Sansar Not Seeing Ready Player One-Inspired Traffic Bump (So Far)

Note: Sansar's Ready Player One experience announced at CES in early January (Data via SimilarWeb)

With the movie a top hit in theaters and the launch of a second official tie-in experience last week, Sansar may yet enjoy a burst in consumer interest from fans of Spielberg's Ready Player One interested in checking out VR recreations inspired by the film and novel. According to SimilarWeb, however, traffic to Sansar.com has actually been trending down since the first Ready Player One experience for Sansar was announced at the widely-covered Consumer Electronics Show in January.

As a point of contrast, while Sansar.com attracted 140,000 page views last month, VRChat.com racked up 720,000 page views: 

Sansar's homepage doesn't make any mention of the movie (maybe by contractual agreement with Warner Brothers?), but I'm still surprised we didn't see an uptick of interest in the run-up to the premiere, and the massive marketing campaign to promote it. But the real test will be traffic performance at the end of this month, as the movie completes its theatrical run.

Comments

[David Cartier]

This should surprise nobody, seeing as they've made no efforts to promote it; not even in Second Life, where they have a captive and at least somewhat interested audience.

[Todd Adams]

Maybe also because it really sucks?

[phoenixbyrd]

Sansar is an unfinished product, there's no point in using it until they make it worth using.

[Philiprosedale]

Actually this is also true across all variations of "Virtual Reality" related search terms and steam product stats for VR, so far as I can see. It's certainly not just Sansar. The movie is not causing people to want to 'try out' VR. I think this is because it only presented the idea of VR as mostly a sort of multiplayer shooter for escapists, rather than for education and many other uses, as presented in the book.

[Galen in Sansar]

I concur with Philip Rosedale's points. What's more, we should not expect that people who enjoyed watching a movie about VR would, en masse, be moved to try out VR. After all, did the success of Rocky trigger an upsurge in people boxing? Did Did Gone in 60 Seconds trigger a wave of automobile theft?

I think the majority of people who have so far watched Ready Player One are no more aware of or interested in real VR. I'm sure it has sparked the interest especially of younger children, who will eventually make the connection with existing VR technologies and worlds like Sansar and High Fidelity. That tiny margin of people will have an impact. Give it time.

[metacam oh]

The people running down the street fighting in the Oasis in the movie bugged the hell out of me. I feel like it made the whole thought that went into this future seem flimsy to me. I don't recall that in the book and it could have easily been cut out of the film without a doubt.

[Pulsar]

Yeah, that's true for the whole VR and the movie may have portrayed more a MMO shooter than a social virtual world, but with Sansar there is a difference: unlike others, Sansar and Linden Lab partnered with "Intel, Vive & Warner Brothers to Launch Official VR Recreation of Aech's Garage from Spielberg's Ready Player One", and they were part of Intel CES booth
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2018/01/aech-garage-ready-player-one-movie-sansar-linden-lab.html
Then, after "Aech's Garage", they launched "Aech's Basement", announcing it at least via Twitter (and via email to Sansar users), plus related blogs talking about it
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2018/04/sansar-ready-player-one-vive.html
So they put their effort to take advantage of the movie. Even with this effort from Linden Lab, Sansar didn't receive extra traffic.