, I was actually dealing with some mental health stuff while also experimenting with my editing style since I felt all of my photos looked so similar. I like switching things up, you know?” 

She was working in GIMP, trying different filters and she cannot remember exactly how she did it. She used a few adjustment layers, but the primary effect was the result of GIMP’s filter. This made me laugh because it reminded me of the best pumpkin stew I ever made. I was pulling a jar out of the spice rack and it tipped over, spilling out herbs from several of the jars. Rather than throw the herbs and spices away, I tossed them in the stew and it was amazing. I will never have it again. I wrote back sharing my best stew story, She laughed at the similarity. 

“I've had it happen a few times during editing. I love creating and it's my favorite way to pass time since it's so relaxing. And satisfying when I get a photo to look exactly how I imagined it. That one photo, in particular, was just a happy accident though.”

Click through for more GIMP details:

Watch: Sneak Preview of Stömol, Feature-Length Cyberpunk Thriller About the Triumph of "Fake News", Shot Entirely In Second Life -- Coming This July!

Last January I told you about Stömol, a feature-length machinima shot entirely in Second Life (the first of its kind in a long time). It's written, directed, and starring Huckleberry Hax, who just shared this incredibly stylish and visually rich scene -- and Stömol's clever premise:

"The main character - Epi Stömol - is looking for two coders," he tells me. "One is a deepfake scripter, the other is able to retrieve old media files. The woman in the scene - Istinito - used to be room mate to one of the missing coders. In the future the movie is set in, old media has been rendered unreadable through corporate software infrastructure, making it hard to work out actual history. It's an Orwellian sort of situation, where there is only official history. The movie as a whole is about truth and the triumph of 'fake news.'"

To shoot a Second Life-based machinima with such an in-depth story requires getting around Second Life's biggest technical impediment, as a machinima platform -- incredibly poor lip sync. As you'll see from this clip, Hax has been fairly successful at doing that by employing some pretty brilliant, well, hacks:

How to Have Great Virtual Meetings -- Valuable Advice from Acclaimed Virtual World UX Designer Jeff "AM Radio" Berg

Jeff Berg, a Webby Award winning designer, has a thoughtful and valuable Medium post on the etiquette of virtual meetings, especially the kind many of us in the quarantine age now have every day on video conferencing systems like Zoom. Berg brings his long experience as a UX designer to bear on what is, for most (all?) of us, an incredibly awkward and frustrating way of having meetings. With the web camera on, we feel like we're onstage, artificially emoting for an audience, but Berg says what we're really doing is grasping at a new kind of etiquette:

For virtual meeting spaces, acknowledging, understanding, and practicing new etiquette is not a wasteful formality, but is a formalization for defining space, rules of engagement, and a process for progressing discourse. There is nothing fake about utilizing the tool-sets we have available to us for optimizing communication. Being aware of your physical self in a virtual space as seen by others in that virtual space will maximize your experience and your own benefits from the interactions you have.

Key to Berg's experience with UX design, as longtime readers will know, is once creating masterpiece works of immersive art in Second Life under his avatar name, AM Radio. These art installations -- quiet, nostalgic, meditative -- tended to attract positive, impromptu conversations around them. Jeff tells me his experience as AM Radio was integral to the advice he's offering for virtual meetings now:

Beautifully Moody Second Life Images Inspired by Jazzinuf, Kudasai & JOJI

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

Euphoric Distraction’s untitled picture is linked with Jazzinuf’s “Sunflower Samurai” which seems a perfect title in itself. In fact, I think his picture is better than the official video. It is artfully composed. The field meets the sky at a third of the way up and the samurai’s head is a third from the right, employing the rule of thirds perfectly. There is the slight blurring of the field creating a feeling of movement and a texture layer has been placed over the picture making the sky look as though it came in watercolor. 

After the break, a picture that we can all connect with.

This picture links to Kudasai’s “Dream of Her” — a quiet instrumental piece that suits the mood of this picture. While we don’t all have a young man’s bedroom full of youthful paraphernalia, most of us have sat in the dark with the only light coming from our computer screens.

Second Life's Virtual World Unable to Grow Further, For Now -- Pandemic & Cloud Migration to Blame, Says Linden Lab

SL land grid circa 2018, photo by Daniel Voyager

There once was a virtual world that kept growing and growing (and often shrinking along the way), with dozens of new islands and continents suddenly emerging, seemingly from the digital ocean, every month. But then in the real world, a global pandemic caused many to seriously reconsider how they spent their leisure time, and return their attention to that aging virtual world. Which in the meantime, was moving away from the old way of existing, on a network of thousands of connected servers, and go instead into the cloud.  And then those two factors coming together at once caused a major interruption, and stopped the world from growing. (For now.)

Or as Linden Lab just put it:

Second Life is in the process of migrating from our existing dedicated servers to a cloud hosting service. That migration has already moved a number of the most important services and databases, but we are not quite ready to host simulators in the cloud. We have a crack team working on that and are making lots of progress, but there are significant changes needed to make sure that we can provide the performance, stability, and security required. When that process is complete we will have a nearly unlimited region capacity, but until then we are constrained by the size of our existing server fleet.

While our migration project has been underway for some time, even our most optimistic business projections did not anticipate a surge of the magnitude we have seen in recent weeks for additional regions. While we planned for growth driven by improvements to Second Life and other factors, we didn't expect demand to be created by a global pandemic.

As a result, we are in the unfortunate position of hitting the maximum capacity of our “old” servers until the “new” cloud servers are fully operational.

And so if you want new land, Linden Lab recommends renting it from an SL land baron -- or renting mainland territory from Linden Lab itself.  In any case, it is an unfortunate hiccup for Second Life's prospects, which was starting to see more usage and land ownership in the wake of the pandemic:

The Problem With a 12,000 x 12,000 Second Life Display -- And With Asking for It From an Unpaid Third Party Viewer Developer (Comment of the Week)

Last week's most popular post by far is this one about how the Black Dragon viewer now has a setting to take 12,000 by 12,000 images of Second Life. So clearly many were interested in that option. However, this also provoked reader comments like "4K is generally good enough for screenshots" and, of course, "Why?" (The obvious answer to the latter being, of course, Why the hell not?)

Black Dragon creator NiranV posted a comment going deep into his own sense of Why:

I did it because people wanted it and it was literally a 10 second number change that doesn't impact the Viewer in any way and doesn't add any bloat and fits into what the Viewer is aimed at.

I told people that it's quite pointless but some peeps were like, "but more pixels!"

But what do you need to pixels for?

"More pixels!"

Yea well that's fine and all but what for, 4K + FXAA is perfectly fine.

"But i already run the Viewer at 4K natively, it looks like trash."

NiranV proceeds to unleash a hilarious rant that's also an insight into a day in the life of a third party viewer developer attempting to serve the needs of their user community

Top 5 Posts Last Week, Including: Philip Rosedale's New Audio-Based Virtual World & VRChat's Growing Insularity During the Pandemic

• VRChat More Active But Also More Insular During Pandemic Says Syrmor, VRChat's Embedded Reporter
• Black Dragon Viewer Now Lets You Take Second Life Screenshots In 12,000K -- If Your Hardware Can Handle It!
• Unreal Engine Updated Royalty Agreement To Transform Indie & VR Games
• Philip Rosedale Launches Limited Early-Access To 3D Audio/2D World Experience For Massive Live Events On Any Device
• Profit Probably Wasn't Alyx's Point -- But VR Won't Be Profitable Until It's Cheap

Mind Carlberg Wins Our #NoAvatarSocialDistance Challenge With This Beautiful Tribute to a Chance Encounter in a Virtual Bar

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

Congratulations to Mind Carlberg for winning our #NoAvatarSocialDistance Contest! After Hamlet and I picked out our top three, readers were invited to vote, and it was close. By a nose, Mind edged out the competition with this fabulous photo of a man and woman at a club. 

I asked Mind about his inspiration and how he created his image:

VRChat More Active But Also More Insular During Pandemic Says Syrmor, VRChat's Embedded Reporter

We haven't checked in lately with Syrmor, VRChat's beloved embedded journalist and videographer -- the Errol Morris of VRChat, basically -- so here's a video he just uploaded, an in-depth interview with a slightly drunken hamster which smells like mayonnaise. (Actually Meowriza, a famous trans bodybuilder and cosplayer in real life.)

"I took a break for a while at the start of the year but I'm starting to upload again recently," Syrmor tells me. "There is an influx of new players on VRChat because of quarantine, so lots of cool new people to talk with! I'm now mixing my interviews with strangers and with different types of Internet personalities."

But has the culture of VRChat changed since the pandemic?