New World Notes

Why Fortnite's Most Unexpected Predecessor is... Second Life

I was recently observing that Fortnite, the world's biggest multiplayer game, had just evolved into the world's most popular virtual world. As it turns out, Fortnite has always been a successor to virtual worlds -- specifically, to Second Life.

Yes: Cory Ondrejka, who co-founded SL with Philip Rosedale as Linden Lab's first CTO, just posted this recollection to his Facebook, tying together many games and game developer together: 

The connected web of game development is pretty awesome. In early 2001, we’d test the prototype of Second Life - then still called Linden World -- by battling each other in a hybrid FPS/building game. [See video below]

Soon after, we expanded scripting, building, and avatars came along and the modern version of Second Life was born, focused on letting people create. We had some pretty fun chats with Epic Games' Tim  Sweeney about blending engine, tools, and game into one experience right as Unreal Engine was exploring the same space from a different direction.

A decade later, Epic Games' Mark Rein let me play a prototype of Fortnite that blended ideas from various Epic Games, SL, and Minecraft into a really different game. Playerunknown: Battlegrounds came along and converted Arma 3 grognard-heaven into something totally new: Battle Royale.Soon after, Epic released a new gameplay mode for Fortnite and the world showed up to play.

Now Fortnite has opened up building and islands to enable players to build using their incredible tools. I wouldn’t have thought to build into a virtual world from a non-persistent game — though John Carmack, who’s often smarter than the rest of us, was musing on that idea back in the day — so it’s friggen cool to see them exploring this corner of design space.

And some years after leaving Linden Lab, Cory went on to join Facebook, where he helped drive the company's acquisition of Oculus, where Carmack is now CTO.  All this might be surprising to Fortnite players who assume Second Life to be a quirky Sims-type social game, let alone to current Second Life users, who tend to be more in the social gamer vein. But in its first few years (2003-2005), Second Life had a few major free fire locations (called the Outlands), which were all about Fortnite-type gameplay, combining building and combat. (Which even led to a in-game culture war.)  

Anyway, take a look at the Linden World product demo Cory mentioned, shot in 2001:

Fortnite Officially Becomes Full-Fledged Virtual World With Private Islands & Content Creation Tools

Fortnite! It's the most popular multi-user game in the world, and while it has always had some virtual world-esque aspects, the new Fortnite Creative mode makes it very much a persistent virtual world:

It’s a brand new way to experience the world of Fortnite, available on December 6. Design games, race around the island, battle your friends in new ways and build your dream Fortnite. It’s all happening on your own private island where everything you make is saved.

Also notable that the video above emphasizes Fortnite's potential as a machinima platform. And while a private island in Second Life costs you some $250 a month, the cost of your own private island in Fortnite is... (drum roll please):

Isotopium: A Real World Virtual World That's a Scale Model of a City & the Avatars Are Internet-Controlled Drones

Isotopium is a game on Kickstarter that has a pretty nifty twist to multiplayer games/MMOs: The "world" is a 200 square yard scale real world model of a city, and the player avatars are actual drones made up to look like tanks, controlled via the Internet. It's not quite virtual reality, it's...

"REMOTE REALITY" is a new concept that incorporates remote-controlled robot technology. We created a gaming platform that allows a player to control real robots over the Internet in real time. Video streaming comes without delays from robot cameras. Game takes place in arenas that can be located anywhere in the world. All arenas are linked together. Players can switch from one arena to another in just one click and play in multiplayers mode. 

This specific game is more or less like the World of Tanks MMO set in the real world, but it's easy to see how this approach could be applied to other real world settings using other kinds of remote-controlled drones. For instance, an MMO for flying drones that takes place in a sky city. Or a new kind of mixed reality game that incorporates drones and actual people. For instance, a futuristic prison escape game set in an abandoned warehouse/shipyard/utility company where the human players must escape through a maze, while prison guard "drones" try to spot and tag them with fricking lasers.

Single-Shard Worlds Encourage a Shared Culture - Including Virtual "Religion"

"Spiritual Expression in a Single-Shard Virtual World" is a new essay of mine for the development blog of Seed, the hugely ambitious MMO where players will rebuild society from the ground up. (Lawrence Lessig is helping craft a political system for it.) I relate instances of happening in pioneer virtual worlds like Eve Online, and also, of course, Second Life:

A single-sharded virtual world will inevitably wind up with recognizable groups which are identifiable by their real life nationality, ethnicity, or culture. And because many of these groups place a prime value on religious belief, they are likely to bring symbols of their spirituality to this new world. But religious divides can also follow users into the virtual space. One high-minded Second Life group founded its own interfaith metaverse religion called The Avatars of Change, announcing, “We are an ecumenical religious and cultural order, united by the Avatarian Way.” However, when disagreements over the members’ real life doctrines emerged, this new religious group quickly fell into chaos.

Read the rest here. I originally wrote about The Avatars of Change here on New World Notes here. If you missed it last Summer, Seed teaser below:

A New MMO Called New World -- Now Featured on New World Notes

12 years after this blog was launched and dubbed New World Notes, devoted to covering virtual worlds and MMOs, there's finally an actual virtual world MMO that's actually called New World.

Created by Amazon Studios, the simplest way to describe it, perhaps, is Day Z, but set during the conquistador era, in a persistent island world:

How to Create Virtual Experiences That Evoke Awe -- Learn from Kant!

This is a brilliant and thought-provoking video from Gamedenker, explaining how virtual experiences can evoke a sense of sublime awe -- or what Immanuel Kant called Erhabenheit. Where Kant argued that Erhabenheit is a phenomena evoked by nature, Gamedenker argues that it can also happen in video games. However, that sense of awe is rare, because designers fail to create the cues which make Erhabenheit possible. Very roughly summarized, creators must clearly convey a sense of massive size and scale, while also giving the user a sense of safety from which to appreciate it. (Shadow of the Colossus is a notable example.)

I asked Gamedenker if Erhabenheit can exist in user-created virtual worlds, and they said yes, pointing me to this Minecraft build:

Who Really Wants a Massive, Contiguous, Single-Shard Virtual World to Explore? (Comment of the Week)

Great rant from reader John C, responding to praise for Second Life being (largely) a massive, contiguous, single-shard world. John C doesn't agree at all:

What is this obsession with linking endless worlds. This is not how I experience the real world. Of course I know in my head that the real world is like this, but I do not really experience it this way. If I am in one town and I wish to visit the next, unless I have some obsession with experiencing the countryside between them, I get some form of transport. And this transport cuts me off somehow from the environment around me. But I do not mind, because my objective is not the space between my social events, but the events themselves. If teleports existed in RL would not the majority of people use them?

The only real use for contiguous worlds is in games that require large uninterrupted play areas. An intensely social metaverse does not require that I am able to travel for hours on end to meet my friends or my partner. Even if I wished to explore some natural virtual external environment I am sure that an island of no more than four SL sims connected would be ample for me and friends to wander through without the need to just walk endlessly seeing the same repeating trees grass and rocks into infinity.

Sure, there is a nice feeling of being able to see a mountain in the distance and imagine you can go visit. But how many times do you virtually wish to repeat that journey? In the real world, we live mostly in small spaces, we create small spaces like the little animals we are. Surly the only use for virtual worlds, beyond games playing, is social interaction, and by far the majority of the most beautiful sensual experiences you can have socially take place in the smallest of spaces. And if you truly wished to experience wandering endlessly in a beautiful environment then try the real world, it beats the hell out of any virtual world you will ever find. 

Now having said that, I am quite clear in my mind that the virtual is far more interesting than the real. But not because it can be huge and endless, that is just some tech challenge that the big virtual players want to beat at the moment. But because it allows me to connect with thousands of other people who I would otherwise, because of time, distance and social barriers, never meet. 

Even if I were rich enough to build the vast virtual city I have always dreamed of building in some virtual world, I would most likely consider breaking it down into smaller virtual chunks. 

I learned very early in my virtual building career that the vast majority of people have no desire at all to travel even shortest distances to their desired destinations. And the first thing you have to install in any good virtual environment is a good teleport system.  

There are many highly popular games, such as the GTA franchise, Skyrim, and Minecraft, which are contiguous simulated worlds. But John thinks their appeal is limited: 

Is Dual Universe Closest to Being a True "Metaverse"? Virtual World Expert Who Helped Define the Term Says So -- And Not Sansar, High Fidelity, Etc.

After saying I was impressed by High Fidelity’s ability to get 350+ avatars in the same local metaverse space, a guy who actually helped define the metaverse told me that he wasn’t very impressed. Will Burns, Vice-Chair for IEEE's Virtual Worlds Standard Group, showed me this video from 2016, and told me to watch. It’s a tech demo of Dual Universe, an upcoming sci-fi MMO that's only been slightly on my radar up until now, and you should watch too:

“As you can see,” says Will, “they not only have 1200+ concurrency and able to scale, they also have a persistent universe with planets. I have to reiterate that last point -- an actual virtual universe that is persistent.” At least that’s what the developer, Novaquark, claims:

Dual Universe is the first game where potentially millions of players can interact together simultaneously, inside the same giant universe. We call it the continuous single shard. No multi-server player separation, instances or loading times, just one enormous persistent universe that never stops.

“Not that I want to disparage Philip Rosedale and his team, or even Ebbe Altberg and Linden Lab, whether this is Second Life, High Fidelity, etc,” Will went on. “But the honest truth is, 300 or 500+ concurrency isn't very impressive to me when I know what is possible, and generally how it is made possible two years ago. It's not very impressive when a hybrid decentralization method would ultimately shatter those paltry numbers.”

He brought that point up to Philip recently, who just suggested, Will says, that “I apply to work for High Fidelity." 

However: “[H]ere's the problem: that platform and others, who all call themselves a Metaverse, are all off on the wrong foot, and locked into their particular paradigms. Unless we're taking things like Dual Universe into account, it's just an echo chamber among the pretenders about their accomplishments and milestones. Lots of nice virtual worlds, but that's about it. While everyone else is waving around the ‘Metaverse’ title and debating who is better, or who is going to be the Metaverse, it's the shallow end of the kiddie pool by comparison to Dual Universe or even No Man's Sky.”

Will first helped craft a definition in 2008, inspired by Neal Stephenson’s original description in Snow Crash, which IEEE adapted in 2013. “Now, if you type the word Metaverse into Google, it pops up with that definition from Wikipedia, which in turn cites the IEEE Virtual Worlds Standard group for it.”

That started an interesting conversation worth discussing here -- and by the social VR industry as a whole -- but first, a caveat from Mr. Burns:

Despite Slow Sales, Apple Continues Pushing AR-Based Games for iPhone

Augmented Reality was a featured part of Apple's new product announcements today, so let's watch these crazy kids play AR Galaga:

This AR adaptation of Galaga comes from Directive Games. When you look at your iPhone screen, you can see a bunch of alien-bug spaceships that you have to shoot down. You’re not only trying to survive, but you’re also trying to beat the other players. It was a pretty cool demo, with a lot of blasting onscreen and loud sounds.

More games are coming later this year, and who can blame Apple for trying? Challenge is, despite the huge exception of Pokémon GO, AR games for iOS aren't exactly flying off the shelf:

I'm Writing About World Building for Seed, the Ambitious New World MMO

"The Hidden Biases of World Building" is a new essay of mine for the development blog of Seed, the hugely ambitious MMO where players will rebuild society from the ground up, which Lawrence Lessig is helping craft a political system for. The Seed development team asked me to write a series of essays on world building as their own world takes shape, so this first one looks back at the worlds which have come before: 

The assumed primacy of military dominance is so deeply ingrained in games, it’s embedded in a subgenre’s name -- with genocidal overtones no less: 4X, for eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate.

Scott Jennings, a longtime designer and MMO analyst, explains this focus on gaming’s origins: “Strategy games tend to view problems as only requiring one (very well armed) tool to fix because for the most part that's what customers expect and want -- wargames, simulations of the military aspect of conflict resolution (and the more detailed in many cases the better),” as he puts it. “[A] lot of this comes from gaming's history in the pen and paper wargame days of the 1970s.” Given that background, many game designers miss the opportunity to move beyond combat; however, as Scott points out, there are notable exceptions that have succeeded: "’Crusader Kings’ for example is one of Paradox's top-selling titles in its list of strategy games, specifically because its focus is less on medieval warfare (although it has plenty of that) and more of the interactions between the political figures of the day -- marriage between factions, intrigue, betrayal, all the things that make Game of Thrones interesting.”

Of course I also relate the history of world building to the founding of Second Life, which was inspired by Burning Man: