New World Notes

Viewfinder, Mind-Bending, Reality-Creating Unity Demo, Now Seeking Publishers With a Graphically Enhanced, Playable Version

Remember Viewfinder? Created by student Matt Stark, that's the synapse-thrashing Unity demo which depicted an interactive world where the user can manipulate their surroundings by taking a picture of them which, once taken, becomes its own little interactive, manipulable, physics-enabled world.

Since showing it off last year, Matt has greatly enhanced the graphics options, added some gameplay features, and has turned it into a short playable version -- watch above! He is now seeking publishers interested in bringing it to the world.  Get in touch with him on Twitter or with his development partner Callum Underwood.

As for how he does this, here is Matt's way of explaining it:

Play Palia, a "Community Simulation" MMO Set in a Fantasy World at Peace

Palia is an intriguing new MMO now in limited pre-Alpha access with a somewhat odd* name from Singularity 6, a startup I last wrote about in 2019, led by many AAA developers who ambitiously promised to create worlds that built "community, friendships and a real sense of belonging.” I was somewhat skeptical at the time, but Palia announces itself as aiming to be just that: 

Palia is a massively-multiplayer community simulation game set in a brand new high fantasy world with elements of open world adventure games. It’s a cozy and welcoming world that we hope fans of the community sim genre will love for years to come.

As all that suggests, there's little or no typical "kill 10 rats" type of gameplay, almost as if it's set in a fantasy world that takes place in between the great battles that get way more press:

Tomorrow: Join a Truly Massive Event With 1000s of Avatars in the Same Space in ScavLab, the Sandbox Testing Platform in Scavengers

Tomorrow (May 29) at 11am PT is the first massive-scale community event in Scavengers, the survival/sandbox game with some Second Life in its DNA.

And I do mean massive, because Scavengers runs on Improbable's Spatial OS:

"We reached over 1,800 players in our closed test in April, so we're hoping to beat that," Rob Whitehead, co-founder and CPO at Improbable, tells me. "However, this first public event will allow up to 5,000 players - although the tech allows for greater player numbers, we found that 5,000 was the max level of density for an enjoyable gameplay experience. We're designing new game modes/events that will go beyond this number."

Here's how to join the event:

• Download Scavengers on Steam or on EGS
• Boot the game
• Go to the main menu (you may need to first complete/leave the opening tutorial)
• Make sure you queue up for the "ScavLab game mode" before the 11AM PT/7PM BST event

Should be a fun and interesting experience even if you're not a hardcore gamer, and are mainly interested in experiencing the latest in Improbable's technology for truly massive, single shard worlds, and the feeling of being surrounded by thousands of avatars. And yes, I do mean surrounded:

New on Steam: First Class Trouble, Like a 3D Among Us, But Onboard a Cruise Ship Where You Can't Tell Fellow Players from Killer Androids

First Class Trouble is a new indie game in Early Access on Steam, and it's next on my list to play. (Soon as I master Fights in Tight Spaces, but that's another story.) To judge by early footage, First Class gameplay is a fairly clever combination of Among Us (but highly immersive) meets BioShock (bloody murder on an Art Deco ocean vessel) meets Blade Runner, in the sense that you're competing against other players and killer androids... but you can't tell right off the bat which is which. (Also reminds me a bit of Spy Party, but in a multiplayer setting.) NPC AI has become sophisticated enough that it's sometimes difficult to immediately tell an NPC from another player, so I suspect we'll see this kind of gameplay mechanic being used more often. 

The developers at Invisible Walls tell me that the live action party game Werewolves was an influence, along with another, more unlikely inspiration:

Rise of Roblox: User-Generated Metaverse Platform Now More Valuable Than Traditional Game Companies Like EA & Take 2

Above: Image from ROBLOX's stock filing, data from the first 9 months of 2020

As expected, Roblox's IPO today was massive:

What makes Roblox different from other online game platforms is that it lets users create their own games on the platform. Developers receive 30% of the proceeds generated from a game, such as the sale of virtual outfits and avatars... As trading began Roblox stock shot up 63%, trading near 73.50, during afternoon action on the stock market today. That accelerated its market value to $47 billion.

Explicitly designed to be a metaverse, Roblox's valuation so far proves the market validity of user-generated content where user-made games (often made by teens still living at home!) are often more popular than the most popular professional games on Steam. Now with this IPO, you can see the dominance of Roblox and its grassroots content as compared to some of the very top traditional game companies. For instance:

Watch: New Gameplay Tests of Seed MMO Gives Us Glimpses of Building, Fighting, Exploring -- And Unexpected Social Emergence

Here's a new look at the latest gameplay test of Seed, the ambitious planet colonization MMO from Klang Games, featuring resource-gathering, world exploration, combat, and more. I'm somewhat biased but so far I'm admiring the streamlined elegance of the user interface and the art. Klang's Sabrina Seltenreich tells me the team is already seeing some interesting, unplanned player emergence, even in these early play trials: 

"We had put several people into the same world, and asked them all to work towards an individual goal of processing resources and building certain machines for their own progression," she tells me. "Everybody had their own little base and a container, which other players couldn't access or interact with. Still, after a short amount of time, they figured out that they could put items into the Kernel and other people could take them -- so they started to share resources, which wasn't something we had planned for or expected." (That was during a previous test, not the one featured in this new video.)

 Seed's Discord server is also becoming an integral part of players' experience of Seed: 

Core Launches Game Dev Competition With $120,000 in Prizes

Speaking of creating virtual worlds with in-game modeling/scripting tools, behold: The Core Invitational Game Jam, awarding $120,000 in prizes to games created on the platform. (Think Unreal meets ROBLOX.) Details:

Manticore Games, creators of the Core platform for making and playing games, is calling on all indie game devs, creators and modders to apply now for one of only 50 slots in the first-ever Core Invitational, an exclusive game dev competition with $100,000 USD in prizes...

Categories and prizes include:

Despite Amazing Creativity, Why Does PS4's Dreams Have So Few Users?

Dreams, the Playstation 4 exclusive from Media Molecule, is a virtual world creation platform with what look to be some of the most impressive and user-friendly creation tools on the market, incredible user-generated content like this, and has at least nearly 1.4 million user accounts. (According to this Media Molecule account, which new users auto-follow when they create an account on the platform.)

What Dreams doesn't yet have, vexingly, is many active users.  As I write this, there's less than 1,500 concurrent users in-game. (By contrast, there's currently about 15,000 and 2,000 concurrent users in VRChat and RecRoom, respectively, on Steam alone.)

Why? To some extent, the very fact that VRChat and RecRoom have become so popular is likely sucking the air out of other user-generated virtual world platforms like Dreams -- especially when those worlds are free-to-play and Dreams costs $20. This recent-ish feature from Kotaku may have some other hints:

IMVU's Plan to Make VCOIN the Most Used Blockchain-Based Currency in Virtual Worlds -- and the Real One

IMVU just announced the availability of VCOIN, an Ethereum-based digital currency for use in its virtual world with 7 million active users  -- and, by design, for buying and selling goods and services in the real world, too. From the announcement:

Available now for the IMVU desktop, mobile web, and web platforms, VCOIN is seamlessly integrated into the IMVU experience, enabling secure, global peer-to-peer transactions at the click of a button. IMVU’s high-velocity economy currently sees more than 27 million transactions and 13 billion Credits changing hands each month. With the addition of VCOIN, users can now easily and instantly pay for goods and services on the platform -- no complicated crypto wallets, or even bank accounts required -- and then convert their earned VCOIN into cash at an established rate.

This is a major move for at least a couple reasons: While blockchain-based currencies have attracted much hype and speculation, they are not actually used very much to, you know, buy goods and services. (As I never tire of noting, more people use Linden Dollars in Second Life than use Bitcoin every day.) At the same time, while there are other virtual worlds with a cash-out option for virtual currency, they also have small user bases -- and aren't authorized for use in the real world. While Linden Dollars outstrip Bitcoin in usage, for instance, they still only count some 400,000 daily users, and aren't intended for use as a RL currency.

Enter VCOIN, which hits the market with 7 million built-in customers. John Burris, IMVU's Chief Strategy Officer, tells me the company fully intends to encourage VCOIN's use outside IMVU -- and even approached the SEC with that in mind:

Can You Guess Which Screenshots Are From GTA Online or... Second Life?

Quick: At a glance, which of the screenshots above was taken in Grand Theft Auto Online, the massively popular open world MMO launched in 2013, and which was shot in Second Life, the niche sandbox construction MMO launched in 2003? (Click to embiggen!)

Not sure? OK, try this one:  

This should be easier because Grand Theft Auto Online is all about racing and heisting in vehicles on land, air, and sea -- right? So which is from GTA, and which from SL?

Answers below, and a conversation with the online game explorer who shot them: