First things first, some readers may find the website of MMORPG a little garish, it’s a bright site and very busy. I mention this because this post is about an article by Neilie Johnson on MMORPG; Linden Lab Looks to the Future of Online Experiences. The article is based on an interview with Linden Lab’s CEO Ebbe Altberg and Linden Lab’s Senior Director of Global Communications, Gray Of The Lab From San Francisco (AKA Peter Gray).
Whereas there are no ground breaking secrets revealed in the interview, it is worth looking at some things again. Firstly the proposed land model for Project Sansar, or what is known about it so far. The article reiterates that the plan for Project Sansar is to have much lower land costs than the USD$295.00 a month region cost in Second Life, with sales tax on the increase compared to the 5% Marketplace commission. There are no figures provided but I think it’s fair to say that this has been mentioned enough times now for it to be a reality.
The article also touches upon the fact that Linden Lab have learnt a lot from Second Life. Although the minimum age requirement will be 13, Linden Lab feel that they will be able to segregate content so that minors aren’t running into unsuitable content.
One of the things I’ve seen said about Project Sansar when comparing it to Second Life is that the Project Sansar development team will look at the way some things are done in Second Life and decide they would not want to start from there to achieve that in Project Sansar. Content and land restrictions are areas where Project Sansar can take a new approach and one that could very well deal with some of the problems we’ve seen in Second Life. The experience of the issues that have been raised in Second Life are an advantage here.
The article points out the challenges of bringing virtual reality experiences to the mobile market :
Currently, iOS and Android development is something of a sideline for Linden while PC and Oculus is in the works. The reason for that, is that Linden sees mobile platforms more as a means of consuming Sansar experiences, than building them. Altberg emphasized Linden’s commitment to serving the mobile audience, but admitted that when it comes to VR, technical and financial issues mean good cross-platform VR experiences are still many years away.
I wonder if Ebbe is hinting at streaming solutions for mobile here. The problems of streaming experiences at a sensible business cost were raised more than once during the SL12B Meet The Lindens sessions. There is most definitely a market for such solutions, but the price has to be right for business and consumers. However Ebbe’s comments about good cross-platform experiences should not be taken to mean Ebbe is negative about VR, quite the opposite, Ebbe is quoted as saying :
“A few years ago VR had a false start; this is the real start.”
When it comes to what Project Sansar might bring to the table in terms of ease of use, there’s an interesting comparison from Peter Gray. Peter compares Project Sansar to websites such as WordPress and Instagram. Peter is talking about how you don’t need to know how to build a website with HTML, products such as WordPress and Instagram do a lot of that work for you and allow you to share images or words with people easily.
Second Life is far from forgotten in the interview. Ebbe and Peter admit that there have been communication issues in the past with Second Life residents. I’m pleased to see that they keep mentioning this because it should mean that moving forward, communications continue to improve.
Another issue related to Second Life comes in terms of Ebbe again stating that Second Life isn’t going to disappear any time soon :
Second Life die-hards shouldn’t worry; Altberg stated that Sansar isn’t a sequel to Second Life, and that the two will function like “parallel universes” for many years to come.
This has been stated before but as Project Sansar news grows, people may get the impression that Linden Lab are getting ready to pack Second Life away on a dusty shelf in an old broom cupboard. That’s not going to happen for quite a few years yet.
The article also makes good use of Linden Lab’s Flickr pool. The Flickr pool is one of Linden Lab’s better ideas in recent years, it provides good images of Second Life and Blocksworld for people to use in their articles, which helps to post the products in a positive light, especially Second Life, which has been around for over eleven years now and therefore there are a lot of old images around.
I’d advise people to read the post on MMORPG in full, it’s an interesting and rather short read.
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