Wagner James Au

New World Notes is moving to my Patreon! The original Typepad-based blog shuts down Oct 1, but I'll keep covering the Metaverse ecosystem news/culture, related topics & OG metaverse Second Life there. Join free below, subscribe for special benefits:👇 patreon.com/u4843285

Read @sannysquirrel for the latest of New World Notes in Japanese! 👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼

Do at least 250 words a day, no matter what. May take an hour, may take ten minutes. But it's one page a day. And in a year, that's a whole book.

@boztank According to a 2022 @JoinBlind survey, a majority of Meta's own staff said Meta leadership hadn't clearly explained what the Metaverse is. I talked with many of them for the book; they saw Meta's VR products as central to the company's vision for creating it.

Seems like this is pretty much an annual tradition now so putting this here so I can tap the sign later...

One of many key lessons Meta ignored with its metaverse strategy: VR headsets should NOT be a central prerequisite for metaverse platforms. @zephoria warned Meta that HMDs have a gender bias, but as I learned for my book, Zuckerberg et. al. didn't even look into this!

@AlexTran677026 Almost 32 years later, and THIS is still one of the best martial arts films of all time. Film: Drunken Master 2 (1994) youtube.com/watch?v=CH07_L…

Almost 14 years later, and this is still one of the best martial arts films of all time. Film: The Raid (2011)

“[Meta] glommed onto the term without really understanding the concept,” Wagner James Au, author of “Making a Metaverse That Matters,” said. “Their efforts on their metaverse strategy seemed completely indifferent to what previous platforms had learned.” nytimes.com/2026/03/19/tec…

Grateful to @MikeIsaac for including me in @nytimes' eulogy for Meta's failed metaverse efforts! (Gift link👇) It's not just about bad business strategy. Metaverse platforms offer unique advantages to underrepresented people. Meta squandered that. nytimes.com/2026/03/19/tec…

During DLSS 5 Hands-On Video, YouTube creator Hot Hardware asked Nvidia employees this question about the computational cost of DLSS 5 when you move around in the game and it really caught my eye on how they hesitated on showing any DLSS 5 footage during motion. Every time that he moved the character, he would turn off DLSS 5 first then move to a different in-game location and then turn it on, or if DLSS 5 was turned on the movement was very slow and controlled. I know this is still work in progress, but it really begs the question "why wouldn't they show any this?" or "why show DLSS 5 this early?" I tried freezing some shots when another character is in motion to check if there are any artifacts when DLSS 5 is turned on. As suspected, I did come across some artifacts with UI elements, character popping out of the UI element and ghosting/artifacts behind the character. Its still not the best way to judge these small details that you can clearly see if a footage is recorded in-game, but then again its not like Nvidia provided any of them during DLSS 5 marketing campaign. Whenever this is still going to be present by the time DLSS 5 launches remains to be seen, however as of right now it doesn't look like it will handle fast-paced motion quite well and I don't know how well this "controlled AI-generated" rendering will scale to weaker GPUs in the RTX 50 series

"The Metaverse" isn't a concept Meta ever understood. It doesn't require a VR headset -- @nealstephenson himself has said so. Meta's leadership ignored virtual world veterans on their own team. Roblox & Fortnite were directly inspired by "Snow Crash" and have 500M+ users.

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Is anyone at NVIDIA an actual gamer? Because any gamer knows you share SCREENSHOTS of your favorite game with other gamers. Which leads to many of them buying / trying it. But if you look at individual screenshots from this demo (see 🧵👇), they often look like ridiculous ass.

Only last week, CEOs of various fast food chains were trying to go viral by pretending to enjoy their burgers on video. In-N-Out is just on a whole other level

@jemelehill Why do people think it's weird? There's an In-N-Out in walking distance from the Oscars theater! They're open late! Above all it's a great fucking burger! youtube.com/watch?v=qGJcVU…

Because I see some people in the comments are getting persnickety … It’s tradition for actors to go to In-N-Out after the Oscars. Jamie Lee Curtis did it. Ang Lee did it. Vanity Fair actually serves In-N-Out at their Oscars party. Hell, I had an In-N-Out food truck at my wedding. It’s just an LA thing.

How it was. How it is.

@slhamlet @quanticfoundry The same people claiming AI is some "second coming" of gaming said the same exact things about NFTs, blockchain, and crypto. AI is a lot more in that category than it is with mobile gaming and social games.

I think there’s a potentially very interesting sea change moment on the horizon. There’s no ambiguity or PR spin on that statement.

In a large survey by leading game industry analyst firm @quanticfoundry, gamers were negative about Gen AI in numbers approaching 85%, most of them strongly negative: wjamesau.substack.com/p/gamers-overw…