Charlie Fink has written a very detailed and complimentary Forbes article in their Tech section about Sansar.
Titled VR Action Sport Hoverderby Opens In Sansar, Charlie gives a good overview of all that Sansar currently has to offer, touching on many of the experiences I have already covered in this blog, such as C3rb3rus’ Eternity and 2077, and the Hollywood Art Museum exhibits of the Lost Art of Star Wars and the Art of Drew Struzan.
But the main focus of the article is the HoverDerby experience that Galen, Jasmine and Drax have been building and promoting over the past several weeks. Charlie writes:
When [Linden Lab CEO Ebbe] Altberg showed me the new user-generated multiplayer game, Hoverderby, I realized immediately this is what I had been looking for in Sansar all along: a place where people would gather and collaborate or simply watch in a group. As I have said repeatedly in this column: People are the killer app.
One of the reasons AltSpaceVR struggles and Rec Room is succeeding is because in VR you need to know who you are, where you are, and what you are supposed to be doing. HoverDerby addresses that. It might or might not work for all sorts of reasons, scale being one, but it’s the right idea.
The article also addresses the continuing need for interactivity in Sansar, which needs more than just beautiful experiences to visit:
Draxtor sums up the challenge Linden Lab faces. “The passive consumption of beautiful worlds will always be secondary to social engagement.” Altberg agrees, “Sansar, like Second Life, is at its best when it’s social.” Drax says there is more social action cooking. “We have some more social games coming. Circling around 114 Harvest starting in late May we are giving away houses to rent and will do daily community hangouts with board games and scavenger hunts and book clubs.” Personally, I’d love to see more action sports like Hoverderby.
I want to rent one of the houses on Harvest Street! Please get me on that list, Drax!
And I was surprised to find I was also mentioned in Charlie Fink’s article, taking a direct quote from this blogpost in which I briefly describe the rules of HoverDerby. Thanks, Charlie! It will be interesting to see if I get any resulting uptick in traffic to the blog. (I also recently received a complimentary shout-out from Strawberry Singh, thank you so much Strawberry!)
All in all, this is quite the positive public relations coup for Linden Lab. Congratulations to Ebbe and his team!
