New World Notes

Tiny Glade, Procedurally Cozy Indie Sandbox Game, Already a Hit One Day After Launch. (First Step to a Tiny Glade Virtual World?)

Tiny Glade, the ridiculously adorable procedural indie sandbox "doodling" creation game from PounceLight, launched yesterday on Steam (with a 15% early bird discount), and it's already a runaway hit. With  over 2000 Overwhelmingly Positive ratings, it's fair to estimate Tiny Glade's likely sold over 100,000 copies on Steam in its first 24 hours. 

I played a bit of Tiny Glade last night, and can personally confirm its adorable ridiculousness. Unlike other sandbox building games, where you're directly (and painstakingly) connecting/adjusting objects, the procedural generation seems attuned to your mouse movements, delightfully filling in your design choices as you go. Create separate segments of a wooden fence, for instance, and without you having to ask, Tiny Glade helpfully connects them together, then turns the fence into a stretchable "fabric" you can pull across your glade. (You'll probably have to play the game yourself, to experience what I mean.)

As luck would have it, Tiny Glade comes at a time when "generative AI" continues to be a siren buzz word in tech, encouraging enthusiasts to imagine that gamers will want to text prompt virtual worlds  into existence. The success of Tiny Glade shows how procedural generative-assisted creation is preferred by actual gamers. As I wrote a few months ago: 

Tiny Glade puts the emphasis on user choice and creativity. The goal with the AI here is not to replace human creativity, but to make it easier, more delightful. It also seems robust enough that very dedicated people could, with enough practice, create especially amazing worlds.

To judge by all the wildly varied user-made castles on Tiny Glade's social media, that last part is especially true. It's also contributed to Tiny Glade's immediate success. Over the last year or two, PounceLight has been demoing their game on TikTok and YouTube, generating tens of millions of views -- while encouraging influencers to run with castle building on their own social channels. For instance:

Cajsa's Choices: Wonderfully Relaxed Avatar Portraits by Jena

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

Jena really knows how to relax, or at least her avatar does. Look how chill she is in this picture. I love the composition as well, how she divides the image into two diagonal sections, the one with the avatar and the one with the light. It’s simply enchanting. 

For more of this most relaxed avatar, click here:

Second Life Economy Report Now Free to All Patreon Members

My Summer 2024 report on the Second Life economy is now free to all my Patreon members here.

Bringing together responses from one hundred and eleven SL merchants, this overview of the Second Life economy goes in-depth on current/future trends and summarizes their sales results on topics like the best price to sell an SL item (see above).

Other topics include:

• How much realm money SL merchants are earning
• Where most of their sales originate (Marketplace, mainstore, etc)
• Their overall outlook on the current state of the SL economy

Join my Patreon and read it all for free here!

Top 6 Posts Including: Meta's Community Support Problem with Horizon Worlds & a Look at OpenAI-Powered NPCs in Second Life

• NPC Companions With Long-Term Memories & Evolving Relationships Powered by Llama & OpenAI, Now Available to Meet in Second Life
• Horizon Worlds Has Powerful Features, Says Former Meta Dev -- But Meta Isn't Giving the Platform's Creator Community Enough Visibility
• The Subtle Power of PBR in Second Life is Much More Than Mirrors
• What Virtual Worlds / Metaverse Platforms Now Have Between 10,000 - 200,000 Monthly Active Users?
• Perfectly Composed SL Landscape Photos by Natalia Corvale -- With Teleport Links to Take You to Them Too!
• Meta Could Be Turning Horizon Worlds Into a Cross-Platform Virtual Machine (Guest Post)

NPC Companions With Long-Term Memories & Evolving Relationships Powered by Llama & OpenAI, Now Available to Meet in Second Life

If you want to meet the latest in AI-powered NPCs, there's a sassy Southern sorority girl in Hathian you can chat with today: Click here to teleport to them. 

It's the latest in NPCs denizens of Crack Den, the long-running mini-MMO in Second Life. (Read my free Patreon story on Crack Den here.) Created by Alterscape Studio, lead developer Nadir Taov added basic NPC-driven gen AI tech to the MMO in July.

The new update this month, NPC Companions, is much more ambitious: 

"These aren’t just static characters," Nadir tells me. "They have distinct personalities and access to specific knowledge. For example, a police NPC can pull from the criminal reports maintained by players, while a nurse NPC can reference medical charts submitted by players." He's expanding the roster of these NPCs to 20 characters this weekend.  

And he really means "Companion" NPCs:

"They now have both short-term and long-term memory, retaining details from their interactions with players. These NPCs track relationship status, moving from stranger to close friend, based on how players interact with them over time. Attributes like kindness or hostility matter, shaping evolving relationships over time." Nadir tells me they can even recognize continually cruel behavior, and may exact West World-type revenge on their bullies.

And as I just discovered, they even interact with you when you physically bump into them:

Horizon Worlds Has Powerful Features, Says Former Meta Dev -- But Meta Isn't Giving the Platform's Creator Community Enough Visibility

Above: A Horizon Creator Community jam that Diaz managed

Is Horizon Worlds a more powerful platform than we give it credit for? Social scientist Dr. Ruth Diaz, who was formerly a Community Design Developer for Meta, recently shared some user-made Horizon Worlds builds with me (above), arguing that the platform has several features which do make it worthwhile. (More on that below.)

The problem, she tells me, is that Meta hasn't given the user community enough visibility -- or even engaged with them enough to begin with.

"Get to know the community," as she puts it in form of advice to Meta, "and focus your programming not on popular worlds, but enriching worlds. To me, this reflects that Meta's developers are still struggling with actually spending time in the LIVE app with those creating in it."

We've seen reports of Meta telling its staff to "dogfood" Horizon Worlds, but to Dr. Diaz, the company's standard doesn't go far enough: "When they say 'dogfooding', they mean using a separate app to try out new features."

In Meta's absence, she tells me, Horizon Worlds has become "an influencer-focused culture" -- "versus investing in genuine community building, which would mean up-skilling and investing in community leaders, instead of burning them out until they are canceled or leave on their own."

This might help explain why the last report of Horizon Worlds activity was only 200,000 users from 2023. But while Meta may not be supporting the user community as much as it deserves, Ruth tells me there is (or was) a community of engaged user creators on the platform expressing themselves in profound ways to the best of their abilities:

"A rich world doesn't have to be a complex world or a profoundly eye catching world," as she puts it. "It just has to have a story in it, that gets you in a really deep place. It rips open your heart with grief or joy. You know you are in the middle of someone's wound and/or rebirth. Some of the most heart-opening worlds that I've mentored into existence are made by people who still do not consider themselves creators. They are stories of severed limbs, severed relationships, hopes, and secret dreams, all woven into metaphor in a way where the emotion bursts through the people experiencing it... Influencer culture changed everything."

I've heard related things from other veterans of Meta who worked on Horizon Worlds. It's certainly a stark contrast with, say, VRChat, which is highly community creator focused, and is vastly more popular than Horizon Worlds even on Meta's own VR headsets.

Anyway, I asked Dr. Diaz to tell me about Horizon Worlds' advantages, and she shared this mini-essay: 

Sesi Shoots Second Life Shots of Sadly Quirky Aching Beauty

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

Sesi is a Second Life explorer who has a knack for finding the enchanting and adorable side of SL life. This picture is the epitome of adorable. I don’t recommend standing in a boat, but those two are short enough, they can get away with it. This is so adorable that I actually said “Ofer cute” even though I have lived in Oregon which boasts similar watery views for decades.  

For more of Second Life through an adorable lens, click here:

 

The Subtle Power of PBR in Second Life is Much More Than Mirrors

Now that PBR graphics are fully launched on Second Life, we're seeing a barrage of pics and videos showing off reflective/mirror effects made possible from physically based rendering. But it's this video of a swimming pool created by SL content creator Bhad Craven which recently caught my eye -- watch. It's not so much the mirror effects per se, but how the light reflecting on linoleum tiles and metal surfaces adds a subtle sense of realism and immersion.

"PBR is a game changer," Bhad affirms, laughing. "I hope people start to like it as much as creators. It's so much faster since baking isn't a thing. It makes my items actually shine, not having to fake reflections is great."

Not that developing in PBR is easy -- here's some notes of caution/advice from Mr. Craven:

What Virtual Worlds / Metaverse Platforms Now Have Between 10,000 - 200,000 Monthly Active Users?

I recently shared the top 10 most active metaverse platforms I'm tracking, with Meta's Horizon Worlds trailing at slot #10 with 200,000 monthly active users.  I'm now working with Julian Reyes of the Virtual Worlds Museum to chart the top 11 through 20 most popular worlds -- i.e. virtual worlds/metaverse platforms which currently have between 10,000 - 200,000 MAU.

To qualify, a given virtual world has to fit these three basic criterion (along with active usage):

• Immersive virtual worlds with avatars that are not primarily games/MMOs.
• Enables users to build their own world/space and invite friends into it.
• Currently online, out of closed beta, with over 100 active users.

Here's ten likely candidates which might now qualify for status in slots 11 through 20:

Perfectly Composed SL Landscape Photos by Natalia Corvale -- With Teleport Links to Take You to Them Too!

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

Natalia Corvale takes landscape pictures that could be used in a composition textbook. Here is Bella’s Lullaby, a lovely and favorite sim for photographers. She takes a picture of the lighthouse from a more interesting perspective and it’s framed as an excellent example of the Rule of Thirds which she likely used to crop this picture. I also like how the small island, its shoreline, and the ocean form concentric rings of open space. 

She also added the SLurl to take you there if you want to go and it’s so cute, the way she did it with emojis, I have to replicate it here:

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For more of Natalia’s excellent landscapes, click here: