New World Notes

Top 5 New World Notes Posts Last Week: EU Regulation Threatens User-Generated Content, Gesture-Controlled Artificial Life System, and Much More

• Jenn Frank Reviews Nightmare In New Orleans, An Amazing Gabriel Knight-Style Adventure Game In Second Life
• Metaverse Pioneer Jeffrey Ventrella Creates Artificial Life-Simulating Particle System You Can Control With Your Hands In LeapMotion
• Online Worlds With User-Generated Content Like VRChat, Roblox & Second Life Threatened By Upcoming EU Regulation, Says EFF's Cory Doctorow
• Have Second Life Users Given Up Promoting & Defending Second Life?
• iOS' ARKit Enables Reflection Of Real Objects On Virtual Surfaces

Social VR Platforms Making Changes to Comply With the GDPR-- High Fidelity's Philip Rosedale & Sinespace's Adam Frisby Supportive of the EU's New Data Privacy Regulations

The European Union is putting the General Data Protection Regulation into effect next month, and as I reported last week, the rules are going to cause some changes to social VR and virtual world platforms -- even those with servers based in the US.

"We like the GDPR in it's broad respect for human privacy, and will work to fully comply with it," High Fidelity's Philip Rosedale tells me. "It is aligned with our own mission to give full control over identity and user data to end-users and not ourselves."

 

One unique challenge with High Fidelity is it's a grid-based metaverse, with servers owned by individual users and organizations.  "Because High Fidelity servers are operated by others and not by us, some of the data that is of concern is gathered not by us but by those server operators," as Philip puts it. "We will work to add features as needed to allow appropriate controls for those server operators subject to GDPR requirements." He says the company will announce specific changes soon.

 

Second Life and Sansar will also see some changes: "Linden Lab is taking all actions to stay in compliance with GDPR regulations for both Sansar and Second Life," company spokesman Brett Atwood tells me. "Our company continues to respect and value the privacy of all our users and works diligently to ensure that we follow best practices for data protection across all platforms." He says a more detailed announcement will be posted in coming weeks.

 

Sinespace is already working on implementing changes in time for the GDPR's deadline in late May: "[W]e're adding a lot more to the privacy policy indicating where and when third parties can access data (e.g. our credit card processor will get your name and card details in order for us be able to bill you)," lead developer Adam Frisby tells me. "[We're] adding clarifying text around things on our signup and account pages, indicating exactly what things like an email address may be used for; finally we're adding a easier account deletion process to satisfy the 'right to be forgotten' parts of the legislation."

 

Echoing Philip, Adam is also welcoming of the GDPR, and explains why its rules matter:

Avatars Infiltrate Instagram As Influencers for Real World Brands

"Miquela" blended into a RL photo in an Instagram post plugging a videogame-- note the comments

One drawback to writing about avatars and virtual worlds for so many years is I sometimes come across an item, think "been there, done that", and forget that it's still news to most people. That in mind, consider the rise of "Miquela", one of many 3D avatars who've gained a large following on Instagram -- 1 million in her case. Miquela is the creation of Brud, a Los Angeles-based company that not only leverages its avatar for real life branding deals, but generates virtual dramas between other Instagram-based avatars to grow their influence:

McFedries, brud‘s founder and chief executive, confirmed that the Miquela account had been hacked in a text exchange with me, writing, “some redditor idiots hacked the page we think.”

That was a lie.

The account “hack” was architected by brud as part of an ongoing virtual reality drama playing out on Instagram and other social media platforms between avatars it had developed, all designed to attract media attention, according to people with knowledge of brud and its plans. It worked. 

McFedries has not responded to further requests for comment after confirming that the Miquela account was “good”.

One Los Angeles investor familiar with the company said brud was “using conflict to introduce new characters… same as the Kardashians always have.”

As with most aspects of virtual culture, we saw similar things like this happening in Second Life over a decade ago, with metaverse pundits like Gwyneth Llewelyn predicting the blending of avatar celebrities into the real world:

Watch: The Dazzling Copper Key Chase from Ready Player One Race

Just because Ready Player One isn't a great model for social VR and isn't growing consumer interest in actual social VR doesn't mean it's not a worthwhile movie in itself -- it's visually dazzling and kinetic and a lot of damn fun. To see what I mean, watch this extended clip specially prepared for the Japan market, where the movie is premiering next weekend. (And where, due to Japan's sophisticated game culture, and the movie's heavy use of iconic Japanese pop culture totems -- including the motorcycle from Akira as depicted here -- it should do quite well.) 

Also some interesting features for virtual world/MMO fans to notice throughout:

Spielberg's Ready Player One On Track to Become Solid (If Not Spectacular) Tron Legacy-Type Hit

Refuting my earlier concerns, Spielberg's Ready Player One adaptation opened quite well last weekend:

The virtual reality fantasy released with a healthy $53 million at the North American box office and picked up an additional $128 million overseas, bringing its global total to $181.2 million. That was enough to land the director of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Jurassic Park” his biggest debut since “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” launched in 2008 with $100 million.

Notably, the movie did really well in China, which has the largest market for VR/online games by far. Also notable, the opening box office performance was very similar to 2010's Tron Legacy, another "adventure in a virtual world with 80s pop culture nostalgia elements". That movie wound up making $400 million in the box office, a solid (if not record-breaking) hit.

Whether this success spurs consumer interest in social VR and virtual worlds is still an open question. NWN readers aren't super impressed on that front:

Open Forum: What Did You Think of Spielberg's Ready Player One And Will It Change the Future of Virtual Worlds?

Ironically I've been too busy preparing for a VR event for a book about the founding of VR to write a review of the widely-anticipated movie based on  a book about the future of VR. (Coming soon-ish!) But if you've already seen Spielberg's Ready Player One, I'd love your take -- bonus points for opinions on how it might change the future of virtual worlds and social VR. I.E. Do you think the many millions who see the movie will be more inclined to check out one of the many real life attempts to build the OASIS?

What Social VR Worlds Can Learn from Friendster (or For That Matter, Orkut)

What Friendster (Yes, Friendster) Teaches Us About Social VR and Virtual Worlds is a fun little essay by longtime metaverse developer/explorer Ryan Schultz, a case study in how online communities can shape a platform as much (if not more so) than the actual company can:

Friendster turned into a very different beast from what [founder] Jonathan Abrams had intended. Now, who would have predicted that? My main point is this: the people who create the software platforms think they have control, but it’s really the end users who shape the service and build the community that they want to see. Past a certain point, it’s completely out of the founders’ hands. Linden Lab understands this and, for the most part, they get out of the way of the insanely creative people who have built Second Life into what it is today. Nobody could have predicted all the fantastic directions that SL went into. And I can see the same thing happening already in Sansar, High Fidelity, and other virtual worlds.

I'd add Orkut as another great case study: a pioneering social network founded by a Google developer named Orkut in his spare time, which gained some rising popularity in the early aughts, especially because it had fun MMO-type leveling systems associated with a user. But as sociologist danah boyd once explained, Brazilian users of Orkut discovered an Orkut page which "ranked" countries in order of their usage -- and treating it like a World Cup soccer match, got all their friends and family in Brazil to join Orkut too, so Brazil would be on top of that chart. Which is why Orkut is now owned by a Brazilian company.

I should add this case study isn't true of all social networks: Thanks to its tight design and strict control of the user experience, Facebook still pretty much looks and operates how it was originally designed by Zuckerberg and crew. Then again, due to Facebook's lax moderation of its own advertising platform, Facebook was also just used to help Russian hackers influence the last US Presidential election, and here we are.

Ready Player One Gets Mostly Positive, Enthusiastic Early Reviews

Maybe Ready Player One won't have the "disappointing" box office many are expecting after all: Reviews are coming in today after its premiere at SXSW last night, and currently, it's at a 73% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes ("No critics consensus yet"), with many (mostly) enthusiastic responses from top reviewers. Here's a sample:

From Variety: "Steven Spielberg has turned Ernest Cline's novel into a virtual-reality fanboy geek-out that's entrancing when it's virtual, less so when it's real."

From Hollywood Reporter: "A rollicking adventure through worlds both bleak and fantastic, Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One makes big changes to the specifics and structure of Ernest Cline's best-selling novel but keeps the spirit and level-up thrills intact... Gamers are far from the only ones who will respond to this virtual-world-set picture, which strikes an ideal balance between live action and CGI."

Indiewire: "This is Spielberg’s biggest crowdpleaser in years, a CGI ride that wields the technology with an eye for payoff. It’s also his most stylized movie since “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence,” though a lot more fun, with a cavalcade of visuals leaving the impression that he watched a bunch of Luc Besson movies and decided he could outdo them all. The result is an astonishing sci-fi spectacle and a relentless nostalgia trip at once."

Most of the positive reviews, I should say, don't acclaim the movie to be perfect, pointing out some superficiality and contrivance. Still, the overall response suggests it'll play well at the box office.

In fairness, here's a negative pan:

Watch: Virtual Reality Replaces Books in the New Adaptation of Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451

With rising star Michael B. Jordan (currently being badass in Black Panther) as the hero, HBO's adaptation of Ray Bradbury's classic seems savvily updated to today, squarely implicating virtual reality (about 35 second in) as a key part of this dystopia that's waging war, as the villainous Beatty declares, against "News, facts, memoirs, Internet of old.. burn it!" Often misinterpreted as mainly being about government censorship, it's really Bradbury's response to the rise of non-literary mass media, and its suffocating power, written many decades before smartphones and bedding Taylor Swift in the Oculus Rift. As he put in an interview some 60 years ago:

Ready Player One Posters Also Eerily Remind Me Second Life Ads

The latest trailer for Spielberg's Ready Player One adaptation eerily seems like a commercial for Second Life, and now a new series of Ready Player One posters remind me of various ad campaigns for SL too, contrasting the player (depicted in their street clothes) with
the avatar they use in the metaverse. (And as it happens, "Artemis" was also the avatar name for a very early SL user who was featured in Wired magazine's 2006 cover story.)

I will say "An adventure too big for the real world" is probably a better tagline than SL's "Your world, your imagination", in the sense that more consumers want an immediate idea of what they can do in another world (i.e. adventure!) rather than just getting a less tangible, more intimidating invite to just use "your imagination". So basically, a major Hollywood studio is now indirectly doing the marketing work for Sansar and High Fidelity, the follow-ups to Second Life, along with all the other new social VR worlds. 

Click here to see all the posters, including the lead character's avatar, Parzival, and Aech, whose garage is now featured in Sansar.