New World Notes

Chouchou, Masterpiece Second Life Sim by Japanese Indie Musicians, Scheduled To Close Any Day Now

Click here to directly teleport to Chouchou, for now (Photo by Amunet)

Since its creation in 2008, the Second Life sim called Chouchou has been among the greatest works of metaverse art online -- a dreamy, surreal, immersive space created by Chouchou, a Japanese music duo of the same name, designed to complement and promote their ambient, equally dreamlike songs. But it's scheduled to close very soon:

"Yes, we’re going to officially announce about the closing in a week or so," the band confirmed to me on Twitter last Friday, but haven't offered more details since then.

In their heyday (as above), Chouchou would perform live in Second Life in different parts of the world -- the singer "juliet Herbele" in New York, and on keyboards, "arabesque Choche" from Tokyo. They did this without having met each other in real life, but that eventually changed -- they are now married in real life, and last year, had a child.

The duo has been moving away from SL performances in recent years, focusing on their outreach across the Internet in general. For instance, here's the trailer for their latest album on YouTube, where they have 20,000 subscribers:

Fittingly enough, it's called "Lost Utopia". Chouchou's Second Life fans have been clamoring for Linden Lab or some other benefactor to take over Chouchou, so it doesn't disappear from the virtual world, but no word if that's happened as yet. For now, here's some images and video from Chouchou taken by fans and the band in a sim that still exists in the virtual world, but not for long:

Cajsa’s SL Flickr Pick: Maerin Tamura's Whimsical Tributes to Virtual Childhood

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

“Urban Jungle” from Maerin Tamura is representative of the cheeky and light-hearted photos that dominate her stream. The pose is poised for action and delightfully teen-appropriate, youthful and non-sexualized. The Big Kids of SL are seen less than the toddlers and the adults, but they are part of the community and have adventures of their own.

Linden Lab's Trouble With Talking to Users to Get Usable User Feedback

Reader Soda Sullivan wasn't happy with this example of Linden Lab responding to Second Life user needs, and feels the company isn't doing enough:

I would like to see the Lindens become less reactive to us residents and more PROactive and maybe try to get out in front of things. Talk to people. Don't poll them, TALK to them and see what they are looking for. 

The proactive point is definitely true, and it does seem the company doesn't do enough of that. At the same time, many Linden Lab staffers do hold regular SL-based meetings for users.

However, there's a downside to direct conversations like this, and it's a problem we talked about a lot during my Linden days:

Monday Flashback: Slack Began as Work Platform for Making a Virtual World

When listening to my interview with Philip Rosedale, where he talks about creating a virtual world-meets-Slack for distributed work groups, here's a fun irony worth keeping in mind: Slack itself was originally created... in order to create a virtual world. Specifically, Stewart Butterfield's web-based world Glitch. As he told me back in 2011:

“[Glitch] is a game, and not a total open virtual world. There are some tools for creative expression now and more will be added, but anything which would count as ‘user-generated content’ will have to fit within the constraints of the game (without the constraints, there's no game left). So, much of that will be visual customizations (to avatars, houses, locations, etc.) and some of it will be ‘other’ stuff (the non-visual: collaborative music making, player-created games, etc.)”

His development team for Glitch was based around the globe, so they needed a unified communication channel where they could work together, and that's the seed of what eventually became Slack, after the small but much-loved world closed down:

Top 7 Posts Last Week: Philip Rosedale on VR’s Future, Real Dancer’s Moves for Virtual Sale, AI Stuntman, SL for Android Update & Much More

• Listen: Philip Rosedale On The Future Of VR, The Metaverse, And Building A "Virtual World Meets Slack" Workspace - The New World Notes Interview
• Nylon Pinkney Is Online: Dubious Proposals For New Snapchat Lens
• Watch: AI Agent "Learns" To Crash Into Physics-Enabled Wall Like A Stuntman
• Hollywood Producer Sells Motion-Captured Routines Of Celebrity Dancers Like Alexander Chung To Second Life Avatars
• Watch: Syrmor's First Interview With A Female VRChat Player, A Brazilian Girl Yearning For A Better Life
• Linden Lab So Responsive To SL User Feedback That The Company Won't Fix A "Bug" That The Community Has Turned Into A Feature, Says Linden Vet
• Lumiya Update: Android App For SL Unpublished From Google Play Due To Sudden Terms Of Service Changes, Dev Team Now Working To Republish

Listen: Philip Rosedale on the Future of VR, the Metaverse, and Building a "Virtual World Meets Slack" Workspace - The New World Notes Interview

Interview starts at about :09 seconds in

UPDATE, 4:40pm: Bumped up for weekend listening/discussion!

Days after Philip Rosedale announced that his social VR company was laying off 25% of its staff and focusing on building Project Lilypad, a cross-platform virtual world for workgroups, I got on a Zoom call with him to talk about that news and related topics. Highlights include news that High Fidelity is coming to Oculus Quest, his thought on the fate of VRChat and other social VR worlds in the wake of this pivot -- and the final word on open work spaces, of which Rosedale was once a prominent advocate.

Timestamps and notes/quotes below:

00:30 Philip and the founding Second Life, my stint as an embedded journalist within it — and walking the virtual world.

01:54: Philip’s mission to build a massive virtual world through High Fidelity and VR headsets — and how the slow adoption of HMDs and their shortcomings for use in work contexts have made it difficult to launch a true Metaverse-type virtual world. Leading to High Fidelity’s pivot to create a cross-platform virtual world-based workspace for teams as a way of growing the market for an eventual Metaverse.

06:20: How High Fidelity’s pivot is like virtual worlds meet Zoom, or a virtual world meets Slack. The challenge of creating an online workspace in the face of open offices — and their opportunity for telecommuting workers, and as a solution to the rises costs of living in tech hubs like San Francisco and New York.  We also delve into the productivity problems inherent in open office spaces, which Philip once advocated. (“Let me go on record and say ‘I was wrong’.”)

12:28: The fate of High Fidelity’s consumer side, in terms of the virtual world and its blockchain-based commerce system. “I’m deeply committed to building the Metaverse… so I’m not spinning down any of that”. That includes plans to release High Fidelity of Oculus Quest soon-ish — date TBD “in the next couple quarters”.

Next: High Fidelity and PSVR, going multi-platform, and how to request early access to Project Lilypad.

Nylon Pinkney is Online: Dubious Proposals for New Snapchat Lens

Four Tips for Creating a Winning Entry in Sinespace's FPS Map Design Contest!

With NWN partner Sinespace's deadline for its first-person shooter map contest judged by Erik Wolpaw just a couple weeks away (May 31st!),  there's a new blog post on their site with four tips on improving your level design. My favorite:

Watch: "Hope Everyone Likes Pancakes", Creepy Hilarious Machinima Satire of Fashion Vlog Drama

Here's a newish machinima from Splinter Smirnov and Chris Mumblewood, masters of weird, pop eye Second Life machinima, this one a creepy hilarious spoof on fashion vlogger drama. At first I thought it was about SL fashion bloggers (lord knows that sub-subculture has high drama), but Splinter tells me it's a spin on another vlogger drama I'd forgotten: 

Watch: AI Agent "Learns" to Crash Into Physics-Enabled Wall Like a Stuntman

Watch this new tech demo from DeepMotion, the AI company which taught NPCs how to argue, and learn to dribble basketballs: An AI "stuntman" agent who can run through a physics-enabled breakable wall -- and adjusts his momentum based on the wall's thickness.

"[W]hat's changing each iteration is the strength of the wall," DeepMotion's Anna Ploegh tells me, "by way of adjusting the mass of each brick. So the running movement is responding each time to a difference in the wall obstacle. Over each iteration, that mass of the bricks increases until it is too difficult for the character to jump through."

This is why each crash in the demo is different, as is the way the AI agent falls. This is in contrast to technology often used in videogames to simulate a similar effect, where an NPC is suddenly turned into a physics-enabled ragdoll (i.e ragdoll physics). Here's why: