Sansar Sees Little User Growth Despite Partnership With Top Twitch Streamer - Daily Usage Still Below 50

Sansar daily peak concurrency and average users via Sansar creator Gindipple -- click to embiggen

Linden Lab has been making some smart moves to grow Sansar lately, chief among them partnerships with UmiNoKaiju, a Twitch/YouTube streamer with over 60,000 subscribers on Twitch alone (announced in mid-April), and outreach to top Overwatch teams Houston Outlaws and the San Francisco Shock (announced May 9) [See update below]. The strategy is that thousands of fans of these gamer celebrities should want to hang out with these personalities (and with each other) in Sansar, and it's a good one -- it is after all a core reason for VRChat's mass growth recently.

Results so far, however, are negligible: Above are more recent peak concurrency and average user charts courtesy Sansar game developer Gindipple, who collects user data via a a back-end API -- daily averages are about 5-10, daily peaks are about 45-50. Last time I reported this data in late April (see below) concurrency levels were running between about 10-50 throughout the day, with average daily use around 5-15.

At best we can probably say there's been a very small growth in usage since these gamer outreaches. I'm personally surprised by this, because I expected growth of at least a few hundred. That may still happen if the gamer personalities do more to ramp their fans into Sansar, but so far, sadly, that's not happening. 

Compare last month's usage after the break:

Sansar data concurrency via Sansar creator Gindipple -- click to embiggen

Sansar average daily concurrency via Sansar creator Gindipple -- click to embiggen

These Sansar concurrency numbers, by the way, are not necessarily reflective of the platform's entire usage -- many Sansar experiences are still set to private/unpublished, and based on his network's activity, Gindipple estimates total concurrency may be as much as three times the stated amount. However, in terms of active users that average consumers can interact with at any given time, it's in the two figures.

These numbers still put Sansar usage around the range of High Fidelity, but well behind Rec Room (with concurrency in the hundreds) and way behind VRChat (with concurrency in the many thousands).

UPDATE, 3:00pm PST:  Thanks to a sharp reader, I just noted a belated (and curious) update to the original VentureBeat post announcing the Overwatch team partnership:

Update: Sansar does not have a formal partnership with the teams or the Overwatch League. Sansar conducted preliminary discussions with the San Francisco Shock and Houston Outlaws to create VR watch spaces, but the previously announced activities are not moving forward at this time as there was a misunderstanding.

Hat tip: Wurfi. Apparently something fell apart after the press release was published; I've updated the post and title accordingly to reflect that. Anyway, as far as I know, the Twitch partnership is still in effect:

Streamers: the future of hangouts is here!
Catch @UmiNoKaiju1 streaming live from her new space in #Sansar.https://t.co/UwuxkZWE9W

— Sansar (@SansarOfficial) April 24, 2018

Comments

[Roland Legrand]

After reading your article, I visited Sansar again - first time since a few months. The place reminds me of Blue Mars, I'm sorry to say. I visited the 'featured places' during the European late evening, only to meet one single person. No games to play, no social interaction, 'just' nice graphics. It's a good thing events are being organized now, but it seems those places lack communities of sufficient scale and diversity (so not only builders but also socializers, gamers, role-players...).

[Luther Weymann]

The play for Linden Research was not Sansar. The play was the total rewrite of all the SL server applications, with great graphics, a huge extensive artist and content creator tool set, and regions at a very reasonable price. VR was never going to work. But what would have worked is a new super great SL marketed to the millions of ex users in a new social environment. But after 14 years in SL (I finally stopped logging in April) the one thing all of us residents have learned is you can't tell the Lindens anything about SL because they never use it and can't relate. In the Bay Area software business, Linden Research is not where the real great programmers to to work.

[jimjane]

I had a choice between going on Sansar and sleep.
I chose sleep cuz it was funner.

[irihapeti]

@Luther - as an opinion you were doing ok until the last sentence.

the current SL programmer cohort and previous alumni are the best in the business. Sure you might find an individual elsewhere who has similar chops, but as a cohort, a team, there is no other cohort who can do what the SL programmers have done and continue to do when it comes to building and maintaining a multi-user generated content-based virtual world.

if you do want to assign blame then direct it at the Board who made the decision to divert resources away from what you want.

ps. I also would love an extensive artist and content creator inworld tool set and maybe one day we will get it. Til then I am satisfied with what I do get from the SL programming team given the resources currently made available to them by the company

[Large Marge]

@Luther- exactly what was needed was SL2.0 but nothing but deaf ears by the lab and blue mars was resurrected.. not even the vision to create something innovative like how Cloud Party was that was on it's way to being what VRChat is today!

- no browser viewer or cell phone viewers while needing a 3k dollar PC just to experience a static world at full settings

Not them Linden Lab or High Fidelity has the kind of talent onboard like early SL had..the management is too restrictive,stuffy and full of bean counters to allow ambitious brimming with ideas/mad skills young coders to come in and create something exciting.

- The lab is so weak/the backend so weak they had to pay a script kiddie like Skills Hak big money to go away after she became an untouchable goddess on the grid using the fountain of bugs/backdoors in the code to control the entire grid turning it to her own amusement park/house of horrors =)

Solution1= FIRE the head guy Ebbe Linden, after all the real decline started after removing the last CEO then bringing him in
Solution2= BUILD the SL2.0 as everyone expected,dreamed of while pulling the plug on Sansar

[Luther Weymann]

To my comments above. SL was a diversion for me, although I did spend an inordinate amount of time and money in it, but I've been single for decades and after the daily office was over SL drew me to something other than TV or working out or reading. I have owned three software companies in the past 35 years, and one even was really good at 875 employees when I sold it. So, after an adult lifetime going to a software company office every day, and having scores of QA and development folks work for me, I have become jaded about using SL for 14 years and never seeing them do a full rewrite to grow and keep their customer base. What I mean is Linden Research may have had gross revenue of perhaps three-quarters of a billion dollars over these years, along with I suppose millions and millions of people trying out SL, and with all that revenue and all those years they never did what almost every software company would have done, which is to create a super great new version, with a new direction, a new concept, and keep their base happy, grown a larger base, and attract back many lost users. This is what I learned in my 35 years of software company ownership, and all the men and women tech company owners I know would have done the same thing. So perhaps as I said, I've become jaded about SL, because I put 14 years in my SL hobby and did amazing things in there, but Linden Research never turned the corner. My expectations were higher based upon what I knew should have been done. I gave up on SL this past April, and the withdrawal has not been easy, but life goes on.

[Clara Seller]

Luther Weymann has illustrated a similar profile of countless people I've met in SL over the years. It makes me want to bang my head against the wall when LL doesn't seem to see the value in retaining him as a customer after 14 years.

I'm willing to bet he wasn't a freebie addict or a bottom feeder. He had the time and resources to give his SL character a good life. He had the place in RL to act as a conduit to bring new people with resources into SL. He had the skills and time to orient them within reason. Multiply Luther many times over and you start to get a picture of a segment of the SL customer base that has been downright abused.

Wouldn't it have been worth monitoring Luther a little more closely as a customer? After 14 years, did he ever receive a computer generated email or message wishing him a happy birthday or rezz day? Was he made to feel valued? Was he given any kind of status or recognition for his contributions of loyalty? Was he ever asked what can we do to make your experience better? Did he ever receive a computer generated message saying you haven't logged in in awhile, we miss you?

Ebbe, it takes more than content creators and bloggers to make a community and a viable business. Your hollow-shell Sansar is a fool's monument to that. It was constructed already broken and it can't be saved. You can't be saved. It's way past time to turn the ship around and go home. The mission is now clearly search, rescue, and damage control. You waged war on your own people and you lost. Everybody has paid the price.

[Luther Weymann]

I spent at least, at least, $20,000 USD in SL over 14 years. Best mesh, best clothes, best furniture, best Anshe land from half sim to quarter sim, one time had a full region, my five year girl friend (who also got tired of SL life and left) was the best dressed, best jeweled woman in SL, so yeah I built many retail stores, up until I left my SL Market was doing great, I had five Alex Bader castles in my 160,000 inventory, I was everything that any virtual world customer could ever want. And no, I never met or heard from a Linden in all of the hundreds of thousands of hours I was on the grid, but I did hear from someone who knew them well, when they told me that the staff of Linden Research never uses SL and thinks the Residents are weirdos for using it. I don't know what to think anymore, but I can tell you this, my 14 years in SL was centered on building, selling, being with my partner, and spending money, and I have very fond memories of all those times.

[Luther Weymann]

Update to my several above posts: I found the old spreadsheet on SL expenses I used to keep hidden away in a folder on another computer. Updating it to the last four years I would say that a reasonable estimate is $40-45,000 spent in SL over 14 years. Best estimate of time in world each year, counting weekends would be about 2000+ hours a year or probably 25,000 hours in 14 years (lots and lots of lost weekends and allnighters, but then I had a hot girlfriend so you have to take that into consideration so it was not all slapping prims together). With these stats of mine If I was a virtual world owner, this would be the exact model of a customer I would want to build upon. But no, not with Linden Research. Thank you all for your comments. I don't dislike SL or Linden Research at all, its just that I was a software guy for 35 years and I really don't understand Linden Research mentality about customers and growing their business.

[Clara Seller]

I truly appreciate Luther's frankness. It's not the easiest task to open up your personal financials about SL. His numbers are very believable and his "reasonable estimate" is probably a little on the low ball side.

Pull back the camera just one notch and you see that 20 Luther's has earned you one million dollars. Whether you are a small business or large corporation, one million dollars is worth 20 smiles and 20 handshakes. If you can't bring yourself to do that, the problem isn't your customers. It's you.

Now, when you think about how many notches LL has to pull back to view their entire customer base and how many Luther's are in those grains of sand, you start to see a crime scene. Even if you have to pay someone a generous salary to only smile and shake hands, isn't it worth it?

We actually had the top weenie, overseeing all of these grains of sand and holding all of these Luther's in his hand, not only refuse a smile and a handshake, but publicly denounce them and toss them into the fires of an egotistical ritual sacrifice to the golden calf of Zuckerberg. Big gamble and big loss.

I'm not as nice as Luther. I won't be happy until the customers get their own ritual bonfire and weenie roast.

[Lost Customer Too]

SLHamlet plz do a story about the experiences of Luther Weymann.

[Hamlet Au]

Agreed!

[Hamlet Au]

Luther please hit me up -- wjamesau at gmail dot com!

[P373R Kappler]

That happens when you remove all the building tools from the simulator it self.
That was sl´s secret power . You could sit with your friends learn make together.
Now you have to use a offline editing engine and third party tools.
They basically created a cheap ass uninity engine with a server system.
How it should be??.
You create your instance.. Go with 3 people in. Drop a mesh plane where the ground should be.. Edit it with the build in vertices editor. Put textures on it. Bake the ground texture to 1 mega texture. Ground done.
Being able to create objects on the fly in world is essential.
Something like: Create a sphere with 256 vertices. Now you can model it to something else just by editing the vertices coords. A painting tool for textures could be also very nice.
Animation creation: make a pose editing tool and ability to capture those poses in a timeline to make animations.
Scripting. In Sansar you have to compile the simulation and run it on order to check how your scripts are working. Big nah!!

LL had found the recipe 10 years ago they just did not used it . They copied stuff ^^