Contemplating New Virtual Worlds While Still Loving Old Ones

With Linden Lab's Sansar soon to launch and a game executive now helping to make its new social VR world more commercially appealing, reader Dirran Skytower has some pertinent thoughts for users of Second Life -- and for that matter, developers at Linden Lab -- contemplating the future of Sansar and worlds beyond:

I am in two minds. While I love sailing in SL I accept that there are always going to be much much better sailing simulators outside SL. That is always going to be true because building a standalone sailing simulator will always be easier than building a virtual world that includes mechanisms for sailing. That lies to almost every game. At the same time SL suffers significantly from being intellectually isolated from the gaming world. I suspect that is more at the den of management than the engineering staff...

Building an avatar is so much simpler in most games and doesn't require you to run multiple additional HUDs and read constant messages about the complexity of your avatar. Contemporary games do not have 1995 vintage inventory systems. Avatar-making is the first step in entering SL and it is a bewildering process, even (perhaps especially) to seasoned gamers.

Planning for Sansar would also benefit from a closer engagement with precisely how well VR games are actually doing on platforms like Steam. A more intuitive way to build avatars would be a major step towards raising retention rates and clearly SL management needs Bing's expertise on that and other subjects.

Here's to new worlds building from the wisdom (and folly) of olds. Back Monday.

Comments

[Ciaran Laval]

Sansar sounds to me like a whole different kettle of fish to Second Life. Second Life is Linden Lab controlled from top to bottom, Sansar sounds to me like it won't be.

I would imagine there will be a Linden Lab controlled Sansar experience where it will be up to LL whether game mechanics are involved but I also imagine there will be distributed Sansar experiences that others make such decisions about.

[Good2 Go]

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Space-Bounce-V15-by-Good2-Go/7060883

Being able to play in a sandbox and string things together, to make a product which is of your own making, has got to be the most fulfilling thing that I have got from SL.

Playing with the physics model is where I have had the most fun.

SL is a platform that has drawn together such a diverse range of skills that I have learnt over the past 20 or so years, from coding, to photoshop skills and textures, to 3D spatial building.

My capacity to draw together the skills and knowledge that allowed me to produce an experience like Space Bounce, is an experience that any Virtual Worlds that come after SL, will have to remember, in which they understand the service they are providing their client base.

Good2 Go
SL Maker