Official Snow Crash shrine in Second Life.
Official Snow Crash shrine in Second Life.
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Making a metaverse that matters | Wagner James Au interview/podcast

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 20 min

Wagner James Au has been covering the idea of the metaverse for decades. He was the first embedded journalist inside the world of Second Life, the early virtual world from Linden Lab. And now he’s back with his own book about the metaverse, the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, like in novels such as Snow Crash and Ready Player One. 

The book, Making a Metaverse That Matters: From Snow Crash & Second Life to A Virtual World Worth Fighting For, debuted this month from Wiley and you can find it here and on Amazon. Au’s book is a kind of spiritual sequel of his earlier titles, The Making of Second Life and Game Design Secrets.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.