New World Notes

Radio, Remembered: Father Who Lost His Beloved Virtual Art in Second Life Finds Them Again -- Recreated in Fortnite By His Son

Here’s a story for the holidays about how online worlds keep families connected, even across generations. It starts a decade or so ago with an artist named Jeff Berg, who discovered a burgeoning new virtual world called Second Life. So he made an avatar named “AM Radio”, and began to create a legend.

The Second Life works of AM Radio have been known and loved by millions, once even featured in the New York Times. Using SL’s rudimentary creation tools, AM Radio made immersive spaces in Second Life that poignantly evoked an era lost to time, as if remembered in dreams.

As I once wrote in Polygon:

The first work in Second Life to bear AM Radio's name was "The Far Away," [above] a Midwestern wheat field players could walk around in, often making them feel wistful for a time and place they likely never knew... In an anonymous interview, AM Radio suggested he was creating these rustic places to puncture the virtual, to offer a glimpse of the real:

"Sunlight, for our generation, is something seen through Plexiglass windows, and my art is a reaction against that ... an attempt to tear down the fakery, all that plastic in impossible colors and awful rugs and terrible media, like television ... And now, here I am in a virtual world, trying to create the organic."

… They were 3-D sculptures that were mostly not animated, but their textures had a vivid lucidity that made them seem vibrant and alive. AM Radio made all this and much more. And as each new creation appeared in Second Life, word of mouth spread and thousands of avatars endlessly teleported there for weeks, months, years after.

In recent years, however, nearly all of AM Radio’s works have gone away from Second Life, largely dematerialized in the face of the high cost of virtual land. (That is to say, monthly server payments to Linden Lab.) So for most everyone, including Jeff Berg himself, his Second Life installations were only memories of the digital.

More recently, he lost another essential part of himself: His marriage. 

And as he and his wife moved in different directions, they also moved apart. Their teen son Cary went to live with her on the East Coast, while he remained in the Midwest. 

To keep connected with Cary, Berg bought an XBox. “All the boys where he lived are on it,” he remembers. “We probably have had some of our best fun together virtually.”

And to better reconnect with his father, Cary went much farther than that. One night he messaged Berg and said “Hey check this out.” And so he did:

Will Real World Politics Influence Players of SEED, the Exoplanet Colonization MMO? Majority of Fans Surveyed Say Yes

In my latest essay for SEED, the exoplanet colonization, world-building MMO with a political system designed by Larry Lessig, I surveyed the game's most passionate fanbase on Discord, asking them how SEED might related to their real life political outlook. The results were pretty surprising, at least to me:

Regardless of national origin, most respondents [49.6%] are decidedly unhappy with the current state of their real-world government. Despite (or because of?) this dissatisfaction, a majority of respondents say that their real world politics will guide how they play SEED, with 44% saying it will have “some” influence on their behavior, while 1 in 4 answering that their politics will shape their gameplay on Avesta “quite a bit”.

But what are the real world politics of SEED’s first wave of settlers? We asked respondents to indicate their ideology along the traditional left-right axis. A plurality (36%) put themselves on the center-left, with 1 in 5 indicating that they are either left wing or center-right. Just as notable: Nearly 1 in 10 place themselves on the far left, while just a sliver of respondents (3.4%) place themselves on the far right.

As to the crux question, and a key reason why Larry Lessig is involved in this MMO: Will we learn anything about real politics and organization from this game? A strong majority of 56% say Yes, reflecting this opinion from one survey taker:

Struggling Stadia Should Shift Away from Twitch Games to Virtual Worlds

Google recently launched Stadia, its OnLive-like streaming service for AAA games, and to no one's surprise who's ever been involved with streaming services like OnLive (like, um, say, me), the reaction so far has not been surprising:

• Google’s Stadia Just Ain’t It (Kotaku)
• Google Stadia Wants You to Replace Your Video Game Console. Don’t. (New York Times)
• Google Stadia is here, but there are still huge issues (CNN)

The amazing thing is this was entirely a foreseeable reaction. Stadia is leading with action-oriented AAA games where split second reaction times are essential to gameplay. Which brings up the core problem with streaming services for that kind of content:

There is simply. No. Fricking. Way. To get past. The speed. Of goddamn light. I mean seriously. Dude:

Second Life Community Moves to Sansar... and Then, To Roblox. Here's How They Compare

1867 is an interesting game experience on Roblox with an intriguing backstory. It started out as a Second Life-based community called Pfaffenthal 1867, associated with a real life museum in Luxembourg City. But as I wrote last year, community leader Hauptmann "Cyberpiper" Weyder moved it to Sansar. Yesterday (completely separate from the news of Sansar's recent woes), Cyberpiper posted an update in Comments to that old post, reflecting on his experience -- and his surprising new move:

I miss what we had in SL. But the problem lies in the rather volatile nature of the SL community. You do something new, nice, interesting, and folks will come. In order to keep it up though you have to put in a bug work load, mainly organizing one event after another. But despite our best efforts, traffic waned. Gosh we offered free housing to our 1867 community!! Rare in SL! The contract with the [RL] museum came to an end, and frankly we could not afford to pay 7000.-€ tier to LL a year out of our own pocket!

Sansar has been a disappointment. We managed to do a whole street eventually, but had to start over because of too much lag, trying to figure out ways of more efficient texturing or building. Also Sansar had promised mobile development, which was then taken off the roadmap, a big disappointment for us.  And... we all know it... no traffic in Sansar... for now...

So we have put Sansar development on the backburner, and decided to develop our own MMORPG, starting off by developing a ‘childrens version’ on ROBLOX.... check it out.

Yes, Roblox -- where it's getting way more visits than what it got in Sansar or possibly even Second Life: Nearly 3,500, since its launch last April. (Not a complete surprise, as Roblox has 100 million monthly users.)

"One thing to say is that we are not completely giving up on Sansar," Cyberpiper tells me now by e-mail. "We still like the philosophy behind it, and might continue building there at a later stage, when it is more developed."

Until then, here's how Cyberpiper compares Roblox's building tools and features, to Second Life's and Sansar's own:

Favorite Game Varies Widely from State to State, According to Google Trends -- And Fortnite is Only Most Popular in 20 States!

Just got this fairly fascinating map from consumer/online research firm Satellite Internet, which compiles Google Trends for the top 20 videogames on the market now, but on a US state level. When you get that granular with the results, it turns out there's lots of surprises: While Fortnite is far and away the world's most popular game now, for example, it's not the most popular in most US states. (Click above to embiggenate.)

"[W]e were expecting Fortnite to be the most popular game across most states," as Staff Researcher Victoria Smith tells me. "We were surprised to see there was a lot of diversity across the US for the most popular video game. Minecraft rose to popularity this year and came up across a lot of states too. We included 20 different video games in our report, to see if Fortnite would beat them all out."

But that's only the case in 20 states. And in many other states, it's another game entirely:

Watch: SEED Pioneers, Prequel to the Single Shard Exoplanet Colonization MMO

Here's the trailer to Seed Pioneers, a prequel to the upcoming single shard, virtual world simulation where players colonize an exoplanet and rebuild humanity, and I'm insanely excited to be a part of this project: For starters, I'm doing some embedded journalism about the world and the large community of fans who've already formed around the game, even though it won't launch until next year. Here's some highlights:

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: