New World Notes

Meme Means Business: Second Life Creator Sells TWO THOUSAND Copies of Combat-Ready Foldable Chair, Latest in a Meme-to-SL Business Model

A few days after the folding chair combat meme went viral (for hilarious and horrible reasons) earlier this month, the proprietor of Bad Unicorn, a Second Life content brand, went to work on bringing that meme in all its deranged glory to Second Life. It's now available in the Marketplace:

• 6 texture options
• Hit your friends or foes!
• Animate people you are attacking.

Last weekend, it was only available in Bad Unicorn's in-world store, but it still sold super-well, Mr. Unicorn tells me: 2000 copies going for L$ each.

I boggle a bit at the numbers.

 

ChatGPT Has Been Slumping on Google Trends Since April -- And Outranked by Leading Metaverse Platforms Roblox, Minecraft & Fortnite

According to Google Trends -- which is actually more or less the collective global brain -- interest in ChatGPT peaked last April, for a brief time, and has been trending down ever since -- even though there have been numerous updates and expansions to the program last May, June, and July.

More key for this blog, ChatGPT only briefly outpaced leading metaverse platforms Roblox, Minecraft and Fortnite on Google Trends in April. Before and since, however, it's trailed behind, usually by quite a lot.

Why? For one thing, platforms comprised of live, active, masses of creative people will always be more popular than an automated service. For another, ChatGPT like all other Large Language Models are by definition mediocre content generators:

Incredible Second Life Screenshot Photos Inspired by Emily Dickinson & Other Poets

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

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

Emily Dickinson

Becca Ordinary’s image “Hope Is the Thing With Feathers” is anything but ordinary. I love how she captures the idea of the poem in a way that takes note of the birds, but goes in another direction. It’s imaginative and truly captures the spirit of the Dickinson poem. And poetry is what inspires Becca’s work. 

For more poetical pictures, click here:

 

Hamilton-Themed Crossover Roblox Experience Yet to Gain Mass User Growth -- Here's How It Still Can

[To the tune of "Guns and Ships":]

How does a metaverse platform in need of a shower
Somehow become a global superpower?
How do we emerge from the Age Cliff quagmire
Leave the virtual world waving stock prices higher?

Yo, turns out we have a secret weapon
A Broadway brand you know and love, that's unafraid to step in

He's constantly confusin', confoundin' the OpenAI henchmen
Everyone give it up for NASDAQ's favorite fighting Builderman!

While Roblox now has 300 million monthly active users, about the population of the United States of America, it's still striving to diversify the demographics of  its user base, about 75% of whom are under the age of 17. Roblox is actively confronting the dreaded Metaverse Age Cliff*, one of two key challenges to mass adoption (see below).

One possible solution: Import a ridiculously popular Broadway musical about the founding of the United States of America:

In the Hamilton Simulator, players use their own avatars as they rub shoulders with the musical’s characters and negotiate through 10 levels set during the Revolutionary War. It starts at the New York docks and the goal is to free the city from British yoke. Appropriately, the music-filled game requires no real money from players.

The game has the blessing of writer-composer Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose blockbuster musical charts the rise and fall of statesman Alexander Hamilton and stresses his orphan, immigrant roots as well as his near-Greek tragedy of a fall.

Click here to start making redcoats redder with bloodstains.

Hamilton is actually an ideal IP to bridge the Metaverse Age Cliff, since the Broadway play is already popular with people across many generations, beginning with teenage theater kids, all the way up to Barack Obama.

Since launching last Friday, however, the Hamilton Simulator's audience numbers have actually been pretty mid: According to RoMonitor stats (see screengrab below), it's only attracted less than 500,00 visits:

 

Darkly Amazing Images from a Flickr Group Devoted to Noir in Second Life

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

I like exploring SL groups because I always find a few new people who do great work. I checked out SL Noir, influenced perhaps by the book I recently finished, Denver Noir. It’s part of a series of what you might call around-the-world in noir. They’ve done noir Paris, Rome, Hong Kong, and Baghdad, but when will they do Second Life? At least the SL Noir group will give them a place to start looking. 

“Night Stop” from Lam Erin does what the best noir stories do. It suggests, it doesn’t tell. The road is narrow. The trees grow so close to the road, they may fall and block the road in high winds. The rain is heavy and there are storm clouds in the sky. The car is a paltry refuge from the elements, but they home where they have stopped cold and unwelcoming without a single light. At least Brad and Janet saw a light in the darkness. 

For more noir, click here:

Ultima Underworld's Untold Influence on Early Metaverse Development -- Including Second Life

Watching Philip Rosedale and Avi Bar-Zeev talk about early days in metaverse development, reader "Nadeja" points out another early milestone that's often under-appreciated -- the launch of pioneering game Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss: 

Another interesting thing is that in March 1992, just a few months before the publication of Snow Crash (June 1992), another influential work in the history of virtual worlds came out: Ultima Underworld. Although it wasn't set in a cyberpunk world and it was single player (as a RPG, you interacted with NPCs), the player's character was also called Avatar (apparently, Stephenson came to the idea independently, even though it was called "Avatar" in the Ultima series since Ultima IV, 1985), the gameplay was nonlinear and with emergent storytelling, it was an immersive sim:  There was crafting, fixing the equipment, cooking and eating, you needed sleep too, and to carry different kind of lights, each illuminating the walls differently and eventually burning out.

Its first-person 3D engine was quite sophisticated for the time (and influenced Carmack's Wolfenstein 3D engine too, that was a lot simpler and flat, but also a lot faster): you could look up and down; when you walked, the camera would bob slightly to simulate the motion of the walking; you could jump, swim, and even fly, there were slopes and bridges, you could drop items inworld from your inventory (not too different than "rezzing" in SL), you could take notes on the map, and many other things...

It gave you the sense of being in a real environment, freely explorable anywhere and interactive, and with customizable avatars. By today standard maybe you won't call it a virtual world; but in 1992, when Snow Crash was published, Ultima Underworld was the closest thing to it. So this is the best Neal Stephenson or someone else could get from the most powerful PCs (and taking most of the hard-disk space) in 1992.

Great points! To which I can add a fun fact: Back in 2004, since I knew him through some of my early articles, I invited lead Ultima Underworld developer Doug Church to visit Linden Lab and judge an early Second Life game development contest.

Philip was excited to meet Doug, because as I wrote in the first book, Ultima Underworld strongly enforced Philip Rosedale's vision of creating a virtual world:

I Ask Neal Stephenson About His Own Metaverse Definition, the Much-Delayed Snow Crash Movie/TV Adaptation, and How The Metaverse Is Already Larger Than He First Imagined

In case you missed it, FastCompany recently featured an excerpt based on my extensive interview with Neal Stephenson for the book. Highlights include his own definition of the Metaverse, reports that he looked into building it back in the 1990s right after Snow Crash was published, and that 1992 novel's long-delayed Hollywood adaptation. Marco Brambilla, director of the not horrible Stallone/Snipes 90s sci-fi movie Demolition Man, was attached to direct it as far back as 1996; the project's since changed Hollywood hands for now nearly 30 years.

So we talk about that, and I get to point out how the Metaverse concept is actually larger in real life than what he first imagined -- which elicits a classic taciturn Stephenson reply:

Cajsa's SL Flickr Pick: Milena Carbone, Who Expresses Herself in Virtual Dance, Photos & Writing

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

Milena Carbone is a gifted artist who excels in creating amazing pictures, dance performances, and writing. A true triple threat. “Dissonance” is a striking example of how deeply she looks beneath the surface. She recognizes that “life goes on” while death rains down on Ukraine. She sees the dissonance in the world where there is the sublime of dance and the savagery of war. 

For more of her thought-provoking work, click here:

Sannyのおすすめバーチャルワールドニュース : 2023年7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.