New World Notes

The Problem With Meta's Approach to Avatars in Horizon Worlds -- Excerpt, Making a Metaverse That Matters

With news that Meta's Horizon Worlds metaverse platform is finally coming to mobile in the run-up to next month's Meta Connect developer conference, here's an excerpt from Making a Metaverse That Matters on the fundamental mistakes Meta is still making in its approach to avatars -- including insights from Second Life co-founder Cory Ondrejka, who went on to become a top VP at Facebook, led the company's acquisition of Oculus VR -- but has serious misgivings about Meta's “infantilized human avatars”, as he calls them:

Richard Bartle Asked Midjourney to Generate Avatars of 15 MMOs -- Can You Guess Which MMO Each is Supposed to Represent?

PANEL 1

Richard Bartle, MMO/virtual world pioneer, has been playing around with  Midjourney lately, and was curious how the AI image generator would visually interpret MMO avatars across the decades:

"I went to Midjourney and gave it the following prompt: 'character from [name] MMORPG //photorealistic --ar 2:4", where [name] is the name of a past or present virtual world. Points to note: Midjourney doesn't seem to have much data on some of these; there's a huge preponderance of white, female characters; for MUD and Second Life, I put 'virtual world' rather than 'MMORPG'."

Here's an alphabetical list of the virtual world avatars depicted here:

• Age of Conan
• City of Heroes
• Crowfall
• Dungeons & Dragons Online
• Eve Online
• EverQuest 2
• Lineage 2
• Lord of the Rings Online
• New World
• Old School Runescape
• Second Life
• Star Citizen
• Star Wars Galaxies
• Star Wars the Old Republic
• Word of Warcraft

Three are above in Panel 1. Here's three more from Panel 2:

PANEL 2

Here's six more MMO avatar sets to identify -- and answers at the very bottom of this post:

Anti-Trans Concern Trolls an Ongoing Problem in Second Life (Comment of the Week)

While trolls recently griefing a Second Life flag with a trans flag may have the new-ish twist of adding pro-Russia propaganda, reader "yup" notes that antit-trans trolling is a constantly occurring issue in the virtual world:

Sadly these anti-trans trolls infiltrate everywhere in Second Life too and they target trans places since awhile. They are also joined by US conservative activists and trolls, who pretend to be moderate or have common sense, but in fact they parrot unhinged far-right slogans. Interaction is often more subtle than rezzing prims. LGBT+ dating boards are targeted too, there is at least a known case.

Often, though, it begins by private messages, starting slow, but in a manipulative way. The victims then let their guard down, then the trolls or "concerned trolls" do what they do. What at first may seem like a normal chat, then becomes something else. Depending on their target, the victim - even worse who was intending to just enjoy a safe space with like-minded people and feel understood - may end up with doubts or attacked and hurt.

I've definitely seen this kind of behavior in SL-oriented sites and on Reddit. Writing about Second Life's large trans community, Cajsa Lilliehook recently noted that it often pops up on a popular avatar gossip site:

Second Life Finally Adds New Mesh-Based Avatars & Fun Web-Based Setup Experience for First-Time Users -- But Lack of Non-Human Options is a Serious Mistake

This has been hinted at for months and even accidentally popped up on the test grid recently, but Linden Lab finally launched new starting mesh-based avatars and a "customize your new avatar" mini-game-type experience (similar to what you get at the start of The Sims franchise) for new users right on the homepage:

We're excited to announce the launch of our new Starter Avatars! These avatars, called Senra, are a fresh mesh take on the classic Second Life avatar, with a customizable modern and stylish look. These avatars will give new residents the opportunity to get started with a mesh body and personalize their own unique look the very first time they log in to Second Life and get a taste for the endless possibilities of avatar customization available to SL Residents.

Go here to join.secondlife.com to try it yourself. You'll probably want to use a different browser than what you normally employ for logging into Second Life's website. These are very rudimentary avatars, so longtimers may understandably squawk, but the great thing is this gently leads new SL users into the virtual world in a way that's, you know, fun.

Some other thoughts:

• It's optimized for mobile! That alone is a huge leap forward for the first-time user experience.
• Since these avatars come with a dev kit, expect a new burst of avatar fashion items in what's been a pretty static economy dominated by 2-3 mesh body giants.
• There's a serious lack of non-human, non-standard avatars. This really conveys a false impression of the varieties of expression that Second Life makes possible -- and will further distort the virtual world's culture around a "Malibu lifestyle" aesthetic. (See below.)

See my Starting Avatar avatar below:

I Doubt the SAG Strike Will Lead to Hollywood Replacing Actors With Synthetic Humans - Here's Why

The Screen Actors Guild strike is now in full throttle, with artificial intelligence a key component of the walk-out. (SAG rejected a proposal by Hollywood studios to create and own AI versions of actors in perpetuity without compensation.) Inevitably, that's caused some AI evangelists to wonder: Do we even need human actors any more at all?

"Doesn’t this just create demand for Hollywood studios to create Synthetic Actors?" As my colleague Jeremiah Owyang put it recently. "Disney+ Netflix: seems like over 50% of content is CGI or digitally altered."

There's already quite a lot of digital-only actors in movie and TV, especially in epic crowd scenes. (And for quite some time: WETA Digital innovated this for the battles in the original Lord of the Rings trilogy over two decades ago.) So the real question is whether we should expect studios to clamor for digital-only actors in bit parts -- or even in starring roles.

There I'm high skeptical, not just on a "Do we really want all human culture synthesized?" moral and philosophical level, but on basic feasibility:

Watch: Avatar Customization in Rod Humble's Life by You Revealed

Back in March we had our first in-depth preview of Life by You, the new life simulation game by ex-Linden Lab CEO / former EA/Sims lead Rod Humble, now here's a granular look at its avatar customization features -- bodies and clothing above, more below (with an emphasis on facial characterization).

It's a great look at a modern avatar experience with a clean, bright, easy-to-use UI that's still highly granular, where pretty much any appearance can be achieved. Many Second Life users have called for Linden Lab to update its avatar customization so it's closer to this.

But as Humble himself might say, it's far too late to change the SL avatar system: There are too many user-made hacks and add-ons that would be broken by an upgrade, literally putting thousands of community content creators out of a job. (For instance, the whole attachable SL hair industry is built on the Second Life default hair UI being so limited.)

One alternative is to offer SL mobile app users a new avatar UI that's closer to the Life by You version, even if that means creating a kind of class/social divide between mobile and PC users. But that's probably inevitable anyway, since it's almost impossible create an equal experience across multiple devices. 

Anyway, more on Life by You avatars and art below:

Barbie Meme for Barbie Movie Gets Metaversey With SL Avatars!

Pretty much the moment after the latest trailer to Greta Gerwig's Barbie movie dropped, SLers have been taking the official meme generator, and uploading pics of their avatar to it. Here's a gallery of some so far on Cajsa's Flickr gallery, which -- Second Life being Second Life -- may be a bit edgier than your usual Barbie.

Submit your own to Cajsa's feed:

• Go here to make the meme. 
• Upload to Flickr, tag your pic with #SecondLifeBarbie
• Creative and subservice captions highly encouraged!

We may devote another post to our favorites, but only if they're wild enough to impress Greta Gerwig herself! Here's the trailer to get into the vibe:

Awesome Second Life Avatar Cosplay Tributes to Legendary Authors Sylvia Plath, Karen Blixen, and Virginia Woolf

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

Cecilia Nansen has created a special photo album offering her photographic tributes to her favorite authors and a favorite photographer. I didn’t need her description to recognize the iconic features of Virginia Woolf. She even captures how Woolf seemed to be looking inward, interrogating herself as well as the world around her. Click here to compare with the IRL photo.

For more amazing avatar author tributes, click here:

Since TikTok Can Turn Users Into Avatarized Versions of Themselves, Will the Proteus Effect Kick In?

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As a general rule, when people create a virtual world avatar for themselves, most tend to opt for a conventionally idealized version of their offline selves  -- younger, more symmetrical, in better shape, and so on. Basically, hotter.

TikTok, everyone's favorite social media app controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, has taken that to the next inevitable stage with Bold Glamour, a new machine language-driven augmented reality filter which basically avatarizes a person's real appearance in real time: 

The Bold Glamour filter, now used over 16 million times since its release last month, contours your cheekbone and jawline in a sharp but subtle line. It also highlights the tip of your nose, the area under your eyebrows, and the apples of your cheeks. In addition, it lifts your eyebrows, applies a shimmer to your eyelids, and gives you thick, long, black eyelashes. It has, as the name implies, a glamorous effect. The aesthetic itself is impressive. However, the really amazing thing is how well it functions. The filter doesn’t glitch when your face moves or if something like a waving hand interrupts the visual field, as filters usually do. 

There's obvious concerns that this is yet another social media app that will only worsen users' self-esteem, especially for vulnerable young women and girls.

At the same time, I'm also curious how Bold Glamour might relate to the Proteus Effect. That's the phenomena discovered by Stanford researchers who found that when people embody an attractive avatar in a virtual world, they themselves exhibit more confidence in real life:

Readings: Why The Fight for Real World Racial Equality is Just as Crucial in the Metaverse

It's a common misconception that virtual worlds are a safe escape from our offline prejudices. This is sometimes true but often not the case. In fact, the anonymous nature of metaverse platforms and other virtual worlds can make expressions of racism worse - especially when avatars are based around a realistic human model. Our best hope is being aware of that reality, and preparing for it.

Here's some New World Notes readings on theme: