Jason Gholston, the Product Director for Sansar at Linden Lab, gave a presentation at the recent Augmented World Expo held in Santa Clara, California from May 30th to June 1st, 2018.
One of the very surprising facts that came out of Jason’s talk was that Sansar users have already created over 16,000 experiences to date! That’s much higher than I expected. If you check the Sansar Atlas, there are only about 1,000 published experiences. This means that only 1 out of every 16 Sansar experiences are published and accessible via the Atlas! A lot of people must have created test experiences which they did not wish to share with the public.
He said that Linden Lab was really excited about esports applications of Sansar, and then he stumbled and said “High Fidelity” when he meant to say “high quality” (Freudian slip?).
When asked if he was surprised by anything that the Sansar community has created so far, he mentioned the very popular Atlas Hopping series hosted by Draxtor Despres and Strawberry Singh (now up to Episode 46!). I agree that a really strong community has developed among the Atlas Hoppers!
Jason talked about how there is no “magic bullet” for dealing with trolls and griefers in virtual worlds. He said that Linden Lab is still building out the moderation toolset in Sansar, but that this work is a high priority.
When asked if he has any favourite memories or stories about Sansar, he mentioned people who met through the platform and even got married (congratulations to Ria and Loz!).
When asked what people could do to help promote social VR, he suggested people inviting their friends into Sansar and other social VR platforms:
Use it like you would use a hangout or a video chat or a phone call. Next time you want to play a game, go exploring place to place, invite friends.
