Why Sansar Can Succeed Where Other Virtual Worlds Failed: Max Graf, Master Metaverse Builder, Makes the Case

Here's the latest teaser video for Linden Lab's Sansar featuring Max Graf, a longtime 3D content creator famous in Second Life for his awesome Rustica experience. Max also built a version of Rustica in Blue Mars, the now-defunct, PC-based virtual world from 5-7 years ago which seems to have many similarities to Sansar.(As some early Sansar users have also noted.) As it happens, I helped launch Blue Mars as a consultant, and with that (ultimately frustrating) experience in mind, I asked Max why he thinks Sansar won't suffer Blue Mars' fate (or for that matter, the many other virtual worlds that haven't taken off).

"I was among the first 3 active users there [in Sansar] back in September," Max tells me, "and even from the beginning there has been a much stronger sense of direction, to be honest. They seemed to have a much better idea of what they were trying to produce and how they wanted things to go. The other primary difference is that they have so much of what SL has taught them to go on. The Blue Mars team were basically a core game development studio and really had no idea what to do or which direction to go. I mean, the only playbook anyone has on how to make a successful, virtual open world platform is Linden Lab, and even they continue to write new chapters as they go along. It should be no surprise that they have a distinct advantage."

He's right about the Blue Mars team's background -- the core devs were veterans of Square/Final Fantasy.

Interestingly, Max seems neutral on whether Sansar will primarily succeed as a VR platform:

"It is anyone's guess if VR is going to end up being a primary driver of the world there or if it will go in other directions once the public goes in and sees for themselves," as he puts it. "I think SL more than likely taught them a lot of things, most importantly what not to do. As VR-centric experiences go, they certainly have advanced farther than most of what I have seen out there, in terms of what kind of experience you end up having overall. It will be interesting to see how the social and cultural aspects of something like SL end up transitioning to VR, or if they will or not. There are so many barriers to entry in VR still."

Now with Sansar launching, how long does Max plan to keep developing content in Second Life?

"Your questions touch on something which I have wondered from the beginning: It is readily apparent that it is possible to build a ‘next generation’ SL, taking advantage of new technology to do what SL does but 'in a better way'' as they said about Sansar from the beginning. What we do in SL could be done in a more advanced way that eliminates some problems.

"What we don’t know is, is the company capable of producing a next generation world, not as a replacement to SL, which it isn't, to something more advanced and different? I think they are making solid decisions. I will continue to make content for SL as long as possible. I have no plans to leave unless it stops being economically viable.

"Having spread out to investigate Blue Mars, Cloud Party, Space, High Fidelity, Sansar... the biggest lesson I took away from that is to stop thinking ‘here or there," and start thinking ‘expansion.’ I see the beginning of what will become a metaverse, lots of worlds to go to. I hope to put my brand in a bunch of them if I can.”

Comments

[Just Say'n]

Sansar does not empower anyone, but the 1% who are professionally trained to create in advanced 3D graphics programs.

Everyone needs to lay off all the bullsh*t, this is not the next Metaverse when they do not even have blender plugins or in the game creation tools.

Space is lightyears ahead of Sansar in almost every way.. period.
right now It's Space Vs. Sansar ..if you wanted the best options just try both and see the difference.

The foundation of Secondlife was built on user creativity & empowering residents with intuitive, creative tools.. now that's rotted out into a rat race for the big bucks for the 1% getting carried over into Sansar.

As for High Fidelity, it is in a class of it's own being free & open source ran by by those who understand what the future world is expecting & desires in a virtual metaverse.

[JohnC]

It is pretty meaningless when content creators praise Sansar, SL or any other Game engine. They all have a financial interest in the success of any project they attach themselves to, they are all mercenaries at heart. At the moment it is just a self indulgent world of content creators all desperate to get their products up and running so they can fleece the first real users. Then Like he says, when it becomes financially non-viable they jump ship.
There is nothing I have seen in Sansar so far that I could not reproduce in SL. Sure, I can't look at it with a diving helmet on, but who the hell really wants to anyway. Oh and I cannot create endless open world landscapes, have any of you played those open world games, after the first horse ride over the said endless landscape you find yourself desperate to find a teleport so you never have to repeat the experience again. All this Sansar time and money should have been put into SL, it is sickening to see it wasted on re inventing the wheel

[Maxwell Graf]

In response to "Just Say'n":
I never went to school to learn what I do, not for a single day. I trained my damn self because I wanted to do this for a living. It's my job and I feel extremely lucky to be able to do it but I also sacrifice a lot for it and make very little in order to continue to do so.

2. I don't think you understand what metaverse means. My whole point was that it won't ever be just one place anymore. There is no metaverse yet, but with this new generation of several different worlds out there, what we are seeing is the beginning of one, finally. It takes a lot of worlds. What tools they provide is just a matter of timing and patience. Will that make this one succeed over that one? No idea. That's why I am in several of them, so I can find out, because I like what I do. I'm not getting rich from this, never have. More often than not it's a struggle, but one I signed up for.

3. I am in Space, for almost as long as I've been in Sansar. They are not the same at all, and will cater to different crowds. In one sentence, you accuse sansar of being made for the elites, then praise Space, which uses the Unity engine ON TOP of having to do all your models and textures. So, which is harder? which more elite? The answer is neither of them are, and I say this having used both. It is a choice. I chose to make things, however that has to be done.
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As for "John C." You can kiss my white ass. I am not a mercenary. I have been an active and interested part of the community in SL for over a decade. During much of that time, I did not make enough to keep going, but I did, because I loved it. Yes, I ran a business there, more often than not it was enough to allow me to continue, through very hard work and very long hours. I also met my RL partner there and formed a lot of other relationships that changed my life. When possible, I got involved in causes, made contributions, tried to affect change, tried to help deal with content theft, tried to improve things when I could. You make it sound like you cannot be more than a buyer or seller in SL. I do a lot of different things, many of which have nothing to do with my business there. What the hell have you done there for a decade?

If you want to complain that there was business there, that an economy existed, then perhaps you would be better off playing endless horse ride games. I would rather see you stay in SL and get a better understanding of the people there and contribute to the economy of the place, because whether you like money or not the free market economy there is a big part of why SL is still around. I would prefer you stay because we need everyone we can get to stay.

As for "jumping ship" when the economy fails, well, what would you suggest I do? I will stay there if the lab stops charging me rent, hows that sound? Then it can be free happy art world. It costs to stay there. It costs to develop pretty much anything worth spending time in or with. Until it doesn't, my business is my ticket to enter and play.

I have no product in the marketplace in Sansar or Space right now, not planning on trying to "Fleece" anyone anytime soon, let alone the "Real users" you speak about. I am a real user; I've been there putting the hard hours in (about 2000 of them) trying to help get that platform off the ground since last October. Not building my shop. Not thinking up ways to fleece customers. Trying to solve problems and break things and fix issues and build everything. Nothing so far has had anything do with commerce or business or my brand.

Meanwhile you sit here in a blog post response bitching about how virtual worlds and the people in them and the games we play all suck. How about you go into those places and try to make them better some how? How about you make something or sit down? The rest of us have a lot of work to do.

[Just Say'n]

Max my comment was aimed at the whole elitist angle linden lab has pulled here.. not you in particular.. but I know how they play favorites and the they claimed Sansar was to fix all the mistakes from SL!.. like what leaving out any ability to create inside Sansar!.. so 5 to 8 to 10 years back those hundreds if not thousands of sandbox's filled to the brim with tens of thousands of people creating was a mistake?.. funny how a simple cube in game became worth a billion dollars according to Minecraft & Microsoft .. Sansar has no spirit because it's not about discovering a new world like SL was.. it's about how many people we can get to spend money in it and why create your world,your imagination when you can put it on your credit card instead.

Maxwell Graf Wrote: " As for "John C." You can kiss my white ass." ..cottage cheese and all max? will john get choices..how about the graying butt hairs? ..keep it classy Max, keep it classy indeed.

[Maxwell Graf]

Heheheh, them grey hairs tho

[YsabelleStewart]

Just wanted to thank Maxwell for his input here, and the info he gives - I'd heard the regions were bigger. I'm really looking forward to getting into Sansar and having a look around. Also interested to see how Space develops.

[mac]

Well said, Max. JohnC is an armchair mouth.

[da future]

Where can I sign up to work 2000 hours for free?

[Shandy Deverox]

I love that Sansar is full of possibilities that SL falls short of. However, I think it would be wise for LL to tell people what kind of hardware is going to be needed to experience this new world. All of you on run of the mill low to mid tier: you can forget about Sansar pretty much. This new thing was built for high end high performance parts.

Why does this matter? Most of SL's users run mid to lower end hardware, and this has been said before by the Lab and TPV devs themselves. Unless they have figured out a way to better harness the capability of any hardware, then those users are not going to have a good experience. This is just another point that should be discussed IMO.

[JohnC]

I suppose my comments would quite rightly lead you to see things that way, and spit fire in my direction. And I deserve it I guess. Although I am pretty sure I have been in SL especially, and many other game engines, working as a hobby and professionally at least as long as you, and most likely much much longer. I have also probably contributed far more than you to SL as well, when all said and done. But no matter. Who cares. It is good to see you respond and say “F..ck you” :) or words to that effect. Better than all this patting each other on the back and having this general creative love in that usually ensues between content creators.

[Ciaran Laval]

@Shandy Deverox to get an idea of the sort of specs that are likely to initially be required, take a look at the specs required to run an Oculus Rift, they are towards the higher end of the spectrum, although not wildly so.

I agree with you that a lot of SL users will be running hardware below these specs and people are going to be reluctant to rush out to buy new hardware which could soon be behind the curve itself, Microsoft have new VR headsets in development, a lot of these new VR worlds are going to be reliant upon hardware manufacturers and their decisions, we're a long way from mainstream VR.

[Han Held]

@Just Say'n said: "Sansar has no spirit because it's not about discovering a new world like SL was.. it's about how many people we can get to spend money in it and why create your world,your imagination when you can put it on your credit card instead."

Quite right. Of course, this applies to SL just as much these days, and I suspect it's part of a larger cultural shift away from audience-as-potential participants (the myth that with a little effort anyone can make it big in a band, or make it big as an artist, etc etc) to audience (and in VR context -consumers) as passive recipients of entertainment created by a closed class of specialized professionals (in this instance, people who have the time and money most of us don't have to get the degrees and training to become professional 3D creators).

[Han Held]

@da future asks; "Where can I sign up to work 2000 hours for free?

High Fidelity. Rumor has it that's why it's open source (the whole "coffee and power" methodology Mr Rosedale is fond of).

[Carlos Loff]

Nowadays Linden Lab is not the only successful virtual open world, I could say Minecraft but I will name Kitely and Digiworldz, 2 very successful Opensim professional companies - SL is still the best place for business, friends and elaborate contents but OS offers the possibility of running HUGE land masses at low price with great performance, that brings a new paradigm because anyone can afford big personal projecrtsts so it is a new case-study - and just as SLrs do not take bad reviews from someone that calls SL a game and evaluates SL with a 30 mins first visit I will also not take bad reviews for Opensim unless the person had lands for several months on one of the serious pro grids