Wagner James Au is the author of The Making of Second Life (HarperCollins, 2008), based on his experiences as the first journalist officially embedded in a metaverse platform, telling the surreal, tragic, inspiring, and fundamentally human stories of its user community.
James continues covering virtual world culture on his blog New World Notes, the longest-running site devoted to the Metaverse, at nwn.blogs.com.
He is also the author of Game Design Secrets (Wiley, 2012) and has written about virtual worlds and gaming as an emerging cultural force for The Wall Street Journal, Wired, the Los Angeles Times, Harper's Magazine, GigaOm, Salon, Polygon, and Kotaku.
Along with helping launch and grow several metaverse-related platforms and technologies over the years, James is also Senior VP of Editorial & Content Strategy at AnyContext, a marketing and communications agency with clients in AI, VR, health-tech, gaming, web3, design, and future forecasting.
He spends far too much time on Twitter @slhamlet and on Discord as WJA#3523, and as an escape from the virtual world, lives and adventures in Los Angeles with his wife.