New World Notes

Despite Widespread Tech Layoffs, Metaverse Platforms Currently Have 800+ Job Openings

With news that Microsoft is shutting down its VR metaverse platform AltspaceVR, along with widespread layoffs across most of the major tech companies, you might assume the Metaverse as an industry is also feeling the string.

Not so much.

On a quick tally of leading metaverse platforms in terms of active users, along with promising metaverse startups I've written about recently, I'm seeing nearly 800 current job openings at minimum. (And by the way, Microsoft and Minecraft developer Mojang still currently have 6 Minecraft-related job openings.) 

Here's links to these job openings available as of today, January 24, 2023:

Roblox, the market leader among metaverse platforms in terms of users, currently has 194 job openings.

Epic Games, developer of Fortnite/Fortnite Creative, currently has 368 job openings.

Rec Room, the most popular metaverse platform among Quest 2 users, currently has 45 job openings.

VRChat, the best next gen metaverse platform, currently has 19 job openings.

Naver Z, developer of mobile metaverse platform Zepeto, currently has 14 job openings.

Lockwood Publishing, the game studio behind Avakin Life, currently has 7 job openings.

Garena, the creator of Freefire, a Fortnite-like metaverse platform that's huge in Asia/South America, currently has 54 job openings.

There's also at least 150 job openings in promising startups featured by New World Notes, including:

VRChat Groups Launches in Open Beta; IBM/SL Vet Andrew Sempere Helping With System Design!

This is actually more of a milestone for VRChat than the Sony body trackers I mentioned earlier this week, and that was also huge -- VRChat just launched a group function in open beta:

Groups is a huge system that we think is going to change VRChat forever. Most of the features we’ve mentioned today will be released in the first, groundwork stage of Groups. Others will be released – along with polishing dictated by your feedback – in the weeks following the launch of Groups. We want to push these updates out relatively quickly, as we’d like to get Groups up and running as fast as possible.

While this group feature has long been in development by the startup, it's notable that a Second Life veteran is helping with its progress: Andrew Sempere, recently hired as VRChat's Senior Systems Designer, who was a key member of IBM's Second Life team back in the day.

While VRC and SL's group systems are very different (watch the video above), they share some commonalities with the thought of Nobel-winning economist Elinor Ostrom and her theory of collective action:

Watch: VRChat Partners With Sony On New Mobile-Based Motion Capture Product

This announcement from VRChat is impressive for many reasons:

Mocopi is supported in VRChat! We teamed up with Sony to integrate their mobile motion capture solution, on both PCVR and Quest!

Watch Mocopi in action above. It's a much more user-friendly way of doing motion capture, and relatively affordable at $358:

Visit in VRChat: 5 Impressive Worlds Inspired by Levels from Final Fantasy VII, Dark Souls, Legend of Zelda, Sonic the Hedgehog & Team Fortress 2

As a fun way of exploring VRChat and checking out the creative power of the platform this weekend, here's five VRChat worlds inspired on famous video game environments. (The above of course is City 17 from the Half-Life franchise, though it's currently defunct.)

Here's five more recommended and documented by Bradlee101, one of my favorite VRChat explorers on VRChat, based on spaces from Final Fantasy VII, Dark Souls, Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Team Fortress 2:

WATCH: This Impressive Machinima With Amazing Fight Scenes Was Shot Entirely in VRChat -- With One Actor Playing All the Fighters!

As teased back in August, here's S.Y.N.C., a short feature movie shot entirely in VRChat. Written, directed, edited, and performed by "Legend50210" (let's call him Legend for short), it's a fun sci-fi actioner with slick production values and impressive fight choreography -- even more impressive, when you realize Legend plays all the characters.

"The loops are recorded animations of myself," as he explained over the Summer. "The FreezeFrame mod had a 'Sync' button at the time and it allowed me to line up all animations from the start when I started a new clone."

In other words, he recorded the fight moves wearing different avatars in a full-body VR rig, then synced them together in post-production. What's really amazing to me is that the fight choreography is so fluid and seemingly full contact. That wasn't easy, says Legend:

WATCH: VRChat Not Only Has Avatars With Legs -- The Community Has Full-Body, Group Workout Sessions! UPDATE: It Was Founded in 2020 During the Pandemic as a Gym Alternative

my litmus test for "is your VR metaverse app even remotely as good as vrchat" is "are furries holding actual exercise classes in it" pic.twitter.com/Pd2mFPbr0k

— Aura🥨🥨🥨 (@MOOMANiBE) October 11, 2022

Update, 10/19: VR Fitness & Biking founder Aigey just sent me background on the founding of his workout group in VRChat during the pandemic peak and continues thriving by giving people an alternate to RL gyms:

[W]e started right as isolation started due to COVID-19 specifically, our group was founded initially because I used to go to the local gym but couldn't anymore but still wanted a gym-like experience but no one was allowed to go to the gym due to social distancing restrictions at the time here in Kentucky.

Our official start up... began officially in October of 2020 and have been running strong ever since. First because no one had access to gyms but then people found the idea to be fantastic due to the accessibility and freedom to 'be as you want to be' in a workout class from the safety of your own home as well as freedom from judgement that comes with going to an actual gym location, which has helped increase the popularity without us really advertising our groups existence. All of our growth so far has come without us advertising the group at all.

Original post below:

Carmack: Quest 2 Price Was Raised Because Free Metaverse Platforms VRChat & Rec Room Are More Popular Than Quest's Premium Games

Update, October 17: Carmack later acknowledged that Rec Room and VRChat do make money for Meta via 30% commissions on in-app payments. However, as most free-to-play multiplayer games/worlds monetize at under 10% (usually much less), it's still likely the case that the vast majority of Rec Room/VRChat players on Quest aren't paying Meta anything through those platforms.

I noted yesterday that the Quest 2 attach rate seems pretty small based on Meta's reported revenue numbers, but the rest of that story -- and the explanation for why the Quest 2's retail price was recently raised -- comes from senior Quest advisor John Carmack himself, in his Connect 2022 keynote.  

Basically, he says, Quest 2 owners are not buying enough premium content and instead, are using their headset for free-to-play metaverse platforms VRChat and Rec Room.

"When you have some of the most popular apps on Quest are free apps, VRChat and Rec Room, that we get no revenue from at all, and while they are sitting there at the top of our ranking list in many cases, there's there's not a lot of internal push for that," as he puts it. (Watch above at about 41 minutes in.)

This is a pretty jaw-dropping revelation. Meta developed the Quest 2 and the Quest app store to grow the market for its metaverse platform. But instead, Quest 2 owners are going in droves to VRChat and Rec Room -- leading metaverse platform competitors.  (Rec Room alone, as I recently reported, had 3 million active VR users, most of them on Quest.)

In fairness to Carmack, he adds that he's completely supportive of that happening. Full context of the quote below, and thanks to the eagle eyes of VR devs Derek Johnson and Kim Baumann Larsen for catching this point that I originally missed! 

This VRChat Explorer Photographs Beautiful Worlds Like These -- But The Most Popular One Here May Surprise You

Neomance is another great VRChat explorer. Like Bradlee, he explores the platforms' many worlds, takes breathtaking photos of his favorites, and posts them in a dazzling cascade on his Twitter.

Like many -- most? nearly all? -- of the active VRChat community, he discovered VRChat through "random YouTube videos, and I got on to socialize with random people".

Unlike most others, he's spent 2 years actively exploring the platform, deeply browsing the user-created worlds, and learning to photograph them like a pro. (That's even led to a few for-hire VRChat photography jobs.)

Here's five of the favorite recent worlds he's photographed -- tweets include creator credits and info for visiting them yourself:

• Abrepear
• suishogu (pictured at right)
• Ecology (pictured below)
• Forest Magic Shop
• Floating Delight (also pictured below)

If you've explored VRChat at all, you'll notice that many of the most popular and well-visited worlds aren't necessarily the most beautiful -- and vice versa. In fact, of the five worlds listed here, the most popular one might surprise you:

VRChat Tips: Five Amazing Worlds to Visit Recommended by a Top Explorer

World name: もいらんどのラビットライド#VRChat #VRChat_world紹介 pic.twitter.com/2hUSx7LuCr

— Bradlee (@Bradlee1011) September 9, 2022

Bradlee is a superb Twitter account for anyone excited by the potential and creative community of VRChat, but for that very reason, is wondering which user-made VRChat worlds among tens of thousands they should visit first. 

 

That's where Bradlee's Twitter comes in. It was inspired by explorations with his his friend Juno, who he met in VRChat.

 

"Eventually I decided to share them on Twitter cuz I want people to also be able to see these worlds and make them hopefully go visit them or make them want to explore themselves," he tells me. (VRC name: Bradlee101.)

 

His Twitter stream is full of photos from his travels through VRChat, so I asked him to recommend five of his favorite worlds here. Read on for those, with links for directly teleporting to them in VRChat, along with his tips for exploring the platform:

Watch: Machinima Shot in VRChat Features Amazing Fight Scenes Using a Full Body VR Rig in a Surprising Way

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S.Y.N.C. is an upcoming machinma shot entirely in VRChat, and it's among the most amazing that I've seen -- along with the professional polish, the many fight scenes (via guns, swords, and full contact kung fu) are impressively fluid and articulated. And as befits most metaverse projects with this level of excellence, it's a fully furry production.

Directed and starring "Legend50210" (let's call him Legend for short), the footage is captured, he tells me, "using the natively supported stream camera function supplied by VRChat. I hold the artificial camera in my hand and move it accordingly like an actual camera minus the weight."

The action scenes are, as they appear, shot with the actor in a full body rig:

"Most people on the platform use the standard form of 6 point tracking which accommodates for head, hands, feet and hips.
Me, I went all out and got added ones that include my chest, knees and elbows, bringing my points of tracking up to 11."

At first I thought the scenes were shot with actors logged onto VRChat from various parts of the world. But the way these scenes are actually shot is perhaps even more painstakingly impressive: