New World Notes

Philip Rosedale Added as GamesBeat Next Speaker! Get The 40% Discount Code, Join Him, Cory Ondrejka, Raph Koster & Me There!

Just got word that Philip has been added as a keynote speaker to GamesBeat Next in San Francisco next week Monday and Tuesday (October 23-24) -- use this discount code for 40% off at sign-up: GBN23SPEAKER

That's on top of me moderating a panel with Second Life co-founder/Google VP Cory Ondrejka; as I discuss in the book, Cory later went on to become a top VP at Facebook, where he led the acquisition of Oculus VR. We're joined by MMO game god Raph Koster, who's furiously and secretly at work creating his next platform, Playable Worlds.  

Here's the title/description of our talk:

That's on top of me moderating a panel with Second Life co-founder/Google VP Cory Ondrejka; as I discuss in the book, Cory later went on to become a top VP at Facebook, where he led the acquisition of Oculus VR. We're joined by MMO game god Raph Koster, who's furiously and secretly at work creating his next platform, Playable Worlds.  

Here's the title/description of our talk:

Unity's New CEO "Needs to Literally Unify Unity!" -- How the Top 3D Engine Became So Broken, and What the Company Must Do To Recover, Post-Riccitiello (Guest Post by Adam Frisby)

Adam Frisby, CEO of metaverse platform creator Sine Wave Entertainment, has been developing with the Unity 3D engine since 2006. So in the wake of former CEO John Riccitiello's self-defenestration from the company earlier this week, he's one of the best qualified people to explain what the company needs to do, to build back its business.

His main suggestion is to appoint a tech/product-focused person as Unity's new CEO: 

“Look, the CEO job utterly sucks, it's an awful grind, and I get that," he tells me. "As a tech person there's really nothing worse than spending all your time putting out fires. Delegating responsibility to someone else is the easy option."

With Unity, however, "you need someone who understands the product -- who wants to build something customers love -- making the calls."

How Unity Broke Its Own Engine

Back in 2017/2018 Unity basically told their engineers, "build something for everyone!" 

So they broke the engine into pieces, so if you needed X you used X, but if Y was better, you use that instead of X.

As a result, Unity now has three entirely separate 3D renderers, three physics engines, two audio engines with some external engines available, two entity systems, two scripting systems, a half dozen networking systems, four UI systems.

I'm not even exaggerating. They literally have that many.

And the kicker: none of them are compatible in the slightest.

So, if you want to reuse stuff from another project, or license some 3rd party tech, from say the Asset Store -- "Good luck!"

It also means if you need features A and B, and they're on different systems -- "Good luck!"

Now it's a total goddamn mess, and someone needs to literally unify Unity.

That's going to take an empowered product manager who can take the hit, and merge everything back together, or at least provide a common interface to all of these parts.

If they do that, they'll make a lot of people happy.

Because up until 2017, you could build for one version of Unity and publish to a dozen devices and take advantage of what's compatible on each without splitting your product into multiple versions.

Now, if you want to, say, have AAA graphics on PS5 and cheaper ones on say the Nintendo Switch, you have to build two versions of your game, one for the high definition renderer, and another for the universal renderer.

That means new art assets, new materials, etc, but also a whole bunch of code too. Also any shaders you've programmed.

When Unity should really have one material format, and one code interface, and the engine adapts under the hood. Like it used to.

But now even stuff like the units used for light intensity are different between the renderers. HD uses Lux or Lumens, and the others use some custom thing. It's totally broken.

Next: How should Unity should improve its product for virtual world/metaverse developers, game devs in general -- and as a business: 

Second Life's Human Avatars Have Become Amazingly Ultra-Realistic Over The Years -- Even If That Hasn't Grown The User Base at All.

There's been lots of interesting conversation over my post last week criticizing Meta's ultra-real human IRL avatars, and why they're not actually wanted in metaverse platforms -- with many VR enthusiasts telling me I'm wrong because of, well, reasons. I even got into a back and forth with someone from Meta on social media, who kept insisting people want avatars which look like themselves IRL... but eventually admitted this was an assumption without a proof point. 

By contrast, I know one notable counter-example all too well:

Thanks to the arrival of mesh in 2010 and some amazing community creators, Second Life now has what are arguably the most ultra-realistic human avatars for an open virtual world platform. You can see that incredible evolution on this very blog, when you compare the best human Second Life avatars of 2006 such as these with the best featured in Cajsa's regular column.

Yet despite -- or because -- of that improvement in human avatar quality, Second Life's active user base has not appreciably grown.

Second Life had about 600,000 monthly active users in 2006, and it's still about that number. At the same time, metaverse platforms with highly abstract or cartoonish human avatars have exploded* in growth. 

To be clear, this is not to criticize the Second Life creative community at all; I am always excited to see the latest amazing avatar portraits curated by Cajsa. The market for ultra-realistic human avatars may be a niche, but it's an impressively creative niche all the same.

The mystery is why Meta thinks this is what a mass market generally wants -- let alone ultra-real avatars which look like their IRL owner.

Replace Now-Resigned Unity CEO John Riccitiello With a Technologist Not an Advertiser, Says Veteran 3D Developer Adam Frisby

I wrote this last month after taking the temperature of various Unity insiders:

I would not even be surprised if Unity CEO John Riccitiello, who pushed for the price increase -- after basically promising not to do it a few years ago -- is forced to step down.

If anything, the surprise is today's news did not come sooner:

John Riccitiello, CEO of Unity, has resigned from the company in the wake of a pricing controversy that left developers in open revolt... Riccitiello will continue to advise Unity to ensure a smooth transition, the company said. The news isn’t a surprise as Unity angered a lot of its loyal game developers a few weeks ago after pushing through a price increase based on numbers of downloads — and then retracted it after an uproar.

Adam Frisby, CEO of metaverse platform developer Sine Wave Entertainment, who's been working with Unity pretty much since the engine existed, suggests it will take more than this resignation and price increase walk-back to restore trust among fellow developers. Telling me what kind of person they should hire as Riccitello's replacement:

Open Today on Steam: Resonite, a Fully Crowdfunded Metaverse Platform from Former Lead Dev of Neos

Resonite is a new free-to-play metaverse platform launching on Steam today, and it has a fairly wild history. It's lead developed by Frooxius, who up until very recently, was lead developer of Neos, another platform with extremely impressive features and content. But after reports that there was a sharp disagreement about integrating cryptocurrency into Neos, Frooxius departed, launched a new Patreon, and began to work on Resonite.

"[Crypto integration] was part of it," Frooxius confirmed to me recently, "but not the sole (or even the main) reason, it was more of an catalyst/symptom."

His Patreon for Resonite already has 2000+ subscribers paying him over $26,000/month, a strong user community that have mostly (completely) followed him from Neos. (Like I always say, community, not cryptocurrency, is what makes a metaverse matter.)

"I hope they'll enjoy the new platform and that the community will grow in a healthy way and build a lot of cool things and help us grow Resonite for a long time into the future," he tells me. That's echoed in the platform's new name:

Metaverse Platform Market Passes 600 Million Monthly Active Users, With Strongest Growth Among 17-24 Adults

Chart via Metaversed

Contrary to common Internet wisdom, the Metaverse not only refuses to die, but keeps steadfastly growing in the only place that ultimately matters -- monthly active users:

There are now over 600m monthly active users! ‍ That's the major headline from our newly published Q4 2023 Metaverse Universe report, tracking virtual world platforms and their respective user bases. The Universe chart analysis visualises every virtual world in the Metaverse, showing launch date, MAUs, platform type (Web2 or Web3) and access method (via browser/app or VR headset). ‍

On a quarter-on-quarter basis from the start of Q3 to Q4, total MAUs increased 10.4% from 549m to 606.4m.

Go here to get the full report from Nic Mitham. I actually think his numbers are on the conservative side, since he has Roblox at 250 million MAU, but a recent report tracked Roblox at 300 million MAU, and doesn't count Garena Free Fire, which is arguably a metaverse platform and has nearly 200 million MAU by some estimates.

Just as notable, Nic tells me the strongest growth area is from young adults aged 17-24, with the most activity there coming from Fortnite and ZEPETO, the South Korean-based metaverse platform.

This usage growth by is very promising, a sign we might be surmounting what I call the Metaverse Age Cliff:

As Epic Lays Off Employees in Metaverse Transition, Nearly 400 Community Creators Earning $100K+/Year from Fortnite Creative. Over 60 Earn Millions.

Infographic via Game Discover

Hard news from Tim Sweeney at Epic:

As we shared earlier, we are laying off around 16% of Epic employees... For a while now, we've been spending way more money than we earn, investing in the next evolution of Epic and growing Fortnite as a metaverse-inspired ecosystem for creators. I had long been optimistic that we could power through this transition without layoffs, but in retrospect I see that this was unrealistic.

While Fortnite is starting to grow again, the growth is driven primarily by creator content with significant revenue sharing, and this is a lower margin business than we had when Fortnite Battle Royale took off and began funding our expansion. Success with the creator ecosystem is a great achievement, but it means a major structural change to our economics.

To see the other, more hopeful side of the structural change, take a look at his infographic from analytics firm Game Discover, tracking the size of the Fortnite Creative economy. As you can see above, nearly 400 user creators are now able to earn an annualized income of $100,000 or more, while 61 creators are earning seven figures. On the very high end, five are earning eight figures.

None of this is meant to take away from the pain that Epic's now laid off full-time employees are feeling. (Fortunately Epic is giving them extremely generous exit packages.) Many of them, however, will now probably become Fortnite Creative creators themselves. So we should also note the impressive growth of this grassroots creator economy emerging:

Linden Lab Looking for Engineering Intern to Help Enhance Second Life's Web Experience

Interesting new Linden Lab job listing which strongly suggests the company is adding more web functionality to the OG metaverse platform:

We’re looking for a Web Engineering Intern to make a significant impact on our virtual world platform, which has been at the forefront of innovation for almost two decades. We are seeking a highly motivated individual who can help us reinvigorate our passion for virtual worlds and our culture of learning by asking insightful questions and collaborating with our talented team of developers.

This role reports to the Senior Engineering Manager of Web and will use AWS and modern web technologies to enhance the Second Life Resident experience.

Unlike the Senior Product Manager job opening, this one seems ideal for an established Second Life user who knows what web tools need improving/enhancing.

Downside:

"I'm not sure Unity's really learnt their lesson" -- Veteran 3D Developer Adam Frisby on Unity's Pricing Changes

Above: Adam Frisby in the Unity-based Breakroom (with Philip Rosedale)

In case you missed it, after a couple weeks of volcanic pushback against a price increase announcement, Unity on Friday published details amending that quite a bit:

Now, users on the Unity Personal subscription plan will not be charged the new fee, and Unity will increase the revenue cap on games made with that plan to $200,000. Furthermore, any game made with Unity that makes less than $1 million in 12 months will not be subject to the fee. The company is also changing what games can be assessed with the new fee. Previously, the fee would have applied to all games that met the specific download and revenue thresholds. This applied to games both in development and released.

Now Unity is saying that the fee will only apply to games made with the next version of Unity that is expected to launch sometime in 2024.

Emphasis mine. So for example, the much-anticipated, already-in-closed Alpha Second Life mobile app will not be impacted by this new fee. 

As for what Unity's new price policy means for developers in general, and metaverse platforms in particular, I reached out to Adam Frisby, CEO of metaverse platform developer Sine Wave Entertainment. Adam's been developing in Unity pretty much since the engine existed, so is the ideal person to analyze the new situation:

"It's the way they should have done this in the beginning," Adam tells me. "No retroactive amendment to terms, that was the element that got everyone up in arms." (Unity's CEO had previously promised not to raise fees.)

But Adam goes on to suggest Unity's walk back doesn't instantly put the company back in the good graces with developers who've come to rely on the 3D engine:

Roblox's Odd Blocky Avatars Are A Key to the Platform's Success: Excerpt, Making a Metaverse That Matters

Pictured: Intrance and LAGurlz, creators of the hit Roblox experience Starving Artist

As Roblox reaches upwards of 300 million monthly active users and continues expanding its feature set, one common reaction is basically: Wait, isn't that just a game platform for kids with blocky, LEGO-like avatars?

Yes... and very much no. As I explain in Making a Metaverse That Matters, Roblox has succeeded not in spite, but in good part because, of those avatars: