New World Notes

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:

Linden Lab "Very Profitable Company" With Sansar Gone, CEO Tells Engadget, Says Cloud Deployment & Other Improvements to Second Life Still in Works

Good long Engadget interview with Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg just posted, who addresses much (if not all) the speculation around the recent acquisition of Sansar by an unknown company called Wookey, and how it will affect the future of Second Life. I've heard much Internet chatter that Linden Lab or even SL itself is now facing dire times, but in contradiction to that, Ebbe is ebullient:

With Sansar off its books, Linden Lab is now "a very profitable company," according to Altberg. "Second Life is an older, very established cash machine that works really well, and right now, we're seeing some tremendous growth happening as we speak. Whereas Sansar is a VC, more long term, need-more-investment-type-of-thing. Mixing those two within one small studio like Linden Lab was kind of tricky, so it was easier to have them go separate."

...  Linden Lab, meanwhile, is going to double down on Second Life. The company is currently in the middle of moving its cloud-based infrastructure to a third-party platform. "Instead of having to nurture and build and maintain our own infrastructure for a lot of things, we're going to be able to rely on someone else doing it for us," Altberg explained. Linden Lab is also working on a number of user-facing improvements, such as the ability to customise worlds and "trade environments in ways they haven't been able to do before."

Good to know the cloud deployment of SL is still happening, though kind of odd that it's moving to an unspecified "third-party platform", when the project was originally specified as going to Amazon Web Services.

As for Wookey, the mystery of what it is and how it will turn Sansar into "a new generation of online AR/VR experiences" (Linden Lab's words) remains, though I suppose Ebbe drops a few hints there:

Sansar Platform Acquired by Wookey Project Corp, Linden Lab Confirms

Confirming hints based on recent website/log-in changes, Linden Lab just confirmed Sansar's acquisition by a company called Wookey Project Corp.:

We are very excited to witness the unfolding of Sansar getting a fresh opportunity to thrive under the ownership of Wookey Project Corp., a San Francisco-based technology company that has assumed all operations without any interruption to operations or the Sansar community... Wookey Project Corp. continues to create a new generation of online AR/VR experiences that allow users the power of collaborative interaction through knowledge immersion.

Operations at Second Life are not impacted at all. The Second Life community will continue to be able to login and enjoy SL without any interruption. As for Linden Lab, many members of the Sansar team formerly employed by Linden Lab are staying with Sansar as employees under its new ownership.

Sansar's blog promises a sunny future for the social VR world, with "[m]ore cosplay karaoke, more zero-gravity game nights, more of the massive interstellar shows that Sansar’s known for - thousands joining from anywhere in the world for one-of-a-kind live performances."

As for Sansar's future as a Wookey world, you can get a hint at that by checking out Wookey's About page:

Copyright to Linden Lab's Sansar Now Claimed by Company Called "Wookey" Which Promises a New VR World

Pictured: Sansar.com's homepage (inset) and the homepage to Wookey.com

Sharp-eyed Second Life user Chic Aeon noticed that the official homepage to Linden Lab's Sansar now displays (at the very bottom of the website page) a copyright and "All Rights Reserved" notice for an entity called "Wookey".

Going to Wookey.com takes you to a page with little details beyond promising "The web animated for VR -- A NEW WORLD COMING SOON!"

Well, what's Wookey? Crunchbase lists the company as WOOKEY Search Technologies, founded by Garnet Chaney and Mark Gustavson, neither of which have any background in online games or VR (at least going by their LinkedIn profiles).  However, on his Crunchbase profile, Gustavson lists his core business experience as "turn-around transactions", i.e., what happens to a company that's hit hard times and is put into recovery mode.

This news comes about a month after Linden Lab, having spent an estimated $50-60 million to launch and develop Sansar, announced that the company was looking to give the world a new owner.

What's this all mean besides the fact that Wookey claims the copyright to Sansar? I've reached out to both Wookey and Linden Lab for a comment and will update this post when/if I receive any reply.  

As Second Life Ages, Linden Lab Had to Try Something Like Sansar (Comment of the Week)

While there's still much anger among the Second Life community about the end of Sansar as a Linden Lab-sponsored project, some readers also make a more positive point: Since Second Life is still based on an ancient graphics engine and server architecture from nearly two decades (!) ago, the company really did (and does) need to invest in developing new platforms while keeping the original one operational. As "Pulsar" puts it:

Linden Lab dumped no working product (Second Life). What's to be "dumped" here -- actually being sold -- is the branch that gave no fruits... Earlier you realize it, the better. Selling it is the right thing to do, in order to not lose further money and getting something back. It's even possible (but I won't bet it) that Sansar, under a different company with a clear plan and finally reworked, other than rebranded, could find a niche.

I actually wouldn't be at all surprised if Sansar does find a suitor -- for instance, a Chinese company that wants a VR-optimized virtual world to deploy behind the Great Firewall. In any case, as Pulsar goes on, Linden Lab was never trying to "abandon" the Second Life customer base, but attempting to grow a new, somewhat overlapping audience with a new product:

What Went Wrong With Sansar: Victim of VR Hype & Failure to Learn from Second Life's Mistakes

Pictured: Sansar featured in 2016 at a Wall Street Journal event on virtual reality

Linden Lab has probably spent about $50-60 million to develop and launch Sansar. We know this is likely because back in 2016, the company had likely already spent an estimated $20 million on Sansar over 2.5 years in payroll alone. Add four more years of payroll, not to mention marketing and operating expenses, and that range is a reasonably educated guess (if it's not even larger). I've been thinking about this ever since Linden Lab announced last week that Sansar would no be a company-sponsored project.

How was so much spent for so little return? There's a number of factors, but I believe it ultimately came down to two interlocking mistakes:

• A flawed assumption, fueled by Goldman Sachs and other respected entities, that virtual reality was on the fast track to becoming massive.
• A corporate culture that was unable or unwilling to learn from Second Life's early mistakes.

I do not think it's fair to lay the blame square on the company's CEO, Ebbe Altberg. Linden Lab insiders, even those who have left the company, fairly consistently praise Ebbe as an inspiring leader. Meeting in person him last year, I was impressed by his passion for virtual worlds. But even the best leaders must work with the limited options that are handed to them. In this particular case, it's likely that Sansar was already in development under the leadership of the advisory board and Ebbe's predecessor, Rod Humble. (Who was in turn working with limited options laid down by the board and previous CEOs.)

That said, to go into more detail:

My concerns for Sansar started early, when it was positioned as a VR-centric project. As I told Wired in 2016: