Tag: Virtual Worlds

UPDATED! What If We Held Annual Awards for Excellence in Social VR and Virtual Worlds?

Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony…What would you call an award
for excellence in social VR and virtual worlds?

I’ve been letting an idea percolate in my head, and now that we are getting closer to awards season in real life, perhaps it’s time to bring it out for closer inspection and debate: what if we held an annual awards ceremony for excellence in social VR and virtual worlds?

We could call them the Schultzies. 😉 OK, maybe not… but let’s toss the idea around for a bit and see what we all can come up with.

We need:

  • A name for the awards;
  • Categories for the awards;
  • A time (and a place!) for an awards ceremony;
  • An award of some type (a picture and/or in-world mesh object);
  • A host (I am willing to step in if Billy Crystal is unavailable).

What else would we need? The most important thing that we need, right now, is categories. Here are some examples to get us started:

  • Best Social VR Platform of 2019;
  • Best (Non-VR) Virtual World of 2019;
  • Best Blockchain-Based Virtual World of 2019;
  • Best Content Creator/Brand of 2019;
  • Best In-World Store/Marketplace Product of 2019;
  • Most Innovative Use of a Social VR/Virtual World in 2019;
  • Best Marketing/PR Move by a Social VR/Virtual World in 2019;
  • Outstanding Contribution to Social VR/Virtual Worlds in 2019 (an award we would give to an individual person);
  • What other categories can you come up with?

We could also (if we wish) incorporate some aspect of the Razzies, by including awards for some of the more ignominious achievements of the year:

  • Biggest Platform Fail of 2019;
  • Biggest Advertising/PR Mistake Made by a Company in 2019;
  • What other categories can you think of?

I could whip up a poll for nominations for each category, and select the top 4 or 5 suggestions in each category as our finalists.

Whaddayathink? Could we make this work? I think this might be a lot of fun.

First things first: what are we gonna call the awards? Please feel free to leave a comment below, or better yet, join us on the RyanSchultz.com Discord server, the world’s first cross-world discussion forum, where we can toss around some ideas. We’d love to have you!

P.S. I am willing to organize, but if I do then I don’t think it’s fair for me to actually vote on the awards in that case, so I will remove myself from that. The voting would be open to the users of the various social VR platforms and virtual worlds for a set period of time (say, two weeks).

P.P.S. Perhaps we should scrap the Razzies portion of the awards before we get started; it would just seem like kicking certain companies when they’re already down. It just doesn’t seem sporting to me.

UPDATE 5:39 p.m.: Adam Frisby of Sinespace had a good suggestion: that I investigate the various in-world awards shows of the past (the Cy Awards in ActiveWorlds, the Avi Choice Awards in Second Life, etc.).

So that’s exactly what I am going to do over the next few days (in between ransacking various Second Life Advent calendars, of course!). So if you don’t see any posts over the next few days, you’ll know I have gone down the rabbit hole…

Editorial: Do You Feel Like I Am Neglecting Your Social VR/Virtual World on This Blog? Well, Here’s What You Can Do About It!

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

I am feeling very irritated this morning. Let me tell you why.

When I write this blog, I choose topics that interest me and engage me, whatever is topmost in my mind, and what I think my readers would be interested in. This is (mostly) a labour of love; I do this because I love social VR and virtual worlds, and I love writing about them. And because I now write about so many platforms, it is inevitable that some will get less coverage. I can’t treat everybody equally; it’s impossible.

But lately, I am getting feedback from certain metaverse-building companies that somehow feel that they have been slighted, if I do not mention them in my blog, even in more general blogposts. (And no, I am not naming names. You can guess who you are.) At which point, makes what I do less a labour of love, and more of a chore, an obligation—in short, a job.

Let me make this perfectly clear: your company has ZERO right to complain to me if I am writing about your social VR/ virtual world (and thereby promoting it) FOR FREE, WHEN and IF I feel like writing about your product. If you are so unhappy with how often I do (or don’t) mention your company on my blog, and you expect me to provide more coverage of your platform, then that becomes a job, for which I expect to be paid. My current rate is US$50 per sponsored blogpost. I do not have an exclusive sponsorship deal with Sinespace, and I would gladly welcome more sponsors.

And if you really want to see your brand name appear on my blog more often, then please consider purchasing advertising space. You’ll find that I have quite reasonable rates, which I will be increasing in the new year, as I now have approximately twice as many viewers (according to my WordPress blog statistics) as I did when I first posted those rates a year ago. So if you want the best advertising rates, I suggest that you lock them in now.

If you are not a sponsor of my blog, or an advertiser on my blog, then I suggest you think carefully before you criticize me for what you see as a lack of coverage of your platform on my blog. If you want me to write about your product regularly (instead of when I feel like it), then you should consider paying me for my work.

Thank you for your time and attention.

I Will Be Writing a Blogpost on Black Friday Sales in Social VR and Virtual Worlds, and I Need Your Help: Where Are the Sales?

I can remember a time here in Canada when there were no Black Friday sales. Canada follows the British tradition of Boxing Day (Dec. 26th) sales. But over the past decade, Black Friday crept north of the border, and now we have both Black Friday and Boxing Day sales.

This year I have decided to write a blogpost outlining the Black Friday sales happening in those social VR platforms and virtual worlds which have an in-world economy:

  • Second Life (of course!)
  • Sansar
  • High Fidelity
  • Sinespace

For example, FULLSpectrum (Medhue and Bagnaria’s store in Sansar) is having a buy-one-get-one-free sale on their custom human avatars. Bagnaria tells me:

FULLSpectrum Black Friday Special (November 26 -November 29): TWO FOR ONE | Buy any FS avatar and get a second of the same value or less for free. You will automatically get your money back for the second avatar you buy. For obvious technical reasons you need to be friends with FULLSpectrum to get your money back. Contact Bagnaria for support.

If you have news about a Black Friday (or Cyber Monday) sale taking place on those four platforms, please leave me a comment here, or use my Contact form, or message me on one of the many Discord servers where I am a member (my handle is RyanSchultz). Thank you!

Exploring Different Cultures in Social VR and Virtual Worlds

Have you joined the RyanSchultz.com Discord yet? You’re invited to be a part of the first ever cross-worlds discussion group, with over 300 people participating from every social VR platform and virtual world! More details here.

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

Long-running virtual worlds such as Second Life attract users from all around the world. (The Second Life website itself is available in English, Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Turkish and Russian.)

Every so often, I like to load up Second Life, do a keyword search for a country or language name (e.g. Turkey, Turkiye, Turkish), and head off on an adventure! Often I find a nightclub where people are chatting away in a language I do not speak, where I can spend an enjoyable hour listening to the popular music of a completely different culture.

The fact that most communication in Second Life uses text chat is actually an advantage here. Automatic translator software (such as this popular item on the SL Marketplace, which works with Google Translate) can be used to bridge the language gap between users chatting in Second Life who don’t speak the same language.

But what about other social VR/virtual worlds? I decided to do some metaverse exploring this evening, just to see what’s out there.

VRChat

VRChat, with its thousands of users from all around the world, is a natural place to begin my explorations. There are many Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Russian, German, and Thai worlds to visit. (These links are from a Japanese directory called The World of VRChat, a website directory for VRChat worlds. The website is in Japanese, but if you turn on Google auto-translate, it works well, and can be used as a handy guide.)

Of course, you can also perform a keyword search on the Worlds menu (e.g. Japan, Japanese) to pull up VRChat worlds. For example, there are dozens and dozens of Japanese-themed worlds to visit and explore!

Sansar

The best way to explore is to use the Sansar Atlas website, where you can do a keyword search for a language or country name (e.g. Germany, Deutschland, German, Deutsch). Unfortunately, the chances of you running into other people this way in Sansar are pretty slim.

High Fidelity

Of course, High Fidelity was home to the well-known Mexico domain, which was one of HiFi’s domains that were shut down when the company pivoted to business use. And the search function in the tablet UI only pulls up matches on domain name, which somewhat hinders the ability to explore (you pretty much need to know the domain name to find anything). It would be very useful if High Fidelity were to add searchable domain descriptions to the social VR platform, but I’m sure the company is occupied with other, much more pressing, matters at the moment.

Mexico (a former High Fidelity domain, which no longer exists)

Other Worlds

As far as I can tell, there is not yet a lot of multicultural content in places like AltspaceVR, Rec Room, or in Sinespace. But it’s still early days. Eventually, as most virtual worlds mature, they will attract more users from foreign countries, who will naturally import their own cultures.

Do you have any tips on cultural experiences in virtual worlds, a spot you would like to share with us? Please feel free to leave a comment below, or even better, join us on the RyanSchultz.com Discord server and share your tips there! We’d love to have you.