New World Notes

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:

Rec Room Passes 10,000 in Peak Daily Concurrency Across All Platforms, Leapfrogs Fortnite on Xbox's Free Games Leaderboard,

Based on Steam user stats, I've assumed Rec Room trailed far behind VRChat. but that's reportedly wrong.  While Rec Room is currently peaking at 1,428 concurrent users on Steam, the world's design lead, Shawn Whiting, tells me via Twitter that Valve's platform is just a small piece of Rec Room's usage pie:  "Steam is our smallest platform by far. iOS, Xbox, PlayStation, and Oculus all higher," as he puts it. When I note this would suggest Rec Room now has over 10,000 total peak daily concurrent users across all platforms, he confirms that that is indeed the case.

This came out after Rec Room hit another milestone: In the Free Games category on Xbox, it's now ranking over Fortnite itself:

Play Season: Magic Realist Adventure Game Where You Explore & Document Mysterious Cultures Before They Fade Away

With visuals evoking a Miyazaki movie you forgot to watch and a story reminiscent of a Haruki Murakami story you forgot to read, the coming-soon indie game Season (for PS5 and PC on Steam) looks utterly gorgeous, an immersive journey that's both nostalgic and otherworldly:

Close your eyes, take a deep breath and let yourself be carried away by the journey of Season, a third-person atmospheric adventure bicycle road trip game. The premise of Season is that you play a traveler recording the last moments of different cultures before they’re washed away. Through the eyes of a young woman leaving a secluded community, you explore the wider world for the first time. Story Document, photograph, draw, and record life. Through a solitary bicycle journey, form your own memories, your own vision of the world around you. Your goal? Protect these treasures from being forgotten. Your quest will lead you to discover a new world; unknown, yet familiar. You will be immersed in different societies that will make you discover the mysteries of the world of Season; a surreal version of the mid-twentieth century, where thousands of years have passed without any progress. Find out what caused the last collapse and what might cause the next one...

It's very much a descendant of the influential masterpiece game Journey. Also the latest entry in a new genre of MMO/adventure game/RPG where the goal is not dominance through combat, but transcendence through art and social engagement. For instance:

Dual Universe Already Has At Least One Embedded Reporter on YouTube

"This month has been great... if you're a shady individual of questionable morality." So begins the latest report from Charlie Traveler, reporter for Dual Universe Stellar Transmissions from the Dark Star Imperium clans... which is also the latest sign that a rich user community and culture is emerging in Dual Universe, the highly-ambitious, single-shard metaverse MMO we write about often here: That's right, since its launch last September, Dual Universe already has at least one embedded journalist. The news stories themselves are full of corporate vs. corporate intrigue reminiscent of Eve Online but on a grander scale.  Of course I personally think an embedded reporter is the best sign of a virtual world's future, but then I'm somewhat biased.

"We were inspired off of a need to catalogue the history of the game," the Dark Star team leader tells me via YouTube, explaining the channel's inspiration and news-gathering approach. "[I]f we did not do this then the interactions and happenings in the community would fade into obscurity, with many people never being able to ever know things had happened. We gather things through a mix of people being able to self report and tip us off on things anonymously, as well as having reporters who crawl and aggregate information throughout the community."

Also interesting to me (and this might be a sign of slow user growth): Mr. Traveler reports the top ten player organizations by user numbers, and they're all in the low four to mid three figures. Which suggests Dual Universe's active userbase is probably in the low mid figures? 

More Dual Universe stories below:

Core Launches Attack on Roblox's 25/75 Revenue Split for Creators

Image via Manticore's blog, comparing Core's creator-company revenue split to Roblox's split

CEO of Manticore Frederic Descamps just announced a new monetization structure for people who develop games on Core, its new Unreal-based, Epic-funded user-generated game development platform, and it reads very much like a direct attack on Roblox. Because while Roblox has shown seriously impressive company revenue and user numbers, creators who publish games on Roblox only take 25% of the games' revenue. (Even though the top Roblox games are played more often than the top games on Steam.) Now the gauntlet has been thrown:

Core isn’t the first UGC games platform — though it is the first full-service one with high-end graphics and multiplayer gameplay — but creators on our leading competitors generally get only a small piece of the pie. Roblox, for instance, has built an extremely impressive ecosystem for kids, with millions of players and 7 million people making and selling content, but it only pays those creators at most 24.5% of the revenue they generate (which includes a 30% marketplace fee upfront). Other gaming UGC and modding platforms pay even less or nothing at all; many were designed without even considering creator monetization.

This needs to change. We think creators should be paid fairly, and that’s why we’re so excited about what the Perks monetization system means for them. Starting today, in addition to keeping half of the revenue they generate, Core creators will also be able to maximize their earnings by integrating whatever economic system they desire in their games.

It will be interesting to see if top Roblox creators begin moving over to Core, or if Roblox quickly attempts to match/beat this revenue split (at least for the top creators on its platform).

Then again, why should indie developers publish their games on Core for a 50% cut when they could instead publish it on Steam and get a 70% cut, or on the App Store and get a 85% cut (on the first $1 million net)? I put that question to Descamps, who answers this way:

 

Cyberpunk 2077 Reviews Seem Decidedly Mixed So For (Except for Keanu)

If you're one of the many millions waiting for the new open world game Cyberpunk 2077 (I'm debating making the massive download myself), the hands-on reviews are starting to be published -- and so far, they seem to lean but positive but mixed.  Pros: Beautiful open world, fun gameplay. Cons: Buggy, not as open as it seems at first, and negatively retro story/politics. Then again every reviewer however seems happy with Keanu. Samples:

It’s a good thing “Cyberpunk 2077” gets so many details right, because in its current prelaunch state, it’s … what you’d expect from a launch CDPR game. Before “Witcher 3” became the darling of the industry, it was released in a famously buggy state. “Cyberpunk 2077” continues this tradition despite seven years in development, several delays and worrying reports of overtime crunch...

The artificial intelligence here likely factors into the overall jank of the game. Enemies and allies alike have no discernible combat tactics besides point and shoot and die. The boss encounters fare even worse, becoming a mess of mechanics as they flip around and do all kinds of things you wish you could. Just as “Witcher 3” didn’t set the world on fire with its battle mechanics, neither will “Cyberpunk 2077.” -- Gene Park, Washington Post

More samples below:

Travis Scott Likely Sold Some $10 Million in Virtual Content from Fortnite

Fascinating tidbit from this Forbes profile of hiphop start Travis Scott, on his groundbreaking Fortnite shows earlier this year:

The implications of his Fortnite concert quickly became evident. For Epic, it proved that the company was well on track to becoming more than just a maker of video games. For Scott and, really, the entire music industry, it laid a path to a new revenue stream. Scott grossed roughly $20 million for it including merchandise sales, according to a source, much more than what his concerts typically gross. It showed that a virtual performance, once dismissed as a gimmick, could be as much an act of artistry as an old-fashioned live show.

Emphasis mine, because wow. At first I assumed Epic developer Fortnite paid Scott most of that $20 million, but running some industry standard estimates on the Fortnite content the Travis Scott show was selling, it's likely half or more of that was virtual goods sales. Here's the back-of-envelope math:

Watch: Book of Travels, Serene & Painterly Online World, Flips MMO Expectations

Here's a first look at Book of Travels, a Kickstarter-powered project that's an MMO but flips our expectations of an MMO on its head. Where we've come to expect a massively multiplayer online world, with Book of Travels it's the world that's massive, but the number of actual players are, by design, going to be tiny:

Wander deep into the layers of this hand-drawn world, stumble upon its hidden places or unravel one of its many mysteries. There is no overarching goal, no real beginning or end, but for mortal characters the stakes can be high.

Braided Shore is a vast and intricate world, but meetings with other players are few and far between so your chance encounters will be something special.

So maybe a bit in the vein of Journey, if Journey had become an MMO as planned. It's always been a hidden assumption that MMOs are better when they have a massive playerbase, but that usually means the users overwhelm the world, to the point where there are literal lines of users waiting their turn to talk with an NPC quest-giver. The painterly look of the world and the narrative depth suggested by its character creation system, where personality traits replace standard Strength/Dexterity/etc. MMO tropes, enforce that sense of an alternate existence to be shared and be part of, not a game to win.