New World Notes

Top Posts Last Week Featuring: What Facebook Employees Think About the Facebook Whistleblower and the Continued Kid-ification of ROBLOX

• New World Notes Newsfeed: Metaverse Content I’m Currently Consuming. Featuring a Facebook-less Horizon, a dearth of visits to AT&T in VRChat, and the coming "Hannibal Lecter" to Second Life. 
• 80% Of Facebook Employees Believe This Week's Whistleblower Revelations Will Damage Company, According To Massive Internal Poll
• ROBLOX Releases New Rules For Its Metaverse: No Politics, Romance, Or Cross-Platform Promotion Of Its Virtual Currency Allowed
• Sannyのおすすめバーチャルワールドニュース : 2021年9月 Sanny Reports For Virtual Japan. Share with Japanese-speaking virtual world fans!

Give Your SL Avatar Realistic Wounds With the Really Needy HUD’s New Explosive Pack!

Just in time for Halloween and Squid Game roleplay in Second Life, the Really Dangerous Explosives Pack is a fun new addition to the Really Needy HUD (a proud sponsoring partner), which turns SL into a Sims-like game experience. Now, with the help of major style brand Izzie’s, any damage from nearby explosions will cause visible wounds to appear on your avatar. 

Here’s Really Needy creator Grace7 Ling with more details, along with some new NSFW partnerships: 

Roleplayers can now give their urban game more gritty realism with the Really Dangerous Explosives Pack, which includes a feature that auto-applies blood-splattered BOM layers onto your avatar body, if hit by an explosion.

This is a feature of the Really Needy HUD which are used by roleplayers in Second Life to simulate their avatars having Hunger, Thirst, Energy, Health, Hygiene and even Toilet and Procreation needs.

This new release builds on the different types of injuries recognized by the HUD (which goes much beyond a simple combat meter), such as burns, falls and gunshot wounds, and now blast injuries.

As covered in a prior New World Notes post, gunshot wounds automatically appear on the parts of the body where the avatar was shot. With this new release, avatars within the blast radius of a fragmentation grenade will get covered in blood splatter or bloody cuts (depending on how much gore you want), or might be bruised badly if they suffered shock damage from a nearby explosion.

Halloween in Second Life Style Tips from Victoria Konnor James

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

Victoria Konnor James' recent post Thirsty for her blog “Pretty Things, Nice Life” has me wanting those beautiful illuminated pumpkins in real life as well as first life. I mean, let’s get serious about pumpkins. I like roasting pumpkin seeds and will happily substitute pumpkin for potatoes in a stew or even make a pumpkin soup or two or three, but one good-sized pumpkin is about as much as I want at one time. Also, if you put out a pumpkin the first week of October, it passes it’s prime long before Halloween. But these pumpkins are so pretty and of course, they don’t smell of pumpkin 24 hours a day, not even 1 hour a day. I want them. Do they exist in real life? 

{vespertine}

• Illuminated Pumpkin – short /bloody blue
• Illuminated Pumpkin – short /zombie green
• Illuminated Pumpkin – tall /jack orange
• Illuminated Pumpkin – tall /neutral
• Illuminated Pumpkin – tall /zombie green

If you’re ready for the Halloween spirit, click here:

80% of Facebook Employees Believe This Week's Whistleblower Revelations Will Damage Company, According to Massive Internal Poll

While Mark Zuckerberg and other executives strenuously defend Facebook against the allegations and documents made public by whistleblower Frances Haugen, denying any serious wrongdoing, the company's employees have a very different perspective:

80% of them believe the whistleblower's revelations will at least cause some short term damage to the company, while a full third believe the damage will be much worse, causing serious harm to the company's revenue, or even lead to an Uber-level crisis, where top executives are fired or forced to resign. (See above.) Almost half consider the impact to be serious. (Love the "Biden joins the chat" option, i.e. new government regulation/penalties are imposed.)

This all according to a user-created survey posted earlier this week on Blind, an anonymous messaging/virtual community app for employees, accessible only by company staff.  (They're only able to log onto Blind's forum for Facebook via a company e-mail address.) 

Over 6300 Facebook employees took the survey  --  roughly 10% of the entire company, a huge sample. In other Blind-based surveys I've reported on, such as this one about curbing hate speech on Facebook, only a few hundred employees typically participate. So this new survey is a fairly reliable barometer to the corporation's internal collective sentiment.

So that in mind, it's notable that just 1 in 5 of Facebook employees seem fully aligned with their executive team:

Marvel at These Maximalist Second Life Images by Ella Pavlona

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

Ella Pavlova is a maximalist. While many artists strive for minimalism or realism, a maximalist goes for excess. “More is more” might be the catch-phrase that defines maximalism, but that does not mean undisciplined or chaotic. Yes, she and the bluebird are surrounded by flowers but they curve around her, encircling her. They do not obscure her, though perhaps the bluebird is hard to see at first glance, but then, it is King Charmant visiting the imprisoned Princess Florine, who is, it seems, in a prison of flowers. Elle links to the exquisite Bluebird pas de deux from Sleeping Beauty. 

For more maximalist Ella, click here:

ROBLOX Releases New Rules for Its Metaverse: No Politics, Romance, or Cross-Platform Promotion of Its Virtual Currency Allowed

ROBLOX just updated its Terms of Use for customers, and given the many reports describing the massive virtual world platform as a Metaverse, the updates are fairly fascinating. They provoke the blunt question, "Is ROBLOX really making a Metaverse, or is it still making a game for kids?"

Because for starters, ROBLOX's version of the Metaverse forbids any virtual expression of romance or real life politics:

We value friendly debate about issues and topics that matter to Robloxians. However, to maintain a civil and respectful environment, we prohibit the discussion or depiction of: Current candidates running for public office, including their slogans, campaign material, rallies, or events... [s]itting real-world elected officials.

Roblox is a safe space for meeting online friends, chatting, and collaborating on creative projects, but we prohibit content that seeks or portrays romantic relationships, including: Animations of kissing, hand holding, or other romantic gestures... [e]xperiences that depict romantic events, including weddings, dates, and honeymoons

The rules against politics are fairly strict even by contemporary standards. For instance, Joe Biden had an official campaign presence in the new Animal Crossing. And one of the key reasons Second Life was deemed to be a metaverse was because it allowed real life politics. Indeed, the 2006 Second Life appearance of Virginia Governor (now Senator) Mark Warner as he was considering a run for President in 2008 was a milestone for the virtual world.

As for the new rules against romance, according to top ROBLOX YouTuber KreekCraft, they run counter to what the ROBLOX community is already doing in-world now:

Riowyn Magwell's Stylishly Badass Female Avatar Images -- Including Classic-Era Lara Croft Cosplay in Second Life!

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

Riowyn Magwell’s “Break Time” is not typical of her photostream. It is a rare moment that catches her at rest. So savor the opportunity. It doesn’t happen often. I like the wash of light from blue to gold. The interior of the club is the cool blue while you can see through the windows the golden heat of the outdoors.  

Now for the action shots, including some excellent Lara Croft cosplay in Second Life -- click here:

RSVP Here: Join Matthew Ball INSIDE the Metaverse for a Virtual Fireside Chat With The Washington Post's Gene Park & Me -- October 21, Noon PT

Click here to RSVP for a Metaverse-based fireside chat happening October 21st at Noon PT with analyst and VC Matthew Ball, who has perhaps done more than anyone else to convey the value of virtual worlds and metaverse-related technologies to mainstream business audiences in recent years. Hosted in Breakroom, Sine Wave's metaverse platform for real events, this is also (I believe) the very first time that Matthew will discuss the Metaverse within a metaverse, in avatar form. 

My co-host for the event is The Washington Post's Gene Park, who along with covering the game industry for the US paper of record, also wrote one of the earliest in-depth articles on the new metaverse era for a major publication.

More details on Breakroom's event page. And as a warm-up to this literal (virtual) fireside, here's my series of posts analyzing Matt's epic Metaverse Primer, along with video of my last Breakroom fireside chat, with Philip Rosedale and Adam Frisby:

These Amazing Action Images Look Like AAA Videogame Screenshots But Were Actually Made in Second Life

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

Ethan Lane’s “The Heist” is an action shot of a thief jumping off a balcony to escape the three-headed guard dog Cerberus. That he is robbing the joint reminds me of my own personal catnip, the caper story.. I love the cleverness of the caper undiscovered until the crew is safely in another country as the credits roll. Add an element of camp and you have the perfect caper whether it’s “Ocean’s Eleven,” “The Italian Job,” or the original “Mission Impossible” series. I wonder. Does Cerberus make this camp? 

If you like story-telling pics, click here:

Sannyのおすすめバーチャルワールドニュース : 2021年9月 Sanny Reports For Virtual Japan

Sanny Yoshikawa が、New World Notesのなかから、毎月おすすめのバーチャルワールドニュースを日本語で紹介します。

Sanny Yoshikawa covers the monthly virtual world highlights from New World Notes for virtual Japan.