New World Notes

IMVU Partners With Top Real Life Brands to Sell Virtual Fashion, Becomes First Non-Crypto Virtual World to Mint Items as NFTs

I don't always get my metaverse news from Vogue Magazine, but when I do, I'm not surprised IMVU is involved:

“Fashion is at the epicenter of why people create avatars and connect with others on IMVU,” says Lindsay Anne Aamodt, the site’s senior director of marketing. “Part of that is because dressing up an avatar in a digital space gives people access to anything that they want to look like, and it’s hard to do that in the real world.” 

... Now, she’s spearheading a first-of-its-kind virtual fashion show on IMVU that unites the real-world labels Collina Strada, Gypsy Sport, Mowalola, Freak City, Bruce Glen, My Mum Made It, and Mimi Wade with expert creators who know their way around the 3D meshing and texturing process that brings IMVU’s clothes and accessories to life. The show will stream on May 27, after which IMVU users will be able buy and dress their avatars in the designer looks they saw on the virtual runway.

Subscribe to IMVU's YouTube channel to watch the show. Reached by phone after a whirlwind of preparing for this event over the last 6 months, Lindsay tells me that it was Vogue's global director who first reached out to IMVU about covering the show, after hearing about it from one of the brands. 

While there have been similar crossover events in other virtual worlds (for instance, Armani once had an official store in Second Life, with decidedly mixed results),  this is the most prominent real-to-virtual fashion launch in some time.

Another newsworthy feature:

Any Open Metaverse Will Require an Opt-In Click (Comments of the Weeks)

Good conversation by readers around last week's post about a universal metaverse protocol, and whether we really need it. One reader was skeptical when I described Steam as basically "[A] metaverse portal, taking you from VRChat to Rec Room and beyond with a few clicks and several minutes of wait time", asking:

Are you serious when you're suggesting to readers of this post that we should be content with "a few clicks and several minutes of wait time" for hopping between destinations in the "worlds-wide meta-metaverse"... rather than striving for the simplicity (and instant transportation) of links between websites? 

As broadband improves, I suspect we'll get to several seconds of wait time by this decade. But it's hard to see the clicks going away. Metaverse or not, we'll probably always need to go through some opt-in steps when going from one experience/IP realm to the next. Or as reader Adeon Writer puts it:

VRChat requires you opt-in to visiting any world it has not greenlit - so the idea of going from one experiences to [another] without clicks is a pipe dream. Even websites warn you when you are about to leave.

This points to a fundamental challenge to the Metaverse ideal, which typically describes a seamless immersive experience that is also open like the web:

Here's a Metaverse Protocol Proposal Linking Virtual Worlds - If We Need One?

Metaverse technologist Kim Nevelsteen, who created that quite cool project which seamlessly connects different Minecraft servers to each other, has promoted an epic manifesto from the M3 group proposing Metaverse connectivity between a wide variety of virtual worlds, including WebVR,  VRChat, Minecraft and beyond:

• Part 1 is here.
• Part 2 is here.

"People are searching for a standardized Metaverse protocol," Kim says, summarizing his purpose. "Even if that's achieved, the overhead of updating the integrated systems will impair a Metaverse. An architecture with dynamic evolution is required and currently IPSME is the only one that satisfies all criteria, as far as I know." (That stands for Idempotent Publish/Subscribe Messaging Environment, on which he co-authored this academic paper .)

This is all admirably ambitious, but with self-described metaverses like ROBLOX and VRChat already quite massive, I'm starting to wonder if we need a single Metaverse protocol connecting them:

"The" Metaverse Isn't Happening (Comment of the Week #2)

Good points from reader "Kyz", reflecting on Core's mission to build a "multiverse" versus Epic's mission to build "the metaverse":

There isn't going to be a metaverse or multiverse in the sense that fiction foretold. That global environment we think of as the metaverse already happened. It's called the Internet. Within it are worlds and nearly endless content.

But one global 3D platform? Not happening. If it was going to happen it would have already. The market doesn't want it any more than it wanted VR on a global scale.

I think this thing with Core is just wordplay. They're close to Epic because they're built on Epic tech, but other than that, they're basically a dumbed down way to create games. If you want better games, you'll use the Unreal Engine itself.

Personally I find Core far too limiting compared to using the Unreal Engine directly and I don't see them overcoming the big problems like delivering the customers and buying power. The more customers, the more games and the more people trying to grab enough foot traffic to make a small bit of money before it becomes so saturated no one is making anything.

At any rate, it's still a good time to be a creator and you go wherever your skill level and determination gravitates you to. But if any entities are the metaverse tools? It's the game engines, few people are writing all this from scratch these days like SL did.

That sounds right. There's multiple popular web browsers and multiple smartphone devices running iOS or Android, so it's hard to see anything like a singular Metaverse dominating. It might not even be a matter of competing game engines (i.e. Unreal vs. Unity), so much as many metaverses for non-competing demographics:

Core Games Joins Epic's Store -- But Not Necessarily Epic's Metaverse

Core, the ROBLOX-meets-Unreal "multiverse" funded in part by Epic is now, to no one's surprise, now available in Epic's store. Trailer above, announcement snip below:

By combining the power of Epic’s Unreal Engine with accessible tools that require no coding experience in a single platform, Core makes game creation, publishing and play available to everyone for free. Core also offers the most creator-friendly economy of any gaming UGC-platform with a 50% revenue share, allowing creators to make money and build businesses on Core. 

I got early word that this would happen right about when I was writing about Epic's new $100 million funding deal with Sony and other partners to build a metaverse, and assumed Core Games would be an integral part of that project. 

But not necessarily: When I asked Core CEO Frederic Descamps how does Core Games fit in with Epic's just-announced metaverse plans, he answered with this Delphic statement:

The Metaverse Wars Are Here: Epic Gets $1 Billion from Sony & Other Major Players to Build Unreal-Based Metaverse

Remember the browser wars back in olden times (by which I mean 2017)? Massive companies competing to own the dominant platform for streaming content to the 2D web? Welcome to the metaverse wars:

This round includes an additional $200M strategic investment from Sony Group Corporation, which builds on the already close relationship between the two companies and reinforces their shared mission to advance the state of the art in technology, entertainment, and socially-connected online services. Other investment partners include Appaloosa, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC, GIC, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Park West, KKR, AllianceBernstein, Altimeter, Franklin Templeton and Luxor Capital.  Epic continues to have only a single class of common stock outstanding and CEO Tim Sweeney remains the controlling shareholder of the company.

“We are grateful to our new and existing investors who support our vision for Epic and the Metaverse. Their investment will help accelerate our work around building connected social experiences in Fortnite, Rocket League and Fall Guys, while empowering game developers and creators with Unreal Engine, Epic Online Services and the Epic Games Store,” said Tim Sweeney, CEO and Founder, Epic Games. 

Epic's vision for the metaverse, of course, is based on its proprietary 3D engine, Unreal. And this comes only a month after ROBLOX, built on the Unity engine, had a massive successful IPO. We are certain to see many more announcements like this in coming months, each a salvo in the battle to win market dominance for the metaverse -- even if the concept is still relatively pretty niche, and hasn't yet been clearly defined for a mass consumer audience. You can see that in Dean Takahashi's recent interview with Sweeney:

Occupy White Walls Adds Music Streaming to Its Real Time, Collaborative Creation Art MMO

I've only casually followed Occupy White Walls, a sandbox creation MMO for PC and Mac, but now that the platform just added music streaming (trailer above, more on that below), here's a brief snapshot courtesy from Yarden Yaroshevski, CEO of OWW creator StikiPixels, via Mario Gerosa, the company press officer (who was heavily involved in the Second Life art world back in the day):

People build galleries with over 2,500 architectural building blocks, we don't allow uploading of 3D meshes.

 

Building galleries is collaborative and in real time, players can invite others to build with them.

 

We don't have [concurrency] limits 'per room'. Galleries can easily hold up to 100 players simultaneously.

 

We don't release monthly active user numbers but they are in the tens of thousands range.

As for my crux question, "Why should someone create in OWW when they could do so on a larger platform like ROBLOX or Fortnite?", Yarden's answer:

Core Has Half a Million User-Created Projects & Over 1 Million User Accounts... But How Many Active Users?

Almost missed this tidbit in the announcement last week that Core received $100 million in funding to create a "multiverse":

After just a few months in Alpha, Core already offers more than 20,000 free games in every genre imaginable, has had roughly half a million projects started on the platform, and has amassed over one million player and Creator accounts globally.

Emphasis mine. "Accounts" are not the same as active users, and a spokesman for the company told me the company is "not revealing Monthly Active Users or Daily Active Users at this point." My guess is they're saving that reveal for a major milestone, and aren't in any particular hurry to publicly compete with ROBLOX's insanely huge user numbers.

However, we can make a fairly reliable guess of Core's Monthly Active User numbers based on how many people visit the Core web portal:

Why Core is Spending $100 Million to Make a "Multiverse" (Not a Metaverse)

Manticore,  the startup behind Core, a kind of Fortnite-meets-ROBLOX UGC platform, just announced $100 million in venture funding from Fortnite publisher Epic and other investors. That's not a surprise in itself, especially since ROBLOX's recent IPO made that UGC platform more valuable than top traditional game companies like Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive Software. What's more surprising to me is that the announcement describes Core not as a metaverse nor as a "a digital playground and community" (the company's original description for itself)... but instead, as a "creator multiverse".

Why the term change?

"We have been talking about the multiverse for a long time but didn’t use that word until the last year or so," Manticore CEO Frederic Descamps tells me through a spokesperson. "We see Core as a multitude of universes, connected or not, depending on what the users decide. Players and creators are ultimately the ones who will determine how all these worlds and universes are connected."

It's why, Descamps adds, they're not calling Core a metaverse:

Koster Teases Playable Worlds' Upcoming Project, Hints at Cross-Device Cloud Streaming & Much More

A year and a half after announcing Playable Worlds, a new game studio from MMO godfather Raph Koster, about which Koster coyly said little, but did say "we are looking to create a world that really fosters online communities and even society", he's revealed a fair amount more in a clarion call announcement: