New World Notes

Linden Lab Launches Creator Partnership Program to Help Grow Second Life -- Including Creators Outside SL Ecosystem

Another piece of Linden Lab's strategy to grow the Second Life user base was just revealed:

We’re excited to unveil the Creator Partnership Program, a new initiative that invites our talented creator community to play a central role in shaping the future of Second Life. This program is all about collaboration—between Linden Lab and creators like you—to co-create content and experiences that delight both new and existing residents...

[We] invite creators of all types to help us build and improve the next generation of Second Life new user experiences and beyond. Whether you’re a fashion designer, avatar builder, home goods creator, experience developer, or just someone with a standout idea—we want to hear from you...

Work hand-in-hand with Linden Lab to shape the future of user experiences and improve Second Life. Help define how new users experience Second Life—from their very first moments to long-term engagement.

The announcement doesn't go into this detail, but "creators" refers not only to SL-centric creators, I can confirm, but includes creators who work on multiple platforms:

"We are hoping for it," Linden Lab head Brad Oberwager tells me, when I ask about that point. "And we are going to do something big with creators in May through December."

I'm glad the company is encouraging creators outside the SL ecosystem, because they'll be solely needed to actually grow the Second Life user base beyond the existing core. Linden Lab has recently partnered with SL brands like game developer MadPea and SL shopping site Seraphim, but these are already well-known creators in the community, and are inevitably architected only to serve the established community. Which is totally fine, of course, but with growth remaining flat, even after the launch of the mobile app, creators how also have non-SL experience are desperately needed.

Likely candidates? Creators more familiar with Roblox, for one, because Second Life's new scripting language, SLua, has the same basis as Roblox's Luau. As Signal Linden (Bennett Goble) told me recently:

ROBLOX Overwhelmingly Remains a Mobile-Centric Metaverse Platform Despite Quest / PC / Console Option

Here's some new Roblox stats which caught my eye:

Roblox reached 82.9 million daily active users in 2024 with 80% of those playing the popular game on mobile devices, according to Roblox's annual report.

PC was the second most popular platform at just 17%, followed by consoles at 3%.

Emphasis mine! Lately the company has been pushing premium PC/console-centric content like Frontlines, a AAA-quality multiplayer game and Tunneler, a fan-made tribute to Portal, not to mention going on Quest headsets in 2023. Despite that, PC/console usage remains small, while Quest usage is 2% or below. (I can't even find a VR usage number in the full report.)

Disappointing that Roblox hasn't been able to diversify usage much beyond mobile, which would also lead to a more diversified user base. (I.E., not just mostly kids on their parents phones/tablets.) But by the company's own data, that hasn't happened yet.

Cajsa's Choice: Great SL Landscape Photos by Mark Mirror -- With Teleport Links to Visit Yourself!

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

Mark Mirror is a landscape photographer and captures some of the most beautiful scenes in Second Life such as this glorious picture of “Midnight in Paris.” Where else can midnight be so beautiful? As with all his pics, click through for the SLurl to this spot!

For more landscape beauty from Mr. Mirror, click here:

WATCH: Learning Virtual World Community Building Lessons from Palia, the Popular Cozy MMO

After blogging about Palia's design mechanics for growing community earlier this month, and Dr. Ruth Diaz's thoughts on them, I got a chance to join Dr. Diaz on an embedded journey into Palia. Watch our tour above! Though you won't hear me speaking due to a technical glitch, I'm interviewing Dr. Diaz as she explores the world, with our core focus being: What Palia features should open non-MMO virtual worlds learn and try to emulate? 

To that question, Dr. Diaz points to the Flow Tree Grove ritual (at around 52 minutes in), where players on the same server meet to harvest these magic-infused trees.

"The Flow Tree Grove Ritual is the most impressive feature in many ways," she tells me. "It takes building a generous culture in the rest of the app, during the rest of the time people play, to make that a regular phenomena, work."

As she notes during the video, Palia players have come up with their own social principles around how to harvest these trees so that they may be shared: "[Palia development studio Singularity 6] have designed this game so cooperatively, that the community has built their own collective rule on how to enjoy something together with delayed gratification."

She even thinks the harvest ritual has become core to MMO's long-term success. "It's like a fruit of the whole Palia tree," as she puts it. "If this gets toxic their game is going under."

For myself, I was impressed by the cooking game (around 18 minutes in) where players are rewarded for working together to cook a single recipe within a certain time frame. That in itself encourages cooperation and community, and then at the end -- well, everyone knows the most fun and the best conversations at a house party happen in the kitchen.

More about that on her blog, such as how Palia's narrative informs the user community building:

SLCreator Survey: What OTHER Questions Should I Ask Besides These?

I'm starting to prepare my much-anticipated report on the state of the Second Life economy for 2025 -- a follow-up to this report from last year -- and it will include an anonymous survey sent to SL merchants.

Below are the questions I'm planning to ask. Are there other burning queries I should include?

Cajsa's Choices: Easter Season SL Screenshots -- Silly, Sacred, and Sweet

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

While browsing all the Happy Easter pictures of friends and relatives with their kids hunting for eggs and the laden tables of Easter dinners, I thought it was a good idea to see what Second Life residents had to offer. Second Life Easter was much more interesting, if I do say so myself. Leonorah Beverly’s “Happy Easter” is not quite in sync with the usual pastel sweetness you usually see, but that makes it interesting. I love that she takes such a departure from the expected. It is a fun picture. 

For more of Second Life Easter, click here:

Top 6 Posts Including: New Massive Virtual World Tech, Visiting a Mysterious Sexy Bot Island & a Huge Majority of SLers Call for Regulation of Gen AI

• On my Patreon: Linden Lab’s Mysteriously Abandoned Islands of Bot Bedrooms in Second Life. UPDATE: Linden Lab Replies, Calls Bot Islands "Low-Key Test"
• WATCH: Can Second Life Grow Without Being Marketed as a Game?
• Compare/Contrast: Sims 4 Speed Build vs. Meta's "Faster" Gen AI Tools
• Flat World Rising: PMR's Cardboard Avatars Top Seller on SL Marketplace, First Flat Town Shopping Event Starts This Weekend
• SL Marketplace Survey: Over 85% Want New Regulations of AI-Made Content; Majority Want Mandatory "Contains AI" Tag
• Watch: Quark Multiplayer Promises Massively Scaled Virtual Worlds

WATCH: Can Second Life Grow Without Being Marketed as a Game?

Bumped up for weekend watching and discussions. Originally published on my Patreon

SL YouTuber Prisqua Newall and Hari Sutherland (author of Second Life's first coffee table book) recently invited me to have this fun debate (watch above!) about ideas for growing the user base of our favorite virtual world. We touch on a number of strategies, variations of which have been tried before (including themed welcome areas).

Somewhat hilariously, we end up agreeing on one that hasn't yet been tried: Pay people to join Second Life. Or more specifically, give YouTube/Twitch/TikTok etc. influencers an affiliate cash reward for getting their followers to become SLers over a certain period of time. There's already a number of influencers who stream SL along with other virtual worlds. (One, Carmen King, has over 1 million followers.) Their fan bases already have an incentive to join them in-world for fun events, and because their stock in trade is live video, they can help these new users get over the various tech/UX hurdles they'll inevitably come across. So it's definitely worth trying!

My own focus is on presenting/marketing Second Life as a sandbox sim game, to go after the people who already play similar virtual worlds/sandbox games. As you can see by the adamant viewer comments in the YouTube video, the term "game" rubs many the wrong way.

"[We’re] still debating what Second Life actually is," as Prisqua puts it. "And judging by the comments on my channel, people are really offended by it being called a game … like, passionately so."

It's totally fine that many (if not most) users refuse to call Second Life a game. I suspect we're dealing with an unbridgeable generation gap, not of age, but experience -- those who grew up with online games already know they're also a special kind of social/community space where real relationships are fostered and formed. Those who did not tend to see games as being trivial or kids stuff and definitely not worth their time, so take personal umbrage when Second Life is branded as one.

All that to one side, the fact remains: By refusing to market/present Second Life as a kind of sandbox simulation game, Linden Lab is giving up on the easy opportunity to grow the user base by many millions of users who are already intimately familiar with similar products, i.e. gamers. (Second Life still not being on Steam being the most obvious example of that sin of omission.)  

Anyway, here's Prisqua and Hari's takeaways from this chat:

Cajsa's Choices: SL Flickr Artist Favorites from a Creator Called Infinity

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

∞ (yes the infinity sign) is a new-to-me account whom I discovered in Vyka Coy’s favorites in this third, and last, leg of the FaVes Game. She is  someone who documents her life in Second Life. Her stream has no other purpose other than showing her friends, her home, her travels, and sharing her joys. Sometimes it seems that we are all taking pictures with a secondary purpose from vendor ads to blogging features to art projects. ∞ is taking pictures for the fun of it, sharing her life with us. I love this picture. The bike is so romantic with the stack of books and gathering of flowers. She’s taking a break, looking at the traffic on the river. I can’t wait to see who is in her Favorites. 

So who is next? To see, click here:

Compare/Contrast: Sims 4 Speed Build vs. Meta's "Faster" Gen AI Tools

I've asked this before, but here I go again: What's the point of prompt-based world building, when we already have many multiple 3D building tools which are user-friendly, feature-rich, and, well, fun? This point must be repeated, since Meta is currently promising we can build faster and smarter with GenAI Tools in Meta Horizon Worlds:

Today, we’re excited to follow up on that commitment by expanding access to the desktop editor and its GenAI tools into the UK and Canada in addition to the US. These tools dramatically reduce development time from weeks to as little as hours; accelerating the ability of creators to translate their visions into high-fidelity worlds that users love.

Watch the demo above. It makes me wonder if anyone at Meta has ever watched a speedbuild video before. Because here's one from a Sims 4 user who's not only building about as fast and with the same quality output, but enjoyably chatting as she does: