New World Notes

Decade-Old Second Life Innovations Now Embraced as "New" by Mainstream

Vega in SL in 2006; Marshmello in 2019

When Marshmello performed in Fortnite last weekend, more than a few people were irked that media outlets like The Verge proclaimed it as a "first" or "unprecedented" -- when in fact, Second Life pioneered live music performances over 13 years ago.  Which is actually not all that long ago! But as reader Madeline Blackbart writes, it took that amount of time for many Second Life innovations to finally seem acceptable to a mass market:

I think as mainstream culture and the average person becomes more and more involved in the virtual world we're going to see a lot more of this retreading of old ground being called "new". Things like virtual "influencers" and virtual popstars and concerts aren't new to those of us who have been playing in virtual worlds like Second Life but they are to mainstream media and the "average" person. To be honest, I'm noticing it more and more, and it's interesting how what used to be something "misfits and shut ins" did (AKA living a virtual life) is just now becoming commonly accepted. I think years from now even if Second Life isn't around anymore we'll still see concepts from it integrated into mainstream life.

This is very true. Along with real world musicians performing virtually, here's a couple other SL-based innovations recently treated by the media as the Next Big Thing:

• Virtual celebrities and models for real life brands (including Kim Kardashian)
• Virtual land rushes and real estate speculation

Best accept the collective amnesia made inevitable by the Internet's eternal present, because we're likely to see many more new (old) innovations arriving (returning) soon. Even though they never really left.

How Linden Lab Could Pay Back Its Original Investors (Including Jeff Bezos) and Split Into Two Companies (Comment of the Week)

Above: Linden Lab's Crunchbase listing

Last week's reader comment from "Irihapeti'" suggesting that Linden Lab should sell off Second Life provoked so many further comments that I looked up the startup in Crunchbase. I believe there was a round of seed funding around 1999/2000 that's not reported there, but according to Crunchbase, since 2004 the company has raised $19 million in total investments -- most recently in 2006, when a lead investor was Jeff Bezos. (Which yes, suggests that the future of Second Life may be impacted by Bezos' upcoming divorce settlement.) That's less an investment than I had recalled last week. With Second Life still returning relatively reliable revenue of about $60-70 million a year, the company could probably find a buyer for SL-- at, perhaps, $250 million -- give its original investors a very decent profit, and still have enough to function.

However, Irihapeti returned to write out an even more intriguing thought experiment: Turn Linden Lab into two companies, one running Second Life, the other running Sansar and other projects. As she argues:

It doesn't have to be sold to a single buyer. Concerns over a sale can be ameliorated by issuing new additional shares in the Second Life company to new investors who put their money into dividend-returning (cash cow) investments. A cash cow investment is what Second Life now is from an investors' point of view.

The existing Linden Lab shareholders would get some buyback cash from this, and can either retain their existing shares in the Second Life company, or sell them on the open market as they choose. While also retaining for themselves all the shares in Linden Lab Research (Sansar, and the other Lab games) with a cash infusion to the Lab from the sale of new Second Life shares, and a second cash infusion from a sale of additional shares in Linden Research if they so choose.

In that scenario, Sansar "will stand or fall on its own merits in the marketplace. And not be tied to the continued success or otherwise of Second Life." And then this second company could focus on SL and its established customer base -- a good thing for them, Irihapeti argues:

Text-Based Viewer for Second Life & OpenSim? There's an App for That

Linden Lab may be finally ready to release an iOS "companion" app for Second Life, but reader "Saga" points out there's already a third party SL app in the App Store: "There is another app for SL chat/inventory for iOS. I use it now and then, it’s called MetaChat!" And so there is:

MetaChat is a text-only viewer for all Virtual Worlds based on the OpenSimulator software for 3D worlds.

iOS apps CANNOT RUN IN THE BACKGROUND !

There is no 3D view, this is a text-only viewer.

Add accounts from different worlds with different start locations.,
See your friendlist, read messages or write
Chat with groups, see group infos or write group notices
Chat in open world 
Move around a mini-map, teleport to landmarks
See your inventory/worn, preview textures or pictures, send items
Attach/Wear/Detach/TakeOff Clothes
Enter/leave groups
Add friends/invite/pay/remove

So about the same feature list as the late-lamented Pocket Metaverse, but updated more often (check the developer blog here). But caveat emptor, my dude: MetaChat's user reviewers are pretty middling. However, even most of the critical reviews still suggest it's worth considering as a purchase:

Staying Power of New VR Games Suggest Emergence of "Solid, Niche Market" (Comment of the Week)

Last week I noted usage of VR headsets on Steam still remains below 1% of the market, but Sinespace CPO Adam Frisby has a more positive perspective on the same data:

Here's a interesting chart, which was pointed out to me recently. [See above and here.] That's 10 popular VR games over time (and yes, there's some selection bias there, it's not all of them). The key thing to note is that these are all VR-only games (no desktop users).

The interesting thing here to note is staying power -- Fallout 4 VR, Skyrim VR, etc all were flash in the pan, people picked them up, and dropped them. What we're seeing with newer titles like Beat Saber is retention - people are going back into the games over and over again, which has not really happened with VR titles until the past 6 months or so.

That gives me some evidence that there is some long term viability here - the problems though are still numerous. A lot of the fundamental hardware issues have not been addressed yet; weight, comfort, heat/sweat, etc are substantially better than two years ago, but still not nearly as solved as they need to be. And the other big issue is space - not everyone has room for a 2x2m+ play area where they can sprawl out.

That said, I think if the market grows 5-10x from now (to 10% of the PC gaming population), that's enough for a solid, but niche market segment -- like RPGs/RTSs which occupy a similar percentage.

I actually agree with this: It's quite possible we'll see VR headset growth reach 1 in 10 of the PC gamer population. That would be enough to sustain a small ecosystem of low budget indie VR game developers. Technically that would make VR games a niche of a niche (core PC gamers) of a niche (core gamers including console gamers), but for folks like Beat Games Studio based in Prague, it's quite sustainable.

Speaking of which, the game drawing the most Steam users after Beat Saber is Pavlov VR, a VR-only Counterstrike-type FPS that's been out on the market since 2017. (To Adam's point about sustainability.) As with VRchat, it's popular with YouTubers, so watch a wacky Let's Play below.

Linden Lab Should Sell Off Second Life to Focus on Sansar, Return to Being More Like a Lab (Comment of the Week)

This is probably more of a thought experiment than something that can actually happen, but reader Irihapeti's intriguing prediction for 2019 is this -- Linden Lab sells off Second Life to laser focus on Sansar:

As Fortnite is showing, and Minecraft before it, something is eating Second Life for lunch. And it isn't Sansar. What's eating Second Life is that Linden Lab is getting eaten for lunch and dinner by other companies. Family-oriented, all-ages-targeting companies. Second Life for better or worse is now a product for adults. It can never be a family-oriented product. The family-oriented part was all over when the Teen Grid was abandoned. Linden Lab needs to split. Spin Second Life into a separate company. When they do this then Linden Lab can get back to being a lab -- like a research lab -- using Sansar to push the technological boundaries. Which is what the Lab has always been good at - innovating and pushing technology to its limits and beyond, and nevermind its users.

It's definitely the case that Linden was once an actual lab, even creating VR hardware way back in the day. The idea of selling Second Life is worth thinking about. With relatively reliable revenue of about $60-70 million a year (by my rough estimate), the company could probably find a buyer at, say, $250 million.

Irihapeti thinks this is a good idea because the current executives have lost sight of the Second Life userbase, and lost focus as a company:

Here's My Virtual World & VR Predictions for 2019 -- What Are Yours?

SL photo by Ann Beedit

• VR headset sales for the 2018 holiday season will be disappointing, below 10% growth for Q42018 compared to Q4 2017, with total Oculus/Vive sales in the six figures. Prepare for another round of "Is the VR hype truly over?" articles, though probably not by me (because why beat a dead virtual horse)?
• VR-centric social VR worlds Sansar and High Fidelity will continue to see peak daily concurrency levels in the two-three figures.
• As a result of the above, there will be a major corporate shift by Linden Lab, possibly a change in executive leadership, or a high profile content partnership or even sell-off of Sansar.
• Fortnite will deploy some kind of real money trading or monetization system for user-generated builds. 

What are yours, reader? I will highlight the best 2019 predictions having to do with VR, AR, AI, social VR, virtual worlds including (but not exclusively) Second Life, Fortnite, Sansar, High Fidelity, and beyond. (Pro-tip: The more specific and easier to verify, the better!) Post in Comments below, and enjoy a few more holiday/NYE-themed virtual world images after the break:

Does Epic Not Linden Lab Better Deserve the Title of Metaverse Builder?

Second Life is a predecessor of Epic's Fortnite, which is fast evolving from a battle royale shooter to a full-fledged virtual world, all of which leads JohnC to make this observation:

Well, as much as I love and will always be an SL addict, I have to say, that if ever there were going to be a company capable of bringing Ready Player One into existence, it would be Epic. No other company comes close when it comes to support and dedication to its player base. I got Unreal, the game, the day before it was released way back in the late 1990's. I got it only because of the editor that came free with it. For me it beat the hell out of the Quake editor that looked like an architects nightmare. Epic were always on the side of the artist, the creator, and they still are. As much as I would hate it to my core, if one day some creation of Epic killed of SL, then I would at least feel that in my heart, the far superior, truly player-aligned company won.

It's very true Epic has always been a strong supporter of user-generated level modding and other UGC. (Fortnite itself evolved into being from an internal game modding jam.) JohnC's comment reminds us that the idea of building a metaverse is not just a dream of technologists like Philip Rosedale, but has very much been a goal of many game developers for decades. Second Life co-founder Cory Ondrejka had a pretty extensive background in game development before coming to Linden Lab -- he even lead developed a fantasy battle arcade game which once sat in Linden's lobby! -- so it's not surprising that he was the main point person who showed off Second Life to game developer colleagues who ultimately went on to create Fornite.

Speaking of which, notwithstanding JohnC's distaste of the Quake editor, it was also intended as the precursor for the metaverse. Read this classic Wired article from 1996:

Well-Optimized Alternatives to Resource-Heavy Mesh Bodies for SL

Last week's post on the leading mesh bodies for Second Life causing major performance issues has provoked a pretty heated conversation in comments, with some blaming users (get a better computer!), others blaming Linden Lab (if high poly mesh is a problem, the Lindens shouldn't have allowed it!), to blaming big brands like Maitreya, Belleza and SLINK* (they have a monopoly on the market!),. Others helpfully pointed out some mesh body alternatives that are much better optimized than the market leaders. For instance, writes Fred Beckhusen:

We now have the free Bento Ruth [pictured above] and Roth avatars. They have far fewer polys, and are very good looking, with body, nail and skin HUDSs. Both are free and Open Source with extremely permissive AGPL licensing. Avatars use only two levels of details. For Ruth, these are:
Level of Detail Settings (LOD)
High - Triangles: 11444 Vertices: 8442
Medium - Triangles: 5563 Vertices: 4960

For more details, see this Github page.

SL Marketpage listings here.

Reader Sarali has a whole hosts of suggestions:

Watch: Augmented Reality App Created for Virtual Reality Headset

Last week we were speculating on Philip Rosedale's comment that VR is preferable to AR, since after all, you can use the video camera capabilities of many virtual reality headsets to create an augmented reality experience within VR. And then a guy named TonyVT Skarredghost came by to comment that he'd done exactly that: 

I already do AR with the Focus. (At the link you can also find an opensource plugin for that that I made for Unity) and also mixed reality.  And I can guarantee you that is pretty awesome. And it has the potential of showing a modified view of the world... so not only virtual objects added to the world.

Read about it on his blog post cleverly entitled, "How to create an Augmented Reality app for the Vive Focus in Unity". Tony gets pretty deep into the technical weeds of making AR possible on a VR platform. For instance, it involves hacking the Vive Focus' camera streams:

How Linden Lab Could Create a Minecraft-Style Game Mode in Second Life

Last week's Comment of the Week included the toss-off line "Second Life cannot be changed to be like Minecraft," but reader Will Burns has this week's Comment of the Week arguing just the opposite:

I have to disagree that SL cannot be evolved closer to the Minecraft model. You already have object materials. You already have the damage indicator. There's just no compelling reason to use them. This is because they were never fully fleshed out and implemented as their own options.

That is where LL dropped the ball. Evolving those already existing attributes and giving them purpose baked into the very nature of SL experience itself and not an arbitrary or superficial addition.

By creating the need for it, it makes the experience compelling long term.

Effectively, you'll end up with a Game Mode sim option where items have durability, people have various stats like and RPG, materials can be harvested and used for items to determine durability and so on.

This wouldn't be a foreign concept either, because you'd just be building the mechanics of Life2 HUD and its various components into the grid itself native.

For those who want to set their sim to God Mode, then those game rules are suspended in such spaces and SL operates in those zones like it does now. Leave those zones and the mortality may resume.

Then you start new users out in the mortality mode in an area that can help cater to those needs. They will figure it out from there. Just like in Minecraft where nobody specifically tells you to punch trees. It's emergent behavior.

Yes. In Second Life's early days, the damage-enabled Outlands had much of this spirit and consequently, had a vibrant culture of its own. It really wouldn't take much effort or cost for Linden Lab to experiment with creating a whole new Gamer continent, and see if it gets any traction. And there's already numerous Second Life users building Minecraft-type content. One or two developers could do this in a year or two, so what's the downside?