New World Notes

SL Flickr of the Day: Amona Savira's Red Shoes & Shadow

Another mini-masterpiece from Amona Savira making the metaverse her perfect palette, with dynamic shadow and a unique avatar pose.

Fact Check: Yes, Second Life Stopped Growing Around 2006

My report on SL usage from 2007

Disappointing but not surprising: Some zealous Second Life enthusiasts (including some who currently have a paid marketing relationship with Linden Lab) are trying to dispute a passage from Wired UK reporter Rowland Manthorpe's great story on Sansar and High Fidelity, where he notes that Second Life hit a growth plateau pretty much a decade ago:

Then, in 2006, Second Life stopped growing. No matter how many people registered, the number of users remained stuck at around a million. In 2008, Rosedale stepped down. The following year he left the company altogether.

Rowland got this report from Philip Rosedale himself, and as I confirmed with him via e-mail, this is basically accurate. (If anything, Rowland is being over-generous to how large Second Life actually is*.) Back then, Linden Lab published lots of user stats, and by 2007, it was very obvious even outside the company that the stagnation had already started. Millions tried SL because of the excessive media coverage, but 99.5% would leave after/during the first try. As I wrote back then:

This despite explosive media attention in October, when the world was featured in two top rated television shows, The Office and CSI: New York.  But despite estimates that these tie-ins lead to 100,000 or more additional sign-ups, most of whom were using a significantly improved version of the software, nearly all of those who came, left. 

This ancient history wouldn't be worth re-hashing, except for one small problem: Sansar and High Fidelity seem dead-set on repeating the same mistakes which greatly helped contribute to that stagnation:

Virtual Sex Assault is a 20 Year+ Problem That Probably Won't Improve Until Devs Deal With Their Own Bias

"My first virtual reality groping on .Mic" is a woman's recounting of a sexual assault she just experienced in VR -- which ironically, I first read because writer Julian Dibbell shared it on Facebook. Ironic, because the author writes that "[e]ventually we're going to need rules to tame the wild, wild west of VR multiplayer"... and Julian wrote about virtual sexual assault in a milestone story over 20 years ago:

These particulars, as I said, are unambiguous. But they are far from simple, for the simple reason that every set of facts in virtual reality (or VR, as the locals abbreviate it) is shadowed by a second, complicating set: the “real-life” facts. And while a certain tension invariably buzzes in the gap between the hard, prosaic RL facts and their more fluid, dreamy VR counterparts, the dissonance in the Bungle case is striking... Which is all just to say that, to the extent that Mr. Bungle’s assault happened in real life at all, it happened as a sort of Punch-and-Judy show, in which the puppets and the scenery were made of nothing more substantial than digital code and snippets of creative writing.

Actually, it's doubly ironic, because Julian himself got the .Mic story from Raph Koster, who's been building virtual worlds for over 20 years, and keeps asking VR developers now to learn from that history:

Some SLers Wonder If Insilico Could Have Been Saved

With weeks left for the soon-to-evaporate landmark Second Life location, this melancholy (and curiously empty of avatars) tribute by Die Villa. Perhaps more poignant, some longtime SLers say Insilico could have been saved if it had been made more sustainable. As regular readers Rin and Rei put it:

Gods & Devils: Wired UK's Rowland Manthorpe on What He Learned by Writing About Sansar, High Fidelity... and Palmer Luckey's Trump Support

Wired UK has a new long and excellent profile of Philip Rosedale, High Fidelity, and Project Sansar by Rowland Manthorpe, deeply delving into the evolution of virtual worlds and what drives them. NWN readers in particular will enjoy finding out about the "frenemy" competition between Philip and Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg, their deeply differing view of their competing products, and for that matter, the salty sailor tongue of Commodore Altberg.("'You install a server,' Alterg says incredulously [of High Fidelity]. 'Who the fuck installs servers?'") I spoke at length with Rowland for the article, and having written it, he tells me, he now has a lot to think about:

"For me this was really a piece about dreams," Rowland tells me. "First, because dreams define companies. When I was reporting the piece I was struck again and again by the contrast between Philip Rosedale and Ebbe Altberg. Philip is motivated by a dream, a vision; Ebbe wants to give users what they want. Neither approach is right, but it really shapes what they're producing. It also shapes the risks: Philip may be trying to do much, Ebbe may end up being a bit boring and commercial. We'll see which approach proves correct (if at all).

"Second, and more importantly, this piece was about dreams because virtual reality is the place where dreams come true. That's how Philip Rosedale thinks of it: it's the place where we can do whatever we want, be whoever we want, call structure into being with a wave of the hand. It's not too much of a stretch to say that it's the place where we become gods."

I talked with Rowland back in June, and since that time, the VR world was shaken by Oculus Rift founder Palmer Luckey being exposed as a supporter of a pro-Trump group associated with Reddit's noxious alt-right fan club for Trump. Unsurprisingly, that seriously impacted Rowland's thoughts about the final story:

"We have adapted to technology's pace by slowing its impact." - Comment of the Week

Steve Jobs reviewing top smartphones of 2006

Really interesting thought by Pussycat Catnap, commenting on how wrong 2006 virtual reality forecasts turned out to be:

What is actually more interesting is how LITTLE has changed since 2006. I think we're hitting a point where even as the technology changes speed up - we've managed to consume it into our cultures in a manner now that keeps it from effecting real change at a pace faster than we have evolved to be able to handle. We have adapted to its pace, by slowing its impact. 2026... the only thing different will probably be another half hour added onto my commute in traffic.

That first part seems exactly right. 2006, we had smartphones and spent a lot of time on social media (maybe more MySpace than Facebook, but still), and we're still doing that. What fundamentally new, categorical technology shift has reached a mass market level since then?

Top Four New World Notes Posts from Last Week!

• How to Separate VR Hype from VR Reality: Track Usage As Well As Ownership
• Insilico, Landmark Second Life Location, Reportedly Closing Soon Due to Mounting Financial Losses
• Virtual World Experts in 2006 Were Wildly, Wildly Wrong About the Future of VR & the Metaverse in 2016
• Anyland: Virtual World for Vive With Prim-Based Building

Anyland: Virtual World for Vive With Prim-Based Building

AnyLand is a new VR-based virtual world for Vive, and more than any other world I've seen -- even High Fidelity and certainly Sansar -- it evokes Second Life in its very earliest incarnation over a decade ago, when the creative space was open and abundant, and we all built quirky things of wonder with prims (i.e. building blocks). Created by indie developers Philipp Lenssen and Scott Lowe, it's a VR spinoff of their web-based Manyland, but the inspiration goes even farther back than that:

"Even before Manyland was released some years ago, we had the idea for Anyland," Philipp tells me. "Manyland being a 2D sandbox universe, and Anyland being the 3D sibling. At that point, we didn't know the wonderful virtual reality devices like the Vive would come along! Once we saw those headsets, and later hand motion controllers, we knew it would be perfect for it. Making 3D models with fluid hand tracking can be super intuitive, and virtual reality can be so incredibly immersive... So Anyland is our indie project of love to give people tools and a universe which is enjoyable, open, inspiring, and unpredictable."

Since launching over a week ago, he adds,the world has a few hundred early users. More about Anyland from Phillip below the break:

Nevereux Makes Stunning Second Life Photos of Surreal & Perfectly Composed Beauty

"The worms raise to swallow" is an image by a new favorite Second Life artist of mine: Nevereux, whose Flickr stream you should just peruse right now. Ever thanks to Cajsa and to Saffron Foxclaw for the tip to Nevereux.

Second Life Crashing? Fix Your Inventory (Seriously)

If you're like Marianne Mcccan, the latest update of the Second Life viewer has been crashing on you. And if you're a longtime SLer like Marianne Mcccan, you have a massive, massive object inventory, which very well might be causing that crash:

My inventory is sizable, and really has piled up over the last few months. I’m not good at getting everything where it needs to be, and first life stresses have made me far worse than normal. Plus, I’m a builder and a gacha fanatic. As a result, I currently have an inventory that is fast approaching 115,000. But as I learned, the size of the inventory was not the issue. Two friends came forward to suggest an alternative issue at play. My bulging inventory was, in fact, too flat.

She explains what she means here, but basically, it means if you're crashing, you might want to restructure your crowded inventory: