Beyond Games, Virtual Worlds Are Still In a "Explaining Pied Piper" Place

I just binge-watched HBO's Silicon Valley (seriously hilarious, painfully accurate), and this scene in particular made me knowingly laugh -- getting feedback on Pied Piper, the distributed file platform being built by our startup heroes, from average consumers in a marketing focus group:

A few years ago, a Linden Lab executive literally told me this: "Second Life is great... it just takes 3 hours to explain why." Which is exactly what Pied Piper's CEO does, crashing into the focus group room to painstakingly explain what the technology he's built is, and why average people will want it:

... and after many more questions like that, a takeout pizza order, and a few more hours of explanation to a rapidly dwindling room of volunteers, one of them finally gets an "Oh..." lightbulb moment and becomes a big fan. I've been in this place myself more than a few times. (Sample: "You can do anything you want in Second Life." "But that's not me, that's just some cartoon character on the screen." "No, that is you, it's your avatar." "Wait what's an 'avatar'?" And so on.)

Nowadays, the explanation is slightly easier: 

"Who else found themselves 'totally freaked out' by this platform?"

Now when someone asks, we can say, "It's like Minecraft -- but for adults, with real money." Which they'll likely understand (especially if they're parents), though of course their next question will be, "But why would adults want to spend their time doing something like this?"

We're seeing a new wave of open-ended virtual worlds reach the market, and that's great -- I'm excited to see how far they've evolved, and how much more is possible in them. But as they roll out to the wider consumer market, we should keep in mind how little the category of virtual worlds has evolved in the general understanding of what they're good for. (Beyond gaming, 3D chat, and entertainment.) And just because virtual worlds can now have far better graphics, get far higher concurrency, and run across far more platforms -- including VR, which is itself still in this Pied Piper position -- we shouldn't assume they'll now be embraced by a broad range of consumers. That, or prepare to order a lot of pizzas.

Comments

[Chong Kaixiang]

I suspect Sansar has a significant calzone budget. Why calzones? because pizza has gotten so plebian. Also: lower risk of pathogen transmission during demonstrations. And counting calzones is an easy way to figure out how many people came in to view.

But srsly, I've personally found that the slower the lightbulb comes on, the longer it lasts, for most folks I meet in SL. I think it's possible that the kind of slowness of realisation comes with a deeper understanding of the system than a quick, glib 'ah, got it' coming immediately after a TLDR of such a complex system.

[LagOh]

I agree, you can do anything you want in SL (with a few glaring exceptions smell for one, but I digress). It is a wonderful platform. I think that most users gravitate towards one aspect. Standing in a large group talking, or Role Playing, or my personal favorite nude skiing while firing heart shaped beanbags at each other. The system is big and once you get into it you find new things that you can do. I never thought I would script, but I do now. The pitch to new users is best if it follows KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principles.

[Northern Kiara]

"We're seeing a new wave of open-ended virtual worlds reach the market, and that's great..."

Other than Sansar who else in in the new wave?

[Wagner J Au]

Google "Improbable MMO" for one.

[Pulsar]

@Chong I'm not sure about that. You met folks who were in SL already. Most people I know (and I invited someone too) either they got it and liked SL shortly after they joined it, or they left it soon and they never came again. Others didn't try it at all prejudicially.
Some people may have took longer in understanding how the more complex things work, but that's another story. Other ones instead didn't realize SL potential and all the things you can do: I still meet old timers that passed years believing SL is just infohubs and erotic stuff. That didn't prevent them to enjoy SL for long.
Personally I have liked SL the day I joined it, a month later I was helping newbies and after many years I'm still there. My curiosity didn't diminish with time and I kept looking with interest at other VWs still today. SL is the only VW that "sorta worked", if we talk about it's success, but it remained an underdog. SL is nothing compared to Minecraft, if you take it as a creative game or platform; nothing compared to WoW, if you take it as a MMOG; even less if compared to Facebook or Whatsapp, if you take it as a social platform.

[Pulsar]

About Sansar, let's see what bulb is to light up.
LL was surprised that people had different expectations.
An open beta that's actually an alpha. They announced the first public release as open beta (the title they gave in their news), but it was a creators beta, then you try it and it looks like an alpha. They added run ability and terrain editing only recently and still a lot is missing. That's not what you would expect from a beta.
The network speed requirements they state are a joke: at that speed, you take forever to download a scene. We aren't talking about the many Km wide spaces that Sansar should be capable to handle, but much smaller spaces. Some people killed the client believing it froze, others waited up to an half hour for a scene. Hudson we have a problem.
"It will not be SL 2", but it looks like it tries to be They made it with a better graphic, it is more user friendly, the prices for spaces are lower than SL - and it is totally early - but besides VR (which SL could have too, there was an experimental client), deep down it's the usual social VW. Someone fells it came out as a wannabe SL 2 after all. Sinespace devs seem better able to think out of the box than LL, for example: they are developing a VW more game oriented, with built in quests, NPC and vehicle systems, and given the success of the last LL minigame inside SL, maybe it's a good idea.

I wonder if they thought it was easier to start a new one, rather to fit radical new things for winch SL wasn't designed for, mess with the legacy content, legacy code, and all the complexity. But Second Life gained a bad reputation, with misconceptions such as "a failure, lasted 1 year and then disappeared", "a thing for weirdos", "pervs"... So they came to announce their new project and told: «hey, this is not SL 2, believe us, it will appeal to different people, no adult stuff for now, cool VR for the masses».
Still no trace of those hundred million active users. Maybe they meant hundred thousands. Or just hundred. I gave another look today: emptiness.

Maybe it's LL who need their bulb to light up.

You can think of anything. For example...
Make it decent to download and embeddable like Youtube videos (there are examples of VW running on web browser, Sinespace too), and suddenly you may enter into some huge businesses to preview e-commerce products, cars, airplane seats, hotel rooms and much more. Or turn Atlas into a Steam-like thing, with reviews and all, and let spaces to be downloaded as games: now who cares if you take even hours to download a game? Once you did, you have them saved and you won't download them each time you play them. At most you will download patches, incremental updates. If the "creator" changes the scene/game, you download just the difference. Then one may sell them like Steam games too.
Hint hint.
But just another virtual world? With a better graphic and dumbed down? When people are already somewhere else? Good luck.