New World Notes

Cajsa's SL Flickr Pick: Kobo Barracuda Photographs His Macabre Second Life

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

The SL Bare Face Challenge has taken over Flickr, revealing the uncovered, unmade up faces of many avatars. This may be one of the most intriguing of the entries in that particular challenge, taking bare to a whole new level. It is also very typical of the sideways-minded Kobo Barracuda whose photostream reveals a love for roleplay, steampunk, and drama - the good kind of drama. 

More uniquely Kobotacular photos ahead!

Journey Director Jenova Chen Shares His Original Vision of the Masterpiece Game as an MMO -- And Its Inspiration from Joseph Campbell & Confucius

When game developer Robin Hunicke told me about Journey, the acclaimed 2012 game she produced that's finally available to play on the PC via Steam, she mentioned an interesting origin story: It was conceived at first as a kind of MMO/virtual world experience. I just heard from Journey director Jenova Chen, who shared these amazing images he created, from when Journey was first conceived:

"It's 2006 I did these paintings imaging an MMO where nameless, genderless, and ageless characters are all searching for the promised land that is unknown," Jenova tells me. "You can see many of these robed figures are traveling in pairs and groups, which later influenced Journey and Sky: Children of the Light." (That's Chen's new game; more on that another time.)

I've long had a pet theory that Journey's gameplay, in which the player must travel up a steep mountain, was inspired by Philip K. Dick's Mercerism in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I.E.: 

The trend of increased empathy has coincidentally motivated a new technology-based religion called Mercerism, which uses "empathy boxes" to link users simultaneously to a virtual reality of collective suffering, centered on a martyr-like character, Wilbur Mercer, who eternally climbs up a hill while being hit with crashing stones.

Chen says otherwise, when I ask if that was an influence: 

Listen With Headphones: Demos of High Fidelity's 3D Spacial Audio-Based Virtual World

You've been recently reading about Philip Rosedale's new 3D space audio plus 2D graphics version of High Fidelity, how musicians like Thievery Corporation's Rob Garza are enthused, even how it might even be used for real world social activism and protests. But none of that's quite convincing until you actually hear what I've been writing about.

So put on some headphones, and click Play on the videos in this post. There's a bit of spacial audio quality loss because these videos are on YouTube, but you should be able to hear various speakers walking around, and even use echolocation to have a rough guess where they are on the 2D map, in relation to you.

Notably, the official High Fidelity demo emphasizes its usefulness as an audio replacement for Zoom: Instead of doing Zoom video calls with many multiple (or dozens of) office workers, you can instead create a 2D floor plan of your real office in High Fidelity, and log into that. Then when you are supposed to have a conference meeting, you just drag your icon there on the floor plan, or drag it over to your desk for a one-on-one chat, and so on.

Here's a non-official demo from London City Voices Choir, using High Fidelity as a social hangout 

Cajsa's SL Flickr Pick: Prophet Produces Fantastic Slice of Virtual Life Pics

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

Prophet ● is one of those slice-of-life photographers I admire so much. They have the patience to put together a scene, the furnishings, the mess of life, the pose, the clothes, and the lighting, all to capture a moment, a fraction of a second in a life. But a fraction of a second that will live forever or as long as Flickr. “Sing, Sing, Sing” is brilliant. There is the second-hand furniture, the snacks, the dog, the messiness of it all. This feels like living. 

More slices of life ahead!

Mobile Companion App for SL "Coming Soon", Says Linden Lab CEO -- Who Hints at 3D Viewer for Mobile Down the Road

His avatar festooned in both a Black Lives Matter T-shirt and Pride-themed pants, Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg gave an in-world "state of SL" talk yesterday in celebration of the virtual world's 17th birthday. You can watch the whole thing below, but as far as I can tell, Ebbe doesn't really make any major announcements. However, he does drop a hint at the company's plans for developing mobile apps for SL (at around 1:06 in the video): 

We're still trying to figure out when we can actually enable the 3D viewer aspect of it into mobile but that's much further out for now we're working on what I would say is a communication companion app and I hope to see a beta of that pretty soon.

I'm assuming "pretty soon" probably means this year, but we'll see. This companion app has been in development since at least early 2019, and sounds very similar to "light viewer" third party SL mobile apps like Pocket Metaverse for iOS from over a decade ago. (Unfortunately now defunct.)

This is the first time I'm aware of that Altberg has acknowledged to the SL community that the company is working on a 3D viewer for mobile, which raises an interesting point:

Watch: Amazing Cyberpunk Scene Illustrates Democratization of 3D Graphics

Watch this single-take scene featuring a girl going down into the depths of a sprawling cyberpunk city for some take-out, then tell me: What do you think the budget to create it was?

Read on for the answer:

Cajsa's SL Flickr Pick: Angelika Corral Creates Stunning Images

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

“Splash” by Angelika Corral is one of these pictures that bring me to a complete stop. So much of my time browsing I will page down and down and down almost mindlessly. I might pause and like a picture or two, but it’s seldom that I come to a full stop and look at the picture in its full-screen glory before I am thinking about writing about it. Corral is usually a black and white portraitist with only an occasional splash of color, but none quite so literal. I love the concept and think she executed it beautifully.

More stunning photos with Corral’s unique perspective on color.

Second Life Usage Now Higher Than Its 2007 Hype Level Period?

Interesting comment from Amanda Dallin, reflecting on SL's recently reported "pandemic boost": 

If the definition of a monthly active user has remained the same then the comparison to the peak in 2007 is valid. Actually there were likely more than 350,000 new registered users a month in 2007 when SL hit the peak of 1.1 million MAU so the number of returning users could be about the same or higher than in 2007 using your math and logic.

This sounds right. 2007 saw a lot more churn due to massively promoted events like a cross-over experience for the television show CSI, mostly from people who were unable to install the program or get past the orientation. However, the definition of a monthly active user has definitely changed since 2007 -- back then, Linden Lab would mainly refer to "Total Residents", i.e. anyone who signed up for an account, whether or not they even installed the program and went in-world.

The definition that hasn't changed is the amount of concurrent users, and that is indisputably much larger now than it was in 2007:

Top 5 Posts Last Week, Including: The Making of Journey & Meeting Miro Shot, an Up-and-Coming Band Inspired by Virtual Worlds

• Journey's Journey: Producer Robin Hunicke Reflects On The Origins & Influence Of The Masterpiece Game As It Finally Arrives For PC
• Meet Miro Shot: The Rising Star Rock Band Inspired By Virtual Worlds -- That’s Now Touring Inside Virtual Worlds
• Powerful SL Images Selected In Honor Of Juneteenth & Black Lives Matter
• "Pandemic Boost" Reverses Decline Of Second Life Monthly Active Users
• The Impossibility Of Real Hate Speech & Symbols In A Virtual World

Journey's Journey: Producer Robin Hunicke Reflects on the Origins & Influence of the Masterpiece Game As It Finally Arrives for PC

Journey, the acclaimed game that began its life as a Playstation title in 2012, is now (finally!) available to play on the PC via Steam. An enthralling, emotionally poignant trek toward a high mountain, the player must guide a robed figure across wastelands and civilization's remains, sometimes assisted by another robed figure who may be another player. As it happens, producer Robin Hunicke tells me, Journey was originally conceived as a kind of massively multi-user virtual world.

"When [director Jenova Chen] originally came to show me the pitch for Journey," as she remembers now, "it had an MMO vibe. Several of his concept art pieces featured long lines of people in dark robes following a path -- almost like a pilgrimage to a holy site or an exodus from a war-torn land."

A multi-user version was prototyped, but the designers found that cooperative gameplay between several players could ironically become less social or cooperative: