The Storyteller is Coming: Join Us for a Week of Events in Sinespace, October 2nd to 8th, 2023!

The Storyteller festival kicks off with Hakawati is the Storyteller on Monday, October 2nd

Mimi Marie, the tireless event organizer in the virtual world of Sinespace, pinged me to tell me about an exciting week of events taking place this coming week, from October 2nd to 8th, 2023. Here are the details from the official Sinespace blog:


Magic, Stories & Music. Carpet Rides & Genies. October 2nd – 8th

Stories: timeless knowledge-sharing tools from the caveman’s “How to Survive 101” to today’s “Culture for Dummies.” They kept early humans alive, shared values, and even sparked campfire karaoke. Today, they’re our wisdom-filled time capsules connecting past and present, shaping our history and our future. Have you talked to a friend today and told them something you did yesterday that amused you? Congratulations – that is the way we use storytelling every single day of our lives regardless of language, culture and location – we all do it – we all story-tell in our own way. 

So, if you ever doubted the power of storytelling, remember: it’s the original social network! October 2nd to 8th will be storytelling week and you are invited to join community events that celebrate authors, books, movies, or game stories.  You may even be invited to participate in story creation or share your own story if you feel inspired.

All times are in UTC (Coordinated Universal Time, also known as Greenwich Mean Time, or the time in London, England); use this converter to convert UTC times to Pacific Standard Time/PST, and this converter to convert UTC times to EST. The special story events are marked *STORY EVENT* below.

Monday, October 2nd, 2023

4 – 6pm – Ziggies with Jay and Les

10:30pm – 1am – Night Stories at Hakawati *STORY EVENT* Magic & Stories. Tunes With DJ Unruly Blues. Carpet Rides & Genies. Random Gifts. Join us at Hakawati, where magic and captivating tales await. DJ Unruly Blues will play his enchanting tunes, while the evening promises carpet rides, genies, and delightful surprises for all.

Tuesday, October 3rd, 2023

10pm – Midnight  – The Sounds of Story With Ghaelen *STORY EVENT* Music, Dance, Chat and a Story Circle – Join us for “The Sounds of Story With Ghaelen,” a captivating blend of music, dance, chat, and a heartwarming story circle. Ghaelen’s music sets the stage for an enchanting event, and in the story circle, people from all walks of life share tales, personal narratives, and folklore, creating a vibrant tapestry of human experiences. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to be swept away by melodies and stories, celebrating the magic of connection and storytelling.

Midnight – 1am – Unruly Blues at Ice

Wednesday, October 4th, 2023

2 – 4pm – Buzzz at the Beautiful Region *STORY EVENT* “Island? Fun? Stories? We’ve got plenty!” – immerse yourself in Buzzz at the Beautiful Region, where island fun meets storytelling. Get ready for a dose of random gold and an abundance of captivating tales.

4 – 5pm  – Community Hour at localhost

10.30 – Midnight – Movie Night with Spi at Spirals Fractal region

Thursday, October 5th, 2023

10pm – Midnight UTC – Bingo, Stories & Arabian Nights Trivia at Hakawati. At Hakawati, join us for an entertaining evening of Bingo, stories, and Arabian Nights trivia from 10 PM to midnight UTC. Win exciting gold and silver prizes while enjoying the company of friends and the delightful tunes spun by DJ Mizz, who will also be playing Timeless Tales. 

Midnight – 2am – Unruly Blues at the WC

Friday, October 6th, 2023

9 – 10pm – Embark on a captivating journey to “Treasure Island” narrated by the renowned real-life storyteller, Andy Jennings. *STORY EVENT* His enchanting storytelling prowess will transport you to the heart of adventure and intrigue. Don’t miss this opportunity to be spellbound by Andy’s storytelling magic. Discover more about him at https://www.andythestoryteller.com.

10pm – Midnight – Ziggies 

Midnight – 2am – Ambient Lounge Bingo

Saturday, October 7th, 2023

2 – 4am UTC – Hoedown with snowtracks.

10pm – Midnight UTC – 381 Club with Kat

Midnight – 2am UTC – Ziggies

Sunday, October 8th, 2023

10pm – Midnight UTC – 381 Club with Kat

Midnight – 1am UTC – Les in the WC

Monday 1 – 3 a.m. UTC – UnoSi & Arabian Nights Trivia at Hakawati *STORY EVENT* Join us at Hakawati for UnoSi and Arabian Nights Trivia. Win dazzling gold and silver prizes, enjoy a great time with your friends, and groove to DJ Mizz’s tunes.


Mimi tells me, “the event hosts are Ghaelen D’Lareh, Mizz and Mimi. Also a brand new feature. A magic carpet ride!”

She adds, “Sinespace is on a roll! if you ever get a free moment log into Sinespace and visit the region called Fireside Chat. Josh and others have created reactors [interactive elements] that are so cool!”

I am planning to attend as many of the Storytelling week events as possible, unless I have schedule conflicts with my full-time paying job as an academic librarian. Hope to see you there! For more information on Sinespace and to download a client, please visit their website.

Unity Drops a Bombshell: What Will Be the Impact on Social VR Platforms?

A collage of Twitter (sorry, X) statements from smaller game developers announcing they are dropping Unity after the company’s announcement earlier this week (source)

On Tuesday, Unity dropped a bombshell on software developers: a new fee structure that will charge devs using its popular game engine on a per-install basis, with less than four months advance notice. Ars Technica reported:

For years, the Unity Engine has earned goodwill from developers large and small for its royalty-free licensing structure, which meant developers incurred no extra costs based on how well a game sold. That goodwill has now been largely thrown out the window due to Unity’s Tuesday announcement of a new fee structure that will start charging developers on a “per-install” basis after certain minimum thresholds are met…

This is a major change from Unity’s previous structure, which allowed developers making less than $100,000 per month to avoid fees altogether on the Personal tier. Larger developers making $200,000 or more per month, meanwhile, paid only per-seat subscription fees for access to the latest, full-featured version of the Unity Editor under the Pro or Enterprise tiers.

“There’s no royalties, no fucking around,” Unity CEO John Riccitiello memorably told GamesIndustry.biz when rolling out the free Personal tier in 2015. “We’re not nickel-and-diming people, and we’re not charging them a royalty. When we say it’s free, it’s free.”

Now that Unity has announced plans to nickel-and-dime successful Unity developers (with a fee that is not technically a royalty), the reaction from those developers has been swift and universally angry, to put it mildly. “I can say, unequivocally, if you’re starting a new game project, do not use Unity,” Necrosoft Games’ Brandon Sheffield—a longtime Unity Engine supporter—said in a post entitled “The Death of Unity.” “Unity is quite simply not a company to be trusted.”

Sheffield goes on to say:

…I can say, unequivocally, if you’re starting a new game project, do not use Unity. If you started a project 4 months ago, it’s worth switching to something else. Unity is quite simply not a company to be trusted.

What has happened? Across the last few years, as John Riccitiello has taken over the company, the engine has made a steady decline into bizarre business models surrounding an engine with unmaintained features and erratic stability.

Ultimately, it screws over indies and smaller devs the most. If you can afford to pay for higher tiers, you don’t pay as much of this nickle and dime fee, but indies can’t afford to on the front end, or often it doesn’t make sense in terms of the volume of games you’ll sell, but then you wind up paying more in the long term. It’ll squash innovation and art-oriented games that aren’t designed around profit, especially. It’s a rotten deal that only makes sense if you’re looking at numbers, and assume everyone will keep using your product. Well, I don’t think people will keep using their product unless they’re stuck. I know one such developer who is stuck, who’s estimating this new scheme will cost them $100,000/month on a free to play game, where their revenue isn’t guaranteed.

Unity is desperately digging its own grave in a search for gold. This is all incredibly short-sighted and adds onto a string of rash decisions and poorly thought through schemes from Unity across the last few years.

And it’s not just games that are affected by this news; many metaverse platforms are using Unity too, and it remains to be seen how this news will impact them. Among the social VR platforms I have blogged about, which rely on the Unity game engine, are:

  • Anyland
  • Bigscreen
  • ChilloutVR
  • Engage
  • Lavender
  • NeosVR
  • Rec Room
  • Sinespace/Breakroom
  • Somnium Space
  • VRChat

(Ironically, the social VR platform Sansar deliberately made the decision not to use a third-party game engine, to avoid being blindsided by exactly what happened to Unity developers this week. Not that it helped with uptake of the platform.)

So, I posted the following question to the most knowledgable (and opinionated!) group of metaverse experts I know, the over 700 members of the RyanSchultz.com Discord server. Here’s a sample of some of their comments:

The devs at VRChat say, on Reddit, that nothing will change. We shall see…this guy is staff:

Other comments and responses to the news, from my Discord, are:

Lots of big-name devs are swearing off of Unity, dropping it even for projects already in progress.

For Neos itself I’m actually worried the least. For years they have planned to eventually move away from Unity, so the way the FrooxEngine actually interfaces with Unity is quite minimal. But like, most other VR Social games don’t have the “luxury” of running on two Engines frankensteined together. VRC will probably have to pay for it, the likes of Chillout are likely still far too small for that… But it still sucks that they have that lingering over their head now as the platform continues to grow.

Yeah, I mean, this is exactly why you shouldn’t rely too heavily on a third-party like this, because they can pull the rug out from underneath you…I am quite sure that VRChat is going to be okay. It’s the smaller, more niche metaverse platforms I’m a little worried about.

Sansar’s in-house engine looks pretty good right now, eh?

Okay, so it’s clear to me that this IS gonna have a large impact on any company that uses Unity. Question: how hard is it to move from Unity to, say, Unreal, or Godot? Is it an impossible task?

For an existing game? You’re usually basically re-writing it from scratch at that point.

For an existing project, it’s like remaking it from the ground up. An open engine similar to Unity would be a much better choice probably, for example Stride 3D.

The skinny seems to be that Unity will undo this, but trust will have been broken.

The last commenter makes an excellent point: even if Unity responds to the backlash by retreating from this decision, the damage has already been done, and the trust between Unity and developers has been broken.

The comments over on Reddit have also been uniformly negative. Again, here’s just a couple of examples:

Whatever Unity does, they already lost the trust of devs. Even if they retract, it will be “for now”. Fuck them.

and:

Cost per license sold? Sure. That’s fine, you can just bake it into the cost of the game.

Cost per install? Charged to the developer/distributor???? Fuck no. You have no idea how much money each customer will cost you.

Initially, Unity stated the fee would apply every time the game was installed, or reinstalled. Then they backtracked that, but installs on multiple devices will have the fee charged multiple times. Install it on your PC? That’s a fee. Now also on your Steam Deck? That’s another fee. Your laptop? Fee again. Replaced your PC? Have another fee! And god forbid someone remembers that PC cafes are a thing. There’s zero information about how a “device” will be kept track of, so potentially just changing the hardware in a device will cause the fee to reset.

Piracy is a huge unknown. Unity says developers will simply have to trust that Unity’s anti-piracy solution works.

You just don’t do business like that, ESPECIALLY when you make this change retroactively. Companies are going to have to retool their entire profit estimation for something they cannot even account for.

Anyway, it will be interesting to watch as developments unfold over the next few weeks. Unity is a part of so much software development work (it’s even said to be a part of the upcoming Apple Vision Pro VR/AR headset!), so there will definitely be ripple effects. And, of course, the only people guaranteed to make money off this are the lawyers, so expect to see the lawsuits fly! Stock up on popcorn…

You’re Invited to a Steampunk Party in Sinespace on October 1st, 2022

The social VR/virtual world platform Sinespace is going to be throwing a steampunk-themed party on Saturday evening, October 1st, 2022, at 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time/8:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Residents are encouraged to dress up, with prizes in Gold (Sinespace’s in-game currency) for the best avatar in steampunk attire!

One of the event organizers, Mimi Marie, tells me:

Hi Ryan! Huge Theme this Month. If you have time . Its a great theme with loads of fun. We’ve created a Steampunk region. An amazing region Created by Saphy and filled with all things “Steampunk”, By Mimi and Mizz. . Walls are AI creations that some of us created in [text-prompted artificial intelligence art generator tool] Midjourney. Huge Gold give away For Best in Steampunk attire. Random region games for gold. Plus Music by DJ Spiral.

As you can see, they have a stunning new venue for the party!

The location of the party is called Grimstorp, but it will not be open until just before the event starts. Just click on the Explore button in the bottom row of blue buttons on your Sinespace client, search for “Grimstorp”, and you’ll easily find it! (The example in the image below was for “Zoo”, the previous Zoo-themed event, but it’s exactly the same procedure.)

If you’re brand new to Sinespace, here’s a guide I wrote up on how to get started; it’s intended for those familiar with Second Life, but it should work for anybody.

See you there!

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This blogpost is sponsored by Sinespace, and was written in my role as an embedded reporter for this virtual world (more details here). 

Sinespace Event: Come to The Zoo Party Today, September 3rd, Featuring a Costume Contest with 2,500 Gold in Prizes, Plus a 24-Hour Scavenger Hunt!

The social VR/virtual world platform Sinespace is going to be throwing a zoo-themed party on Saturday evening, September 3rd, 2022, at 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time/8:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Residents are encouraged to dress up as animals, and there are some serious prizes for the top two winners of the costume contest!

The Zoo with its amazing show of dozens of animals! Best dressed in created animal: first place 2000 Gold, second place 500 Gold (contest board). Live music with DJ Les spinning the tunes!

24 Hour Scavenger Hunt! Four frogs have escaped the Amphibian House and the zookeeper needs help finding them. Go to The Zoo between 8:00 p.m. EDT Sept. 3rd and 8:00 p.m. EDT Sept. 4th, find a frog, and take your picture with the frog. Post it to Sinespace Discord events, on fansite, or the Welcome Centre Flickr board. Tag Mimi, send help and receive 100 Gold! One frog per person, please!

The location of the party will be the Zoo world, but it will not be open until just before the event starts. Just click on the Explore button in the bottom row of blue buttons on your Sinespace client, search for “Zoo”, and you’ll easily find it!

If you’re brand new to Sinespace, here’s a guide I wrote up on how to get started; it’s intended for those familiar with Second Life, but it should work for anybody.

See you there!

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This blogpost is sponsored by Sinespace, and was written in my role as an embedded reporter for this virtual world (more details here).