Tag: Linden Lab

UPDATED! Editorial: Linden Lab Launches Sansar on Steam—Will It Entice More People to Use Sansar?

Sansar Steam

Note: I woke up very early this morning to write this editorial. Once Linden Lab makes their announcement (which is expected today), I will make a new blogpost with that information. UPDATE: It’s now official—Sansar has launched on Steam.

Today I also am getting feedback from many Sansar users that I have been way too harsh and negative in this particular blogpost, so…

***Please READ THROUGH MY ENTIRE BLOGPOST, INCLUDING THE SECOND UPDATE, thank you!***

Linden Lab has a problem (although they won’t label it that). Fewer people than they probably expected by now are using their social VR platform, Sansar. They’ve tried a few things (like partnering up with esports leagues and popular Twitch livestreamers), in an effort to ignite the fire that made VRChat suddenly so popular earlier this year. Frankly, they’ve had very little success so far. And they’re probably scratching their heads and wondering what it’s going to take to get people to try Sansar—and stay.

So, on October 29th, 2018, Linden Lab made a major surprise announcement:

Sansar has come a long way since we started the project. In 2018 we have devoted an enormous amount of effort to improving the end-user experience, and will continue to do so.

Given those improvements, we believe we are quickly approaching the point where we want to start bringing a large number of users onto the platform. This is an important milestone for us and especially our creators. One of the foundational principles of Sansar is that creators must be able to profit from their creations. For us to make that a reality, we need to give our creators a large audience of customers.

The cornerstone of our growth effort will be to put Sansar on Steam. Steam is where more than half of the VR market goes to find software. It also is a huge pool of users who are interested in our space and are likely to have the hardware required to run Sansar.

Why has Linden Lab decided to take this step? Well, as they said above, they want to get more customers for Sansar, and they know that making the platform available through Steam is going to put it in front of a lot more eyeballs. People who might not have known about Linden Lab or Sansar before. And (most importantly) people who are more likely to have an Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, or Windows Mixed Reality VR headset than the general population. These are the hardcore gamer crowd, who tend to be early adopters of technology. Linden Lab wants these people.

Linden Lab is betting that, if can get sufficient numbers of Steam users to try out Sansar, that a significant number of them will become regular users: exploring, socializing, building experiences, and shopping for items from the Sansar Store. It’s a risk, but it’s a calculated risk. And Linden Lab is willing to get into bed with Steam to do it (even if it means closing down their SandeX Sansar dollar exchange, which happened yesterday).

However, there’s absolutely no guarantee that simply putting Sansar on Steam is going to be enough. For example, the statistics clearly show that High Fidelity’s launch on Steam in late 2016 has, so far, had very little demonstrable impact on its usage levels, aside from the spikes of users attending the monthly stress testing events and the recent FUTVRE LANDS virtual reality festival.

Whether or not Ebbe Altberg and his team at Linden Lab want to call it that is a moot point, but essentially, what we have here is the “consumer launch” of Sansar I had blogged about back in April 2018. My major concern then was that Sansar did not yet have enough features to attract and retain new users. So let’s take a quick look at the 12 things I thought that Sansar should have before a “consumer launch”, according to that April editorial:

  1. Better avatar customization features. We have a few facial sliders, zero body sliders, and no custom avatar skins. The avatars look good, and there are plentiful clothing options, and you can dye your hair any colour under the sun, but you really cannot customize your avatar to the extent you can in other social VR platforms like Sinespace. Nope.
  2. More and better avatar animations: OK, here at least we now have custom emotes, plus a few more dances and the ability to sit down on the ground. Still needs work. Half a check mark (and I’m being generous here).
  3. Particle effects: Fire? Water? Fog? Smoke? Nope. Just kludgy workarounds. High Fidelity already has this feature, and builders such as Noz’aj are using it to great effect in domains such as Beyond.
  4. More interactive content: At the moment, there isn’t nearly enough interactive content in Sansar, although the situation is slowly improving as the scripting abilities are built out over time. But note that two of the most popular Sansar games to date, Galen and Jasmine’s HoverDerby and Gindipple’s Combat Zone, have both shut down because of the developers’ deep frustration with the current scripting limitations and user interface issues in Sansar. At this point, we seem to be going backwards, not forwards. I’m not even going to give this half a check mark. UPDATE: Please see Bagnaria’s comment below.
  5. One or more community hubs: Nope. Linden Lab’s position is that the users can create their own hubs, and some have tried, like David Hall’s Avalon experience.
  6. Greeters: Nope. Other virtual worlds like Sinespace and High Fidelity have paid greeters whose job it is to welcome guests, answer their questions, and make them feel comfortable. As I said before, it’s a business cost. You can’t just rely on volunteers. Hire people. Put them in your community hubs. Pay them (in Sansar dollars, if you prefer).
  7. The ability to pay an avatar directly: Finally, something we do have! Check mark.
  8. Paypal support: Still no Paypal support.
  9. More functional and attractive user forums and blogs: We are still stuck with Zendesk, which is butt ugly and makes Linden Lab (and Sansar) look bad. The Sansar blog is especially horrible. FIX IT. Fail.
  10. Better communication and collaboration with livestreamers and other potential promoters like bloggers and vloggers: This has had mixed results. The UmiNoKaiju thing was a total bust, as far as I can tell. And so far, I am still one of the few people blogging about Sansar. Linden Lab has failed to gain much traction with livestreamers, vloggers, and bloggers when it comes to Sansar. Fail.
  11. More contests: (sound of crickets chirping) Fail. Linden Lab needs to have more contests (and have more and better prizes for those contests), in order to encourage and reward the creativity of Sansar’s userbase. Period.
  12. More regular events: OK, this is another area where things have much improved since April. The Sansar Events calendar is starting to look pretty good. Check mark.

FINAL SCORE: 2½ out of 12 (numbers 2, 7, and 12). In my books, that’s a failing grade. Now, do you see why I wanted Linden Lab to wait another six months to a year before launching on Steam?

My worst nightmare is that we are going to have a repeat of Sansar’s open creator launch, when dozens of people trooped in, looked around, declared themselves dissatisfied, and left, never to come back. And even worse, told their friends how bad Sansar was. Linden Lab cannot afford to make a bad first impression with a brand new bunch of Steam users. And Steam users can be truly brutal in rating their experiences if they feel a product is not up to their standards, as High Fidelity has already learned: 

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A selection of negative reviews of High Fidelity on Steam

And, if you think that user reviews are not important, think again. I read user reviews for new apps on the Oculus Store all the time, and if they are mixed or bad, I don’t buy. The same applies to Steam. A recent Queen’s University research study showed that Steam users left negative reviews more quickly than positive ones, and that boring games were reviewed worse than buggy games:

Lin and the team also found that while most reviews are written after around 13 hours of play, “the majority of negative reviews” are posted within the first seven hours. Additionally, free-to-play games see a spike in reviews after just one hour of play.

Linden Lab better have a SWAT team on call to handle unhappy reviewers on Steam! This is part of the new landscape, and they’d better be responsive.

So cross your fingers and say your prayers. We are entering a new era.

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Image by peter67 on Pixabay

UPDATE: Bagnaria has taken me to task for saying that scripting is “going backwards instead of forwards”. I have decided to post her comment in full in this blogpost, since people often skip the comments and what she has to say is important:

While I agree that Linden Lab should have waited a few months longer, I do not agree with what you are saying here regarding interactivity : “At this point, we seem to be going backwards, not forwards.” Here is why:

We have seen a large influx of new interactive experiences since Linden Lab introduced Simple Scripts about two months ago. Simple scripts have enormous potential. The best example I can give is Scurry Landia which is one of the most interactive experiences in Sansar right now. We made much of its game logic simple script compatible. Also many of it’s individual games can be completely wired up using nothing but the Linden Lab provided simple scripts. The Lab also provides the source code of all their simple scripts. FullSpectrum and many other creators are releasing dozens of additional simple script compatible add-ons that we created for everyone to use without having to code. That includes some more complex animation controllers, the ability to add puzzles, digit displays and very soon weapons and relatively soon vehicles. The key point is that any coder can add more script functionality in a way that can talk to other simple scripts. 98% of what one can do in Scurry Waters right now will be possible without writing any additional code.

When more people discover that simple scripts are like LEGO blocks that do not require writing any code, they will realize just how powerful that is to create interactive experiences.

The other part to that is that Sansar engine can not only host stunning visuals. It is doing a phenomenal job at handling all the scripts and animations we are throwing at it. Scurry Waters uses hundreds of scripts. Everything is moving and it just proves that it is possible to create engaging interactive experiences at this point and we are really just at the beginning of that accelerating evolution.

We are in the early stages, but I continue to be willing to invest my time in Sansar because I know how much is possible already and we creators are barely able to keep up utilizing all the new features we are given. In regards to interactivity Sansar is a very short distance away from becoming truly amazing and I do believe this will make enough difference to finally create a WOW.

So, as a result, I hereby give Linden Lab another check mark for item 4 on my list from last April…which brings it to a final score of 3½ out of 12.

SECOND UPDATE: I am getting feedback from various Sansar users today, who feel that I have been way too harsh and negative in this particular blogpost.

I want to stress that this is only one person’s opinion, not an official Sansar spokesperson’s point of view. I still remain a strong Sansar supporter, but I would be neglecting my duties as an independent social VR/virtual worlds blogger if I simply posted nothing but “good news” about Sansar, as some people want me to do.

There are indeed many truly wonderful things about Sansar, and I want Sansar to be a success! And please keep in mind that Sansar is still a BETA platform, and in constant development. There has been much good progress over the past two years. But I still feel—STRONGLY—that Linden Lab should have waited six months to a year before releasing Sansar on Steam. And I stand by my statement, and I feel I have supported it with my arguments. (Perhaps the tone was a little too sarcastic.)

When Linden Lab makes their official announcement, I will either update this blogpost, or (because this is getting ridiculously long as it is) I will start a new one. 

Editorial: Lessons Decentraland Can Learn from the 15-Year History of Second Life

Have you joined the RyanSchultz.com Discord yet? More details here. 

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Carl Fravel (whom I first met in Sansar, but who has since moved on to become a sort of unofficial ambassador for Decentraland), responded to me when I commented on the Cryptovoxels Discord this week that the creators behind Decentraland have not really paid attention to the history of Second Life, and the problems and scandals that SL has encountered in its 15-year history.

He asked me to give him some more details, which he has promised to pass on to the founders of Decentraland. Instead of a direct message to Carl, I decided to make this blogpost, in case other people were interested in my opinions. As you know, I have written extensively, and with a critical eye, about the Decentraland project in the past.

So, what can the folks building Decentraland learn from Second Life?

First, casinos. Linden Lab shut down the casinos in Second Life in 2007 after an FBI investigation into gambling in SL. I have already written about this on my blog:

I posted a comment to the busy Decentraland Reddit channel, reminding them that the FBI investigated gambling in Second Life, which had led to them shutting down online gambling a decade ago, and asking if anyone had stopped to think about whether the U.S. federal government would step in to stop Americans from gambling using cryptocurrency in Decentraland’s Vegas City district. That Reddit post was taken down by the moderators less than an hour after I posted it. I can only assume I was censored because they didn’t want to spook investors in their platform. I’m not impressed.

Now, Decentraland may be able to skirt around this by setting up in a jurisdiction where online gambling is allowed. However, you can bet that the FBI will get involved again if it is found that American citizens are gambling in Decentraland. They’re probably going to have to set up some sort of system to block users from certain countries; have the developers (and the people who contributed virtual land to the Vegas City district) stopped to consider this?

Second, “banks” and get-rich-quick schemes. Linden Lab was forced to ban “banks” in Second Life after reports of scammers making off with people’s investments (for more details, see number 10 on this list). Originally, Linden Lab’s excuse was: hey, we just host the software, and residents should avoid deals that sound too good to be true. But then, they were essentially forced to implement a ban after a story appeared in the MIT Technology Review. And, if Decentraland does not take steps to ban financial get-rich-quick schemes on its platform, it is likely that scammers with lofty promises will also descend upon it and set up shop. The world of blockchain/cryptocurrency is full of stories of people taking advantage of other people’s greed and ignorance. Remember what happened with BitConnect?

Third, ageplay. Linden Lab was forced to confront a public relations disaster when the news media reported that pedophiles were using the platform to engage in sexual roleplay with child avatars (see number 4 on this list for more details). The resulting scandal led Linden Lab to enact and enforce a strict ageplay ban.

To this day, when “Second Life” is mentioned, sexual roleplay tends to be the first thing that the general public thinks of; Second Life’s reputation has been pretty much tainted by that association ever since. Decentraland needs to think about this before a scandal hits, and set up similar bans, and a means of enforcing them.

Fourth, intellectual property and copyright issues. I have already written about this at length here and here. Go read those blogposts. I suggest that Decentraland put a report mechanism in place, as well as a procedure for dealing with DMCA filings. It will happen.

This is just a start. I suggest that the Decentraland founders and investors read through my list of the top 20 controversies in Second Life, and see what else they can learn from it.

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1

Editorial: Fasten Your Seatbelts, It’s Going to Be a Bumpy Night!

Yesterday’s announcement that Sansar is moving to Steam was a big shock, but it should not have been so unexpected. It’s clear that Linden Lab is under increasing pressure to show a profit from Sansar, after plowing years of work into the platform without getting much back in return. They simply can’t keep relying on the profit from Second Life to build Sansar indefinitely. Eventually, Sansar has to pay its own way.

Some people will say (in fact, they are already saying) that Sansar is not yet fully-featured enough to be on Steam. High Fidelity made the mistake of putting its product up on Steam well before it was ready, and it got savaged in the user reviews. Is Linden Lab really ready to take this fateful step now, rather than wait another six months or a year to further polish the platform? Why the sudden pressure to do this now, before the end of this year?

What surprises me is how quickly and easily Linden Lab is jettisoning its SandeX exchange. The delicate and intricate balancing of the Sansar economy was something that LL staff put a lot of time, effort and energy into (even going so far as to create a subsidiary called Tilia, which focused on payments and the compliance work associated with operating virtual economies). All of that work, or at least a good chunk of it, gone.

Obviously, integration with Steam was considered to be a higher priority than the SandeX, which was considered a key component of Sansar. Which leads to the question: What other major changes to Sansar are going to be required before its launch on Steam? 

Yesterday’s announcement has probably raised more questions than answers. Several content creators have already announced on the official Sansar Discord channel that they are taking a break, cashing out their profits, and watching from the sidelines as all this plays out over the next few months. Which is exactly what Linden Lab doesn’t want.

And, of course, the even bigger question is: What happens if moving to Steam doesn’t bring a significantly larger audience to Sansar? (You could argue that High Fidelity’s launch on Steam has so far had very little impact on its usage levels, aside from the monthly spike of users attending regular stress testing events.)

As Bette Davis says, “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.” A bumpy night not only for Sansar, but for all the competing metaverse platforms in this overcrowded and uncertain marketplace.

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Mark my words; there are going to be winners and losers, and it will not be pretty. I predict that one or more of the blockchain-based virtual worlds will be among the first to fail, given the current grave state of the cryptocurrency markets, but really, anything can happen at this point.

Oh, and by the way, in response to those people talking about how Linden Lab tried—and failed—to get Second Life on Steam way back in 2012, Eliot, Sansar’s Community Manager, said on Discord today:

I also saw some people commenting that trying to get SL on Steam didn’t work out. Well we’ve learnt from that experience. The announcement we made comes after months of negotiation with Valve. We have an active dialogue with them on this :thumbsup:

So, it would appear that this move has been in the works for quite some time, and it’s not an impulsive decision by any means. But no matter how well they plan, it’s still going to be a bumpy ride. Stay tuned. And fasten your seatbelts!

Could We Finally Be Getting Official Mobile Clients (iOS and Android) for Second Life?

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Virtual worlds like IMVU and Avakin Life, which are highly popular with tweens and teens, have one strong advantage over Second Life; they can be played on mobile devices (tablets and smartphones), which are now ubiquitous technology in modern-day society. Although Linden Lab has made a few half-hearted forays into mobile clients for SL in the past, these projects never went very far before they were shut down. Second Life is still, after all these years, primarily a virtual world played on a computer desktop (Windows, Mac, and Linux), which limits its potential audience somewhat.

Wagner James Au of the long-running Second Life blog New World Notes was the first to notice that Linden Lab is hiring a senior mobile engineer for Second Life. According to the position description:

Linden Lab is looking for an innovative mobile app engineer to deliver a compelling, responsive mobile interface into Second Life. If you’re passionate about the latest cross platform mobile technologies and would be psyched to wake up every morning knowing that your efforts will enhance the largest, most successful virtual world on the Internet then we want to hear from you!

Responsibilities

  • Expand and enhance access to Second Life – the most successful user-created Virtual World ever with tens of thousands of concurrent users.
  • Collaborate with other engineers in an iterative, agile development environment with a passionate commitment to improving the Second Life experience.
  • Participate in design and code reviews and discussions both within the web team and with other parts of Second Life development.

Knowledge, Skills, Abilities

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

  • Results-oriented attitude and dedication to the user experience.
  • Demonstrated proficiency working in a geographically distributed team.
  • Experience developing consumer-oriented mobile applications for Android and IOS.
  • Experience with distributed version control (git or mercurial).
  • Experience with automated testing.
  • Experience with AWS or other cloud-based deployment models, especially streaming cloud-based rendering.
  • Demonstrated ability to accurately scope projects and negotiate deadlines within a flexible team structure.
  • Deep familiarity with and enthusiasm for Second Life is a HUGE plus.

It would appear that they are interested in building Second Life mobile apps for both Apple (iOS) and Android devices, which is good news!

Wagner adds:

Also notable: Based on this job requirement, it looks like the company is planning to create a cloud-streaming version of SL for mobile:

Experience with AWS [i.e. Amazon Web Services] or other cloud-based deployment models, especially streaming cloud-based rendering.

Back in 2014, Linden Lab partnered with the now-defunct OnLive to do just that, so it’s good to know they’re going in that direction again.

[The] job is remote and “deep familiarity with and enthusiasm for Second Life is a HUGE plus”, so this could be a dream gig for SL’s many talented community developers. My recommendation, of course, is to hire Alina Lyvette, whose Lumiya viewer for Android has already sold well over 100,000 copies.

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Lumiya client on the Google Play Apps Store

Along with High Fidelity’s recent announcement of an alpha version of an Android client for the platform, it looks like we’re going to see some interesting times ahead!