New World Notes

Richard Bartle Releases His Classic Book Designing Virtual Worlds for Free Online -- Here's His Guide to The Sections Still Most Relevant Today

Update, August 20:  Click here to download Designing Virtual Worlds as a .PDF file.

Designing Virtual Worlds is a milestone book in the history of the genre, relevant to basically anyone working in or thinking about online games/metaverses/MMOs/etc.; written by UK professor Richard Bartle in 2003, much or most of it is still relevant to today's technology. (Perhaps even more relevant now, as each wave of designers and developers insists on repeating mistakes made 10-15 years ago -- just on a much, much larger scale.) And Richard just announced he's offering it as a free download on his site:

It's held up reasonably well in some places but not so well in others. 18 years is a long time in virtual world development (the book predates World of Warcraft), but there may be something there of interest to people who haven't read the physical copy.

Click here to open Designing Virtual Worlds as a .pdf.

Professor Bartle, with characteristically wry self-effacement, just sent me his personal summary of the book chapter by chapter, noting which sections are still most relevant and which, not so much -- a handy cheat sheet for new/returning readers:

Among Us Inspires Full VR, Horror-Themed Version of Hit Game in VRChat

If anyone is interested, we are working on a VR Chat map based on #AmongUs Come check it out and join our discord! We would love to know what everyone thinks of it! https://t.co/cCfMGjaLSl#VRChat #VR #amongusfanart #AmongUsMeme pic.twitter.com/lGPtsyE3BN

— Shoobly (@Shooobly) September 25, 2020

Among Us, the wacky sci-fi party hit game of deception and betrayal, has quickly become the Fortnite of 2020. And because user-generated content communities inevitably schloop up and synthesize the interactive zeitgeist, it should be no surprise that a group of ten or so VRChat community developers have already been hard at work creating a fully playable VR-based version of the hit game. "Fully playable" might seem like hyperbole, but among the lead developers is "Markcreator", who also created this fully playable version of  Minecraft in VRChat:

"I'm working with a team of artists to make a realistic VR rendition of the game, fully playable using Udon scripting magic," he tells me. (Udon being VRChat's scripting system.) In other words, don't confuse it for Among Us-themed roleplay in VRChat.

In fact, to judge by the teaser video above and screenshots below, Mark and friends are turning Among Us into a game of goofball fun into a foreboding space survival game with the added suspense of being in immersive VR, with VRChat's voice communication enabled. (In VRChat space, everyone can hear you scream.)

Cryptovoxels Evolving Into a Creative Community, Says Virtual World Veteran

Pic from HiveMind Collective, a Cryptovoxels creative community

Cryptovoxels is a WebGL-based virtual world running on the Ethereum blockchain -- and to be totally honest, not something I'd find immediately interesting, ever since the blockchain-based Decentraland, after much excitement from from people like, well, me, more or less went sideways.

Juergen Hoebarth, however, who I've known back in the Second Life boom days when he was creating professional SL content for agencies, insists that Cryptovoxel has brought some of the old virtual world magic back.

Blockchain-based virtual worlds, I tell him, mainly seem to be driven by speculators but with not much actual users.

"Speculators are riding it back," he allows, "only thing is in Cryptovoxel's core community is evolving around crypto and digital art scene which has a nice size and a potential to grow into something sustainable."

The collaborative creation tools seems to be a big draw:

Chris Nolan World Premieres Next TENET Trailer In Party Royale, Epic's New Combat-Free Virtual World Expansion to Fortnite

A lot is riding on TENET, the next movie from Christopher Nolan, because it's the first big budget major studio movie that will open in theaters after the lockdown is eased, in mid-July -- meaning its success or failure at the box office will greatly shape the future of the film industry. So it's also notable that the world premiere for its next trailer will be in a virtual world: Today at 5pm PT in Party Royale.

As the name suggests, Party Royale is the new, non-violent virtual world expansion for Fortnite Battle Royale:

Shows at the Main Stage are just some of the many attractions at Party Royale. In this new experimental and evolving space, there are many things to do and places to explore. For example: take on aerial obstacle courses at Skydive Rift, participate in boat races at Fishsticks’ Boat Race, and grab items at The Plaza such as the new Paint Launcher. There are no weapons or mats in Party Royale — it’s all about just hanging out and having fun. No Sweat. All Chill. Let’s Party!

Let's all watch the trailer to Party Royale before watching the trailer to TENET in Party Royale:

In Case You Missed It, Travis Scott in Fortnite Set the New Gold Standard for Virtual World Performances

Somehow during its seventeen years of existence, "virtual concert in Second Life" has generally come to mean just that, and not much more: One or more avatars performing on a stage pretty much like they would at a real world show, with the possible bonus of synchronized gestures and out-of-sync mouth movement. Late last week, however, hiphop star and Fortnite showed how much more amazing, immersive, and only-in-a-virtual world a virtual concert can truly be. And to a truly massive audience:

More than 12 million players logged in for Fortnite's concert featuring Travis Scott, with reviewers calling it "stunning" and "spectacular". It included a skyscraper-sized version of Scott teleporting across the landscape as he performed his songs... A digital version of Scott performed a fully-animated, scripted 10-minute set - shorter than a concert performance. As Scott moved from song to song, his virtual avatar changed - first into a cyborg, then a fluorescent spaceman. The landscape shifted and crumbled around players on an enormous scale. After it was over, Scott tweeted: "Honestly today was one of the most inspiring days. Love every single one of you guys."

Watch above, and expect to see many more such virtual world concerts by major performers soon, especially with real world shows cancelled during the pandemic. Now that Scott showed what's doable in a virtual world, that's the gold standard going forward. Indeed, beyond a live DJ set in the zero gravity nightclub of Inspire or the live performances of the Skydancers, I'm hard-pressed to think of many "not possible in real life" (TM Bettina Tizzy) music events in SL. It's been 14 years since Suzanne Vega performed live in Second Life, so the novelty value of "popular music star performs in virtual world" in and of itself has long since faded. 

And yes, yes, the Scott performance is (far as I can tell) completely pre-recorded while Scott himself is not directly involved, but I'm not sure that completely matters.

Second Life Sees Significant User Concurrency Growth of Old & Returning Players, Post-Pandemic Declaration

Data courtesy Tyche Shepherd

While newer virtual world usage so far seems to be flat in the wake of recent coronavirus news, legacy world Second Life has indeed seen some growth in usage. As renowned Second Life grid analyst Tyche Shepherd puts it to me today:

"This weekend there seems to have been more activity above expectations -- Median Daily Concurrency was up by 10% on Saturday 14th (45,000) and Sunday 15th (44,000) over expectations. There was also uplifts in Maximum and Average Daily Concurrency."

Notably, the World Health Organization designated the Coronavirus a global pandemic on March 11, while the White House declared a national emergency on March 13th. 

"However," as Tyche cautions, "this effect has only been in the last 4 days of data (13th onwards). We'll see what happens over the weeks to come."

In terms of actual users, ten percent growth in concurrency translates to about 5,000 people; not a lot, but not nothing. And to be sure, correlation does not prove not causality. (Except in the sense that writing about a correlation causes Internet commenters to angrily write, "Correlation does not prove causation!") But common sense suggests at least some of this growth is the result of more people staying indoors longer, looking for new (and classic) social outlets to play in.

Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg did just confirm this growth, and also associated it to the coronavirus:

Somnium's Embedded Reporter Explores Single-Shard Social VR World With Blockchain-Based Economy

Now this video gives me some deep, 2003-era nostalgia. It's a brief tour of a build in Somnium Space, the new-ish social VR world for PC and VR headsets, but with its simple graphics and sunny, seamless, single-shard world -- With places! On a map! That you travel to! -- it vividly reminded me of Second Life from back in olden times. That's also because the video itself is by Carlos Aborde, Somnium Space's official embedded reporter.

Besides being primarily for VR, the key 2020-era update is blockchain. (Well, most people in Silicon Valley would tell you blockchain-based platforms lost their luster ages ago, by which I mean 2018.) Anyway here's the key feature set from the homepage:

No Virtual World is Ready to Be an Educational Platform -- But Maybe We Just Need SCORM (Comments of the Week #2)

In the era of the Coronavirus, the time for a virtual world that works well for professional/enterprise use seems to be now -- but Gwenette Writer, who works in the space, argues that none as yet exist that meet all seven of the criteria I outlined last week (i.e. "serious" non-human avatars, multi/cross-platform, light client, spacial audio, cloud service integration, frictionless firewall support, regularly used for work by the company that makes it). As she puts it:

There is no product that offers what businesses needs as outlined above. As a virtual world (VW) developer, I run into these barriers all the time with university and business clients that want a multi-purpose learning space with a sense of place or a structured immersive training scenario, but also need doc support, mobile capabilities, often firewall tunneling, and encrypted communications. The fact is, the viewers for most immersive 3D VW are memory/CPU hogs, require high-graphic cards and are not web-based. I am always testing new software/platforms, but none come close to offering solutions that overcome all seven hurdles listed above. Wagner, if I am wrong and you have a hidden card up your sleeve, PLEASE let me know ASAP!

Wish I did! I do know of a few that meet some of those criteria, and could probably meet the rest of them -- in a year or two of serious development time (maybe sooner with more resources). 

Reader "Fionalein", however, argues fairly persuasively that a virtual world is not what's needed for real work -- and suggests another alternative:

What Virtual Worlds Need to Become Real World Offices, Post-Coronavirus

With more and more people working from home amid the continued coronavirus pandemic, many virtual world/tech analysts speculate we'll see a rise in virtual worlds used as real world office spaces. Wired just pondered that very topic from a slightly different direction:

[H]ere in the San Francisco Bay Area, office lights are winking out one by one as businesses send their employees home to work, and everyone’s talking about Zoom and Microsoft Teams and Hangouts. We all know these tools don’t work that well. We can all predict the frustration and miscommunications they will cause over the next few weeks or months (or more?) of remote employment. As this future sails ever closer, I can’t help but think: Weren’t we supposed to have virtual reality in the workplace by now?

No, we don't actually want VR to become the remote workspace, at least not any time soon: VR headsets are still too expensive, too heavy and sweat-inducing to wear for over an hour, let alone eight, while virtual reality still causes nausea in a large percentage of people. (There may even be a gender component to the nausea, with women much more likely to experience it in VR, which would make mandatory VR for work a total non-starter.)

Virtual worlds (i.e. immersive 3D spaces), however, do have much more potential as a remote workplace. But at least seven hurdles remain:

Non-human avatar options: The avatars pictured above, from a VR workspace startup, are what I have in mind, clearly conveying their purpose as a professional tool. Many virtual world companies for work offer human avatars by default, which immediately creates an impression that they're for a game -- a deal-breaker for many executives. 

Extremely cross-platform: Some workers may want to use VR for work, but for everyone else, they need every conceivable option: Mac, PC, and iOS/Android, at minimum. 

Extremely thin client: Most people have multiple programs running simultaneously at work. A workplace world must therefore run alongside them, and not require heavy resources to run.

Four -- yes four -- more, after the break:

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: