New World Notes

Palia Particularly Appealing to Second Life Players. Here's Some Play Tips!

Second Life players party in Palia (pic via Gogo)

Palia, a recently-launched, free-to-play MMO described by developers as a cozy community simulation game (read my 2021 post on it here) has seen a notable growth of one sub-community of players in particular: Second Life users.

"All of my SL friends who joined, we're addicted," as famed Second Life blogger Gogo puts it to me. "And it's only been two weeks. What we do is farm, hunt, mine, level up all of these skills and more to access different goodies. It's all FREE. you can farm and sell your crops or mine and sell the mineral or melt it into gold bars and sell. With that gold, you can go shopping just like in SL, but the content is all created by the company."

So instead of Second Life events around, say, new brand launches or discount fairs, the social fun in Palia is around collaborating together. And unlike standard MMOs, it's not about grouping to raid dungeons or kill Yet Another Boss.

Instead, there's... cooking cakes.

"So we make like 50-100K [in Palia gold] per cooking round (cooking like 50 cakes in a team) everyone gets 50 cakes even though we only use ingredients for 50. So after we get all the cakes, we sell it and go raid the furniture store or the markets/black market. And make mansions, it's hilarious!"

Gogo counts at least a dozen Second Life players in her Palia network, and has seen many posts about it across SL-themed social media channels. Part of the appeal, she points out, is offering a break from the cash-driven creator economy of Second Life:

"I think for people that DON'T have money, they would really get into this MMO. The only time you have to spend money is to buy special outfits or hair etc, but the company provides a nice variety."

Sparkle Skye, creator of amazing SL wedding dresses -- listen to this podcast we did about that topic -- is now also a passionate Palia player:

This Great-Looking, Fully VR, Voxel-Based Sandbox Game Was Created by One Person -- And It's Now Updated & On Sale!

cyubeVR is easily among the most impressive-looking VR games I’ve come across, and while it launched in 2018, it just had a huge graphics optimization update. It’s now on sale on Steam until September 20.

A voxel-based sandbox world, cyubVR (pronounced “cube VR”, of course) is credited as coming from Stonebrick Studios, but it’s really a labor of love from one person.

“There is exactly one person on the dev team, it's just me,” they tell me, who goes by the name "sbsce", and quickly credits the game’s dedicated user community as collaborators. “I've been working full-time on cyubeVR for over 7.5 years by now, so quite a long time!”  

There is no multiplayer mode yet, but sbsce tells me that’s on the roadmap. “It's certainly one of the most requested features by the community.”

And despite surface appearances, it’s not Minecraft. Really:

Rooms.XYZ is a Kind of Mini-Metaverse You Can Customize & Explore in the Palm of Your Hand

Rooms.xyz is a new virtual world platform to play with; still in Beta, it's a deceptively simple (that is, actually powerful) interactive room creator/explorer on the web and iOS: 

• Try on the web here
•  For iOS, download the Alpha release on TestFlight here.

Watch the intro demo above. I only started noodling with it myself, but I see it as a kind of potential mini-metaverse, where the virtual world is represented by thousands of interconnected rooms you can play with in the palm of your hand. The charming voxel graphics and the bite-sized experiences that are 2.5D by default (with an option to display in full 3D) are a tight, organic fit with how Gen Y/Z habitually engage on the Internet. 

Founded by Jason Toff, formerly of Vine, Twitter,  and Meta (where he was a VR developer), here's a good interview with him in FastCo:

 

Viewfinder, Immersive, Brain-Melting Puzzle Game, Now 20% Off on Steam -- Read My Interview With the Indie Dev!

Fun for the long Labor Day weekend -- Viewfinder is 20% off on Steam until September 8:

Challenge perception, redefine reality, and reshape the world around you with an instant camera. Viewfinder is a new single player game offering gamers hours of interesting and fun experiences while uncovering the mysteries left behind. Viewfinder is a mind-bending first person adventure game in which you can bring pictures to life by placing them into the world.

As longtime readers may remember, I started cheerleading for and chatting with Viewfinder indie's developer, Matt Stark, back when it was just a viral demo released during the peak of COVID in 2020:

Life by You Simulation Game Early Access Pushed Back to March 2024, Says Lead Dev/Ex-Linden CEO Rod Humble

Early is later, sad to say:

Life by You’s Early Access date has moved to March 5, 2024. We’re excited to take this time to continue improving Life by You, and can’t wait to continue to update you on our development! We appreciate everyone who has taken the time to Pre-Order, Wishlist, and leave us questions and comments! We’ve added an extra bonus for everyone for the start of Early Access, the Nightclub Vibe pack. If you previously pre-ordered, your pre-order will be automatically refunded by Epic. You will need to pre-order through Epic again to receive your pre-order bonuses.

Originally set to launch in early access this September, lead developer (and ex-Linden Lab CEO) Rod Humble says the extra time will help integrate user feedback, add visual/UI improvements and gameplay tune-ups, enhance mod tools, and localization for Italian and Portuguese language users.

 

That's the official explanation, at least! My guess is Humble and company are also hoping for some kind of major push during GDC 2024 in March. Anyway, here's my previous posts on this seriously impressive mega-simulation game:

Viewfinder Finally Playable on Steam & PS5 for Brain-Melting Indie Fun

It's been over 3 years since Viewfinder started out as a viral, brain-melting Unity demo, and now it's finally and fully playable on Steam and Playstation 5:

Viewfinder is a mind-bending first person adventure game in which you can bring pictures to life by placing them into the world. It tells the story of the ever changing world, human experience and relationships, meaningful and misguided passion for change, and overcoming loss.

"It's come so far since the demos I posted ages ago," creator Matt Stark told me recently. "There's lots of stuff in the demo I couldn't have even dreamed of us doing back then. At the same time, it feels like the demo is just scratching the surface of all the stuff we've got in the rest of the game."

One particular feature that wasn't in the 2020 demo is fairly dazzling:

Watch: Avatar Customization in Rod Humble's Life by You Revealed

Back in March we had our first in-depth preview of Life by You, the new life simulation game by ex-Linden Lab CEO / former EA/Sims lead Rod Humble, now here's a granular look at its avatar customization features -- bodies and clothing above, more below (with an emphasis on facial characterization).

It's a great look at a modern avatar experience with a clean, bright, easy-to-use UI that's still highly granular, where pretty much any appearance can be achieved. Many Second Life users have called for Linden Lab to update its avatar customization so it's closer to this.

But as Humble himself might say, it's far too late to change the SL avatar system: There are too many user-made hacks and add-ons that would be broken by an upgrade, literally putting thousands of community content creators out of a job. (For instance, the whole attachable SL hair industry is built on the Second Life default hair UI being so limited.)

One alternative is to offer SL mobile app users a new avatar UI that's closer to the Life by You version, even if that means creating a kind of class/social divide between mobile and PC users. But that's probably inevitable anyway, since it's almost impossible create an equal experience across multiple devices. 

Anyway, more on Life by You avatars and art below:

Will NVIDIA's AI-Powered NPCs Make Games More Fun? This Star Wars Old Republic Designer Has Concerns

You probably saw this  pretty impressive recent demo of NVIDIA's NPCs powered by generative AI, enabling players to converse in deep detail with an NPC (albeit with a cringey mechanical voice). And if you were to ask an AI evangelist, they'd pronounce it as The Future of MMO Games.

However, if you were to ask an actual MMO designer who led creation of a AAA game like Star Wars: The Old Republic, they might have a more ambivalent response:

WATCH: Sims/Second Life Dev Rod Humble Unveils Features in Life by You, His Ambitious, Upcoming Simulation Sandbox Game

In March we got the first in-depth preview of Life by You, the new life simulation game lead developed by ex-Linden Lab CEO / former EA/Sims lead Rod Humble. Since then, the game's YouTube channel has been steadily showing off various features, including Rod himself showing off the avatar movement interface. (Watch above.)

I have to wince and grin at the video because Life by You's movement UI is already easier and more intuitive than what it currently is in Second Life -- even though Rod himself implemented some click-and-move improvements to the official SL viewer during his tenure as CEO. By that time, however, most active users had switched over to a third party viewer for using Second Life -- so any fixes to the official viewer were like giving a new paint job to the entrance of a mansion that's already been mostly abandoned.  

That to one side, Life by You is looking pretty impressive. Previous videos show off the powerful home customization options, and a feature for editing chats with NPCS: 

In Russia, Ukraine News is Censored, But Counter-Strike is Extremely Popular. So Reporters Put the Truth About the Invasion in a Secret Room Players Can Only See When They Die.

Amazing cyberpunk-made-real story of the month, made possible by the fact that Counter-Strike Global Offensive is extremely popular with young gamers in Russia (most of them either in Putin's military or likely to be conscripted into it), but where news of the nation's real invasion of Ukraine is censored.

Here's what Finnish reporters did with a user-made CS:GO map:

When a player’s avatar dies, the game view changes: For a while, the player can go through walls or fly around the map. At this stage, they can also find the secret room hidden underground...

There is a light above the door. This is a hint that taking a closer look at the object may reveal something.

There are stairs leading to an underground room.

First, the player sees a wall with a headline.

Next to the headline, there is a map showing how many civilian targets in Ukraine have been hit by Russians.

Another wall displays a news item on the Bucha massacre. When the player comes close to the images, they hear a Russian voice-over on their radio telling them what the images are about: Ukrainian civilians murdered by Russian soldiers.

Read the English-language story here. The CS:GO map "de-voyna" is available on Steam. Consider giving it a good rating, so that more players will see and experience it.