New World Notes

Sansar's Corporate Owner Announces Attempt to Resolve Unspecified "Issues on the Platform" After Last Week's Downtime

Here's a mysterious update to the Sansar platform and website going offline and then back on again last week before the Christmas holiday: Steve Moriya, VP at Sansar owner Wookey, posted this in the official Sansar Discord server on Christmas Eve:

hi there. this is steve from the wookey management - sansar team. i thought i'd pop in to let you know we are actively looking to resolve the issues on the platform. we value our community big time, and hope that we can get things running smoothly soon. big thanks to daisy for her assistance here. we appreciate your patience and understanding...

No further word about the specific "issues on the platform", and insiders I've talked to aren't sure either. (And I've tried contacting Wookey for an official statement multiple times to no avail). Reportedly one of those issues is resolving the furlough of Sansar employees that has existed since at least September.

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:

Carmen King Explores Sansar as Only Carmen Can -- And Has Tips for Making It Better

After basically becoming the queen of Second Life YouTubers, Ms. Carmen King reluctantly donned her dusty Vive headset --"I get insane motion sickness... [and] "normally can't last 10 minutes in VR", she says -- to re-visit the social VR world of Sansar.

"First time I tried,"  she casually notes, while getting strapped in, "I saw people trying to fuck in the middle of the ocean."

No such luck this time, but she does narrowly avoid an alien probing and inevitably wields some dildo-shaped hand controls. Further Carmen-esque NSFW hilarity ensues, so just watch.

"Sansar seems really fun and I love how smooth the game runs," she tells me now.  "Virtual Reality makes it a lot more exciting as you feel like you’re actually in the game!"

Sansar was originally developed by Linden Lab before its acquisition by Wookey; but does she prefer it to Linden's original world, Second Life?

Watch: Sansar With Full VR & Physics-Enabled Objects Officially Looks Fun

Thanks to all my friends who joined me, hope you had fun. I had a great time playing my Mixtape in #VR at #StereoWaveFest in #Sansar. Here is a highlights vid from the Stream where you can see me turning up late for my own show 🤣 #SocialVR pic.twitter.com/11zrJOaygT

— LokiEliot (@Demonkid) August 16, 2020

OK this looks fun: Well-known SL personality Loki Elliot taking his incredibly detailed 80s nostalgia persona into Sansar to perform in a full VR rig (Valve Index with Vive trackers in this case) in front of a fairly large audience during Sansar's recent Stereowave Music Festival for community DJs.

And best of all, those flying objects being tossed back and forth between people from all over the world are not scripted:

"The beach balls and a few other objects were fully physics-enabled," Loki tells me. "In VR it's simple fun to be able to pick up and throw things." Much of the audience was already there for the festival, but Loki brought in his native crew, so to speak:

Watch: Sansar's Pivot as Enterprise Platform for Live Music Seems Complete

As far as I can tell, this is the first official platform demo on YouTube for Sansar since it was taken over by Wookey, and it's pretty striking: Where once Sansar was promised to be a successor to Second Life and a WordPress for virtual worlds, it's now positioned as a "turnkey virtual venue platform" for "record labels, artists, festivals, creative agencies, and brands" (their words). 

Not a criticism! It's a smart move to target the live music/concert market in the COVID age. And I do like a lot of the functionality they are showing off in the video, especially avatar-to-avatar VR meet-and-greets for artists.

Sansar's Fat Boy Slim Show a Success for Wookey, Says Longtime Virtual World Creator (Comment of the Week)

Fatboy's Lost Horizon set in Sansar via Tim A's Twitter

I don't have a PC/VR rig powerful enough to catch the Fatboy Slim/Lost Horizon show staged on Sansar under its new owner Wookey, but longtime virtual world user/creator Tim A did, and here's his take:

I checked it out - I love Fatboy Slim, and it was a lot of fun to see him. It was pretty impressive -- the avatar moved in real-time, with the movements matching what was shown on the video screen. Things have come a long, long way since the "U2 in SL" days. Wookey had set up a ton of NPCs, so it was hard to get a good count, but from folks I was talking to in the area, probably about 50 folks hanging out.

Sansar hit a peak concurrency on Steam of 180 during the Lost Horizon show, so I bet overall attendance was much more than 50 -- probably upwards of 500, I'd estimate.

The show didn't go off without a hitch, however, Tim continues:

Sansar's First Big Music Event as a Wookey-Owned Platform Featuring Fatboy Slim Starts Tomorrow

In case you missed the announcement, starting tomorrow is the first major live music event in Sansar as a non-Linden Lab, now Wookey-owned platform -- a virtual world music festival featuring Fatboy Slim called Lost Horizon:

For the first time ever, you can experience one of the most iconic British festival destinations from the comfort of your home, all while raising money for two amazing causes – The Big Issue and Amnesty International.

Go here to RSVP for a free ticket. If you have a Vive HMD, you can get a free premium pass (for "virtual merch, special in-game powers and art") by going here. 

I mean no one's doing live real world music shows nowadays, not even Vanilla Ice, so why not now?

Sansar to Host Major Virtual World Music Festival Featuring Fatboy Slim

If you thought Sansar was destined for obscurity after Linden Lab sold its virtual world platform to an obscure company called Wookey, think again:

Aiming to recreate that festival experience in VR, the team will be replicating real-life attractions from Shangri-La, including the Gas Tower, Freedom and SHITV stages. Performers will include Carl Cox, Fatboy Slim, Jamie Jones (Gas Tower) and Coldcut, A.Skillz, Krafty Kutz, Henge and Alabama 3 (Freedom). There will also be a new stage called Nomad featuring drum-and-bass labels like Hospitality, Critical Records and Born on Road.

“Now more than ever, fans are looking beyond traditional live shows to connect with the artists they love. They’re online, they’re savvy about streaming, they’re eager to experience music unconstrained by where they live, and there’s a clear demand for events that transcend old boundaries,” says Sheri Bryant, President of Sansar in a statement. “

Here's the site for the free to attend festival, though you do need to request a ticket for entrance. And if the name Sheri Bryant sounds familiar, it's because she was formerly General Manager at Linden Lab on the Sansar team.

For that matter, every person of the 16 listed as working for Wookey on LinkedIn are from Linden Lab. (Including Richard Nelson, a great guy who was with Linden Lab since 2001!) This does much to confirm speculation that Wookey is not a tech company per see, but a way for Linden Lab to move much of its Sansar team to a new company/executive management.

You could even say Wookey was Linden Lab's... weapon of choice.

Watch "Hand", Bryn Oh's Latest, Bitterly Beautiful Machinima Shot in Both Second Life & Sansar

Here's the latest machinima from beloved metaverse artist Bryn Oh, who now has a Patreon page which you should definitely consider supporting if you're among the hundreds of thousands who've loved her artworks over the years. This new piece, called "Hand", was shot in both Second Life and Sansar, and as with some of her other works, was sponsored in part by an Ontario Arts Council grant. (Yes, the Canadian government will pay you to make virtual world art.)

"I decided to use footage from both Sansar and Second life because each has their strengths for machinima," Bryn tells me.  "Sansar can actually have really wonderful graphics.  Unfortunately their filming tools were quite limited.  Second Life on the other hand is great for filming in.  Also my machinima are a catalogue of my artwork so I wanted to capture a bit of both."

The locations for "Hand" are both still virtually explorable in Sansar here and in Second Life here.

Her inspirations for "Hand", as she tells me, include smartphone addiction, and the culturally corrosive power of advertising:

Torley & Other Beloved Lindens Now Working on Sansar at Wookey (ICYMI!)

In case you missed it (and it sort of fell off my own radar during the whole global pandemic thing), there's an update to the early March news that beloved Linden Lab staffer Torley departed the company after 14 years: He along with some other Lindens have moved over to Wookey, the obscure company with no game/VR development track record that recently acquired Sansar, to continue developing Sansar:

"Yes," he posted a few weeks ago on the official Sansar Discord, "many of your old fave ex-Lindens, now Wookey-(suffix TBD) are back in action... we'll have more to share soon!"

As for what they've been sharing on social media about Sansar, it's mostly featuring the virtual world as a platform for immersive live music shows: