Housekeeping Notice: The NeosVR Dispute

SEE ALSO: Housekeeping Notice: I’m Juggling

Because I have been occupied with my full-time paying job as a university librarian these past couple of months, I have fallen behind on my monitoring of what’s been going on in the many social VR, virtual world, and metaverse platforms I write about on the RyanSchultz.com blog.

So I have been out of the loop (and trying to get up-to-date) on the recent news about NeosVR, and the now-public dispute between the company’s CEO and the rest of the team, involving NeosVR’s cryptocurrency, called NCR. I have been madly bookmarking and reading everything that I could get my hands on over the past three days, and at this point, due to the large volume of information I have to sift through, I will probably be writing up a series of blogposts, instead of just a single blogpost, starting sometime next week. I do realize that because of my position and experience, I might be the best-placed person to write up something about this dispute!

But with that position and experience, I also have a responsibility.

I have learned (the hard way) some hard lessons covering corporate disputes and controversy in the past on my blog (notably the series of layoffs at Sansar), where I realized that I wasn’t just a blogger—I’m a reporter, and what I write has real-world impacts on the metaverse platforms involved, and the companies that build them. You could say that I have become somewhat battle-hardened. This means that I have a responsibility to my readers to be as accurate and as neutral as possible, while still having an editorial viewpoint (after all, the tagline of the RyanSchult.com blog is “News and Views on Social VR, Virtual Worlds, and the Metaverse”).

So, I plan to dot all my i’s and cross all my t’s before I publish anything about the NeosVR situation, and I will also try to incorporate a variety of perspectives and opinions, using direct quotes of source material as much as possible.

TL;DR: I am very well aware of what’s going on over at NeosVR, I am actively researching it, and I plan to write up a series of blogposts about the dispute, probably starting later next week.

P.S. Of course, I have many other story ideas in the hopper, as I usually do (for example, the response of the AltspaceVR community to the removal of the central gathering places like the campfire by the company). I never have a shortage of things to write about lately, there’s just so much happening! Stay tuned 😉

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: 26 Free Group Gifts and a L$500 Gift Card at Brillancia!

A new womenswear store has opened in Second Life, called Brillancia (SLURL). The Brillancia group is free to join, and among the 27 group gifts you can pick up, there is a L$500 gift card!

The group gift wall at Brillancia

And you can put that gift card to immediate use on any of Brillancia’s ample stock of womenswear for your avatar! I chose this beautiful brocade Valery dress, which comes in eight different colours (black, white, pink, red, maroon, beige, chocolate, and blue). The Valery dress comes in sizes to fit the following mesh bodies: Maitreya Lara and Petite; Meshbody Legacy and Perky; INITHIUM Kupra and Kups; and eBody Reborn. With your L$500 gift card activated, you can pick up two colours for free!

The dress even comes with an optional shimmer/sparkle attachment! Here’s a short video clip demonstrating it:

Another option is this Nataly party dress, which comes in eight different colours as shown in the image below (sizes: Maitreya Lara and Petite; Meshbody Legacy and Perky; INITHIUM Kupra and Kups; and Belleza Freya). At L$250 each, you can use your free gift card to snap up two different colours!

According to a notice posted to the Brillancia group:

Hello everyone, the gift card will be valid until March 8th. After March 8th, the group will become paid. And I will systematically organize sales and gift cards for the group members! Therefore, if you have friends who have not used the card yet, invite them to us. Also, a new group gift is waiting for you soon!

So, hurry on down to pick up your group gifts, plus the L$500 gift card, before it’s gone, and you have to pay to join the Brillancia group!

P.S. The Brillancia gift card is transferable, if you rez it on Second Life land where you have build rights, wait for it to initialize, then take it back into your inventory. Then you can give it to a friend (or an alt 😉 )…

Housekeeping Notice: I’m Juggling

Between the ongoing pandemic, the recently-concluded five-week faculty strike at my university, and now the unexpected war in Ukraine, things have been a little crazy around here these past 3 months (did you know that 14.5% of Manitobans are of Ukrainian ancestry?). Like many of you, I have been glued to the news lately.

Throw in a broken Valve Index VR headset (my unit, of course, died a couple of months after its one-year warranty expired, and Steam has asked me to ship back my headset and cables to be replaced with a refurbished, non-warrantied, headset.) Also, Carlos and I have also—finally!—started working on Episode 1 of Season 2 of the Metaverse Newscast, about which I will be sharing more news soon.

I forgot to mention that after 23 months of working from home for my university, this week I finally returned to my office in the library full-time. (The University of Manitoba has a firm vaccine mandate and a KN95 facemask mandate. Faculty, staff, and students were required to upload proof of vaccination to a special, secure website, and students who did not do so were deregistered from their courses this term. U of M is following the science and absolutely not messing around, which makes me feel much more comfortable coming in to work every day!)

I’m juggling a lot of balls at the moment
(photo by alexey turenkov on Unsplash)

I’m juggling a lot at the moment. All of this is my very long-winded way of saying: don’t expect a whole lot of blogposts from me over the next few weeks. I’ll do my level best to stay on top of all the news and events happening in the metaverse, but no promises 😉

Thanks to my readers and followers for your continued support and engagement! And you are welcome to join the RyanSchulz.com Discord server, with 650 passionate members, representing every social VR platform and virtual world! We discuss, debate and argue about the ever-evolving metaverse and all the companies building it, and we’d love to have you participate (or, if you prefer, just lurk and learn!).

Nevermet: An iOS Mobile Dating and Matchmaking App for the Metaverse

Nevermet is a new iOS mobile app by California-based Cheerio, which can best be described as Tinder meets VRChat. The app, which launched on Valentine’s Day, had over 2,000 people sign up on the first day!

According to their official press release:

As now the majority of new couples are meeting online, a new and uncommon app comes to the fore. Enter Nevermet. It’s the latest kind of “limitless” experience making love connections more accessible for people through avatars and VR. The brainchild of co-founders Cam Mullen and Solaris Nite, Nevermet offers to redefine how avatars connect to form meaningful relationships. Mullen and Nite previously launched three social VR apps together, each of which has tens of thousands of users on the Oculus App Store.

The problem is, it’s hard to find a VRBF or a VRGF (ahem, a “virtual reality boyfriend / girlfriend”). Walking up to an avatar in a digital world, just like in the real world, is nerve wracking! It’s even tougher when one doesn’t know the gender or age of the other person, if they’re single, or if there’s anything in common. As Tinder made it easier for people looking for a relationship to find each other in the real world, Nevermet wants to make it easier in VR and the Metaverse. Nevermet is focused on enabling romantic relationships in VR, but users who are looking to make friends are also welcomed.

So how does it work? It’s just like Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, or Grindr, but the key difference is instead of posting content of yourself, users post content of their avatar — no human faces allowed. A profile (which must be approved by the moderation team), can only showcase an avatar. After creating a profile and setting the age and gender filters, users swipe on potential love interests. If there’s a match, they can then text to coordinate a meet up for a VR Date. One thing’s for sure: Nevermet isn’t a dating app based on natural looks. Appearance is off the table, and avatar movements, style and the sound of one’s voice takes the floor.

Of course, dating and matchmaking in social VR and virtual worlds is not a new concept. For example, I personally know of at least five couples who met because of the social VR platform Sansar! And Bernhard Drax (a.k.a. Draxtor Despres in Second Life) has a whole series on YouTube called Love Made in Second Life, where he profiles couples who first met in SL and partnered up in real life! And Joe Hunting recently premiered his feature-length documentary We Met in Virtual Reality at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, featuring two romantic couples in VRChat. I’m sure that many other metaverse platforms have similar stories. So it seems a natural next step to have an app like Nevermet, for avatars to meet new friends or potential dates.

While the starting target community for Nevermet is VRChat, there are many users who overlap with other platforms, such as IMVU. While the Nevermet app is for iOS devices only now, Cam Mullen tells me that there are future plans to expand to Android mobile devices.

For more information on Nevermet, you can visit their website, or follow them on TikTok. You can also follow Cheerio, the company behind Nevermet, on Twitter and Instagram.