Project Sansar is widely being dubbed as the Second Life of Second Life. This makes it sound as if Second Life has gone away, if you read the headlines, but when you read the articles then you discover that Second Life is not only healthy, it’s arguably still the best virtual world out there.
We’ll take a look at a couple of articles to demonstrate this point, the first is by Annie Gaus and published on Silicon Valley Business Journals : In virtual reality, Second Life prepares for its second act. The article talks about the virtual reality boom, the fact that Linden Lab have a new product on the way and dives into the hype machine that is currently in action regarding VR :
Now, the makers of Second Life are preparing for a new life of their own in the fast-developing virtual reality market, which Deloitte analysts estimate will hit $1 billion for the first time in 2016.
However, before we can move forward into the new virtual reality, we have to step back and the article acknowledges that Second Life was a successful early experiment, so successful that the article also points out that Second Life’s longevity makes it ancient in Internet years.
The article also contains some quotes from Ebbe Altberg, many which have been heard before but one really stands out from the crowd, especially when people seem to feel that the end of the Second Life virtual world is nigh :
It’s still the best virtual world out there today. We’re profitable all thanks to Second Life.
People should bear this in mind, Second Life is still paying its own way for Linden Lab, Project Sansar is still some way off from being a polished product and even when it is a polished product, it won’t be Second Life, which means that Second Life may still have a home. The article does of course delve into Project Sansar, which is seen as the future, but the future isn’t here yet.
The second article I want to highlight is by Sophie Charara over at WAREABLE : Virtual worlds reborn: Can Second Life’s second life democratise VR? This article is lengthy and has a lot of meat on the bones, it’s well worth a read. This article talks more of Project Sansar than Second Life, or more to the point, the article speculates about Project Sansar, but it does point out that Second Life is still very much alive :
Slightly down on a peak of 1.1 million users, nevertheless the biggest virtual world in the er, world never went away. Now Linden Lab has 12 years worth of valuable experience around how people interact in virtual spaces.
The article talks about how Project Sansar is a social platform, how the experiences can be real in terms of relationships and identity and much more :
First and foremost, Project Sansar is a social platform, that’s been in development for around two years and lets you build and share virtual CG spaces, activities and experiences. Linden Lab are selling it as WordPress for VR. That makes sense as the project aims to both democratise VR and make it much more diverse than if the future of the medium were decided by say, the games industry and Hollywood.
The article also delves into what our brain does, or how our memories can be influenced, by virtual reality experiences :
Spending time in Project Sansar allows you to live your life (a life) without physical constraints – you can go any place, any time and be anyone. That’s a powerful idea – democratising experiences, not just creativity – and it’s one that clearly informs the work of Altberg and his teams of engineers and designers.
Linden Lab’s CEO refers to Chris Milk and Nonny de la Pena’s work with building empathy by placing viewers directly into scenes with VR and he cites Stanford University’s Jeremy Bailenson who has shown that our brains cannot distinguish between memories created in the real world and in virtual worlds.
Interesting and fascinating stuff, but the reality of how far away Project Sansar is in terms of gaining the wider mainstream audience Linden Lab seek is also highlighted. Peter Gray (AKA Gray of The Lab From San Francisco) is referenced :
This pre-alpha group of VIP testers will grow “in the coming months”, according to senior director of communications at Linden Lab, Peter Gray. The final version of Sansar is set to open up to “hundreds” of beta testers in June 2016 and a launch, which is now late 2016/early 2017 on PC, mobile and “as many different VR platforms” as possible.
Interesting stuff for sure, but with Project Sansar not looking set for a wide release until next year, Second Life, warts and all, still looks like the virtual world of choice and has established communities, commerce and creativity.
Second Life won’t be around forever, but it’s really hard to disagree with Ebbe Altberg when he says that Second Life is still the best virtual world out there today.
*nods in agreement* I’m not a techie or geek about the platforms at all…I leave that to much better informed people such as yourself and Inara, but after attending the Lab Chat the message I got was Sansar will be awesome….one day…and not right off the bat when it launches. A lot of the exciting advances won’t come for a while and SL will still be the place to grow, develop and create for a long while yet.
Absolutely and of course, Second Life is where the people are. There’s power in the community.
“Second Life’s longevity makes it ancient in Internet years”. Absolutely. It’s not just a technical product, it’s also a social environment. You can’t design social maturity into a product.
The social environment is a factor people oft seem to overlook. World of Warcraft’s longevity comes due to similar reasons, it’s where the people are, that’s a powerful tool to have in your locker and it doesn’t happen overnight.
Sadly, as per many can also report, performance is degrading on Second Life during weekends, mostly around blake sea. If the msg that the lab wishes to give is that Second Life is here to stay, is not the best way to do it.
I’ll have to look more into issues like that when I have more time, but weekends are an important time for users to be able to enjoy the Blake sea.
Second Life “fails” with more profit and users than many of the major “success stories” here in the Silicon Valley succeed.
There is more user retention, community, social media, and economic value in Second Life than almost everything except for Facebook and Twitter…
And Twitter is good to mention because its hitting the same issue Second Life has: despite being massively successful Silicon Valley and Wall Street have no decided it is a failure. Its value is going down even as it still rakes in both uers and money hand over fist.
The only thing that ever failed in Second Life was the hype machine – but then, hype machines always fail.
Ok yeah… Youtube is bigger too obviously, and a few others… but I was wasn’t going to accuracy there but to make a general point: Second Life is thriving even as its own users think its failing…
People overlook the social side of Second Life, probably because it’s not something that is easy to explain but that social side provides the community that has aided Second Life’s longevity, it possibly goes over people’s heads because it’s not a technical solution and Silicon Valley loves technical solutions.
Sansar can do all the ‘looming large’ it wants, I won’t be leaving SL for it. As I’ve said elsewhere, Sansar is dull, restrictive and most unattractive.
Mars? Beautiful? Isn’t a statement like that best left to the eye of the beholder?
Wouldn’t LL’s dollars (sorry, I mean ‘our’ dollars – we gave it to them, after all) better spent on fixing SL, polishing it up so it’s not so dated, so it’s not so laggy, and most important, not such a ghost town anymore?
I think the costs of rebuilding SL to make it shiny and new are prohibitive but you make a great point regarding the eye of the beholder and this is why I think plenty of people will choose to stay in SL as that’s where they are happy.
Saying that ‘Secondlife is still the best possible virtual world out there’, is a bit subjective.
SecondLife, while having been around for a while, has become a ghost town, despite LL’s constant denial of the simple fact.
Log in at any time of the night or day and you’ll find the world a barren and desolate place – most events listed in the destination guide either don’t exist anymore, or no one shows up so they don’t bother going ahead with it.
And that’s just events. Try all the shopping malls – you’ll be the only one there.
I can’t help but think that it’s due to poor management (and poor management decisions and practices).
Either way, I’m looking for a better alternative to SL and so far, Kitely looks like being the one, although there are one or two others.
I’m choosing Kitely simply because other creators, who were previously SL residents, have expressed dissatisfaction over SL’s TOS and its constant and unstable changes to management.
Kitely seems far more stable and I’d rather pay a monthly membership/subscription fee, knowing that things will be done properly, than anything else SL has to offer (or not, as the case now seems to be).
Sansar won’t draw me back, either. I think Sansar is a case of far too little, far too late – and seems as though it will be even more restrictive and cost prohibitive than SL.
SecondLife may have gone a bit quiet for a period of time, but I believe it’s starting to come to life again (no pun intended).
I love SL and I will remain in SL for as long as it exists.
Sansar has never appealed to me and never will; it’s like someone saying you won a trip to the farthest, most desolate regions of Siberia, but you have to pay through the nose for clothes before you can get there – and then your every move must be dictated, recorded and watched.
Nah. Not for me.
Not appealing at all.
I have to disagree that SL is a ghost town. At MadPea Games we’re still seeing consistent year on year growth in all areas.
* The number of vips in our group is growing at a rate we’ve never seen before…over 5000 new members since 2014.
* The number of people playing our games. Every game release we’ve had has been more successful and had an increased number of players.
* We’ve been able to switch to a monetised model for our games in the last 3 years which has seen a huge increase in our ability to recover costs and plough more resources into game advancements within Second Life.
* Our presence on social media has also been growing from the Second Life user base.
I do think there is a switch in how people are choosing to spend their time in Second Life and the ‘traditional’ SL club is suffering because of that but there’s still plenty to do in SL if you look outside of dancing and listening to music.
We currently have 3 very successful games running in Second Life which are gaining new players every day. UNIA, The Interview…oh and if you really want one we even have The Ghost Town at Firestorm Gateway for people to play.
Kess Crystal, Marketing Director, MadPea Productions.