New World Notes

New for Nintendo Switch: Hexagroove, "Tactical DJ" Game by Linden Lab Alum

If you own a Nintendo Switch, Hexagroove is a new game you should check out, another ambitious project created by former Linden Lab developers. (In this case, from folks mainly on the Blocksworld team.) As befitting a game from Linden alum, Hexagroove is a mash-up of many genres, with a core focus on player creativity -- specifically, it's a "tactical DJ" game:

Blizzard Employees Strongly Support Company's Punishment of Hong Kong Advocate & Player Censorship of Sensitive Chinese Topics - Blind Survey

Blizzard HQ photo by Heather Newman

Blizzard has been under tremendous backlash since its October 8 decision to punish Chung “blitzchung” Ng Wai, a Hong Kong-based Hearthstone champion, after he advocated for the city's pro-democracy movement during a live post-game interview. Anti-Blizzard memes have spread through the gaming world, along with calls to boycott the company's games, and protest at its conventions; unsurprisingly, Blizzard just cancelled an upcoming Overwatch launch event in New York.

However, aside from a small walk-out protest and other ripples of dissatisfaction, one point remains unclear: What do Blizzard employees think of punishing its players for expressing opinions considered taboo by the Chinese government on their gaming platforms?

According to a survey recently launched by the development team of Blind, an anonymous messaging app for tech company staffers, a strong majority of Blizzard employees actually support the punishment of Chung -- and in general, strongly support censorship of players criticizing China's government.

About 500 Blizzard employees are members of Blind's community for the company, Blind co-founder Kyum Kim tells me. Of that 500, fifty to seventy Blizzard employees took the two question survey, along with hundreds of staffers from many other tech companies -- raw data on the right.

Asked, "Should Blizzard reverse its banning of the Hearthstone player?", only 36% of Blizzard employees surveyed responded Yes. However, a solid majority of 64% opposed the reversal. This greatly contrasts with answers from employees across the tech industry, which supported a reversal at ranges from 67 to 92%. (With the notable exception being Riot Games -- like Blizzard, a game company that's heavily dependent on the Chinese market, with opinion split 50/50.)

Blind launched this survey last Thursday, just before Blizzard softened (but did not completely reverse) Chung's punishment. However, when asked a more general question about sensitive Chinese political topics, Blizzard employees were about as adamant in their support of player censorship :

Cloudpunk: Voxel-ish Indie Game Looks More Immersive Than 2077

Cloudpunk is an indie game coming soon-ish, and while it may be Keanu-free, its moody, voxel aesthetic and soundtrack sure makes it look more engrossing and immersive than the much-hyped (over-hyped?) Cyberpunk 2077:

Decentraland Founder on Moving Open Standards-Billed Virtual World to Unity 3D

Decentraland, the virtual world which raised USD $25 million in Ethereum sales of virtual land to fund its development and is showing some promising closed beta growth. was originally billed as aiming to run completely on open standards technology and protocols. Over the Summer, however, the startup quietly moved to Unity 3D, the world's largest 3D development platform which is decidedly closed and proprietary. Which to me seems like a major change in development philosophy.

 

Decentraland founder Ari Meilich argues otherwise:

 

"More important than the underlying stack is what it enables," as he puts it to me. "The open source JS engines we previously tried were not performant enough, so having a web-based client was at risk. The web is crucial for Decentraland because it overrides any platform limitations, like those you encounter in the app stores against crypto.

 

"So by adopting Unity (which allowed for a great performance boost by compiling to WASM we are able to give users a web-based client, with the web being the last bastion of freedom on the Internet."

 

It's an irony of the times: The best way to get on the most open Internet platform is through a closed platform.

 

Ari tells me this doesn't move Decentraland away from the open standards as a principle:

Space Engineers, a Voxel-Based Sandbox Game for Creators Who Want More Destruction

YouTuber Luca, who's made some of the best viral Second Life machinimas in recent years, has a third life as a YouTube streamer of Space Engineers, a voxel-based sandbox game. (Watch above, as Luca builds a whole ass space ship during a downtime.) While the game worlds are decidedly different, Luca says many fans of the former might want to try out the latter:

Decentraland Getting Prim-Based Creation System from SL Scripting Veteran

The private beta release of Decentraland, the open standards virtual world which raised USD $25 million in Ethereum sales of virtual land to fund its development, is looking pretty good so far. Even more important, it's starting to see some notable projects from third party developers. For instance, a prim-based creation building block system:

The idea for this scene was simple: I wanted to be able to intuitively build things while actually standing in the scene, not in a separate Builder or with an external text editor and modeling software (as one does with the SDK). Also, I’m not a 3D artist, so it had to be made entirely of primitive shapes... Overall, the scene has a bit of a Minecraft feel, but where most of the blocks are bigger than the grid size, and are carried around in front of you rather than in an inventory. Per my main goal, you can totally build some fun things without ever leaving the scene.

Check out an early web-based version of this project here. Created during a recent Decentraland user hackathon, the prim creation system is currently, well, primitive, but that can quickly change. Also notable:

Seed, the Persistent World-Colonizing MMO, Gets $22.3 Million in Funding

Great news for my colleagues at Klang Games:

Klang has raised $22.33 million in funding to develop a massively multiplayer online space colony simulation called Seed. The Berlin-based game studio is making a large-scale, persistent virtual world, hoping to redefine the MMO landscape... Seed is an online life-simulator where each player manages multiple characters. Set far in the future, players work together rebuild society and create a new home in a vast world similar to the Earth. The simulation is persistent and continuous, meaning that when players go offline, their characters will continue to live their lives within the simulation.

Seed's Discord server is here. I've been working with the Klang team on Seed's launch since last year, and I'm pretty psyched (in a very biased way) for their next big announcements coming soon. Until then, here's some of the writing I've done for them, to help set the stage for what they're creating:

Roblox Now Reports 100 Million Monthly Users, With 3x Growth in 3 Years

Amazing new growth and revenue numbers from Roblox, the virtual world creation platform for kids and young teens:

A week after gaming platform Roblox  announced its new milestone of 100 million monthly users — topping Minecraft — the company said at its fifth annual developer conference that its developer community is on track to earn $100 million in 2019. Roblox also introduced a new set of developer tools for building immersive, more realistic 3D experiences; detailed its plans to make its developer software fully cloud-based; unveiled a new Developer Marketplace where creators can set their development assets and tools to others; and more. Over the past decade or so, Roblox has grown to become a $2.5 billion company, with roughly half of U.S. children ages 9 through 12 playing on its platform.

Roblox reported 30 million monthly users at the end of 2016, so this is amazing, strong growth. As Roblox users grow out of their early teens, they're bound to look for a platform with better graphics, more capability, and a more mature outlook. I'm even more amazed that Linden Lab's new ad campaign for Second Life does little to show off its unique capabilities to this potential market.

Decentraland Looking More & More Like a Virtual World -- But Maybe Less Than What Investors Hoped

Ryan Schultz has an in-depth, in-world look at Decentraland, which in 2017, raised USD $25 million In Ethereum to fund development of the open standards virtual world. In the two years since, many have speculated that Decentraland might be vapor or mere tulip-mania over virtual land that with no actual world. But Ryan's embedded reporting reveals it looking more and more like a thriving virtual world -- though maybe not as full-featured as its many investors expected:

AR Gaming Played Out? Harry Potter Wizards Unite Popularity Falling Far Short of Pokémon Go's Peak

With the continued success of Pokémon Go -- yes it's still huge worldwide -- the common wisdom in the AR/VR industry is that augmented reality games need to have a major brand to go mass market. With the recent launch of Harry Potter Wizards, an AR game that's also from the creator of Pokémon Go, that common wisdom is not looking so wise:

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite generated an estimated $1.1 million in player spending over its first weekend of availability and was installed by nearly three million new players, Sensor Tower Store Intelligence data shows. Based on its performance over the period of June 20 through June 23, and its impending launch in Japan and South Korea, the two largest markets where it remains unavailable, we project that Harry Potter: Wizards Unite stands to gross more than $10 million in its first 30 days. Niantic’s previous release, the smash hit Pokémon GO, generated more than $28 million in player spending during its first four days post-launch on 24 million installs in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand alone. It went on to gross $206 million and see close to 173 million downloads in its first month.

I'm seriously surprised at Harry Potter's tepid results, because I fully expected it to be a big hit. There's still a good chance Niantic can turn this around by tweaking the game -- some early reviews suggest it feels like a Pokémon GO knockoff without the organic charm -- but the relatively small number of downloads suggests some more fundamental problems.

I mean, just watch the trailer: