New World Notes

Richard Bartle & Readers Opine on Irena Pereira's Theory on What Went Wrong With WoW

Lots of interesting reader feedback to my interview with Irena Pereria, on what went wrong with WoW, based on her insights as a former Blizzard designer/developer. Irena's core argument is that changes to World of Warcraft starting with the Cataclysm expansion degraded the sense of World of Warcraft as a dynamic, living virtual world and hurt its appeal as a virtual community where you wanted to socialize with other players.

On my Facebook feed, Richard Bartle -- who literally wrote the book on designing MMOs -- stopped by to offer some complementary thoughts:

The deleterious effects of many quality-of-life changes were obvious to most experienced designers as soon as they were discussed, and the effects were exposed by Asheron's Call 2. It put them in and it failed. Nevertheless, most modern MMOs now put them in as standard (or, for some things like fast travel, sell them). Some such features are unavoidable, though. When WoW didn't have a LFG mechanism, there were addons available that provided that functionality (albeit not with instant teleportation into an instance). Once the genie is out of the bottle, it's hard to put it back in again without changing the bottle.

Instead, it's better to nudge players to play with each other, as they do in countless Minecrafter servers, as Bartle writes:

Self-directed entertainment isn't just entertainment: it's fun. If people merely want entertainment, they can passively watch TV or listen to music. If they want fun, they can play games. Minecraft isn't just entertaining, it's fun. When an MMO becomes the equivalent of a movie but you have to play a combat mini-game between scenes, the fun is leeched out. The same thing happens when other players become objects rather than subjects: you may as well play a single-player game.

Some reader responses, some concurring, some disagreeing, after the break -- though I'd read the original interview first to get the full context:

 

New-ish Second Life Brands Recommended by Readers: Dope Pixels, Neutral Tones & Star Quake. What Others Should Be Featured?

Loving the variety of new-ish SL brands recommended by readers so far, including:

• Dope Pixels (Facebook): "We make beautiful, scene-changing skyboxes from real-world photos, renders and AI, but mostly AI lately! It's gotten so good," says owner Adrienne Lowe (Andi Ayashi in SL) 
• Neutral Tones (Instagram): "They started off with really unique shoes but branched out into doing more interesting fashion accessories that could only exist in Second Life," writes Anya Ohmai. (Like the balloon-lifted wiener dog accessory, above.) "Brilliant mind and creative!"
• Star Quake Shapes & Beauty (Primfeed): "Definitely check out Starquake by my dear friend Theo (Lore Olivieri)," writes Peter Stindberg. "They are very new, aspiring, but with already good items. Theo makes unique shapes and focuses on non-binary niche - they even run their own blog about queerbodies."

I'm still looking for more recommendations to highlight, so please add more in Comments! Here's the full criteria to include for consideration:

How Virtual Worlds' Creator Economies Can Exert a "Big Sort" Cultural Effect (Comment of the Week)

Responding to my post on VRChat's emerging new creator economy featuring the video above), longtime reader Martin K. has some provocative thoughts on the sociology of virtual worlds:

One interesting thought that jumped at me in the context of monetization was this: 

When your world is Quest-compatible, more kids get in; it's just a fact - an uncomfortable fact, because it's also people who don't have as much money - who can't afford a PC - who get a Quest.

All this is probably true, but one might jump to the conclusion that Quest-users spend less money on microtransactions (on average) because they are younger (on average), and that's probably not true for microtransactions targeting children: as Roblox and many other free-to-play games have shown, children might be quite willing to spend a few dollars regularly on (exploitive) microtransactions. (And that inclination is in addition to the larger number of Quest-users compared to PC-VR users.)

Of course, the offerings have to target children; your typical, over-sexualized Second Life skins probably won't sell well to children.

Which reminds me of the idea that The Big Sort is not only happening in real life but also in virtual worlds with creator economies: specific metaverse-apps with creator economies attract specific audiences.

Martin's referring to the highly influential sociology book arguing that people across the United States have been "sorting" themselves by culture and worldview, to the point where even differing neighborhoods in the same city can hold widely contrary values and opinions.

Martin argues that different kinds of commerce can have the same sorting effect on virtual worlds:

Civil Discussion About Virtual World Trolls (Comments of the Week)

Last week's post on Dr. Ruth Diaz's new project to interview and better understand virtual world trolls helped provoke a pretty interesting reader conversation that's difficult to summarize, but here's one particular highlight -- longtime reader Martin K. makes the provocative argument that trolls are somewhat necessary to the long term health of virtual worlds:

[T]rolling and toxicity might be important for many virtual communities to stay stable (and relatively small) by limiting the influx of new users (and thereby avoiding the "Eternal September" problem). I consider Second Life, VRChat, Rec Room, and Gorilla Tag examples of such communities.

By Eternal September, Martin's referring to a phenomena back in the early 90s when Usenet was opened up to mainstream Internet users, causing a backlash among the established user base of Usenet groups. In other words, trolling might have the effect of driving out noobs while maintaining stability and group cohesion among the dedicated community. 

But how can a platform expand? Martin again:  

The way to grow a community beyond those limits appears to be the fragmentation of a community into smaller groups ("bubbles") with limited communication between groups. Facebook has perfected this approach, but long before Facebook (and other social media), competitive team-based multiplayer games have strictly limited communication between competing teams to limit toxicity.

Whether social VR can adopt this approach of fragmentation to grow larger communities is an open question. 

VRChat actually did keep growing its user base beyond the infamous Ugandan Knuckles troll era of 2017/2018 and now boasts over 10 million active users. That's largely a credit to the platform's karmic system (as I discuss in my book); arguably the fact that individual VRChat worlds tend to have a small capacity (20-30 is ideal) helped enable sub-communities to avoid both trolls and noobs.

Anyway, in response to Martin's argument,  Samantha Venia Logan, a colleague of Dr. Diaz and herself a PhD candidate, makes some important distinctions:

 

Readers Enthuse Over Wolf Grid's Many Virtual World Innovations

I had worried my story on OpenSim-based world Wolf Grid might be too niche for readers, but to judge by reader comments, many virtual world veterans are giving it and other OpenSimulator worlds a closer look.  

Soda Sullivan argues that more innovation is happening across OpenSim worlds for the very reason they're often developed by small teams:

I decided to give OpenSim a visit and was pleasantly surprised. It is not just Wolf Grids that is innovating. Many regions are pushing hard and fast at adding new option to their grids. I would guess this is a benefit of having a small group (or even a single person) focused on their grid and looking at and implementing innovation. Wolf Grids is certainly a perfect example of this. Once once the new advancements are realized, they move very fast across the entire OS system. Weeks, not months.

One example is Wolf Grid's voice-to-text/text-to-voice function, which many hope Linden Lab would add to Second Life one day -- watch below:

Why Crack Den Keeps Thriving: Community Members Share Stories (and IRL Marriages) from Second Life's Long-Running Urban Roleplay MMO

Image by Orion Octane from Crack Den's Flickr pool

Crack Den, the long-running urban roleplay mini-MMO in Second Life, is like a version of Grand Theft Auto Online from an alternate timeline where the Hot Coffee incident scarcely elicited a shrug (if you know you know), and its user community was free to wildly build on top the world in ways Rockstar Studios could never dare imagine.

At least that's my impression, after my post about Teal Aurelia's stellar new trailer for the game attracted a barrage of comments from the CD user community. So much so, I had to share some of them, along with images from Crack Den's huge Flickr photo stream. They tell about drama, interwoven stories, and a world so large, it has its own thriving newspaper:

Successful Mixed Reality Social Experiences Need a Shared Virtual Workspace (Comment of the Week)

Good points from reader Martin K., riffing off Skarredghost's design thoughts for creating powerful mixed reality experiences for the Apple Vision Pro:

What each app needs to do is to establish what is known in the research on "Computer-Supported Cooperative Work" (CSCW) as a "shared workspace", e.g. a shared virtual 3D model, a shared virtual movie screen, a shared virtual projection screen for a shared slide show, a shared whiteboard, a shared virtual tabletop game, etc. It's not a new topic; some people have spent decades researching it in CSCW.

If an app allows to align the shared virtual screen with a real wall in your room or the shared virtual tabletop game with the surface of a real table in your room, then the app gets extra points for immersion, but that's not necessary. (And if the app requires this alignment, it might introduce additional friction for users.)

This scenario is what Skarredghost labels "You want to have a social AR experience about an element in particular"; according to them, it "was the theme of 80% of the social videos of the Vision Pro on X." I'm not surprised and would assume that an even higher percentage of successful MR apps will have some kind of "shared workspace" - at least that's what you would expect from CSCW research.

Where Martin disagrees is the idea that a good social mixed reality experience should model the real life space of a select member in it:

Microsoft Copilot Seems Better Than ChatGPT at Summarizing My Writing -- But Still Adds Errors!

Following up on a reader's comment to my rant about ChatGPT totally botching my writing, I went with their suggestion to try Microsoft's Copilot instead. I asked the same question, "What is Wagner James Au's definition of the Metaverse?" and got this output:

Wagner James Au defines the Metaverse as a vast, immersive virtual world simultaneously accessible by millions of people through highly customizable avatars and powerful experience creation tools integrated with the offline world through its virtual economy and external technology. His book, “Making a Metaverse That Matters: From Snow Crash & Second Life to A Virtual World Worth Fighting For,” explores nascent metaverse platforms, interviews metaverse creators like Neal Stephenson, and aims to dispel myths and misconceptions around this interconnected universe of virtual worlds. In essence, the Metaverse represents a convergence of digital and physical experiences, where users can interact, create, and explore within a shared digital space.

Much better than ChatGPT! I also like how Copilot's output includes source web links for further reading, enforcing its role as your assistant, and not the ultimate purveyor of truth.

Still, Copilot is decidedly not perfect, adding in bizarre inaccuracies:

I rarely write about the Metaverse being "a convergence of digital and physical experiences" (though others emphasize that angle much more), and I've devoted thousands of words explaining why the Metaverse should not be defined as an "interconnected universe of virtual worlds". Worst of all, putting Neal Stephenson in the "metaverse creators like" category is so profoundly, face-palmingly wrong, if I were teaching a class on the topic and a student wrote that in a paper, I'd deduct a whole grade or two.

So overall I still question the usefulness of LLMs beyond being a highly imperfect, unreliable assistant. Anyway, here's the comment from reader "N" who makes some good points and even shows how Copilot is pretty impressive with discussing Second Life-only content:

 

How AI Can Help Drive Second Life New User Growth -- As Explained by a Retired Tech Exec Who Helps New Users Himself.

Given the so-so reception to the launch of Convai/Linden Lab's AI NPCs, here's a great reader comment from Lucas Weymann (previously), a retired tech executive who spends much of his retirement hanging out in Second Life -- and thus has a uniquely smart perspective on how AI NPCs could help grow the SL user base:

Over the past twenty years in SL, I've watched out for local avatars near me on their first day. I've tried to help hundreds of them, and years ago, I would blow off all day on a Saturday just dedicated to helping noobies.

Here are the consistent things I have found that first-day avatars have no idea about:

First, many don't know that someone locally and directly in IM is trying to chat with them. 

Secondly, I've seldom met a first-day avatar that knows they can rez a cube or knows what a sandbox is where they can rez a cube. 

I instruct them on how to teleport, give them a link to a public sandbox, and wait and see if they make it there. Some need help using the link or landmark. 

Then, after they rez a cube, I tell them about the SL Marketplace, which none know about, and how to search for free clothing and avatar bodies on the market. This is usually a massive revelation for women. 

Knowing how to rez a cube in a sandbox means they can rez what they get on the SL Marketplace in the sandbox and change outfits there. Most now have something they can do in SL. 

They can teleport, test out free stuff from the market, go to a landmarked sandbox, rez their stuff, and change their look.

But that's just the beginning!