New World Notes

Aero Pines Park Recreated from Second Life into "space" Virtual World -- Hosts Live Event Tonight!

If you're curious about space, the new cross-platform virtual world created by veteran Second Life/OpenSim developers (and a proud NWN partner), you may want to visit Aero Pines Park v2. It's a faithful recreation of the long-running Aero Pines Park in Second Life, which owner/lead designer Cindy Bolero wanted to give a new life in space, including an event today (Friday) from 7PM-10PM PST with live music and entertainment:

"It’s the 10 year anniversary of the Aero Pines Park Winter Festival in Second Life," Cindy says. "We wanted to do something special to celebrate that. Since the original 16 region park has reduced to only three sims, I was hoping there would eventually be an ideal Unity3d-based MMO SDK to revive the park. It’s the same topography and layout our residents and fans will recognize."

Just with way more trees, a working roller coaster (see above) and beyond: "There are thousands of trees with more forestation, structures, and interactive activities added with every park update. Come see for yourself!" She's hoping over 3D developers like her join the space Beta program to experiment with uploading environments of their own.

How to Visit Aero Pines Park V2 in space

Thanks to space lead developer/CEO Adam Frisby, here's detailed instructions for traveling to the Park below:

To visit the Winter Festival Aero Pines Park in space – you’ll need to download the space client – you can get the latest client by going to sine.space/download.

Just download the client for your operating system (Windows, OSX and our new Linux alpha), and install it. If you run into problems with the installer in Windows 10, click the ‘More Info’ link, followed by ‘Run anyway’. Next:

SLers on YouTube Starting to Shoot Unboxing Videos of Virtual Goods

Did you know unboxing videos on YouTube are a huge thing? Yes, unboxing videos on YouTube are a huge thing:

Since 2010, the number of YouTube clips with "unboxing" in the headline has increased 871%. Last year alone, 2,370 days, or 6.5 years, worth of unboxing footage was uploaded to the site. The traffic is coming from all over the world, with an uptick in recent interest from such far-flung places as India, Brunei, Sri Lanka, and Trinidad and Tobago. The people who post the videos are not just bragging about their latest purchases. They make money off ads displayed at the start of a clip or that pop up while they're playing. YouTube's payment system is complicated, but one unboxer said he can make $2 to $4 for every 1,000 views.

So it's interesting that we're starting to see videos like the one above from Harmony Sandalphon, or the one below from Strawberry Singh. They're sort of mesmerizing, especially when the YouTuber sounds as mellifluous as Harmony or Strawberry:

Tell Me About Your Favorite SL Marketplace Holiday Shopping Offers & I'll Promote Some

Here's an open forum for SLers for the holiday week/weekend: Post your favorite Second Life Marketplace listings, especially holiday shopping offers, and I'll promote the best ones in standalone posts for the remainder of the week. Yes, content creators, you can post links to your own listings, as long as they're lovely. Preference given to truly innovative items (please explain why), especially items which make use of the latest Bento/mesh technology.

Mika Whitesong's Avatar Looks Like a Modigliani to Me

I'm utterly besotted by the mesh avatar head of Ms. Mika Whitesong and I'll tell you why: While most SLers create their avatars to seem like ultra-realistic supermodels, Mika's face seems sculpted, elongated, like a modern painting come to life.

"I see 3D animation as sculpture or 3D art, so I can see how it can be perceived that way," Mika tells me when I point that out to her. "After I made it, some people said it reminded them of a painter's work. I cant recall his name now, though."

Personally I'd compare her to the portraits of the artist Modigliani, because look:

Roblox: Yet Another Virtual World Much Bigger Than SL

VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi reports on Roblox, yet another virtual world on the outliers of the "Second Life is the most successful virtual world ever made to this day” claim:  

It’s not quite Minecraft, but the Lego-like block world of Roblox is doing just fine at its tenth anniversary. The San Mateo, Calif.-based company has more than 30 million monthly active users for its sandbox video game that lets users create their own spaces and games. Roblox is near 900,000 concurrent users at its peak, and users have put more than 300 million hours into it. The top game creators on the platform are now making more than $50,000 a month in revenue, and Roblox now runs across phones, tablets, PCs, VR, and Xbox.

Quite a bit like Linden Lab's Blocksworld (actually the other way around, Roblox came first), it's a shared open world with user-generated content that can be sold for real world cash, an internal programming language, and as far as I can see, no traditional levels-points-goals RPG elements emphasized. Lots of engagement on YouTube and player creativity too:

Black Desert MMO Has $5 Starter Pack Holiday Discount

Black Dessert, the new-ish MMO with impressive avatar creation system that virtual fashion fans have enjoyed tinkering with (as above), has a holiday discount special: 50% off a starter pack (i.e. just $5), or a 7 day free trial. Go here to check it out.

"space" MMO Partners With New World Notes to Help Launch New Market for Virtual World Content Creators

space, the new cross-platform virtual world created by veteran Second Life/OpenSim developers, attracted a lot of interest from New World Notes readers when it launched last month, so I’m proud to announce NWN is now a media partner with the space development team at SineWave. I’ve known and admired CEO Adam Frisby (Adam Zaius in SL) for over a decade, and I’m impressed by the vision he and his team have for the next generation of virtual worlds. That especially includes their developer program, designed to help content creators monetize their work, and just as important, protect their intellectual property. As their developer page explains:

Space only cashes out to approved creators. Like the Apple store, we cash out quarterly in arrears; to ensure there is time for copyright infringements to be investigated. Your content is fingerprinted. And if someone does upload something of yours, we automatically remove every copy, not just the copies you can see in a public space.

I’ll occasionally highlight space features and new content in coming months, but if you’re a 3D/virtual world content creator and you’re interested in exploring a new market for your work, read more about and sign up for their developer program here. 

SL Flickr of the Day: Virtual Winter in the Metaverse

Now that it's Winter in the metaverse (wherever land owners are wont to simulate snow) master SL travelogue photographer Pepe Cometa shot this lovely little snowbound video in an area called "One Caress" on a sim called Beck -- click here to visit.

Here's another from Pepa of New Babbage, the classic steampunk city:

Why Does Linden Lab's CEO Say Linden Lab's Second Life is "The Most Successful Virtual World Ever Made"?

VentureBeat has a new preview of Sansar which mostly covers territory already familiar to NWN readers, but this remark from Ebbe is worth gawking at a bit:

“Second Life is the most successful virtual world ever made to this day,” said Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg in an interview with GamesBeat. “No one has ever come close. We are building something here that we believe can go way beyond what Second Life achieved.”

Maybe there's some additional context to this claim that hasn't been included -- which I hope, because taken by itself, I have no idea how this assertion makes any sense. Based on what we know, Second Life currently has about 600,000 active users and makes about $75 million in annual revenue for Linden Lab. By contrast:

• Eve Online is a single-shard virtual world like Second Life, and at $74 million a year, earns about as much revenue for its owner as Second Life.
• IMVU has a marketplace for user-generated content and to judge by website traffic and reported concurrency, is somewhat more popular than Second Life.
• World of Warcraft is a multi-user virtual world like Second Life, and over its 12 year existence, has earned far more money and had far more users.
• Minecraft is a user-created virtual world like Second Life, and as of this year, has sold over 100 million copies.

And so on; we're not even mentioning virtual worlds in the Asian market, many of which have monthly usage in the tens of millions of users.

At best, you could make the case that Second Life is the most ambitious and influential virtual world ever made -- the claim I'd personally prefer to make. At worst, you could argue that Second Life is the most successful virtual world in terms of media coverage -- but then that also means acknowledging much of that coverage has been negative.

This may seem like an academic point, and to be sure, CEOs like to make harmlessly hyperbolic statements about their products all the time. But seeing as Ebbe Altberg made this claim in the context of talking about its Sansar, the company's successor to Second Life, there's room for concern:

SL Flickr of the Day: Have Yourself an Emo Little Christmas

This moody holiday pic from Tyler Oysternatz seems just about right for a melancholy Monday start to Christmas week closing off a fairly terrible year. Or maybe he's just sad he can't locate his shirt? Anyway, more details of the avatar accoutrements at the link.