New World Notes

What to Watch & Read This Weekend: inZOI Early Review, Philip Rosedale on Community Building & PlayerUnknown Makes a Metaverse Platform

This long inZOI playthrough by Rudi Rennkamel (watch above) is from a few months ago, but it's the most thorough I've seen so far. The avatar creation and 3D building system is quite impressive, with some caveats. Unless I missed it, sadly no mention of inZOI's cat god though. 

Brendan "PLAYERUNKNOWN" Greene is making a metaverse platform (something he hinted with a Steam demo last December), and now Edwin Evans-Thirlwell of Rock Paper Shotgun has an in-depth look at his plans.

Such as:

There is certainly a grand design here, but it's more about the role Go Wayback will play in the aforesaid "3D internet" stuff, which I find pretty draining to describe. To recap, Go Wayback is the first of three games that are sort of one big rolling exercise in cultivating the technology for a bunch of "interoperable" gameworlds. As Brendan Greene explained to me after my hands-on, it paves the way for Artemis, which will run on the studio's own Melba engine, with the promise of much larger generated maps and "millions" of players per session. As for the eventual "Game Three" - this, seemingly, will be the capstone for an open-ended network of holodecky fantasies in which people can generate, modify, share and monetise worlds or bits of worlds via means yet to be fully described.

I can't believe people are still saying "3D internet" which is a term from when Nirvana was still touring. But then again, I can't believe people are still talking about web3, which Greene does. Still, the breadth of ambition is impressive.

Finally, there's Philip Rosedale's latest think piece, which also reads like a design document to a new social app (that he's maybe building?):

Brad Oberwager Explains Why Linden Lab Promoted Second Life With Stock / AI Images -- And Why They've Now Stopped.

Originally posted on my Patreon here

UPDATE, March 4: This story continues here.

If you've visited Facebook recently, you may have noticed new official ads for Second Life which incorporate video and images that are AI-generated. (And at least in one case, uses an Adobe Stock image.)

After seeing complaints about this from SL creators on social media on Wednesday night (see some samples below), I reached out to Linden Lab head Brad Oberwager, who spoke with me while standing in the rain outside his Boston hotel during a family trip.

As we spoke, it quickly became clear to me that this was probably an honest mistake -- and clear to Oberwager how upsetting this ad campaign might be to many in the SL community.

These are not official ads for Second Life, he explained, but only A/B tests using mock-up ads, created in preparation for the eventual, actual, official Second Life advertising campaign -- which will, he confirmed with me, only use SL-based content by Second Life creators.

"I'm preparing to spend millions of dollars [promoting Second Life]," as he put it to me. "Until I know what works, every dollar is wasted."

He was actually surprised community members had even seen these A/B tests, because Linden Lab has only spent a very modest amount (i.e. three figures a day) on them.

"We can't guess [on an ad campaign] and hope for the best," he explained. "We're going to run test ads and once we find out what works we'll talk with all the creators", on creating SL-based ads.

"Is it dragons? Is it relationships? We have no idea what works [with SL ads]." He really means it: The ad campaigns they've launched up to now have done nothing to grow the active user base.

But why not just use existing Second Life screenshots and video created by the community for these ads? There's even a promotional clause in Second Life's Terms of Service, granting the company the right to use any user-made content "to advertise, market, and promote [SL]."

On that point, my impression is Linden Lab didn't want to use SLer's content without their permission for an ad. But seeking permission takes quite a lot of time, especially since you technically need to get permission from every single content creator whose work is featured in an image/video, including any creator of the literal sky. (This very dilemma was raised by HarperCollins' lawyers with the cover of my first book!)

"I couldn't test fast enough creating these [ads] in SL", as Oberwager puts it. "I've got to get the best 8-10 messages, then you get the creative."

In other words, he adds: "100% of the actual ads will be Second Life-based. "

So ironically, while apparently trying to be highly respectful of creators' content, Linden Lab went with an approach that's inadvertently made many of them even angrier (see sample below).

In any case, now that the Second Life community has complained about these mock-ups, this A/B test has been halted:

Cajsa's Choices: The SL-Based Imagery By "Awesome Fallen" Are Awesome Indeed

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

Awesome Fallen has one of the most powerful photostreams you will find in Second Life Flickr, heavily post-processing SL screenshots into something transcendent. “On Social Media……” captures the effects social media can have on a person, tightly wound, sharp but internally vacant, with detritus flying too fast to comprehend and understand, leaving us stunned, but also hostile. It’s amazing and immediately, I knew I had to feature her work. 

For more from Awesome Fallen, click here:

Expert Explains How Using VR Can Help You to Have Lucid Dreams IRL

Flying in VR can help induce lucid dreams, says researcher

With Quest headset sales slumping last holiday season, and their overall active usage dipping down to 1 in 3 active owners,  there's a good chance your VR rig is gathering dust. Or maybe you're still enjoying it for games and virtual worlds like VRChat and Rec Room. In either case, here's a VR application you might want to try out:

Train yourself to have lucid dreams in real life.

You know those: The seriously cool kind of dreams where you experience yourself as being aware that you’re in a dream -- and are even able consciously change what’s happening within the dream.

This post brought to you by the generous support of the Virtual Worlds Museum, now crowdfunding an expansion to build the largest resource and online community devoted to virtual worlds! Go here for all the details on Kickstarter.

Yes, you can train yourself to lucid dream over time without VR. One common technique is to get in the habit of keeping a notebook near your bed, and writing down your dreams the moment you wake up from one. (Which I’ve never tried, because frankly that seems like a pretty sure way to ruin a good night’s sleep.)

So if you have a VR headset, you might be able to take a shortcut to all that.

These tips come from Dr. Jarrod Gott, who led an experiment testing that very thing a few years ago. I’ll get into the science down the way, but since it’s the holidays, here’s the fun part first. As with anything in VR, be careful, and don’t do this near furniture or someone you can trip on.

How to Train Yourself to Lucid Dream With VR:

• Play highly immersive content. Flying games are very good for this. IE, "Velocity". Enough to produce a mild dissociative experience following play.

• Then conduct reality intention checks within this 1-2 [second] dissociative window.

Here’s what Dr. Gott means by dissociative experience:

Extraordinary, Androgynous SL Style Photos by Winter Jefferson

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

Winter Jefferson has been a fashion icon in Second Life since 2008, pushing boundaries of fashion and style. (Those are not the same thing.) Impatient with gendered fashion expectations, his style has been gender-bending since the beginning. Describing himself on his Flickr profile, he wrote “I've escaped from your nightmares, but I may turn up occasionally in your wet dreams. I'm made of violence, style, sex and magic and all of those impossible things before breakfast. I blog and model, I'm a marketing maestro and I always, always bite.”

For more Wintery style, click here:

 

Second Life's New AI Character Creator Creates Sharply Divided Community Reaction Related to the Very Nature of the Virtual World

Linden Lab unveiled the latest version of its AI Character Designer late yesterday (website here, login required), created in partnership with Convai AI -- watch the demo on YouTube above. To judge by social media, the SL community reaction has been, well, contentious.

Here's a sample of YouTube comments:

So this looks like a nice feature, and just what I need for my land.

This is a game changer! We can't even imagine how it will influence the experience we'll soon have in Second Life! 🤓 Awesome work!

... and here's a sample from /SecondLife in a post with the somewhat negative title:

Eat your SLop™" - LL releases a new "How to make AI Bots" video on their official channel... a video that is itself written and voiced by AI.

wow i hate this

f*** this, give us better ways to socialise

Might as well play The Sims at that point.

That last comment is quite trenchant actually, speaking to a sharp divide between the Second Life community who see the virtual world as primarily a human-to-human socialization platform -- and others who interact with it more as a kind of spicier version of a life simulator game. (And roughly generalized, oldbie SLers tend to fall in the former category, while new-ish users who discovered SL on YouTube and other social media fall into the latter.)

I touched on this topic in my recent interview with Philip Rosedale and Brad Oberwager:

Raph Koster's Stars Reach Kickstarter Succeeds in One Hour - Including 4 People Who Pledge $10,000 Each to Buy Their Own Planet!

The Kickstarter for Stars Reach, Raph Koster's highly ambitious galaxy sandbox MMORPG I wrote about last month, just launched earlier today... and surpassed its initial $200K target goal within an hour. So far it has over 1400 backers, with the majority pledging between $30-100 for early access to play the game, along with other benefits.

On the very highest end, four people have already pledged at the "Galactic Plenipotentiary Tier" at an eye-watering $10,000, which comes with your own whole world:

Claim a Planet: Choose a climate and planet type, have it named after you and assume immediate governance of the planet when the game launches. Disclaimer: Maintaining a planet requires an active population. [Emphasis mine! - WJA]

"In the game," Raph tells me, "planets can be abandoned, wormholes can collapse, and the map shifts over time. So you get a planet and skip the claim process, but you still have to be active enough to keep it." In other words, you can have your own world, but you need to keep maintaining it.

Stars Reach's success on Kickstarter demonstrates the willingness of gamers to crowdfund a new MMO, something that was very much in question even last month. In this current climate, with the game industry in painful flux, it offers hope that devs might consider crowdfunding their way into publication.

What advice would Raph Koster give other MMO/virtual world developers on crowdfunding their own projects?

"Have most of your game done first, so you can let people play and build their confidence that there’s something actually there," Koster tells me. "If your game isn’t good, it won’t go well, of course. But if the game is solid even in early stages, then you are providing proof that you are worth backing."

Watch the trailer below!

Cajsa's Choices: Minimalist Second Life Fashion Photos by Zlaggy

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

Zlaggy is a Second Life microblogger on Flickr. She is an exciting blogger because she has a unique and creative fashionista. None of her looks are like anybody else and that’s what I most admire. Her photos are excellent and minimalist, just her against a white background most of the time but with clever poses and completely unique outfits such as this tricorn hat with a black bodycon dress and an arrow. She’s fierce. 

For more of Zlaggy’s unique looks, click here:

The Coming of "AI Fast Fashion" in Second Life -- and the Danger of Not Addressing It Now (Comment of the Week)

Max at his mainstore/sim, Rustica [direct teleport here]

Last week's post on how AI-based image-to-3D mesh conversion will impact virtual world economies dependent on mesh content has inspired quite a lot of conversation across Second Life social media. Indie creator Tim Hannan demonstrated how it's now relatively easy to generate an SL-based shoe from a real world photo; while the results are rudimentary, the quality will quickly improve.

Maxwell Graf, a longtime 3D creator/merchant in Second Life and many other platforms, argues that we must decide now how to co-exist and regulate AI-based content in the virtual world. Read his argument (originally posted here) below. 

[Gen AI programs] will chip away at the market until there is no viable reason or alternative for creators to continue doing completely original work and being able to make any amount of profit from it to justify the effort, unless profit is not the desired result or customers are willing to pay a premium for items they trust are being created without it. At some point, AI will dominate the economy of available goods in the marketplace, simply because it makes it easier to make money.

The SL creator economy is already a predominant aspect of why SL continues to exist at the size and concurrency it does. Roleplay environments, entertainment, hobbies, live/DJ music venues and even just hanging out with friends has diminished considerably over the years and the creators making stuff is the main pillar supporting it now.

However, even that has changed over time, in types of content, point of purchase/marketing methods, pricing and product usage; the market is dominated by avatar bodies, fashion and accessories, mostly presented at events, purchased mostly from Marketplace and considered largely disposable (wear it once and put it away, etc.) Not always, but I am considering the primary market. Even furniture, home and garden items are rarely used for the amount of time they used to be before being changed to something else.

Add to all of these factors the expansion of the number of creators/brands available, vastly increased from even a decade ago. ALL of these factors contribute to dividing up the limited economic pie of sales into smaller and smaller slices, at a time when the plethora of events and competition drives the pricing of items down and down, limiting return unless volume is increased.

THAT nexus brings us to AI and how it is arriving at exactly the moment when that volume economy is dominating the marketplace:

Top Four Posts Including VRChat Volleyball and the Coming of AI-Driven Mesh Generators

• Meta's Horizon Worlds $50M Creator Fund Yet Another Deep Misunderstanding of How Metaverse Platforms Work
• New VRChat-Based Volleyball Game Is So Playable, It Has a Player League & Live Sportscasts. So I Interviewed the Creator!
• What Will Virtual World Economies Do With Image-to-3D Mesh Conversion AI Programs Coming Soon?
• Grand Theft Auto VI Becoming Grand Theft Metaverse Like My Book Predicted? I'm Checking on Early Reports