New World Notes

Top 5 Posts Last Week, Ft: Axie Infinity Loses 1M Daily Users, Linden Labber Teases SL Web Access, and Immersed in the Metaverse With Matthew Ball

• Matthew Ball Interview: The Metaverse Author On Government Regulation, Advice For Beginners Getting Started & Second Life's Importance To Its Future (Part 2 Of 2)
• Linden Lab Bringing Back Second Life Cloud Streaming For The Web?
• Matthew Ball Interview: The Metaverse Author On Mainstream Awareness, Negative Implications, NFTs & Blockchain -- And An Exciting New Vision For Interoperability (Part 1 Of 2)
• Breaking: Axie Infinity Lost 1 Million Daily Active Users In The Last 4 Months!
• In Praise Of Rec Room's Live Creation & Teaching Features -- And A Defense Of Its Cartoonish Graphics

Matthew Ball Interview: The Metaverse Author On Government Regulation, Advice for Beginners Getting Started & Second Life's Importance to Its Future (Part 2 Of 2)

Update, July 22: Bumped up for weekend reading/conversation!

Read Part 1 of our Q&A here. 

In his book The Metaverse, Matthew Ball touches on Second Life and even speaks with the late, beloved CEO Ebbe Altberg about the dangers of breaking user-generated content through platform updates.

During our Q&A this week we had a chance to chat about what Second Life can teach new metaverse platforms.

“We're discovering so many things about virtual societies and communities, there's so many emergent behaviors, and many of them have been discovered or surfaced before," Matt tells me. "Second Life is such a great example. I was telling you the other day when I was asked that question, Is Second Life over or underrated?

"I think it's underrated, because we and I for a long time underappreciated how many behaviors evolved that actually can’t really happen elsewhere that teach us a lot about what to build, what not to do, and how to speak to users upon which you rely on for an economy and user-generated content. Learning that history is important.”

As to the future, much more of our conversation below: Advice for getting started in metaverse development, the important metaverse news announcements that have come out since his book was published -- and what he'd say about government regulation of the Metaverse, if someone like Senator Elizabeth Warren asked:

Friday Fashion: Fantastic Vampiric & Cyberpunk Style from My Dark Fantasy

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

My Dark Fantasy is Yana Nightwich’s exciting and quite erotic blog featuring roleplay vampires, fairies, and warriors as well as highlighting intriguing places.  Romantique is a safe for Google post with a gorgeous avatar who is still a little bit spooky. For myself, I don’t wear tattoos or piercings in my first or second life, but I know they are popular. I think she looks gorgeous. 

• THIS IS WRONG  Sumukhwa IV tattoo (Evo X) F @ Hongdae event
• Stealthic - Ardesia hair @ Anthem
• [Cubic Cherry] {Shinku} rose deco (R) BLACK@ The Vault
• Guwopp - Becky Necklace Fatpack@ The Vault
• SFU - Umbra Piercings @ The Vault

For more futuristic fare, click here:

Linden Lab Bringing Back Second Life Cloud Streaming for the Web?

What would you do if you could run #SecondLife in a browser?

— AlexaLinden (@AlexaLindenLL) July 18, 2022

Alexa Linden, director of Product at Linden Lab, just posted this casual but tantalizing question to Twitter: "What would you do if you could run #SecondLife in a browser?"

Which is a great and highly specific question to ask!

Second Life has actually done at least two official trials running Second Life through cloud streaming -- first to the web in 2010, via Gaikai, and then (in a very ambitious rollout) in 2014, with OnLive. Look:

Virtual World Images With Real Feeling Created by Eoleon Elcano

Oh, Eoleon Elcano sure knows how to pluck the heartstrings. This is a picture full of pathos. The person who abandoned the dog did not even leave a dish of water. I’m sure even pixel dogs get thirsty. Eoleon included a link to Annie Lennox’s song “Why?” [Click here] 

For more emotionally powerful pictures, click here:

Matthew Ball Interview: The Metaverse Author on Mainstream Awareness, Negative Implications, NFTs & Blockchain -- and an Exciting New Vision for Interoperability (Part 1 of 2)

Matthew Ball's The Metaverse: And How it Will Revolutionize Everything is now available in bookshelves and online. (Get it on Amazon here, on Apple Books here, or on Bookshop.org here, which contributes a cut to indy bookstores.)

I've been avidly reading my review copy of The Metaverse over the last couple weeks, and while I feel way too biased to write a full review, seeing as I'm now writing my own book on the topic, I will say this: It's an essential and indispensable resource to understanding the concept, and the key business, technology, and policy facets we need to comprehend now, to create a Metaverse that's truly worthy of the name. 

I spoke with Matt earlier this week, delving into many topics from the book, beginning with what's been expanded on from his online Metaverse Primer (which I wrote about here last year):

"The first and last thirds of the book are entirely new," he tells me. "The first third gets into the history of the Metaverse in science fiction and in virtual game worlds and platforms, why gaming seems to be at the forefront of this next generation of the Internet, defining the Metaverse as I see it, and why it is a successor of state to the Internet rather than just application for experiences on it... 

"There are a few sections that are dramatically different; the hardware section in the Primer is about 600 words; in the book it's 12,000 or 13,000. It's fundamentally deeper and richer, part of which is to explain why the future we hope for VR and AR remains far outside of our grasp, while also looking at the other input devices that we might use, such as holography. The section on payments was dramatically changed to talk about the importance of regulation in the space."

Speaking which, Matt also wrote an entirely new section about how much -- or how little -- blockchain relates to the Metaverse.

"I don't believe that the blockchain is the Metaverse," he puts it to me bluntly, "I don't believe that it's a technical requirement. I think there are some interesting potential applications, but it is so relevant to the discourse that I wrote a chapter trying to explain why people think that, what the various perspectives are, and what may or may not need to change for those perspectives to clarify."

Part 1 of our conversation below, including some of my reader questions about NFTs and negative effects of the Metaverse, and an intriguing new way of thinking about interoperability.

Today's Flickr Pick: Breathtaking Second Life-Based Images by Drew Lukas

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

Drew Lukas’ “Aberration” is phenomenal. It makes me think of the cover for some James Bond thriller. I love how it overlaid a red version on top of a blue creating a kinetic energy to a static pose. It’s all very sharp and exciting. His stream is also exciting, full of a wonderful mix of tastefully erotic pictures and creative surreal pieces that are breathtaking. 

For more magnificent pics, click here:

Breaking: Axie Infinity Lost 1 Million Daily Active Users In the Last 4 Months!

Above screengrab taken from the Axie Growth Data spreadsheet 

When we last checked in with Axie Infinity, widely touted as the model of "play-to-earn", NFT/blockchain-based games, it had dropped from 1.3 million daily active users in April to under 600,000 in June. That's a huge drop, but 600K DAU is still quite impressive, ranking it (for example) in the top 20 of Google Play mobile games by daily usage. 

Since then, however, DAU rates have continued plummeting -- from under 600K DAU at the beginning of June, to under 300K DAU as of yesterday. 

If you pull back the camera to April, 16 weeks ago, the drop in usage is even greater:

Watch: Guy Recreates Bizarre Images from Dall-E Mini in Fortnite Creative

As a fun companion video to two themes discussed last week, the future of art in the AI era, and the future of 3D creation on next gen metaverse platforms, here's both at the same time: A guy creating builds in Fortnite Creative based on images suggested by Dall-E mini. The images themselves are pretty mild (an alien mountain, Darth Vader celebrating his birthday), so I'd love to see someone try to recreate the more bizarre and nightmare images Dall-E often extrudes from its cursed system.

As demonstrated by the dulcet-voiced Mustard Plays, this is also a good demonstration of the Fortnite Creative tools, which include a huge assortment of prefab mesh objects and primitives, both of which can be imbued with physics and other interactivity. And yes, it also enables multi-user creation, which Mustard Plays leverages to host a collab creation contest -- watch below:  

Powerful Abstract Imagery Created in Second Life & Inspired by Songs from Lennon, Machairitsas & Sinatra

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

Mihailsk, on his Flickr photostream’s About page writes, “I don't see myself as an artist, I am a passenger with open eyes in this journey of life and Second Life…” 

I wonder, isn’t that what an artist is? Someone with their eyes wide open who can capture those moments of grace and synchronicity that make our lives more beautiful. I love the feeling that this picture conveys, of a spontaneous revelation that just happened. It’s quite possible that this was very deliberately constructed, as many SL photos are, but it has the feeling of just falling into place. Mihailsk chose the song “Cycles” by Frank Sinatra [Click here] as a musical companion to this image. It seems perfect: 

"There isn't much that I have learned

through all my foolish years.

Except that life keeps runnin' in cycles.

First there's laughter, then those tears."

For more extraordinary imagery, click here: