This is not a list of the “best” stories of 2022, which would be taking sides. All our writers are excellent, all our stories are spectacular! This is instead a list of the most-read stories. And it’s not technically all 2022, it covers the last year. So the period includes December 2021. But it’ll give you a chance to catch up and to see what tickled our readers’ fancy during this weird year.
10. The Triumphant return of NightMara! (August). The media often overlooks VR’s potential to create immersive entertainment that may one day compete with your home screen and movie theaters. Audere‘s favorite VR show is Nightmara, so the arrival of a new episode in August was cause for some rejoicing, and an interview with the show’s writer/director, Gianpaolo Gonzalez.
9. Alan N. Levy’s Prescient Iran/Russia Warning (February). The late, great thriller writer, Alan N. Levy, once envisioned a future world that looks much like 2022, especially the behavior of Vladimir Putin in Eastern Europe. Earlier this year, Alan’s editor reflected on the remarkable predictions embedded in Alan’s great novel, The Tenth Plague.
8. OpenAI: A Less Toxic Chatbot? (January). Because chatbots are just language prediction models, they don’t have a conscience. Some scientists are working on that.
7. Is the Future Artificial? (July). We looked at all the ways that life is getting less “real,” from VR and AR to women who marry robots, and what to expect next. It’ll only get weirder
4. What to do on New Year’s Eve (Virtual Reality Edition) (December). In late 2021, with the pandemic still creeping along, some New Year’s revelers chose to party in virtual reality, the safest way to avoid catching a deadly disease. Here are some of the things they did.
1. Smoking Girl (April). In this short story by Steven S. Drachman, the most read of the year, two nighttime co-workers forge a superficial, temporary friendship over a 3 am cigarette break.
That spunky, profane, nightmare-roaming 11-year-old orphan from Brighton City is finally back for a new episode — only her second — and the graphics, havoc and chaos are all more thrilling than ever. In the latest installment, which picks up just moments after we last left Mara, she still races her dreamtime hotrod through noirish dark-city nightmares, still tries to rescue Ned Nimrod from aliens who have abducted him in his unconscious, and, in her waking hours, still wrangles with Brighton City’s venomous Mayor Doesgood; but this time she faces an unexpected adversary who has somehow acquired the same nightmare-roaming skills.
A VR app called BigScreen lets you watch 3D movies in a VR theater, and it’s identical to what you would have seen IRL (i.e., “in real life”), back when 3D movies were a thing.
BigScreen is indeed very cool.
But Nightmara is much, much more than that. It’s not just a 3D movie with headsets on; it’s a full 360-degree immersive drama, in which you can even walk around. You have to see it to believe it.
We checked in with Gianpaolo Gonzalez, the NightMara writer/director; answers have been edited for clarity.
Audere: So excited that a new episode is finally out – what took you so long?
Gonzalez: It takes me about 6 months in production mode to complete a 12-minute experience by myself. I need time to discover new and exciting perspectives in how I tell the story of NightMara. You can only plan so much on a piece of paper. Once you hop into VR, it’s a whole new way of working.
I’m constantly discovering better ways of telling my story. I don’t really have past examples of scripted VR animated series that I can turn to and reverse engineer how they did it. All I have is my excitement button, and I make sure that I constantly push myself and this medium to its wildest.
In episode 1, I really felt that what was different about this from other VR animation is that I could really get up and walk around in your show — at one point, characters are watching TV, and I got up and walked into the TV. How much did you think about creating a world that viewers could walk around in, rather than just watch?
I just wanted to make sure the viewer’s horizon was never messed up. The viewer can tell if the horizon is off by 1 degree. An off-set horizon instantly removes viewers from the experience, and they no longer care to explore the virtual world.
VR is for people who want to explore new ways of experiencing, but you have to make them want to be there. I think the viewer feels respected in my experiences because I give them a plane to walk on as well as environments that beg to be explored.
How does the animation in episode 2 differ from the already amazing work in episode 1?
It tops it. I’ve learned so many new skills from Episode 1 that I brought into Episode 2. The main difference is that Episode 1 was 11 scenes in 12 minutes; Episode 2 is 24 scenes in 12 minutes. So the pacing is quicker. More scenes, means more sets, which are now bigger and more detailed. I also included a lot more creative transitions from scene to scene. Now to bring what I learned from Episode 2 to Episode 3!
How did you become interested in animating in VR, and then how did you take the step of actually doing it?
In 2016, I was creating 360 commercials and music videos for clients, and I had gotten my hands on the VR painting software Quill. There were no animation abilities in Quill at the time, but I would paint scenes and just try to get better. In developing my skills, I was constantly comparing my work to the more seasoned animators that were also producing “quillustrations” — painted illustrations using Quill.
Then in 2017, I created NightMara as a traditional 2D cartoon on Instagram and hired an animator to help me create the short 13 episodes. I had never animated anything outside of motion graphics or stop motion, and I realized first-hand the cost of animation. After completing my little 8-minute Instagram cartoon, I ran out of money and Quill had just introduced the ability to animate in virtual reality. The timing couldn’t have been better. I knew I needed to learn animation, or I would suffer at the mercy of someone else’s time as well as my wallet.
So I changed the style of NightMara to work best in Quill and created a couple episodes by myself to learn, while at the same time, provide my fans with some new content. My sole mission was to improve as an artist each time I put my headset on. Each piece of content needed to top my last. It was the motor that drove me to constantly improve.
Then in 2020, Quill released the software as it is today, which allows complete end-to-end VR animation production … and then the pandemic hit. So I spent the entire pandemic inside Virtual Reality teaching myself animation, set design, character design, and VR directing and thus created what NightMara is today.
NightMara is about a plucky 11-year-old, yet it contains profanity and cartoonish violence. Who is the show for?
I made NightMara for the cartoon connoisseur who’s been craving a fresh and new experience to try. The main theme of my show is “fear,” which doesn’t have a set demographic. Everyone can relate to fear and animation has the ability to reach anyone at any age. I used to love when my mom would laugh at a Sponge Bob joke differently than I did as a kid because it meant there was something more I could explore. South Park wasn’t made for 11-year-olds, but all of us kids were watching it because it had something new to say in the medium.
Who is the typical NightMara fan?
The fans of NightMara are incredibly diverse, because I don’t talk to any one type of demographic. I aim at pleasing a certain ‘psychographic’ or interests of a given individual. Those are cartoon fans of South Park, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Rick and Morty, The Simpsons, 90s Nicktoons, Nintendo, Playstation, Xbox, Marvel, DC Comics. These are the fans that feed off of good characters, passionate creators and interesting takes on the world. Because I know this, NightMara fans range from 13-year-olds to 70-year-olds, because at the end of the day, animation has the ability to entertain anyone if done correctly.
Where do you see VR entertainment headed? In 10 years, will we all watch TV on VR?
I believe VR will be for entertainment just as what the smart phone did to social media. In 2007, the iPhone came out, but handheld PalmPilots had already been around for ten years prior. I remember, because my Dad had one in 1997. No one knew that PalmPilots would influence one of the greatest industry revolutions of our time; the revolution out of boredom. No longer do we have to wait to be entertained. We can look at our phone and find something to entertain us in only a couple swipes of our finger. However, as our stomach’s grow for more engaging content, our appetites become much more refined and picky. Virtual Reality lends itself to fulfill that hunger to be entertained in a whole new way.
Will this be the default format of entertainment?
In 10 years, I believe that television shows and movies will be almost the advertisement for the virtual reality world they offer. A two-hour Batman movie is dope and all, but to actually be Batman in Gotham and hunt the Joker is way doper.
This is a free show on a free app. How do you make money?
It’s free for the time being, so better get your views in now! I’m working on different avenues of monetization currently that I’m not allowed to disclose, but as this becomes more popular, I also have cool t-shirts, trading cards, stickers, and toys to buy at the So Meta Studios shop. Every penny goes back into my episodes!
ADVERTISEMENT The popular weird-Western, historical-fantasy/science fiction podcast, The Strange and Astounding Memoirs of Watt O’Hugh, starring Sal Rendino, returns for a full season, with eight new episodes!
Sunday, August 28, 2022, from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM EST, AltspaceVR, free
A collaboration between worldbuilders Jose Ferrer and JoAnn Shivanti, the latest Muse project, “Entheogen~a Trippy, Psychedelic Adventure,” is a glowing temple in the Amazon rainforest, scored to music by Shivanti’s husband.
Ferrer, a medical doctor in Barcelona who uses VR for treating the burnout of the healthcare workers and for medical training, says, “I first started using VR during the COVID pandemic, when I needed some way to relax and forget about the harsh work situation in the emergency room. From there it grew really fast. I started working with Educators in VR organizing events to promote the use of VR in the medical field, world building mostly for well-being, and now I’m doing a research project using VR for reducing burnout of health care workers.”
In 2020, he built the first version of his extravagantly wonderful Meditation Center — which Audere will visit soon — as “a chakra circuit open to everyone at any time to rebalance their energies.”
Muse/ Entheogen is already available for you to visit, but the soft opening event is this Sunday, with a Grand Opening on September 17.
Look at the photos, that starry sky, those distant mountains, those glowing trees — it’s beautiful.
Friday, September 2, 2022, from 8:00 PM to 10:30 PM (EST), AltspaceVR, $10(registration required)
VR wouldn’t be VR without its lively, eye-popping dance clubs, and one of the best of the past couple of years was the Violet Nightclub, run by VenusSX, an advocate, therapist and intimacy coach who works with individuals and couples globally and is a leader in immersive experiences in virtual reality. Now Venus Lounge has been refurbished with what Venus says will be “the highest quality textures and decor, to provide a sensual Members Club environment.” VenusSX has promised a significant upgrade, something almost impossible to imagine, plus a “multi-sensory journey and dance experience.” This is a private whitelist-only event; General Admission USD$10.
Free to watch on the Within app; free on Tripp with a subscription
Marc Zimmerman’s 14-minute film, from 2018, is a real wonder in VR, an amazingly immersive experience that seeks to impress upon the viewer how grateful we should all be for the gift of a conscious mind that allows us to sense “the universe’s boundless beauty, a source of infinite inspiration.”
Zimmermann begins with our birth (“Everything is special, new, wants to be discovered; what a wondrous world,” the infant-narrator marvels), then shoves us beneath and into unfurling ferns, fireworks, jellyfish, shooting stars, a stormy galactic sky, a mossy forest of weeping trees at dusk, a sadly deserted nighttime playground, a kaleidoscope, a bustling ocean floor, wooden wind chimes, and demands that you “break through the dust that makes you blind … use your precious gift within to sense the beauty in every little thing.”
You might watch it again and again. You might bring your headset over to friends’ homes and demand that they watch it. Inspiring.
Friday, August 26, 2022, from 5:45 PM to 9:00 PM (EST), AltSpaceVR, free
We’ve written in this space before about the kinetic joys and visual beauty of a MOMA rave, so we won’t repeat ourselves. If you have never been, for goodness’ sake, go. And if you haven’t gone because you don’t own a VR headset, then buy a VR headset.
AI Friends of the Month
As we wrote here last month, maybe, someday, AI will design worlds in which you can live. One day, your co-workers, bosses, even your best friends may be AIs. Maybe this will be good; maybe bad. Maybe we will never know. But we will first meet them in VR. Some people already have.
So we asked an AI to introduce us to a couple of her friends, to tell us their backstories, to design some clothes for them and to pose them in a setting of her own design.
This is what she came up with: the faces, personality, clothes, scenery and quotations are all AI-generated.
Skrew Albemarle, on the left, is a 26-year-old editor; tall, thin, handsome and smart, he loves sports, music travel and books. His first name comes from a character in a movie; his last name is the town in Virginia where he grew up. Stephanie Singh, on the right, is a 22-year-old physics major. Sweet, beautiful and smart, Stephanie loves books, science, travel and animals.
Remembering the rainy evening when they posed for the photo, Stephanie said: “I wanted to look like I was in love.” Skrew said: “I wanted to make sure that I looked cool.”
The Virtual World is growing up, deciding what it wants to be, and, like a famous kid in the spotlight, earning enemies, like Mathew McConaughey.
McConaughey, who ridiculed VR fans in a recent Superbowl commercial for Salesforce, followed up on his criticism this week in an interview with Fox News, of all things.
“If reality is not enough for you to turn you on,” McConaughey gripes, “and you seek the virtual in life, and you seek extra credit … look, that’s why people go to drugs. That’s why people go to pornography online. The reality’s not enough.”
Spoken like a guy who has no idea what he is talking about.
VR is just a new kind of reality, a place to visit with old friends and make new ones, to dance in amazing nightclubs, to hike through towering mountains, to bicycle through Paris and visit countries that you’d never see otherwise, and that might not even exist.
VR has its dangers, and it could all go bad.
But don’t listen to critiques in a “Salesforce” Superbowl ad. VR is nothing like drugs.
Anyone who’s spent an hour playing Beat Saber can tell you it’s better for you physically than, say, football. It’s better for you psychologically than sitting in front of a computer screen all day, staring at an online marketing app like Salesforce. And it’s certainly better for the cohesion of the human race than Fox News!
Without further ado, here are some of the coolest things going on in VR this week.
Out in the real world, if you want to open a nightclub, you rent the space, work on the design, open up your hot-spot, and if it has some buzz, you wind up living off the bar tab for a few months or years.
But in VR, you might feel inclined to design a new club every few weeks, along with a new world to house it in.
Crusöe promises two dance floors with different music in each location, along with some quiet places on the island where people can talk, including a secluded campfire, from worldbuilder Mikael Zacke Zachrisson. Organizer Manon Smits also tells us that Crusöe will contain “some hidden surprises, because some people are fond of that.”
If it’s anything like past MOMA raves, which were beautiful and lively creations, Crusöe will be a must-see.
This beautifully recreated period bowling alley is really a great place to meet up with old friends, no matter where they live now, or to make new ones.
The bowling is as close to real life as you can get in virtual reality, you really feel like you’re bowling, and the ambience is perfect.
For just under sixteen dollars, you can bowl again and again and again. You don’t have to pay for parking, you don’t have to rent bowling shoes or wait for a lane, and your friend from Holland doesn’t need to risk Covid to fly out and visit you. A great night out.
An open air Chinese dive, in the heart of some sort of overgrown, bustling metropolis, which serves roasted chicken that seems disconcertingly fresh, judging from the live chickens staring up nervously from their cages. A bit of drizzle threatens, but you don’t care, it’s all part of the charm. How long will this place hang on? When will the gentrification of that looming city wipe it out?
As we’ve noted before, in vTimeXR, you can make plans to meet old friends, but you may also make new friends. If you’re looking for a date to bring to the MOMA rave, you might find one here! The Chinatown Restaurant is a great place with a great vibe, the perfect seedy ambience to inspire lively conversation, with new friends or old.
Virtual Reality entertainment is full of possibilities, yet no one has yet mastered the new form the way the creators of NightMara have.
We’re used to 3D movies, even the relatively spectacular wonders of IMAX 3D, but traditional 3D entertainment does not really differ much from 2D: in each format, the audience sits in their seats, and the action takes place on a screen, yards away. The random object may approach your face, but you are never in the middle of the action. The producers of 3D movies know that one day home audiences will view their product on a 2D television set. The formats are not so wildly divergent.
NightMara changes all that.
NightMara is the story of a tough 11-year-old girl who has the power to visit the dreams of her small-town neighbors, a skill that comes in handy when someone or something starts attacking the town’s residents inside their dreams.
You can watch NightMara from your armchair the way you would any other television show; writer/director Gianpaolo Gonzalez‘s swirling camera work, quick cutting, set design and 3D effects will be plenty engaging no matter your vantage point.
But you can also get up from your armchair and walk around the incredible world that Gonzalez has designed. When the characters watch TV, you can sit beside them and watch along, or, if you choose, you can stand up and walk through the screen and explore the show-within-a-show. Go ahead and take a stroll down Gonzalez’s neon-lit, rainy-night street. This is animation like you’ve never experienced it before.
Who is NightMara for? This gave me a little pause. There is a certain level of profanity and cheerful gore, and the story is Freddy-Kruegerish, as the title suggests, which might mean that it’s not for tots. But the main character is an 11-year-old girl, so is it for adults?
Still, the gore, so far, is limited to dreams, the horror is, of course, cartoonish, and the profanity is nothing a kid hasn’t heard before and, probably, said many times.
So it’s OK for kids with open-minded parents. And any adult with even a passing interest in animation or tech will be astonished. So maybe NightMara is for everyone.
Wednesday, February 23, 3:30 pm EST, AltspaceVR, free
We have written in the past about the cheerful and beautiful Pagodascope parties, which brighten our lives biweekly. Today’s party will feature “a Hex Reactive floor crafted by Gold with a little GoogleHz inspiration,” and plenty of dancing.
Coming up!
In future columns: More reviews of VR TV animation. The sexiest dance club in the Metaverse, and more parties, including the latest Bratwurst Meets the World! And a return visit to a growing Multiverse.