Founding Linden & Top VC Hunter Walk Wonders if Virtual Worlds Need to Be Ultra-Realistic to Go Big

This is a really good and long interview with Hunter Walk, now an extremely influential venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, but who got his start in tech helping found Second Life in 2002. (A year after I joined the company as the "embedded journalist".) It's a excellent listen if you're also in the tech industry, but the Second Life and virtual reality stuff gets going around 8:30, starting right around Hunter saying, "Jokingly, you could claim Second Life is more profitable than Twitter, Uber, and Airbnb ever have been." (Though that's actually still true.)

A lot of what Hunter discusses from there is featured [shamelessplug]in my first book[/shamelessplug], but the points he makes about why Second Life failed to gain a mass market strike me as extremely relevant to the new wave of virtual reality-based worlds in the era of Oculus Rift and Vive -- i.e., for developers of High Fidelity, Project Sansar, and others -- and are really worth thinking about (around 23:45):

Walk: Does an immersive simulated environment need to be photorealistic? ... Anybody who's spent time in Minecraft knows that you can create a true emotional connection to an avatar, to an environment, to a simulation, without it having to be photorealistic. And I think good designers, good game designers, good designers in general, are thinking about what they’re trying to achieve as that sense of place, that emotional connection. And it’s unclear to me that the best vector for Second Life was to take the path that we did of photorealism... we spent so much time perfecting that, we didn’t spending so much time thinking about the anthropology of it.

So for example, as Hunter notes, while Second Life's graphics were improved as it gained traction, it became even more difficult to host more than a few dozen avatars in a 16 acre space. (Still is.)

It's easy to apply these insights to VR's new generation. From what we know, Project Sansar is going to be ultrarealistic, while High Fidelity will enable both photorealistic avatars (like those above) but also more whimsical cartoonish avatars created by a PIXAR vet. (Philip Rosedale also puts a lot of emphasis on low latency as crucial for creating deep social connections in VR.)

By contrast, notably, Microsoft's first VR world is Minecraft. Probably putting Hunter in the camp of John Carmack -- and, frankly, me. Though I'd also add that Minecraft's game-like mechanics (basically, just survive) are also important for success.

That in mind, what do you think will be this era's blockbuster VR world? 

Please share this post:

Tweet

 

Comments

[Nobody]

"That in mind, what do you think will be this era's blockbuster VR world?"

A fork of High Fidelity were the owner creates a place that solves most issues SL residents begged to be fixed while offering a whole new boat loads of positive options.

Someone will use HF software to finally create "Like SL but Better" then you will hear a loud sucking sound out of SL as the users are drained away.

High Fidelity is not a competitor to Project Sansar,it is an open source software allowing thousands of separate VR worlds running HF software to compete with Sansar.

[Nobody]

Just to note what was written by me above.

I do believe Second Life has many years still to come and will always have a market.
my comment above was to harsh and unrealistic not taking in other factors.

[Wagner J Au]

That's a fair point!

[Clara Seller]

I really hope that what ever virtual world becomes "this era's blockbuster VR world" it's one that inspires imagination over commercialization.

At least Phillip has some spark of enthusiasm for his project. LL has presented Sansar in the most painful way possible. It's like they can't even put on a game face and pretend that it's anything other than about money.

I'd love to see the next virtual world be born from the underground. I'd like to see it be defiant, brilliant, and rebellious. I'd like to see it be young at heart, courageous, and aim for something higher than investor profits. Rather than entering through Facebook, you'd need to enter from a back alley. That is a world that I would want to financially support. This whole corporate drone angle of VR is so unappealing.

[Shockwave]

Fortunately ll drove away so many people by mismanaging things that there is no need to have more than 16 avs on a sim anymore. Had they simply treated the new idea as a new idea and quit trying to run it as anything but a virtual fantasyland, they'd be fine.

The graphics are secondary to the experience. Consider mine craft, where you make anything you want a cube at a time. You think folks play minecraft for cutting edge graphics? The play it because it's fun! Sl was once fun too. But certain people couldn't leave the customers alone with their property to enjoy themselves, or has everyone forgotten the death march to zindra?

[Nobody]

@ Shockwave

I always thought the beginning of the decline on SL and the Rise of Minecraft around the same time was more then timing.me too i remember when every place was packed just 5 yrs ago every sandbox filled to the brim.you could met people from all over the world.the translator worked.it was so exciting to met people and helping nobs start out if only i had known those days would slowly fade finding myself alone in my region all my friends long dead.

10th birthday the last CEO Rodvik Linden while hated and blamed by creators marketed SL as a premium upscale world that was desirable and he never cheapened SL or treated it like it was stale bread.i still remember the recorded chat they played of him talking at the 10th birthday he might of been a lot things to a lot of people but he never bad mouthed SL and what is Sansar today was his plan to overhaul second life not starve it out of existence with a competing product.
He also never spent two yrs paralyzing the population with fear and uncertainty spinning different angles on his toy project to residents leading to mass drama and confusion with an exodus of a huge amount of creative talent.the damage "SL but Better " done was totally massive leading to huge amounts of creative public and roleplay sims to close doors.
Lets not forget how he plays good cop/bad cop as Sheriff Ebbe when they decided to enforce laws on cash outs that's when we first seen his Andy Griffith act were he came in talking to residents like he was talking to Aunt B while deep inside the lab they were banning hundreds of residents who did not want to or could not give the information as this went on for two months being a killing field against some of the grids deepest talents..instead of doing as the laws stated that if they refused to provide proper documentation then you refuse by law to transfer any funds to them unless they verified proper tax status by filling out forms.. they never had to ban anyone but did to bully the population as a form of control while in interviews at the time Sheriff Ebbe acted as an innocent bystander as Barney Fife kept driving the squad car into the local lake over and over while Inara Pay just kept saying "Golly Andy" as Gomer Pyle.as the world burned on.
Zinda was bad i agree then what came after was a resident purge by one policy change to another from one skilled actor playing CEO to the next.

[Skate Foss]

All true and well put Shockwave.
I lost a beautiful friend who created amazing sim's here, for whatever reason, Linden Lab permaBanned her and paid her for her sim's and sold them or gave them to someone else to run. Now they're ghosts of what they were. Another friend who's been in Second Life for years with his own business, was banned for taking out money to buy a new PC.
Your so right about the stress the Lab put on SL residents, sim owners, creators, anyone who's invested so much time and money and sweat into their inventories.
But as much as Rodviks projects failed, the more we learn of Sansar with all its road blocks and hurdles, it's so far from the original SecondLife concept, I can't see it succeeding. But that also gives hope, SecondLife will have new life. (Or we all go to HighFidelity)

[Flashing Merlin]

No one has mentioned this point about photorealistic avatars: How many would want to have virtual sex with a Minecraft avatar?

Look at the profile pix on a dating site like AVmatch.com and you don't even see furries, let alone anyone looking remotely robotic.

As to "what do you think will be this era's blockbuster VR world?" It's way too early to guess. Sansar hasn't even opened to the public; High Fidelity is still getting started, and we have no idea what Facebook's virtual world will be like. Right now it wouldn't surprise me if Second Life remained the last virtual world still running. (Albeit with a new CEO, if Sansar fails.)