New World Notes

Gumroad Online Marketplace "Another Peg in Place for the Metaverse"

I mentioned how there's a growing real cash economy for VRChat-based content on Gumroad, an online marketplace for digital content, and reader Joey1058 explored the site deeper, then came back with this brief report:

I took a look at Gumroad. This site is awesome. It's not tied specifically to a particular VR world. This means that somewhere up the road, creators can expand their line for any world they see fit to sell to. One more peg in place for the metaverse!

Quite possibly! In all honesty I didn't know much about the site before this, but it claims that nearly 72,000 creators are selling content on the platform; according to SimilarWeb, Gumroad gets over 12 million monthly visits in recent months, which is quite decent. My pal Leigh Alexander sells her fiction on Gumroad and has this endorsement on the homepage, which is good enough for me.

Also to Joey's point, the content for sale on Gumroad isn't locked to any specific virtual world. (It even has some Second Life-related items for sale.) I don't know if Gumroad will ultimately become the main commerce site for the Metaverse (single or plural), but I think he's right that some kind of independent marketplace like this will be key to making it viable.

Content Creator Goldmine: Studio Ghibli Releases Hundreds of Movie Images for Free Use, Including Stills from Miyazaki's Masterpiece Spirited Away

If you're reading this blog you're probably both a virtual world content creator on some level and a fan of Studio Ghibli films, so this news should come as an incredible gift:

Now the studio is making another unprecedented move, by announcing they’ll be releasing hundreds of images from their movies for the public to use free-of-charge, with one caveat: they’re to be used “within the scope of common sense.”

That includes stills from Hayao Miyazaki's masterpiece Spirited Away (like this one above). Click here for all the free images.

There's already quite a lot of Studio Ghibli tributes in virtual worlds, of course, like this Second Life recreation inspired by Laputa: Castle In The Sky. So I'm excited to see what's created with this trove of legit content.

As for using it "within the scope of common sense”... I'm pretty sure that's a polite way of saying, "No hentai, you freaks." 

Anyway, here's another from Tales from Earthsea:

Treasure Trove for Creators: 100,000+ Classic Art Images for Free Use

Here's a treasure trove for art lovers and creators of new art including digital remixes and reboots of old art, including virtual world platforms: Over 100,000 digital photographs of great art from Paris Museums, including works by Monet, Picasso, and Cézanne,  licensed for free use and re-use. As the press release announces:

Paris Musées is a public entity that oversees the 14 municipal museums of Paris, including the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Petit Palais, and the Catacombs. Users can download a file that contains a high definition (300 DPI) image, a document with details about the selected work, and a guide of best practices for using and citing the sources of the image.

“Making this data available guarantees that our digital files can be freely accessed and reused by anyone or everyone, without any technical, legal or financial restraints, whether for commercial use or not,” reads a press release shared by Paris Musées.

Link via Jason Kottke, who has some wonderful examples of the art available for download and use.

Guide: How to Tell Steampunk, Dieselpunk & Cyberpunk from Other Punks

I'm not sure of its original source -- and if you know, please let me know -- but someone recently posted to Reddit this handy visual guide at right to the various "punks" of online/gaming/popular culture we talk about a lot on New World Notes, categorized by features and fictional era. (Click to embiggenate.)

Steampunk is surely the most well-known and practiced at the moment, though thanks to Keanu, cyberpunk is seeing a second (or fourth?) resurgence.

Cyberpunk, arguably, is the godfather of them all, since its leaders drove an ironic revival of old science fiction tropes from many previous era, only now seen from an anarchic post-modern point of view -- first starting perhaps with William Gibson/Bruce Sterling's Difference Engine which popularized  (pioneered?) steampunk.

Perhaps more interesting are the styles in between steampunk and cyberpunk, since they're less popular:

I guess you could argue that the post-cyberpunk Star Wars films are a kind of raypunk, since the original movies jumped off from the old Buck Rogers movies/comics (the OG raygun genre).

Far as Dieselpunk, I'd say Captain America: The First Avenger qualifies, while the Fallout game series has a lot from Atompunk, such as the ironic Pip Boy iconography. (Or as someone pointed out, Fallout is a Dieselpunk apocalypse built on top of an Atompunk past.)

Meanwhile, the Stranger Things series revels in Cassette Futurism.

(Those are all actually pretty obvious off-the-cuff examples -- I'd love someone to out-geek me with better ones.)

Interesting question for longtime NWN readers: What well-known Second Life experiences fit into these categories?

Reddit's Griefer-Free /SecondLife Community Reaches 5000+ Subscribers

After a long slow climb (it had less than 500 members in 2011), Reddit's largest Second Life-related subreddit, cleverly called /SecondLife, now has well over 5000 subscribers. And as it's grown in numbers, it's evolved away from mainly being a place for fashion bloggers to promote their latest posts, and into a community with constantly interesting conversations. For instance, up on the front page now:

• Active Sims in SL?
• Guy got ejected from our land for being an entitled naked asshole .. so he brought all his store bots to pretend he had friends and protest.
• How Second Life Has Helped Me Cope With PTSD And Anxiety.

This growth comes, by the way, despite the moderators having a policy against SL griefing videos. So somewhat ironically, the best place to find videos of trolls griefing people in Second Life is not /SecondLife, but rather... the front page. Seriously, this SL griefing video was on Reddit's front page last week (NSFW, possibly also not safe for sanity):

Cassie's Clips: Walkthrough of Blogotex, the Online Management System for Second Life Fashionistas

Courtesy NWN YouTube correspondent Cassie Middles, here's a hands-on walkthrough of Blogotex, the quirky name of a cool and useful web service for SL fashionistas, especially bloggers:

"Blogotex is a good alternative to blogger groups if you're ever low on group space in Second Life," as Cassie explains. "Even with a Premium subscription, I used to run out of room and would have to leave one group to join another. Aside from event groups, this is where most of my blogger items come from now. They list all new releases and normally what events they're for, or Flickr links. You can grab a limited amount and blog them, post your blog posts there to be able to grab more. You can also get redeliveries of items if needed." The delivery system, which deposits items directly into a user's SL inventory, is a particularly cool feature. There's also some new-ish features which expand on the platform's power:

Woman With Failing Eyesight Creates WindLight Filters to Make Second Life Look Brighter, More Beautiful -- Then Gives Them Away for Free

Poignant post by longtime SL fashion blogger PeepSideshow Darkward:

I have a condition called Macular Degeneration... It has no cure; I will never regain full vision. All I can do is try to slow down its advance... For over five years, blogging was my passion. Staging a scene, styling my avatar, selecting a pose, finding just the right goddamn angle and Windlight setting all were challenges that I embraced. And I was pretty OK at it. I met many wonderful and talented people, forged friendships and family through it and just had a good time. But as my condition worsened, I found it harder and harder to find the joy. It became a chore and a source of stress and distress.

Over the years, she created many customized WindLight environmental settings which in retrospect, she observes, was a reaction to her failing eyesight: 

I mainly used these for portrait photography, but a few of them are kind of pretty but some of them are rather stark and bright. I hadn’t really realised, but I think I was trying to bring a bit more lightness into my world.

In that sense, these visual filters are a living, digital testament to what she literally sees as beautiful. (One of them featured above.) She's made them available for everyone here.

Read more here, and when you're there, wish Ms. Darkward well. Happy to say, it looks like she's not leaving the virtual world anytime soon:

Top 6 New World Notes Posts from Last Week: From Fortnite's Many Female Players to Second Life's Slow Recovery

• 20 Million+ Fortnite Players Are Female, Website & Mobile Analytics Suggests
• How To Help Stop Abuse In Social VR: Consider Creating A Crazy Distraction
• How To Create A Kim Kardashian-Inspired Second Life Avatar That's True To Her Social Media Brand
• Second Life Discounts Help Drive Largest Sustained Sim Growth In Years
• Linden Lab Claims 16,000 Sansar Experiences Have Been Created -- But Only 1,011 Are Publicly Available On The Atlas, And Little Visited
• Linden Dollar Increase Threatens Second Life's Impulse-Driven Economy

Second Life Now Has an Instagram Account; I Now Have Some Questions

It's a nice stream of pretty virtual world images and short video clips, which is nice, but also raises some questions: 

When will Second Life get an official mobile client? Because especially for Instagram, it would be ideal to go immediately from that mobile app right into SL for smartphones. An indie developer already made an unofficial SL app for Android phones, and it has customers in the six figures.

Also:

SL Tutorial: How to Build a Mesh-Based House in Blender

Aywren Sojourner has a handy, step-by-step guide in three parts on her blog:

• Part 1: The Very Basics
• Part 2: Planning
• Part 3: Windows & Doors

Most SL tutorials are published as videos on YouTube, but as Arwen explains on /SecondLife, there's advantages to having an illustrated, textual guide instead: