Wagner James Au 🔜AWE

Make your virtual world experiences matter -- from multiplayer combat and MMOs to social worlds and metaverse platforms -- with expert guidance on avatars, on-ramping, game mechanics, real world brand integrations, monetization, and community growth.

"In Making a Metaverse That Matters: From Snow Crash & Second Life to A Virtual World Worth Fighting For, the celebrated author of The Making of Second Life and Game Design Secrets, Wagner James Au, delivers an engrossing exploration of how nascent metaverse platforms have already captured the imagination of millions. Featuring powerful stories and dozens of incisive interviews with insiders including Metaverse creator Neal Stephenson himself, the author uses his unique, grassroots-level perspective as the first reporter embedded in a metaverse platform."

Owner, editor-in-chief, and lead writer of the largest and longest running blog about Second Life and other 3D metaverse technology, with extensive coverage of gaming, virtual goods, and related topics. Traffic: 125,000 monthly and 7.25 million total pageviews. Affiliated with Federated Media. Has been cited or excerpted in the New York Times, Harper's, the Washington Post, and other outlets. I regularly speak about my writing with media outlets such as the New York Times, NPR, and the BBC, at leading conferences including SXSW and OReilly, and at educational colloquiums for Princeton, Stanford, and other universities.

A full-service digital consultancy and lab that leverages every platform to build, measure, and amplify your story. Equal parts art and science, our senior-level team connects your brand with customers through methodical storytelling that keeps them engaged.

Wore many hats for the Unity-based virtual world platform, from managing and running the blog / editorial strategy, to planning and executing live events, to business development out reach to major brands, to product management/creative direction of individual brand projects.

Annual review, analysis, and recommendation of SXSW Interactive panel submissions, especially the Screenburn game arm.

tMa is a full-service boutique communications agency. I help our awesome partners in mobile, gaming/digital entertainment, cloud services, and green tech tell their stories and explain to the world who they are and why they matter. Current clients include China-based mobile game publisher Yodo1 and classic game/ad network RockYou.

Author of the upcoming *Game Design Business Secrets: Do What You Never Thought Possible to Monetize Your iOS, Facebook & Web Games* (2012). More info and 40% DISCOUNT here: http://bit.ly/ICQ0Gr Also co-author of *Second Life: The Official Guide* (2006).

I analyzed virtual goods, monetization, and development/usage trends of Facebook and iOS games for extensive reports published on Inside Social Games.

Analyst writing monthly in-depth reports on monetization strategies and market trends in virtual goods, gamification, and Facebook games: http://www.mediabistro.com/socialtimespro/