New World Notes

BREAKING: Sansar, Would-Be Second Life Successor & Metaverse Platform, Is Offline -- Staff Reportedly Furloughed Since September (UPDATE, 12/23: Sansar Website & Platform Back Online)

Live Sansar platform pic from 12/23 afternoon PT via @wurfi.

Update 3, 12/23, 1:40pm PT: The Sansar platform is reportedly back online. @wurfi  (teddy bear in hat) just sent the in-world pic above as confirmation.

Update 2, 12/23: As of at least 12:35PM PT today, the Sansar website is back online. However, going by user reports in the official Discord, the world itself is still not accessible. (Hat tip: @Wurfi.)

Update 1, 12/23: I have e-mailed officials at Sansar owner Wookey twice, yesterday and this morning; both times, my e-mails were bounced back with a "550 No Such User Here" message from the Wookey server.

Good if sad scoop from Metaverse blogger Ryan Schultz: Sansar's homepage is currently offline, as is the platform: "You can no longer get into the social VR platform, and the Sansar website has been taken down."

A former Sansar staff member tells me that employees have been furloughed for as far back as September. I'm now reaching to officials at Wookey, the company which acquired the social VR/metaverse platform from Linden Lab in March 2020, for an official comment, and will update this post when and if I receive one.

This is somewhat surprising news, as Sansar was announcing live concert events as recently as August, and was touting itself as a pandemic-era concert/festival solution back in 2020, with top artists signed for shows on the platform. It's also a sad coda to the passing of former Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg earlier this year: For years, Ebbe had worked to turn Sansar into Second Life's official successor. The platform, however, was optimized for use on premium VR headsets, and when sales of those stayed slow, so did Sansar's growth rate.

More from Ryan below, including an error page which suggests more on Sansar's fate:

Grading My Ten Metaverse/VR Predictions for 2021 from Last Year

Image credit: Klaus Reinherz, "Socially Distanced New Year 2020/21"

Time to take a look at the predictions I made late last December:

• There will be a departure in Linden Lab's C-suite, i.e. CEO/COO/CFO/CTO.

This prediction, sad to say, turned out to be correct in the most tragic way possible.

• Both VRChat and Rec Room will finally surpass Second Life in peak concurrency numbers.

Also correct if we're referring to current peak concurrency numbers: VRChat started doing that around April (42,000+), and Rec Room, back in January (45,000+).  Second Life's all-time peak concurrency is closer to 80,000, but that was back in the boom times.

• Related to the above, either VRChat or Rec Room will be acquired by a major platform/company.

Wrong. However, both startups did attract heavy investments in 2021 -- VRChat getting $80 million last June, and Rec Room getting $145 million just this week.

• Second Life's long-awaited "mobile app companion" will launch but see a disappointing reception, failing to earn over 100,000 downloads on Google Play.

Another strike -- but SL's mobile app was definitely disappointing in the sense that it was put on pause months after it was approved by the App Store last July.

Six more after the break:

Coming to VRChat in Early 2022: Avatar Dynamics to Enhance Physics, User-to-User Interaction, PG-13 Sexytimes

Cool upcoming feature for VRChat to keep your eye on in early 2022: Avatar dynamics, designed to enable for more interactivity between avatars and the world, and (even more key) avatars to avatars.

"[I]t offers a ton of new options for people to explore that are into avatar development," as top VRC community creator Lakuza explains. "For one, it'll improve the performance overall for VRChat since the in-house dynamics system they've made is made with VRChat specifically in mind. Currently people are relying on a 3rd party asset called 'Dynamic Bones' which can be quite expensive on performance. So just being a more optimized version will do great for the regular VRC experience. But the team have gone a step further and made it easier to program player to player interactions into their avatar." 

Watch the company's demo video above for examples of what this enables. Adorably, VRChat is not showing off what avatar dyanmics will surely enable by the boatload: Avatar-to-avatar sexytimes! (At least as much sexytimes as VRChat's terms of service allow, which bans any pornographic content.)

More from the VRChat blog:

Amazingly Realistic Rick and Morty Cosplay & Anime-Themed Christmas Pics Created in Second Life

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Eyes Kirschtaria’s “Christmas Costume Party” is something out of a graphic novel. His work features a lot of roleplay and anime, but this costume party Christmas is so joyful and full of joie de vivre. Their similar costumes make me think of superheroes, like a Phenomenal Five. The background is full of moons and Christmas trees. I love the abundance of it. 

For a very different take on Christmas, click here:

How Neal Stephenson's Unions of Metaverse Users May Arise

Reader Luther Weymann, who was a successful tech exec before becoming a virtual world fan in his retirement, isn't convinced by Neal Stephenson's call for metaverse users to unionize:

Any attempt at collective bargaining in a virtual world will require a massive legal department with huge overhead to administer the quirks of the people and failures of the system. The simple decision for any board of directors of a virtual world company would be the answer of “oh, heck no, we aren’t doing that!”

He's probably right if we assume that Metaverse-based unions must have the exact same structure and legal status as real world labor unions. But historically, ad hoc collectives of virtual world users often are able to change company policies to benefit users. Local favorite Second Life famously had a user-driven "tax revolt" movement which successfully pressured Linden Lab to change its pricing structures. It's fair to assume every virtual world has had (or will have) its own instances of collective user protest, because virtual world companies are utterly dependent on sustained user activity and growth.

We saw the latest example of that just last week, around the use of NFTs in online game worlds:

Rec Room Fact Check: World Likely Has 4-5 Million Active Users, Not 37M

Great news for Rec Room:

Rec Room, a free to download and play cross-platform social gaming company, has raised $145 million, funding that it will use to continue building out its tools and audience of gamers using them to create their own experiences across mobile devices, game consoles, PC and VR headsets (operating systems/platforms supported include iOS, Xbox, PlayStation, Oculus, Steam and, as of August, Android). The funding is being led by Coatue Management, with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures and Madrona Venture Group, and it is coming in at a $3.5 billion valuation...

It has now racked up 37 million users who build and play games in “rooms” where they virtually hang out with other users. Although it’s not clear how many active users there are out of that 37 million figure...

It's actually somewhat clear how many people are active in Rec Room:

Top 5 New World Notes Posts Including a Darker Look Into the ROBLOX Economy & the Inventor of the Metaverse Calls for Users to Unionize

• Facebook Whistleblower Airs Valid Concerns About The Metaverse -- But Misses The Proteus Effect Of Avatars
• ROBLOX Reportedly Pressures Journalist Covering Platform's In-Game Market "In Which Children Are Encouraged To Gamble Real Money"
• Neal Stephenson: The Metaverse Isn't Dystopian, The Problem Is Monetizing User Data -- And We Need Collective Bargaining To Make It Better
• Fantastic No-Photoshop Screencaps Of Second Life Shot With The Black Dragon Viewer
• Pros & Cons Of Real Work Meetings In The Metaverse Vs. Zoom, Slack, Etc.

Consider Contributing to Cajsa Lilliehook to Help With Her High Medical Bills

Here's the Ko-Fi donation/tip page for Cajsa Lilliehook, New World Notes' indispensable curator of great virtual world images through her column Cajsa's Choices (along with her own blog). Cajsa was recently interviewed by the Daily Edge political blog where she mentions that she has a Ko-Fi account because "I am poor and cannot afford copays for my insulin, so I have to buy generic which is much less effective." So if you've loved Cajsa Choices over the years, along with her other writing across the SL editorial ecosystem, consider sending Cajsa a Ko-Fi tip to help out.

Speaking of The Daily Edge, Cajsa mainly talks about her other editorial passion -- compiling an ever-growing list of sexual predators in GOP politics:

Facebook Whistleblower Airs Valid Concerns About the Metaverse -- But Misses the Proteus Effect of Avatars

I've been wondering what Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen thought about Meta's plans to make the Metaverse, and she finally aired her concerns with Time magazine:

When I asked her about the metaverse, Haugen’s answer focused on the extra forms of surveillance that would be necessary for any meaningful kind of metaverse experience. “I am worried that if companies become metaverse companies, individuals won’t get to consent anymore on whether or not to have Facebook’s sensors—their microphones in their homes,” Haugen told me. “This company—which has already shown it lies to us whenever it’s in its own interests—we’re supposed to put cameras and microphones for them in our homes?” she said.

This is all very valid and reflects what VR pioneers like Avi Bar-Zeev and Jaron Lanier have been saying (screaming into the void?) for the last few years.

Haugen raises another concern beyond privacy that needs a bit of unpacking:

Friday Fashion: Holiday SL Style Ideas from the Sassy Shopper

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

The Sassy Shopper’s Blog by Sparkle Mocha caught my eye with this gorgeous post, “A Stroll in the Snow.” I love the outfit. I love that she’s wearing an outfit. (I confess I am tired of the competition to show the most skin with the least fabric possible. It’s boring.) Her outfit is gorgeous and I want it. 

• NANIKA Annette at the Arcade through December

For your Christmas hosting outfit, click here: