New World Notes

Top 5 Posts Last Week: Real Theology, Virtual Baptism; Surprising VRChat Stats; SL's Chouchou May Go; GoT Meets SL

• Nylon Pinkney Is Online: Game Of Thrones, Second Life Style
• VRChat Site User Demographics: 430,000 Uniques, Mostly Male And Over 25
• If An Actual Pastor Simulates A Baptism In VR, Is It Spiritually Real? Here Comes The Theology
• Chouchou, Masterpiece Second Life Sim By Japanese Indie Musicians, Scheduled To Close Any Day Now
• Linden Lab's Trouble With Talking To Users To Get Usable User Feedback

Nylon Pinkney Is Online: Game of Thrones, Second Life Style

 

Sinespace Help Wanted: Senior Programmer With 3D Graphics & Game Engine Experience

Sinespace, the virtual world/social VR platform and Unity 3D Asset Store Partner (and proud sponsor to NWN!), is expanding and growing its staff, starting with a senior graphics programmer. Sine Wave Entertainment, the parent company, is based in London, but remote workers from around the world are totally encouraged to apply. Here's the details from lead developer/founder Adam Frisby:

VRChat Site User Demographics: 430,000 Uniques, Mostly Male and Over 25

SimilarWeb, my go-to resource for online/mobile data, just kindly shared with me some pretty interesting behind-the-paywall demographic on VRChat's site. (The company has not publicly released much concrete, industry standard user data numbers, beyond saying 30% of daily users are logged in via a head-mounted VR display.)

Here's SimilarWeb's age and gender demographics for the site:

• Gender Distribution
• Male: 81.5%
• Female: 18.5%
• Age Distribution
• 18 - 24: 42.8%
• 25 - 34: 32.1%
• 35 - 44: 12.1%
• 45 - 54: 6.6%
• 55 - 64: 3.8%
• 66+: 2.6%

The gender breakdown, alas, is not a surprise -- as embedded reporter Syrmor says, "VRChat is really disproportionately male".

The VRChat site age breakdown, however, is fairly notable: A strong majority (about 58%) are over 25, while 1 in 4 are 35 or older. That runs counter to the general assumption that VRChat users are mostly teens and early 20s.

In terms of unique users, VRChat site visits over time give us a pretty good guess at active unique users of VRChat:

Watch: How to Improve SL Land Impact By Optimizing Mesh in Blender

Poorly optimized content continues to be a bane of Second Life, so here's a useful tutorial for optimizing SL buildings by exporting them in Blender. Presented by longtime creator "Deep Elements", who tells me this process reduces overall land impact by quite a lot:

"It's an EXTREME difference," as DE tells me. "My current build (three floor Building) would have been 271 Land Impact - now it is 94, with a functional elevator, too! All rooms/floors have realistic trimming on ceiling, floor, windows, etc. There is a lot in this build, and to be under 100 is simply marvelous."  

Deep Elements explains how his method reduces Land Impact so significantly:

Cajsa’s SL Flickr Pick: Reesla Makes Great Use of Lighting & the Golden Ratio

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

Reesla’s photostream is exciting to browse, full of a variety of photos united by good composition and dynamic energy. “Way Back Home” is a beautiful example of using the Golden Ratio to situate the subject. I love the use of light, the sunlight casts the subject in shadow, a silhouette while picking out bright orange flowers in the field. Cropping the picture at an angle makes it seem more dynamic.

If an Actual Pastor Simulates a Baptism in VR, Is It Spiritually Real? Here Comes the Theology

You've probably seen the virtual baptism performed by a real life pastor in VRChat, the latest video from acclaimed embedded reporter Syrmor. Left unanswered is the obvious question: If a "baptism" is only simulated in a virtual world, is it still real in any theological sense?  

From one perspective, the answer suggests another way VR and virtual worlds might one day disrupt traditional services -- in this case, the service being organized religion.

"VR baptisms are new to theological conversations," Bishop DJ Soto of the VR Church acknowledges to me; he is the pastor who who performed the baptism in Syrmor's video. "Our position on VR baptisms doesn’t seek to convince all denominations and religious constructs everywhere because a wide stream of varying theology already exists. Therefore, we simply state why we celebrate VR baptisms."

A trained theologian, DJ once helped launch an actual mega-church in Pennsylvania, but then decided with his wife that the next place to take his ministry was in the metaverse.

Now, his VRChurch typically holds services every Sunday in Alt Space and VRChat, with services in Rec Room soon planned. 100-150 attend, Bishop Soto tells me, with parishioners logging in from the US, UK, Holland, and Germany, "and then a sprinkling of like 10 other countries", from points as far as the Middle East, Africa, and South America.

When it comes to talking about the validity of virtual baptisms, he alludes to well-established strands of Christian theology that have existed for centuries:

Linden Lab Trying to Save Chouchou - If Its Owners Can Be Reached In Time!

Chouchou photo by Loverdag

Potential good news for Chouchou, the beloved, dream-like Second Life sim that is scheduled to be closed down within the next few days. After an impassioned protest by many SL community members, Linden Lab staffer "Patch Linden" posted an appeal in the community:

Your calls have been heard! I need the region owner to contact me directly (via email or through support) to start the process of entering the region into the Second Life Region Preservation Society. I have not seen contact from them so far.

I have also not received word from Chouchou's owners juliet Herbele and arabesque Choche, the Japanese music duo who created and own the sim, since they or their manager told me last week that they planned to take Chouchou down. I've reached out to them again, and I'm also in touch with Patch, so I can connect them directly. However, we may need more help from the community:

Cajsa's Choice of the Day: Artful Screen Captures from A Plague Tale

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

Sebastian Dell-Aria’s work can be found on Instagram: His Memento Gallery, as he describes it, is his collection of “art, wallpapers & overly dramatic footage from my photomode adventures.” (He’s also active on Twitter.)

I was struck by this A Plague Tale screenshot which uses the door to frame the path leading to the garden. It is also the dark that frames the light, a suggestion of moving from the dark to the light. Of course, that’s making assumptions, isn’t it? After all, if it’s a really hot day, the dark means cool refreshment and ease from the heat of a burning sun. That poor guy raking the leaves might really like a break inside.

This shot below of Amicia (also from A Plague Tale) illustrates the extraordinary detail of the game.

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: