Right: The same avatar made by Krample selling to VRChat users for $40 and (below) for SL users for L$550 (under $3)
I recently told you about a 3D creator called “Krample”, who has been an SL merchant for many years. Listed in the SL Marketplace as Orange Nova Avatars, he’s now finding far more success selling his avatar content to the VRChat market. That’s partly because the VRChat userbase will pay much more for his avatars -- $40 USD, versus a handful of USD in Linden Dollars. But more than that, the switch was motivated by the creation tools VRChat has, versus what Second Life offers -- especially as Krample is a professional graphics artist in real life.
“I've been making content in Second Life for the past decade or so,” as Krample told me last month, “but it's increasingly brutal to be working in an engine that's just so... old. Especially ever since I got a day job working in Unreal.” (If you've watched the Super Bowl in recent years, you've probably seen visual effects he helped create.) “[I] get to have a daily reminder about how much better things could be!”
He might not even still be creating SL content, he tells me, but for the pandemic:
“If it hadn't been for COVID keeping me at home,” as he puts it, “it'd be flat out impossible to work on ANY new SL content. My spare time just wouldn't allow it, it'd take me years to finish anything. Several of my SL avatars have taken years to put together, as a matter of fact, just ask any of my disgruntled customers.”
I asked him to compare Second Life and VRChat’s creation tools -- and what Linden Lab might do, to catch up: