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[b]Second Life / There / MUSHes / The Well:[/b] "We wrote The Torment Nexus as a precautionary tale. Please do not build the Torment Nexus."
[b]2020s metaverse wannabes:[/b] [i]sticks exactly the worst possible appendages into the "Torment Nexus: GomJabbar Edition" from Meta[/i]
Anil Dash's Guide to Good Content & Community Management Applies to Metaverse Platforms Too
In the lead-up to my interview in The Atlantic last week, this recent blog post by veteran Internet thinker Anil Dash helped crystallize my thoughts around community and the Metaverse. Because while it's not specifically about the Metaverse, Anil's insights very much apply to metaverse platfor...
LL needs to look into temporary suspensions of fees for Russians as much as it did for Ukrainians. The people of both countries are united in terms of being massively hindered by the situation, albeit for different reasons. Driving people who never asked for this out with monetary pressures strikes me as a bad move, even if LL has its hands tied on the movement of money to Russian CCs.
Russian Content Creators in Second Life, Now Sanctioned & Unable to Cash Out, Contemplate Bad Options in Both Realities
Though Linden Lab has not yet announced any plans to ban payments from Russian users on its virtual world platform of Second Life, the US and EU banking sanctions have already taken their toll on SL content creators in Russia -- especially those who depend on Second Life for their livelihood: ...
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. What are the chances Meta will listen to Gwyneth when they won't even listen to first-party veterans they hired from the field?
Veteran Metaverse Analyst Gwyneth Llewelyn on Meta's Horizon Woes -- And How They Might Be Improved
Longtime metaverse analyst and developer Gwyneth Llewelyn recently posted a good reader comment analyzing Meta's early efforts in the space. And I do mean "longtime" -- this is her avatar from 2006 when she was in a trademark dispute over a collectivist utopia in Second Life. (Yes, that's a th...
You were warned. You were warned by someone informed by past experiences and scholarly observations in the matter. You ignored it. Meta, this is why the news that was already bad when it occurred on a smaller less-watched virtual world blew up twice as hard on yours - you didn't think to work on blocking/reporting or permissions tools. Now, suffer.
Also: Pool Closed Due to COVID-19.
EXCLUSIVE: Virtual World Vet Warned Meta About Avatar Harassment in the Metaverse Years Ago -- But Long-Known Best Practices Were Not Prioritized
If you've been following the news about Facebook/Meta's metaverse project lately, you'll recall the slew of bad press when a female user was sexually assaulted in Horizon Worlds, leading the company to hastily add an avatar "boundary" system. And if you've been following virtual world/metavers...
It also doesn't help that Second Life avatars regularly push far more triangles in total than VRChat. Even allowing for the use of some triangles to mitigate limitations in Second Life (e.g. parts swapping due to lack of user morphs, shelling for multiple-layered textures), SL users regularly push far more triangles per avatar than VRChat reasonably allows, allowing for models closer to render-quality at the cost of terrible realtime performance especially in busier areas without mitigations like jellydolling of excessively loaded avatars.
VRChat also imposes lots of additional limits that many SL creators take for granted or don't have to deal with such as limits on simultaneous noise playback, polygonal usage on particle systems, or even flexible volumes that can be interacted with by other users in unpredictable ways.
SL's avatar approach is muscle-car. VRChat's avatar systems are more finely tuned for performance across the board. Which one is better depends on what sort of look you were aiming for and what you wanted to do with it.
Does VRChat or Second Life Have Better Avatar Options? New World Notes Readers Debate the Pros & Cons
Good reader discussion in last week's post about VRChat's new peak usage numbers. This growth inspired "Timo" to ask why so many VRChat avatars seem so low detail, as compared to Second Life: I read many comments here recently about how VRChat uses more modern technology, custom shaders from U...
Medhue: " At a 62% commission rate, it's impossible to have an economy"
ROBLOX: *laughs in 70% commision rate plus minimum 1000 USD cashout*
(granted, ROBLOX's economy is not going to last in its current state, especially once people figure fully what a gyp it is)
BREAKING: Sansar, Would-Be Second Life Successor & Metaverse Platform, Is Offline -- Staff Reportedly Furloughed Since September (UPDATE, 12/23: Sansar Website & Platform Back Online)
Live Sansar platform pic from 12/23 afternoon PT via @wurfi. Update 3, 12/23, 1:40pm PT: The Sansar platform is reportedly back online. @wurfi (teddy bear in hat) just sent the in-world pic above as confirmation. Update 2, 12/23: As of at least 12:35PM PT today, the Sansar website is back onl...
The Idolmaker is an atheist, for he knows what the gods are made of.
Blind Survey Asks "Are You Buying Land in the Metaverse?" Here's How 1400 Staffers at Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft & Others Answered
The team at Blind, the anonymous social messaging app for tech employees, just passed along the results of a user-driven survey, asking the somewhat ambiguous question, "Are you buying land in the metaverse?" Since it was posted December 17, 1400+ users have responded, with the most responses ...
This is how you give ROBLOX problems: get the content creators unionised and demanding a bigger cut of the pie or they all purge their content and walk.
How Neal Stephenson's Unions of Metaverse Users May Arise
Reader Luther Weymann, who was a successful tech exec before becoming a virtual world fan in his retirement, isn't convinced by Neal Stephenson's call for metaverse users to unionize: Any attempt at collective bargaining in a virtual world will require a massive legal department with huge ove...
Well, until you get your actual mitts on access to Horizons Worlds, any feelings you have are personal and they can be as biased as you want - and frankly, you're not the first person to find it a little janky coming from Second Life.
Summer: Horizon Worlds is targeted to a standalone Quest 2. unfortunately that limits what shaders and geometry are allowed. if SL had been forced into the same limits from day 1 it would have potentially looked closer to this than it does to the renders we see all the time.
In Case You Care, Facebook Horizon Worlds is Here
Now in open Beta if you have a Quest 2. I'm maybe cursed by too much knowledge (and don't own a Quest 2 yet), but it looks like Rec Room but with way less user-generated creativity or a leg-less VRChat without the utterly cool ecosystem of community-driven creativity.) But maybe I'm being unfai...
We've had our share of highly priced items for a world with few people in SL?. Remember Eshi Otawara's fishhook dress? The OOAK Dominic Shadow made and auctioned for charity? it seems not a year goes by without a charity auction of some really inexplicably priced item somewhere. And I suppose the value of it is whatever the buyer percieves it to be, even if the majority of us disagree or are unaware of it.
Expensive Virtual Items for Worlds With Few Users: Pricey NFT "Metaverse" Sales Give Me Serious Entropia Universe Déjà Vu
Remember Entropia Universe, a niche MMO launched in 2003 where players can buy and sell in-game items for real cash? You'd only really read about it when there was a breathless report about another record Entropia Universe sale -- like this one, from 2010: How much would you pay for a string ...
Put it this way:
in the real world, we all each live in some different and separate part of the Earth. You can take a trip on various transport methods to shift your location to some extent if you desire.
But the thing is, not everyone will necessarily want or need to make a larger shift than that accomplished by a short car/bus trip or a walk or bike ride.
The same thing applies to the Metaverse: even if you offer interoperability, there's always going to be a group everywhere who is mostly content hanging around a small part of the metaverse rather than having to experience every single major bit of it.
There will be travelers, and there will be homebodies. Doesn't devalue the existence of a world any more or less that the latter exists. They're content with what they have access to, and it's in no way demeaning that they decide not to go wild all over it.
Philip Rosedale: The Metaverse Isn't for "Everybody" & Meta Shouldn't Succeed at Making It
Here's a new interview on Axios with Philip and veteran game industry journalist Stephen Totilo, with some bombshell quotes like these: Of the metaverse, he says: “I think what we've learned — and somewhat with some sadness, given the work that I've done, I would have to agree — is that it's ...
A good search engine should be initially streamlined, but offer plenty of additional ways to hang your query in specific ways. This version goes pretty far in that regard, but don't expect anything fancy like Boolean searches (like anybody younger even remembers what those are anymore.)
Are You Thankful for Second Life's Sleek New Search User Interface?
I just gave this a quick spin (watch above): Today we’re excited to announce that we’ve updated the look of our inworld and web-side Search feature to bring it more in line with the look and feel of our viewer and the direction that that rest of our web properties will be going... Our goal was...
They're going to force the 29 different takes on the Haunted House in SL to shutter in favor of their proprietary blend served up in their own metaversal theme park. Betcha on that. It would be wise for Theme park owners in SL to start planning and designing their own unique properties instead of adapting EPCOT or Disneyland, however stage-accurate those adaptations are.
With Disney Announcing "Our Own Metaverse", Prepare for an IP Bloodbath Across Competing Platforms
Above: Dozens among the hundreds of user-made ROBLOX worlds using Disney IP I'm not surprised at all by this announcement, but I'm somewhat surprised that no one at Disney explained to company leadership what a Metaverse actually is: Disney CEO Bob Chapek is preparing the company to blend its ...
Facebook has the technology to track people as anonymous holes filled with various data points rather than actual identities, based on FB API scripts tracking people across various sites who haven't logged into Facebook in any way. Once Facebook gets over its hangups and obsessions with realworld identities and falls back on this tech instead despite its reduced accuracy, they will have a seat at the table. Until then, it's more likely the chair will be pulled out from under them by any number of firms that understand experimentation with identity is metaverse 101.
Facebook's Biggest Metaverse Safety Problem is Baked Into Facebook's Brand
The man driving Facebook/Meta's Metaverse development is seriously worried about safety on their now-in-development platform, according to a leaked memo reported by the Financial Times: Andrew Bosworth, who has been steering a $10 billion-a-year budget to build “the metaverse”, warned that vi...
And Second Life has two decades of user-generated inertia behind it. Let's not discount the very silent whale in the room.
Meta Commentary on Facebook's Metaverse Move to Becoming Meta
Update, 11/29: Added the summary video above! 7 years ago, Snow Crash author Neal Stephenson told me this: "Metaverse" has turned into a sort of golem, capable of wandering the earth on its own, out of the purview of its creator. So I am always surprised to see where it turns up and what it's ...
That agreement is no longer tenable with the new ban as it locks away a tonne of products produced with a lot of work. It is up to the organizers of gacha events to issue a blanket waiver allowing normal resale to the people they've previously worked with, and it would make for one last bit of goodwill before they go down, even if they're not obliged to allow folks to break those terms. And as you've shown, it's also up to creators to decide whether to convert their items to normal sale, or let them fade away quietly into the past.
The End of Second Life Gachas Will Hurt for Awhile, But Second Life Itself Will Recover (Comment of the Week)
From Chic's post "EPIPHANY GOODBYE GACHA" Good analysis on the coming end of SL gachas from Chic Aeon, who's both an SL blogger and a sometime gacha creator, echoing my sense that their end will significantly impact the virtual world economy as a whole: I rarely played gacha machines; only the...
The loss of sims as a result of gacha being taken away from the allowed sales methods will depend to some extent on how much space a sim has dedicated to gacha sales or resales. Once the gacha machines are totally gone, the supply of resale gacha will become actually finite as no further new gachas go onto the shelves. Once the gacha are gone, the sims that specialise heavily in this stuff will have to pivot to other uses or go the same way as Ozimal bunny resale fairs.
if simowners are to keep their holdings sustainable post-gacha, perhaps they should consider sponsoring up-and-coming content creators or working on new sale fairs or other niches. There is always a demand for something unusual, and people need to look for these demands to fill.
Survey: Will Ending Second Life Gachas Hugely Impact SL's Economy?
Loading… Now that we know that come month's end, gachas gotta get gone, please take this survey asking how their removal will impact the Second Life economy. While Linden Lab releases few economic/user stats to the public, we can track sim ownership and concurrency rates via third party data sit...
Where Lumiya stopped would have been a better start. Still, this is a good start as long as progress continues.
Apple Approves Official iOS App for Second Life! But There's a Big Catch...
Linden Lab just announced that its long (long!) awaiting iOS app for Second Life has finally been approved by Apple, so expect that coming soon -- this mini scoop via sharp-eyed SL fan blogger Daniel Voyager, who took furious notes as staffer Keira Linden gave details in a recent meeting in SL...
I wonder if they would be open to hiring anyone who's prepared to move to one of these states or San Francisco as a condition of employment.
Linden Lab Still Looking for Engineering VP To Help Define Future Of Second Life -- Now Open to Remote Hires Based in 10 Oddly Specific US States (UPDATED)
This new help wanted ad from Linden Lab looks like the exact same one I mentioned last March, with one significant difference: In this VP Engineering role, you will own the technical and architectural roadmap of Second Life and advocate for robust and lasting strategy as a part of the Second ...
You can come back, and you don't have to leave if you don't want to. That's it, that's all there is to returning to a forum or world you came back to.
Long-Dormant Second Life Users Brought Back By the Pandemic Contemplate a Post-COVID Return to Reality
Where do virtual worlds go when the pandemic’s gone? It's a topic I'll be thinking a lot about in the coming months. The tragedy of the global pandemic accelerated the need for online work and virtual social spaces as never before -- hence the explosion of Zoom-meets-virtual worlds startups su...
In fact, the Fox Entertainment Channel has regularly broadcast shows that mock Fox News, and on some occasions even itself with minimal repercussions for the creatives involved.
TV Producers Searching for Virtual World Performers for Masked Singer-Meets-Avatars Reality Competition
Anytime I watch clips from FOX's The Masked Singer, my first thought is, "Why are all these celebrities costumed up to look like furries from Second Life and VRChat?" So I was utterly unsurprised to read about Alter Ego, an upcoming reality competition show from the same TV network: ALTER EGO...
Twitter is recovering. Trumpism was a tumor. Now we just need to keep the chemo going until it's all gone.
Twitter Usage Back Up to 2020 Levels Despite (Because of?) Trump Ban
Twitter usage last month hit 6.42 billion total visits, according to SimilarWeb, with US-based traffic up 4.18% from February. This after traffic had dipped somewhat from January's 6.3 billion visits. March 2021 traffic is about on par to Twitter's traffic in November-December 2020 and actual...
This was a fun April 1 joke, but it ironically also exposes some glaring weaknesses in how LI is managed in SL based on land acreage rather than volume occupied as well, making multi-storey communal home builds like this generally a failure unless all residents are prepared to respect a shared covenant that covers this LI sharing strictly.
Still, it was nice to briefly dream about owning a home like this for real in SL.
Linden Lab Unveils New Soviet Tenement-Themed Homes for Second Life Players -- Visit Now!
In Ebbe Altberg's Second Life, Linden Homes live IN YOU. Click here to get your piece of the Soviet dream in the highly desired mainland sim of Milbank -- rubles or Linden Dollars accepted. Better hurry, though, avatars are streaming in by the boatload as I write this. Official (unofficial) an...
Given the current state of SL's shader engine, optimization is often a murder victim when flexibility is desired in any build. This needs fixing or this issue will persist with all mesh builds, not just heads.
(Disclosure: I have never bought into any of the standard mesh heads - I do have most of Utilizator Mode's work in this regard, and I don't regret one moment how different I look to others as a result, even though this complicates skin matching. The lack of polygons really helps drop my render costs slightly even as I stick to conventional mesh bodies and fashions.)
Catwa Head Mob Crush Perfectly Encapsulates Current State of Second Life (Comments of the Week)
Photo of Catwa sale mob crush by SL blogger Kirsten Corleone; large version is not worksafe. The L$1 sale of Catwa avatar heads caused the Marketplace website to crash due to heavy demand, provoking Linden Lab to remove the item from the store, and instead, make it available in-world on severa...
Conspiracy theorists are the same everywhere. Crackpots even on the rare occasion that they get it right, which I certainly doubt this is one of those cases. Regardless, I wish Oz Linden a happy retirement and hope he doesn't become a stranger. Drop in every now and then, okay? SL isn't going away anytime soon.
Farewell to Oz: Linden Lab's Open Source Director Retires, Leaving Position's Fate Unknown -- And Hole in Second Life Community's Heart
Emphasizing that his upcoming departure from Linden Lab "has nothing at all to do with the change in ownership of the Lab" (the long-running startup was recently sold to the Waterford Group holding company), the veteran technologist Scott Lawrence, known by tens of thousands of SL users by his ...
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