Altspace's Demise Suggests Dark, Difficult Future for Social VR

AltSpace VR is closing soon, and everyone reading this blog should wonder why that is, at least for a couple reasons:

• The social VR platform was widely covered by gaming and high tech media outlets over the last couple years, generating awareness among tens of millions of early adopter tech/VR fans.
• Altspace VR is cross-platform, compatible not just with Oculus and Vive, but Samsung's Gear VR and Google Daydream -- a potential VR market, roughly speaking, of ten million conumsers.

From Altspace's announcements, here's how many people actually wound up using Altspace VR:

Around 35,000 people use our product every month, which we think is pretty good for the size of the VR market. The average user spends 35 minutes a day in AltspaceVR, and in big events we typically see around a thousand attendees. We have active developer and event organizer communities and have attracted marquee partners for our events.

As a point of contrast, Second Life (now in its 14th year) still has a daily mean concurrency between around 31,000-41,000 (see Grid Survey for those stats).

So from a potential userbase of 10 million or so VR owners, far less than 1% became Altspace users. As another point of contrast, both High Fidelity and Sansar (both spinoffs of Second Life to a certain extent) are only optimally usable through Oculus and Vive, which have an install base of less than a million.

What went wrong with Altspace, and what's that mean for High Fidelity and Sansar? I put questions to Gwenette Writer Sinclair, a longtime metaverse developer who considered Altspace as a platform for herself and her clients:

"I did do five over-the-shoulder tours with clients," she tells me. "None of them thought the graphics or avatars offered what they envisioned for a virtual world project space. I try not to let my personal biases be the sole reason for 'abandoning' a platform."

Her personal perspective? "The avatars alienated me and it seemed to devolved rather quickly into a place that had the young gamer sexist theme dominating conversations." (Others have reported on the sexism of Altspace's userbase, a sure way to slow user growth.) "As a developer for edu or corporate projects, I thought the environment itself was not suitable or flexible enough for client projects, so I moved on. I applaud it for its efforts though. Every world created explores different creative options and each appeals to its own niche culture."

That said, she doesn't think it's directly comparable to the SL spinoffs:

"Sansar and HiFi are radically different looking -- far more sophisticated. Clients are interested in both platforms, but I do not recommend anything 'new', nor do I like platforms where content cannot easily be transferred or archived. I may not be the best person to compare them. Personally, I am more interested in Space than either HiFi or Sansar for clients at the moment. Still, they are all very, very new. And the variables in VR headset dev and adoption may turn out to surprise us all.

"And," she adds smiling, "I do so like to be surprised."

Comments

[sirhc deSantis]

AltSpace who? Well now "We’re a venture-backed startup. We had a supportive group of investors that last gave us money in 2015."
And in terms of user base use SL sure. It is the only reliable metric. But for every alt I have a standalone which goes from leaps to erm more leaps.

Its like your sponser there trying to leech SL users away - Sl is flawed (this last week is a primo example not seen since 09) but oddly enough inworld_updated_unix 1501272911 inworld_updated_slt 2017-07-28 13:15:11 inworld 46881 even when theres a new TOS to add to the crappiness:)

More seriously, the link you give about "Early VR Communities Adopting Gaming's Toxic Male Culture" is something that in SL the tools to deal with it are built in. Since at least December 30th 2006 when i wombled in. Then when did people ever learn.

[Amanda Dallin]

Those avatars are a big reason they failed. It doesn't matter how good the world looks, if the avies don't appeal and make a connection with people they won't stay around long enough to notice anything else.

[Ciaran Laval]

"Still, they are all very, very new. And the variables in VR headset dev and adoption may turn out to surprise us all."

This is a very key point. Microsoft's links to mixed reality headsets and a bigwig at EA saying that AR is more exciting at the moment suggest that Altspace was in the right direction but maybe on a trickier path. They have played an important role in proof of concept but funding is all important and the avatar point is something that devs really need to take onboard.

[Just Sayn]

Altspace it seems was just another cloud party

Had Linden Lab created a real SL2 it would have had a strong mobile presence were the REAL MONEY is just look at Roblox a game almost 14 years old too, stealing all our noobs.
SL2 would have benefited SL1 but not with Sansar it will just divide the user base eroding the population further.

Future article?
'Sansar's Demise Suggests Dark, Difficult Future for Ebbe Linden's career'

[inthisboxgoesaname]

Snapchat over facebook. Facebook over twitter. twitter/soc and mobile 9less is more) media over the whole web.

BS. They don't all die. Yes, myspace didn't survive Facebook and Spotify/Pandora/Tidal very well. But, VR fans were still around even before Oculus and the big game and electronic companies jumped in. Headsets were on the verge of becoming better, the screen speed (gaming on flat monitors was unheard of until the refresh etc got better, remember that?) so basically it was more electronics engineer based opportunity. The big companies just popularized it after Oculus got so much attention.

Now more VR fans are out there, they have some hardware that is better. But the masses may not really care. Most people talk on phones over writing letters, emails etc. But email is very much alive and well, regardless of your updates, tweets, and timelines. Yup, some things are old grizzled champions of the killer app/tech arena. They fight on, never giving way. The phone, or simply talking into a microphone and transmitting it to one person who listens using a speaker, is still alive and well regardless of video chat.

Same with VR. Some will use it, as do some who like Snapchat for instance. Snapchat is maybe new, but video chat is not. Picture sharing or editing in a funny way is not new either. One day someone may really perfect a headset, a usage or otherwise make VR work for some. Maybe. Then again, some things are not so great and die.