New World Notes

Tim Sweeney Has an Epic Vision for an Open Metaverse -- But Unanswered Questions "Who Needs It?" & "Who Wants It?" Remain

Master VR podcaster Kent Bye has a valuable Twitter thread on a SIGGRAPH 2019 talk by Epic's Tim Sweeney, who just laid out his vision for an open metaverse. (No surprise Epic has plans to build one, as that was evident when the company rolled out user-creation tools for Fortnite last year.) In opposition to say, Facebook, Sweeney's metaverse is admirably open and not a walled garden: 

.@TimSweeneyEpic
What is the Metaverse?
Real-time social medium to share experiences & ceators need to be able to create their own stuff.
Needs to have an open economy that participants can participate & survive w free market economics without corporate dystopian control.

— Kent Bye VoicesOfVR (@kentbye) July 30, 2019

As with any other metaverse framework, however, two basic questions (far as I can tell) remain unaddressed:

Decentraland Launches New Site With Metaverse Messaging, Creator Contest

Big updates to Decentraland, the ambitious, open standards-based social VR world project which raised $25 million in 2017 via Ethereum sales to fund development. The website is new, gorgeous, and decidedly metaversian in its messaging:

Welcome to Decentraland: A virtual world owned by its users. Build, explore, and earn money from your creations. Join a public platform controlled by its community and take a stake in the virtual world. Drive your vision with the tools, tutorials, and support that our community provides. Decentraland’s world is built around MANA, a blockchain-based token used for trading goods and services provided by users.

More on the blog here. On top of that, there's a major update to the Builder, the world's scene builder, and a Creator Contest that's being co-judged by James Dargie, a seasoned 3D artist with an impressive AAA game/Hollywood movie track record. (Metroid Prime, Medal of Honor, the Matrix movies, etc. ) For a glimpse at how the Builder works and what's possible with it, here's a recent-ish tutorial where a simple tower defense game is built in Decentraland:

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):

Humans Want Struggle, Not Perfection: What The Matrix's Agent Smith Teaches Us About Creating Successful Virtual Worlds

If you want to know why some virtual worlds like Minecraft are huge, while others like Second Life remain a relative niche, watch this scene from The Matrix, which is actually about creating the virtual world of the Matrix itself. Agent Smith reveals that the AIs first tried to create a perfect virtual world for its human users, but the humans rejected it. For Will Burns, Vice-Chair for IEEE's Virtual Worlds Standard Group, this is the key challenge virtual world developers face:

"When you build a perfect world without needs or wants, it inevitably is rejected," as he puts it. "Because that's not how humanity works. Humanity thrives in the pursuit of progress and something to work toward.

"So when you introduce those needs, those imperfections and whatnot, suddenly humanity thrives, rises to the occasion. When you stop giving them everything and their entire existence is no longer on a whim of wants, but no needs... something fundamentally changes in how that society works. They strive and overcome. You give them challenges, limits to face and overcome. That way, you no longer end up with 'Bored God Syndrome'. People logging in and saying 'What's the purpose here?'.

"If everything is a matter of want but not need, then it's boring. If nothing really serves a need, people get bored. Introduce those limits to overcome, those challenges, and they come together not just for want, but for necessity. And that's how civilizations arise in their complexity. And by no means should you give them that pre-defined complexity prebuilt. You just hand them the system that lets them do it themselves and ultimately requires it."

 The challenges define and shape how the virtual community evolves:

"In this manner, airports means something when built. It's not a joyride (though you could have tours). But it serves a real purpose of faster travel. Highways, sea ports, etc. They serve a bigger purpose. And they are created with the intention of solving a problem. That's the big take away. What does such a thing solve in a virtual society? Does it have a purpose other than superficial? In that moment, you realize the secret to a successful Metaverse. Is it superficial only? Then you have Bored God Syndrome and it gets rejected. Just like the first Matrix."

That changes if the developer imposes struggles and challenges: 

When Does a Successful Virtual World "End"? (Comments of the Week)

With well-known Second Life-focused media outlets expanding their focus to other virtual worlds, some readers have become bearish on SL's prospects. For instance, Clara Seller:

A few years ago, I always thought that Second Life's end would look like a mass exodus to a new world. Now it feels more like mass extinction.

I'm skeptical that there's enough commonality to hold these diversification models together. It seems like they are just extending a big net and hoping there's something out there to catch.

When you start to see successful people jumping out of tenth floor windows toward nothing, it's not entirely crazy to think there's fire up there.

When SL goes down the drain, it's going to take a huge amount of imaginary money and hope down the drain with it. Whatever worlds exist in that aftermath, are going to have to deal with the "Remember what happened to Second Life" reality.

Small businesses go quickly and quietly. Now you see it, now you don't. I'm starting to think that this will be the real foundation challenge that the next generation of virtual worlds will have to contend with. Maybe all of this technology floundering is the easy part.

Penny Patton, a RL graphics artist with a longtime commitment to improving SL visuals, has perhaps a more nuanced view:

Divisive SL Secrets Gossip Blog Relaunching as Virtual Secrets Site for Multiple MMOs - But Not Due to Recent Second Life Ban, Insists Co-Founder

Notable update to the fate of SL Secrets, the user-submitted gossip/slam site which was so divisive and upsetting to many in the SL community, Linden Lab apparently banned its owners from Second Life entirely. In a recent update, co-founder Kesseret announces SL Secrets will soon become Virtual Secrets: "This leaves us open [to[ the opportunity to expand into various other MMOs or virtual worlds that we seem interested in expanding into," she writes there. "This domain will redirect to the new domain when the change happens."

Kesseret tells me this rebranding is not due to Linden Lab hitting them with a trademark infringement suit -- "Nope", she says, when I asked if they received a legal notice -- nor is it due to her recent banning in Second Life:

"[The change] was being thought of before I realized I was banned," she says. "I was actually 'on hold' mid-June according to my e-mails. Being banned just made it easier to give up the SL part. We do not have a Second Life presence anymore."

The real motivation, she says, tracks with a larger trend of other SL-centric media properties away from a strict Second Life focus:

Decentraland Attracting More Virtual Land Speculation Than Virtual Community?

Decentraland, the open standards-based social VR world project which sold virtual land plots worth USD $25 million in Ethereum last August, is experiencing a virtual land grab that's become so fierce since I wrote about in February, Bloomberg News has taken notice:

While this sounds like a lark, or perhaps another iteration of the faded online world Second Life, there’s already real money behind the blockchain-based real estate. In December, Kunzmann paid $15,000 for 62 plots of about 1,100 square feet apiece, and he recouped his investment three months later by reselling a mere eight of them. Today, resellers can reliably get as much as $30,000 for a Genesis City plot... Scarcity is driving the speculation. Unlike Second Life, or games such as SimCity, Genesis has fixed virtual dimensions, some 90,000 plots that make it about the size of a digital Washington, D.C.

Since I was Linden Lab's fresh-faced embedded journalist when Second Life land plots were first put up for real money sale in 2004, some points of correction -- both for Bloomberg and (perhaps) Decentraland:

Back then, Second Life land was actually quite limited at the time, since user activity was based around its early "mainland" continents.

Even more key -- and I hope the Decentraland team is reading this:

Watch: Designing Virtual Worlds Author Richard Bartle Discusses Designing Virtual Worlds from Within a Virtual World

As mentioned last month, here's a virtual world appearance of Designing Virtual Worlds author Richard Bartle, discussing virtual worlds from within a virtual world. (In this case Sinespace, the upcoming Unity 3D-based MMO from SL pioneers which full disclosure, is a NWN media sponsor.)

Bartle and the Sinespace team talk a lot about Bartle's famed taxonomy of player types, but rather than just talk about them, all the attendees' avatars get up at the end and walk onto a platform which designates each users' particular type. If I'm not mistaken, everyone winds up in the Socializer and Explorer category, with little or none being Killers or Achievers. (Not totally surprising, given Sinespace's roots in Second Life, an open-ended MMO without traditional levels and objectives.) Another interesting point (around the 35 minute mark) is about creating story structures within MMOs like World of Warcraft, and whether improved AI could help enhance future narratives. Richard talks a lot about the importance of emergent, player-created narratives and the possibility of failure:

Decentraland: New Open Standards-Based Virtual World Uses Blockchain to Track Content Ownership & IPFS to Distribute Content

Decentraland is a new virtual world which aims to run completely on open standards technology and protocols. I'm not familiar with the creators, but to judge by the trailer (above) they have hella high ambition. More from the site:

Decentraland uses the Ethereum blockchain to store information about land ownership and its content. The Ethereum smart contract validates that modifications were made by the owner of the land. Users can use MANA to buy any empty land parcel.

Some of the graphics effects are pretty impressive though the avatars seem to be from 2007. Another ambitious aspect to Decentraland is it'll distribute content via the IPFS protocol, an equally audacious technology I first heard about from my colleague Amber Case:

Why Does Linden Lab's CEO Say Linden Lab's Second Life is "The Most Successful Virtual World Ever Made"?

VentureBeat has a new preview of Sansar which mostly covers territory already familiar to NWN readers, but this remark from Ebbe is worth gawking at a bit:

“Second Life is the most successful virtual world ever made to this day,” said Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg in an interview with GamesBeat. “No one has ever come close. We are building something here that we believe can go way beyond what Second Life achieved.”

Maybe there's some additional context to this claim that hasn't been included -- which I hope, because taken by itself, I have no idea how this assertion makes any sense. Based on what we know, Second Life currently has about 600,000 active users and makes about $75 million in annual revenue for Linden Lab. By contrast:

• Eve Online is a single-shard virtual world like Second Life, and at $74 million a year, earns about as much revenue for its owner as Second Life.
• IMVU has a marketplace for user-generated content and to judge by website traffic and reported concurrency, is somewhat more popular than Second Life.
• World of Warcraft is a multi-user virtual world like Second Life, and over its 12 year existence, has earned far more money and had far more users.
• Minecraft is a user-created virtual world like Second Life, and as of this year, has sold over 100 million copies.

And so on; we're not even mentioning virtual worlds in the Asian market, many of which have monthly usage in the tens of millions of users.

At best, you could make the case that Second Life is the most ambitious and influential virtual world ever made -- the claim I'd personally prefer to make. At worst, you could argue that Second Life is the most successful virtual world in terms of media coverage -- but then that also means acknowledging much of that coverage has been negative.

This may seem like an academic point, and to be sure, CEOs like to make harmlessly hyperbolic statements about their products all the time. But seeing as Ebbe Altberg made this claim in the context of talking about its Sansar, the company's successor to Second Life, there's room for concern: