New World Notes

SERVICE UPDATE: New World Notes Not Recently Displaying Due to Typepad Outages

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Thanks to everyone who recently contacted me about New World Notes not loading or fully displaying since last week. That seems to be due to my blog service Typepad having trouble with server migration and maintenance since roughly October 21, further compounded by a DDOS attack on October 28. You can follow Typepad's Twitter for further updates.

Apologies for the inconvenience! Kinda wild that Linden Lab chose Typepad to host the original New World Notes blog because it launched in October 2003, shortly after Second Life launched commercially. (And I stuck with Typepad when NWN went independent.)

Further irony: At this point I probably need to keep New World Notes on Typepad, at least in an archive form, because at least 25% of daily traffic goes to old posts, even to posts originally published in 2003.

Watch: We Talk About Taylor Swift’s Metaverse, Roblox Revenue & Other Topics While Paddling on the Second Life Sea

New video from Isabelle and me! Please like, subscribe, and leave comments/suggestions/complaints/etc. below. And yes, I'm still not happy with the quality of my voice recording. (Not sure why, we recorded the audio via Google.) Topics we discuss include:

• IRL update from Isabelle!
• Size of the metaverse Roblox vs. SL creator revenue
• The Taylor Swift metaverse (compared to Suzanne Vega in SL)

Be sure to stay until the end for a glimpse of Suzanne Vega's classic performance of "Tom's Diner" in Second Life. Plus our answers to these viewer questions: 

Spooky Season SL Styles from Gothic Fashion Blogger Wicca Merlin

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

Wicca Merlin’s blog Fashion Addicted is where you go for a gothic, edgy aesthetic any day of the year, so there is no better place to look for Halloween ideas. I mean you can find ideas in April. However, “Tasty, tasty beautiful fear” is from this week. I love the entire dress which you can see when you click through to the blog, but my favorite is the stunning face makeup. Great scary clown makeup. She shot the picture at Everwinter. [Click here to teleport.]

• Outfit (incl. shoes & balloon): :Moon Amore: – “Circus” (Gacha)
• Hair: Exile – “Sela (A)”
• Face Art: LVL9 – “Honkers Nose & Facepaint” (LeL. EvoX BoM)
• Teeth: [CX] – “Strigoi’s Fangs – Silver Type.1 ( Size E / Wider )”
• Arms: Ghoul – “Hannya Demon Arms” (Maitreya)
• Tattoo: .:Vegas:. – “Tattoo Feeling ( Dark )” (LeL. EvoX BoM)
• Carousel: DRD – “EL Carousel2”

Just to prove the point about April, click here:

Play Gloomwood: Immersive Steampunk Indie Sim Consciously Evoke Classic, Beloved Thief Games of the Early 2000s

Gloomwood, the new steampunk-themed indie sim game now in Steam Early Access, consciously evokes the classic Thief PC games so much, the publisher Newblood Games even got a special URL to promote it: ThiefWithGuns.com.

It is very much Thief with steampunky guns -- but as with the original Thief games from the early 2000s, the whole point is not to use noisy weapons unless you have to. And instead, to stealthily stay in darkness, using the light meter (yes, there's a Thief-style light meter!) to check how visible you are, and also, avoid stepping on noisy surfaces. The overall experience is incredibly immersive, making you constantly aware of your virtual environment. 

I played an earlier version of Gloomwood last month and instantly adored it; the visuals, the emerging story, and above all, the stealthy gameplay and the sense of truly being immersed in the world of the game. It's what got me into immersive games two decades ago, including (eventually) the Metaverse. 

As it happens, Newblood's Dave Oshry tells me, veterans of late-lamented Thief creator Looking Glass Studios are very much aware of Gloomwood, and even advised on it -- including acclaimed designer Warren Spector (Deus Ex/System Shock), who did some early work on Thief: 

Here's What a Beautiful Wheat Field in Second Life Looks Like -- Raw Screenshot vs. Artist's Final Image

Walsh County on the Campton sim [click here to teleport]

I was so amazed by Micah Volmaire’s “Timeless - Part I”  featured in a Cajsa post last week that I had to visit myself -- it's a beautiful wheat field dubbed Walsh County. [Click here to teleport]

I also wanted to do a compare and contrast with Volmaire's final image.  Above is what Walsh County looks like taken as a direct screengrab from my laptop using the default SL viewer and most (but not all) the graphics features turned on.

And here's what it looks like through Volmaire's lens:

Smashing Spooky Season Screenshots by Flickr's Second Life Community

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

Halloween is nearly here so what are the spookiest, scariest, ickiest pics for the season? This is a spooky picture and really gross which is ideal for a Halloween picture. I would worry about this person any other time of year. “Countdown to Halloween” by Olvar Blakewell.

For more ghoulishness, click here:

Second Life User Creators Were Paid Out $86 Million in 2021! That's Decent Growth & Compares Well To Metaverse Leader Roblox

When I blogged about J.P. Morgan investing in Linden Lab payments spinoff Tilia last week, I missed this point from Forbes columnist and longtime Metaverse expert Charlie Fink:

Tilia is easy for developers to implement, and it’s simple and convenient for their customers to use. Transactions are instant and cost pennies, some of which go into the developer’s pocket. At Second Life, those pennies amounted to $86M last year.

Emphasis mine, because wow. I checked this with company spokesman Brett Linden who clarified that this $86 million is "the amount that was paid out to creators in 2021."

Yes: Second Life's content creator community earned $86 million from their virtual content last year.

This is notable for at least a couple reasons:

WATCH: This Impressive Machinima With Amazing Fight Scenes Was Shot Entirely in VRChat -- With One Actor Playing All the Fighters!

As teased back in August, here's S.Y.N.C., a short feature movie shot entirely in VRChat. Written, directed, edited, and performed by "Legend50210" (let's call him Legend for short), it's a fun sci-fi actioner with slick production values and impressive fight choreography -- even more impressive, when you realize Legend plays all the characters.

"The loops are recorded animations of myself," as he explained over the Summer. "The FreezeFrame mod had a 'Sync' button at the time and it allowed me to line up all animations from the start when I started a new clone."

In other words, he recorded the fight moves wearing different avatars in a full-body VR rig, then synced them together in post-production. What's really amazing to me is that the fight choreography is so fluid and seemingly full contact. That wasn't easy, says Legend:

Today's Flickr Pick: Spine-Tingling Screenshots of Spooky Season Second Life Homes

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

“House on Haunted Hill” from My SL Reflections seems a perfect Halloween picture with its orange and black theme and the slightly decrepit old Victorian home with a wrought iron fence and the bare trees, their silhouettes black and menacing. There are even bat shadows cast on the moon! It’s so perfect it inspired me to look for other SL haunted houses. 

For more spooky shelters, click here:

Metaverse Platforms Infographic: Now Well Over Half a Billion Monthly Users!

Update, 10/26: Nic just confirmed to me that his official total is now 505 million monthly active users across all the metaverse platforms he's tracking. 

Here's a core slice of the Metaverse Universe chart just updated for Q4 2022, from longtime virtual world analyst Nic Mitham. (Click here for the full version from his analyst firm, Metaversed.) When I blogged his Q1 2022 chart, the total number of monthly active users (based on publicly available data) was just under 500 million. Now, counting  platforms which roughly fit the classic Snow Crash definition, it's over 505 million monthly active users. Those include: