Year: 2019

Editorial: Why It’s Time to Change How I Cover Social VR and Virtual Worlds On This Blog

My blogposts about Second Life are far more popular than those about Sansar

I am only a couple of blogposts away from my next milestone on this blog: 1,500 blogposts. And it’s probably as good a time as any to calculate some quick statistics on what topics have proven to be the most popular in the two and a half years I have been blogging about (as I state in my blog’s tagline) “news and views on social VR, virtual worlds and the metaverse”.

My coverage of the various social VR platforms and virtual worlds has been quite uneven, with most of my blogging focused on three metaverse platforms to date:

  • Sansar (the reason I started this blog in the first place)
  • High Fidelity
  • Second Life (with a focus on freebies)

Of my Top 100 most viewed blogposts since I started this blog on July 31, 2017, you might be interested to learn:

  • 36 were about Second Life
  • 10 were about virtual reality in general
  • 9 were about Sansar
  • 7 were about VRChat
  • 5 were about High Fidelity
  • 4 were about Decentraland

What I find interesting is that there is absolutely no correlation between how often I cover a social VR/virtual world on my blog, and how popular those blogposts are. For example, I write about VRChat much less often than I do about Sansar, yet the VRChat posts are more popular overall. I have written less frequently about Decentraland than High Fidelity over the years, yet more people tend to visit my blogposts about Decentraland.

All this has led me to do some thinking about making changes to what I write about on this blog. In particular, I want to put more effort into covering those platforms which:

  • show consistently higher levels of usage according to publicly published statistics such as Steam, or
  • show higher levels of reader interest based on my own WordPress statistics, or
  • show reader interest based on how often they are discussed on the RyanSchultz.com Discord server.

What this means is, going forward, I will be starting to pull back on my formerly heavy coverage of both High Fidelity and Sansar. Both the concurrent usage statistics from places like Steam, and my WordPress stats, tell me that people don’t seem to be as interested in those platforms, so why am I continually writing about them? I do not kid myself that I am going to be able to convince people into visiting platforms like Sansar and High Fidelity via my blog, and frankly, it’s not my job to do their promotion for them. I should be writing more about the state of the metaverse as it currently exists, and spend less time trying to encourage people onto less popular platforms. Therefore, I think it’s time to reign in my coverage of Sansar and High Fidelity.

(As a side note, one of the first changes I see in Sansar, since last week’s announcement of a new focus on live events, is that the number of Product Meetups has been cut in half, to biweekly from weekly. Of course, if you don’t expect to have as many new features coming out in future client updates, it makes perfect sense to have fewer Product Meetups, where those features tend to be discussed. Daily Community Meetups have also been cut to Mondays and Wednesdays.)

Also, I will start paying more attention to those platforms which meet at least one of the three criteria I have mentioned earlier:

  • Second Life (which is clearly still the most popular part of my blog)
  • VRChat
  • Rec Room
  • AltspaceVR
  • Decentraland

My coverage of Second Life will now expand a little bit from the initial focus on Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies, in that I will be commenting more on a variety of topics relating to SL, particularly more announcements of changes to the platform by Linden Lab, and more editorials.

I will also start to write more often about other platforms which I have visited too infrequently, in an effort to even out my coverage of social VR/virtual worlds and provide a better overall picture of the evolving metaverse to my readers:

  • Sinespace
  • Somnium Space
  • Cryptovoxels
  • NeosVR
  • Mozilla Hubs

And, whether or not I am invited to participate in the closed beta early next year, I will of course be writing extensively about Facebook Horizon!

I realize that this decision might be a disappointment to both Linden Lab and High Fidelity (or, perhaps, a relief, given how I have criticized both Sansar and HiFi in the past). But I think it’s time to adjust my blog to the current market realities, much the same as the companies themselves have seen fit to make significant changes this year.

Editorial: Sansar, Sovietology, and Reading the Tea Leaves

In the days of the old Cold War, American spies, historians, and Sovietologists would spend hours poring over published pictures of Communist party gatherings (such as the annual May Day parade rostrums) with magnifying glasses, trying to figure out who was in and out of favour among the ruling class: who was a new and rising star, and who had fallen from power, perhaps even banished to the Gulag.

And, given how Linden Lab has refused to comment publicly on their most recent round of layoffs, bloggers like Inara Pey and I rely on not dissimilar techniques to read the tea leaves, and figure out who’s in and out at LL. (For example, Inara has pointed out that Landon McDowell, Linden Lab’s Chief Product Officer, seems to have survived the layoffs, as she could still find his Second Life account. Yes, such are the straws we are currently clutching at. Of course, until such time as Landon actually pops up to say something, we’re just guessing.)

A tried-and-true tactic (used to parse previous Linden Lab layoffs in the past) has been to check the ratings and stories of recently-laid-off employees posted to the Glassdoor website. One such review, posted Oct. 31st, 2019, states:

I worked at Linden Lab full-time for more than 5 years

Pros: Some hard working people who were trying to do the right thing and ship a compelling project.

Cons: Exec leadership is inept beyond belief. No clue about the product they’re in charge of or the industry they’re a part of. Sansar had a chance to shine, but leaders who were too scared to make important decisions, constant pivots, and wasting too much time building unnecessary tech spelled it’s doom. CEO was an old friend of the chairman of the board who got the job due to nepotism. CPO was useless.

Advice to Management: Fire yourselves.

Yee-ouch! Well, if I were suddenly and unexpectedly laid off, I would be probably be that bitter too. But the overarching complaint here is one that is often lobbed at Linden Lab: that the company has had great difficulty explaining exactly what purpose Sansar was intended to fill.

(Also a note: of course the board of directors is going to rely on their existing social network to find and hire a CEO! That is hardly a crime. And overall, Ebbe Altberg seems to have done a much better job as CEO of Linden Lab than many of his predecessors, as far as I can tell.)

So, all the hue and cry is pretty much over now, and the people who have been let go have packed their boxes and left the premises. Now what?

Well, now that the marketing people (as opposed to the engineers) are firmly in control of the Good Ship Sansar, I think that we can expect what we were clearly told at the Friday Product Meetup: the new focus will be on live events, with a secondary focus on socialization and communication tools, and providing a better on-boarding experience to new users. Anything that does not support those primary and secondary foci, such as further avatar customization and gamification/questing options, will likely be pushed back, or taken off the software development roadmap completely.

Frankly, a new focus on live events is a pretty canny move for Linden Lab. It also helps define more clearly the purpose of the platform (which, as I have said above, is a core problem Sansar has had from the very beginning).

And Linden Lab wouldn’t have to look very far afield to find talent; it is right under their noses in Second Life! SL has been a fantastic incubator for countless musical performers, some of whom have gone on to achieve real-life success, stepping out from behind their avatar.

If I were Sheri Bryant, I would set up a formal program to try and encourage many of the talented live performers who entertain audiences in various venues in Second Life, to consider using Sansar as a new platform to attract a whole new audience. We have already seen this happen to a limited degree with events that Alfy and others have organized in Sansar; why not pull out all the stops and take it a step further?

Of course, I expect there will also be a big push to bring in small, medium, and big-name artists from the real world. Sansar was already off to a good start in that department; I’m quite sure they already have plans in the works for many future concerts and events.

And, as I have said before, I expect that Linden Lab will continue to cultivate selected social media influencers in an effort to get the word out. It’s the best bang for their advertising dollar in this digital age, in my opinion. Like it or hate it, social media is here to stay, and influencers have power.

So, what do you think will happen next? What do you see in the tea leaves for Sansar? Please feel free to leave a comment on this blogpost. Also, there’s the RyanSchultz.com Discord server, the world’s first cross-worlds discussion forum! I’d like to extend an invitation to have you join us and participate in the many discussions and debates that take place there.

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: The Queen of Frost

It’s definitely winter here now in Winnipeg. The snow is already blowing around, and it’s chilly outside! We’re settling in for another one of our usual long, cold Canadian Prairie winters. And it’s time for another winter-themed Second Life avatar!

I wanted to share a couple of free hunt gifts that I combined to style an avatar I call the Queen of Frost. The base avatar is the same Altamura Juliet full-body mesh avatar with Bakes on Mesh enabled, which I described here: the Snow Queen. But the hair and dress are new, free prizes from two different hunts.

The mesh hair is a style called Frozen by KMH, which comes in the white-and-blue shown here, or completely blue. It is one of the free hunt gifts of the fall Paripi Hunt, part of the After Paripi Fair (here’s a SLURL):

You are looking for coconuts dressed as people. Here’s a hint to find the Frozen hairstyle: try looking around the fountain in the centre of the park.

And the completely over-the-top Queen of Frost dress is a free hunt gift from BlueMoon Enterprise in the Womenstuff Hunt (here’s the SLURL). You are looking for a brightly-coloured, striped T shirt. Here’s a hint: check the area around the group gifts carefully.

This outfit is more versatile than it looks at first glance. You can take off the skirt and you will still have a very workable minidress for that holiday party! (The sleeves are also a separate, removable piece.)

For shoes to match this frosty outfit, I relied on a pair of free white flats, which are part of a free sample pack of Slink-compatible shoes from Garbaggio, available on the SL Marketplace; Altamura mesh bodies have Slink-compatible feet.

Happy hunting!

Linden Lab Lays Off 30 Staff

I can now report this morning that Linden Lab has laid off staff as part of what appears to be a significant reorganization and reallocation of staff resources. My source (who shall remain anonymous, but whom I consider a good source) tells me that 30 people were let go. The rumour mill this weekend has been saying that 20 to 30 people were laid off, so the figure would appear to be accurate.

So we can assume that Sansar staff who have “disappeared”—notably Landon McDowell/Landon Linden (the Chief Product Officer), Nyx Linden, and Cara Linden—have not been reassigned to Second Life, and are indeed gone. Jesus Christ.

WHAT. THE. F***. HAPPENED?!??

Another source tells me something which may or may not be true:

I heard a rumour Linden Lab got bought, about two/three weeks ago; I don’t fully trust the source (it was definitely a rumour), but that’d explain it.

It is now clear that something major has happened at Linden Lab, whatever it is. I now disagree with what Inara Pey has said about the Friday Product Meetup even more strongly.

This is not “business as usual”. The hastily-arranged Friday Product Meetup was damage control, an effort to get out in front of the story.

UPDATE 10:59 a.m.: I am angry about how all this was handled by Linden Lab. I am sad for the Linden Lab staff who have lost their jobs. And I absolutely hate how private companies with non-unionized employees handle staff changes like this. It’s brutal. As the survivor of a layoff very early in my career, when I did work for a time at a private software company, my heart goes out to the Linden Lab staff who survived this layoff, who now have to adjust to a new reality (and probably an increased workload, too).

And I have been angrily arguing with several people in Discord, who think that I should not have published this blogpost (as if the news wasn’t going to get out anyway; in this digital age you can’t hide something like this). I am staying off Discord for the rest of the day, before I say something in anger that I truly regret.

This is news, I am not under a gag order from Linden Lab, and it directly impacts the Sansar community. How could I not report on something so major? Ebbe Altberg, the board of directors and upper management at Linden Lab have already made their decisions and acted on them, and the news would have eventually gotten out anyway.

UPDATE 12:22 p.m.: Inara Pey left a comment on an earlier blogpost, telling me that, as far as she was aware, Landon McDowell, the Chief Product Officer, was still with the company:

While Landon McDowell (Landon Linden) has taken something of a lead with Sansar, his title is Chief Product Officer, which (so I understand) covers both Sansar and SL. Right now (Monday, Nov 4th), he still appears to be active at the Lab (e.g. his SL account is still active, unlike a couple of others I’ve been checking on).

So, it is possible that with Sheri taking over the “GM” post with Sansar, he may have simply stepped back from the more day-to-day hands-on aspects of running Sansar, rather than having departed from LL or anything of that nature.

UPDATE 2:53 p.m.: Wagner James Au of the long-running blog New World Notes has confirmed my reporting, citing his own sources, saying:

Confirming a blog post from Ryan Schultz (along with some ominous rumblings I heard last Friday), some insiders tell me that Linden Lab has recently laid off over 20 staffers working on Sansar, the company’s social VR platform. Even more tragically, the layoffs include some longtime Lindens who got their start working on Second Life, Linden Lab’s core profitable product, but who were moved to the Sansar team.

Asked to comment on these layoff reports, a Linden Lab spokesperson just sent me this response, in its entirety: “We have no comment at this time, but we’re continuing to develop both Second Life and Sansar, and we’re excited about the many new partnerships and features on tap for 2020!”

UPDATE Nov. 13th: I haven’t been checking messages sent to me via the Contact page on this blog lately, so I missed this anonymous message sent to me on Nov. 4th:

I have a trustworthy, insider source. I can confirm Linden Lab laid off a significant number of Sansar staff (more than 50%) last week ([October] 30th). Sansar is not growing, no growth = no revenue. The Lab couldn’t get secure more funding/investor money so they had to do this. [The] events pivot is a Hail Mary to try increase user growth. Morale within the company is low (90% of avatar team was laid off). Ironically, 100% of the team working on events was laid off as well. Don’t expect any large features in the next few months.

So I have yet another source that corroborates what both I and Wagner have been told.