Inworld Review is a talk show on Youtube about Openism. The show started over a decade ago, and was the brainchild of Mal Burns who produced and presented the program right up to his death in July of last year. His idea was to bring together interesting people from around the metaverse and have them tell their stories, share their experiences, and explain their latest projects. The show began in SL and eventually came to Opensim, and if you go to Mal's Metaworld Youtube channel you will find dozens of episodes featuring famous names from both platforms, as well as less well-known but equally interesting and creative people talking about tech, about their grids, about music and art.
When Mal unexpectedly passed away, his co-hosts Tosha Tyran and James Atlloud naturally suspended the show, not only out of respect, but because Mal was, as James likes to say, the 'wind in the sails' of the production.
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| Inworld Review has moved from Mal's Youtube channel to the new Inworld Review channel |
However, Inworld Review was one of those rare assets in Opensim - a point of contact for everyone in the hyperverse, a central point for conversation and news, in an environment that is by its very nature decentralized and complicated to navigate. The show was never political, or terribly technical, and had at its heart the hypergrid, never trying to promote one grid over all the others.
After Mal died, James and Tosha teamed up with Petlove Petshop, who had been cameraperson in the early days of Inworld Review, and me, Thirza, a previous Inworld Review co-host, to revive the show. That involved a few changes.
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The original studio was retired and a brand new building set up on sim HIE on HG Safari Grid. Since Mal was a cofounder of the HIE (Hypergrid International Expo) this seemed like an appropriate place for the new building, which was made with significant contributions by Jimmy Olsen. I should also point out that HG Safari, HIE and Inworld Review are all separate projects organized in different ways, and each has its own social media profiles, listed at the end of this post.
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| Mal memorial sculpture made by Cherry Manga |
Our first Inworld Review show without Mal was in October 2025 when Cherry Manga was our guest. It was a thrill for us to have her on the show not only because we all love her art but also because she is a native French speaker and to come on the show and speak English for the whole interview was a challenge - which she of course did brilliantly!
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| Cherry on Inworld Review in October 2025 |
Other guests have included Jupiter Rowland, Xenon Darrow, Marcus Llewellyn, Sun Szu, Wolem Wobbit, Bloom Peters, and Jimmy Olsen, and we have many more coming up including fashion designer and DJane Loru Destiny, Licu Rau of Craft, Govega Sachertorte of Neverworld, and Lone Wolf of WTG, to name just a few. One of the great things about the show is that you finally get to hear the voices and the opinions of people who you may only know by their name on an object.
So far we have had seven episodes with the refreshed format, and although none of the IWR team members are new to the show, it's been a learning curve for us all, with our fair share of bloopers - but that's the human element, which is essential to the show and to our community.
We also opted for a slightly different format from the original Inworld Review.
- Rather than an open-ended show that could last anything from sixty minutes to two hours or more, we chose to limit the broadcast to an hour. Guests come in with a clear idea of what we will be asking them, and they know we will not be taking up their whole Sunday.
- We moved the broadcast to a brand new Inworld Review Youtube channel and came up with a new logo and intro video
- The Live broadcast time changed slightly, to accomodate RL activities and obligations. Inworld Review used to begin at 12 noon Grid Time (or SLT if you prefer the term) and now begins one hour earlier, at 11am Grid Time. It is still on Sundays.
- Instead of a show every week, there are two shows a month, on the second and fourth Sunday. To try to make that easier to find, we put reminders on YT, Discord, and Facebook - and this is one of those channels on Youtube where you really do want to click that Notification button!
We begin with Hypergrid Happenings which is all about parties, celebrations and classes happening in the next seven days. We make a YouTube 'short' of this segment each weekend, so there's something new on our channel even when there is no new episode of Inworld Review. The name Hypergrid Happenings was coined by John Simmons for the FB group of the same name. He was nice enough not to mind us stealing it.
Following HH (so much easier to just use the acronym!) there's the interview with our guest. This is always fascinating because they never fail to surprise us with their stories, their humor, and their willingness to share.
After the interview is Virtual News and Views - a roundup of recent news. Again, in the tradition of Mal's original show, this can be anything from an update about developments in Viewer technology, or it might be about a new tool made for opensim, or letting folks know that a grid has opened or closed down, or about some upcoming community project that everyone can get involved in, or sharing with everyone a machinima or other video made in Opensim.
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| Virtual News and Views is a segment that showcases the latest news in Opensim, and also recent videos and machinima of interest. |
Shows like this only work if the community supports them. You can do that in several different ways. You can watch the show, and we love it if you comment on the videos and subscribe to the channel - we really love a 'Like' too, which is anonymous so if you're using your RL account and don't want to comment because your name will appear, please do give us that thumbs up. You can let us know about your news, so we can include it in the show (we need to know about a week before it will happen, otherwise we won't have time to include it) but also about bigger community news about changes on your grid, progress in your projects. If we can fit your news item into the show we will be delighted to do that. Maybe you'd like to be a guest - let us know and we will The other way you can help is by spreading the word, that will bring us into contact with even more
The most efficient way to get in touch is via Social Media, so here are some links for that.
Other links of interest
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