New World Notes

Here's Why Sony Hates Being the Market Leader of High End VR

Congrats, Sony! Despite getting far less coverage in the tech press (versus Oculus and Vive), your VR system is far and away the market leader: 1 million cumulative units sold as of June, at least twice that a significant lead over Oculus and Vive combined. 

Wait, why the glum face?

Sony Interactive Entertainment boss Andrew House wants to see more competition in the virtual reality sector, and says he's uncomfortable with Sony being the market leader...  "I'm not entirely comfortable being the market leader in VR by such a margin that seems to be happening right now," he explained. “With such a brand new category you want a variety of platforms all doing well to create that rising tide and create the audience."

House is being diplomatic, but this is corporate-speak for roughly: "OMFG we may not make any fricking money from this VR crap we just spent so much producing!" Here's why:

Beyond Games, Virtual Worlds Are Still In a "Explaining Pied Piper" Place

I just binge-watched HBO's Silicon Valley (seriously hilarious, painfully accurate), and this scene in particular made me knowingly laugh -- getting feedback on Pied Piper, the distributed file platform being built by our startup heroes, from average consumers in a marketing focus group:

A few years ago, a Linden Lab executive literally told me this: "Second Life is great... it just takes 3 hours to explain why." Which is exactly what Pied Piper's CEO does, crashing into the focus group room to painstakingly explain what the technology he's built is, and why average people will want it:

... and after many more questions like that, a takeout pizza order, and a few more hours of explanation to a rapidly dwindling room of volunteers, one of them finally gets an "Oh..." lightbulb moment and becomes a big fan. I've been in this place myself more than a few times. (Sample: "You can do anything you want in Second Life." "But that's not me, that's just some cartoon character on the screen." "No, that is you, it's your avatar." "Wait what's an 'avatar'?" And so on.)

Nowadays, the explanation is slightly easier: 

Some SLers Already Going Crazy for the Grid-Wide Glytches Games

"Tyrah & the Curse of the Magical Glytches", the grid-wide, Pokemon GO-ish game Linden Lab launched last week, is gaining some pretty decent traction among many SLers so far.

"Our Residents seem to be having a great time," as Dee Linden, Linden Lab's Land Operations Supervisor, puts it to me. "Every time we pop into one of the Next Locations we bump into folks with jars and nets chasing after one elusive Glytch or another."

In fact, her team is already adding new content to the game: "We are busy with updates and modifications, although I hesitate to say exactly what they are until I have a better feel for when they will be released.  I can tell you we added three more Next Locations over the weekend, and have several more slated for this week."

Longtime  SL blogger Chic Aeon is already a fairly hardcore fan, and just posted this extensive walk-through. "My top popular post since it's appeared and I guess that says something," notes Chic in NWN comments. She even posted a mini-review here, noting that some players are dealing with some, well, glitches with the Glytches:

SL Creators Rally to Help Colleague Max Graf, Who's in a RL Crisis

Max Graf, a longtime, much-loved 3D content creator in Second Life and many other virtual worlds (he's even featured in Linden Lab's official campaign for Sansar) is about to be evicted from his home in real life along with his family after a series of unfortunate, rather heartless-seeming events: "I'm 50. Cheryl is 60. This is terrifying," he writes in a statement to his subscribers. "We have no savings, we have no credit cards to run up... What I want is a safe place for Cheryl and my dogs to sleep at night. Nothing else matters."

Within days of Max sending out that notice, however, dozens of fellow SL creators have rallied to organize a massive, sim-wide one-week fundraiser sale, starting next week: Going to the Max.

"I am humbled beyond my ability to express," Max Graf said, when the announcement was posted. "In gaming parlance, this would be like if I was a tank amid a team of 10,000 healers and they all suddenly got very gracious on me at the same time and I started growing and then glowing and then my mana reached peak and my head exploded as I turned in to a demigod and could face any enemy."

I'll post the teleport link when Going to the Max goes live on October 3, but if you're an SL content creator who wants to help out too, contact Sophia Harlow or post a comment on the event's Facebook page.

Until then, you can also help Max while helping yourself, buying some of his acclaimed virtual items, which he can then convert into much-needed cash:

Ultima Online Turns 20! Raph Koster on the Pioneering MMO's Influence

It was 20 years ago today, Origin Systems put a new world on the Internet, and pressed play: Lead designer Raph Koster just published a collection of posts he's written about Ultima Online since the influential MMO's launch -- on September 24, 1997, to be exact. The world is still online (having gone through several corporate owners in the interim), and still influential. In fact, it's difficult to imagine what contemporary MMOs would look like without UO.

"I am fairly sure that were it not for the presence of crafting in UO, there wouldn’t have been crafting in most of the later, combat-centric games," Raph tells me, when I asked him about the world's most influential feature. "It’s not a natural fit with the DikuMUD-derived worlds, which are just combat classes."

What's the most important lesson that Raph and his team learned from developing UO which most current MMOs are missing?

Open Forum: What's the Most You Ever Paid for a Virtual Item in Second Life (Besides Land)?

Would you pay $20 to have this head? (via Mavi Beck)

Was just reading a fun discussion thread on social media, asking SLers to name the most they ever paid for a virtual item. Some candidates that came up: 

• An avatar head by Lelutka (above) for L$5000 -- about USD $20
• A haunted house for L$9000 -- about USD $36
• A coterie of virtual pets for L$15,000 - about USD $60
• A swank mansion for L$35,000 -- about USD $142

 How about you, reading this right now? As a bonus, explain the reason for buying it, and whether you got your money's worth.

Top Six New World Notes Posts from Last Week!

• VR Chat Gets $4 Million In Venture Funding Despite Tiny Usage On Steam
• Linden Lab Launches First Grid-Wide Game In Second Life - Think A Bit Like Pokemon Go, But In An MMO
• Now Integrated Into IPhones & Tablets, AR Faces Do-Or-Die Phase
• Cajsa's Choices: The Strange And Wonderful Avatar Art Of Minotaur & Ragu
• Despite Little Growth Or Usage, Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin Claims Blockchain-Based Virtual Currencies Will Rival Visa In Two Years (LOL)
• Ray Kurzweil Once Bet Mitch Kapor That A.I. Would Pass The Turing Test By 2029 -- Because He Assumed Full VR Would Be Feasible By Then; UPDATE -- Kapor Responds: "I Told Ray I Was Prepared To Double Down On The Bet..."

Play on Steam: Auto Age: Standoff, 80s Cartoon Style Meets Multiplayer Car Combat -- With Three FREE Download Keys for NWN Readers!

Auto Age: Standoff is an indie car combat game with an appealing cheeseball 80's cartoon aesthetic and it looks like a lot of goddamn fun. It's the latest game from Phanton Compass, the Toronto studio of Tony Walsh. And if that name rings a vague bell, congrats, you're a truly longtime New World Notes reader -- Tony was known as Second Life blogger "Zero Grace" back in the day. And while Auto Age is all splodey and shootey, he tells me there's features SLers will particularly enjoy:

"The game is a complete U-turn from the usual 'grim dark' tone of most car combat games and doesn't take itself seriously," as he puts it. "Second Life users are likely to enjoy the customization aspect of the game, choosing from various car bodies and over thirty pieces of weaponry and equipment. We hope to add more cosmetic options such as paint jobs and decals in the future."

Speaking of which, Tony gave me free download keys for the first three NWN readers to redeem them:

VR Chat Gets $4 Million in Venture Funding Despite Tiny Usage on Steam

Hey remember when I said that hardly anyone on Steam is using the many social VR apps on the PC's largest game platform, including VR Chat, which as of this week, is averaging little more than around 100 peak concurrent users there? Guess what those 100 users are worth:

VRChat, one of the earliest social VR apps, announced that they’ve completed a $4 million Series A investment round lead by HTC’s Vive group. Joining HTC are venture capital firms Brightstone VC, GVR Fund and Rothenberg Ventures. The Series A funding round comes one year after the company’s initial seed round of $1.2 million, also raised by the previously mentioned firms.

Seriously: As I write this, VR Chat has 81 users online now, a maximum of 105 over the last 24 hours, and an-all time concurrency high (from 7 months ago) of... 115.

To be fair, HTC probably knows how little active usage VR Chat attracts, and presumably, hopes to grow that userbase by integrating the app into future shipments of the Vive. To be still further fair, not every VR Chat user logs in via Steam. Still, even if VR Chat's concurrent users were 10x or even 50x this Steam figure, the startup has a steep hill to climb before reaching just 10% of the Vive's current install base. (Roughly 500-750K.) Best of luck!

Top SL Blogger Celebrates Real World Birthday With Virtual Gifts for You

Having only just emerged from Hurricane Irma relatively unscathed, Strawberry Singh is now celebrating her latest RL birthday:

September 22nd is my birthday and this past year has been such a wonderful one for me personally. I feel like I’ve really grown and I finally feel as if my life has purpose. I’m not even going to hide my age, I’ve earned my 37 years, and I’ve never felt so incredibly strong and confident before in my life. I’m hoping for even more growth and strength this coming year.

Berry being Berry, she's not asking for gifts but instead, giving them away to her readers -- specifically, five gift cards worth L$1000 each. Go here to enter and to wish her a Happy Birthday while you're at it.