New World Notes

My 10 Personal Favorite New World Notes Posts of 2016

My personal selection from the year that soon was:

• Gamer Sexism Made VR Pioneer Jaron Lanier Less Utopian About Virtual Reality
• Neal Stephenson on Oculus Rift & His Metaverse Becoming an Actual Business Plan
• Bernie Sanders’ Second Life Headquarters Besieged by Trump-Supporting Swastikas, Demons and 120 Ft. Fireworks-Spewing Donald Trump Statue
• Force Unawakened: Why Have Millions of Geeks Stayed Silent & Passive About the Fate of a Cherished Character?
• Philip Rosedale: The Mind Itself is a Virtual World We Live In
• Palmer Luckey’s Mexican-American Virtual Reality Mentor “Dismayed” by His Support for Pro-Trump Group
• How Sansar Differs from Second Life: One Early Preview User's Perspective
• Virtual World Experts in 2006 Were Wildly, Wildly Wrong About the Future of VR & the Metaverse in 2016
• Why I Told Wired That Linden Lab & High Fidelity Are Gambling Their Companies on VR's Highly Unknown Future
• "Trump Won Because He Understood the Digital is Real" - Top Anthropologist on How to Study the President-Elect's Online Following

Thanks to everyone reading this now for reading this blog in 2016. See you next year!

My Favorite Second Life Machinima of 2016

This year we saw a definite decline of great Second Life machinima in terms of full-fledged narrative videos, but we also saw more and more people embrace "Let's Play"-style videos popular on YouTube. On the downside that continued including a lot of trolls who turned Second Life into their favorite platform -- on the upside, it included videos like this one above. Which as I wrote:

2016 Recap: My Writing & New World Notes in the Media

My own writing:

• Wired, February: "VR Will Make Life Better—Or Just Be an Opiate for the Masses"
• Wall Street Journal, April: "Virtual Second Thoughts"
• Vice, April: "Bernie Sanders’ Second Life Headquarters Besieged by Trump-Supporting Swastikas"

As cited in these outlets:

Top Second Life YouTuber Shoots ASMR Video

Does this video featuring the avatar and whispery voice of Strawberry Singh give you a delicious tickling sensation on your spine? Because that's precisely what an ASMR video, which this is, is supposed to do. As Janine Hawkins once explained, it's a popular sub-genre of gaming videos on YouTube:

New World Notes' Most Read & Shared Posts of 2016

As it turns out, the most shared and/or read NWN posts of 2016 offer a pretty good glimpse of 2016's highlights and milestones -- both real and virtual. Here they are, roughly arranged in chronological order:

• David Bowie Actually Had a Second Life Before Second Life
• Metaverse Artist Bryn Oh Gets Canadian Government Grant to Turn SL Installation into VR-Powered Art Gallery Exhibit
• Ten Years Ago Today, Hamlet Au Was Born to Leave Hamlet Linden Behind
• Insilico, Inaccessible: After Reported Permaban of Owner/Lead Creator, Second Life's Renowned Cyberpunk City Blocked from Public Access
• Neal Stephenson on Oculus Rift & His Metaverse Becoming an Actual Business Plan
• Someone Recreates Virtual Version of Donald Trump's Mansion in Second Life, Complete With Virtual Wall
• Watch This Seriously Impressive High Fidelity Demo Moving Virtual Objects Around With HTC Vive Hand Controls
• Bernie Sanders’ Second Life Headquarters Besieged by Trump-Supporting Swastikas, Demons and 120 Ft. Fireworks-Spewing Donald Trump Statue

May through December 2016 below!

Bento Makes More Mesmerizing Avatar Hands Possible

This is a pretty amazing use of Bento technology by "Utilizator.Mode" to bring full articulation to the SL hands of their Kemono avatar. More about this on Utilizator's blog:

My goal is to make full use of the bento bones for avatar 2.0 and kemono to drastically cut down on the rendering weight... also this bento update will be free.

Hat to the ever chatty Patchouli, who observes, "It's not exactly all HUDs and whistles but... woah."

Top 2016 NWN Posts Probably Most Important in 2017

Just days away from 2017, here's the New World Notes stories from 2016 that I think are likeliest to be most relevant to news next year -- at least as points of reference:

 

• May 2016: VR Users Report Experiencing Matrix/Cartesian-esque Confusion Between the Virtual & the Real
• August 2016: How Many Premium VR Devices Will Sell by 2020? Bloomberg/Gartner's Forecast Suggests 42 Million
• August 2016: Does IDC Really Think We'll Buy 225 Million+ AR/VR Devices By 2020? That's Faster Adoption Than the iPhone!
• October 2016: Virtual Hype, Real Numbers: Total Projected VR Install Base for 2016 Under 6.25 Million
• October 2016: Why I Told Wired That Linden Lab & High Fidelity Are Gambling Their Companies on VR's Highly Unknown Future

Several more below:

NWN Alum Janine Hawkins' Top 10 Games of 2016

Writing for major gamer site Giant Bomb, here's New World Notes alum Janine Hawkins on the Top 10 Games of 2016. NWN readers know her virtual fashion/game writing as Iris Ophelia, but in recent years she's also been flourishing as a leading game culture writer. Janine being Janine, most of her favorite ten games for this year are indie/international titles you probably haven't heard about let alone played, but then that's why you want to follow Janine. Sample:

Insilico Saved -- Second Life's Landmark Cyberpunk City Announces Last-Moment Funding, New Roleplay-Only Focus

Set to close last month due to mounting financial losses, the official site to Insilico, Second Life's cyberpunk masterpiece, reportedly received some 11th hour funding to remain open:

SURPRISE and Merry Giftmas! INSILICO is here to stay (again)! It just took a while to get all these ducks lined up. Suffice to say though, it’s pretty much official. We live on.

No word on where those ducks came from, or who's paying for them, but good news all the same. Also interesting that the funding is enough that Insilico reportedly no longer needs typical revenue streams for paying monthly sim tier, and instead, can focus on its cyberpunk roleplaying community:

Top Three New World Notes Posts from Last Week!

• Aero Pines Park Recreated from Second Life into "space" Virtual World
• Roblox: Yet Another Virtual World Much Bigger Than SL
• Why Does Linden Lab's CEO Say Linden Lab's Second Life is "The Most Successful Virtual World Ever Made"?