Taking a peek today at the Lab’s press page on the web, I saw that Geek Dad has an article by Derrick Schneider in which he discusses the Lab’s in-development “Project Sansar” virtual experiences platform with Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg.
The article, Project Sansar: Giving Virtual Reality a Second Life, doesn’t give out much that is new about “Sansar” for those who have been following whatever news has been made available, but it does tend to further clarify a few things, while re-stating others.
For me, the more interesting part of the discussion revolves around the concept of the “creator”.
Within Second Life, and while it can have a fairly broad generic application, the term is most readily identified with the role of the model-maker; those people who actually create models and objects, whether in mesh or prims.
However, in broader terms, anyone who creates a region or a parcel, be it for their own use or to be shared with others, is equally a “creator”, even if they purchase the items they use either in-world or through the Marketplace.
For “Sansar”, it appears the Lab is using “creator” in this latter context, rather than identifying a specific group of skilled model makers. That is, people who can bring together models and content into a single experience and present it for use by their intended audience.
Obviously, those who build the models are an important subset of this creative group; hence why the Lab has engaged with modellers and “content partners” (itself an interesting term)” during the current closed alpha for “Sansar”. But the model makers aren’t perhaps the central focus of the Lab’s endeavours in building Sansar as some may have taken the term “creators” to mean.
This leads us, by way of a discussion about instancing experiences, to matters of revenue generation, which I also found to be of speculative interest. In an almost throwaway comment, Schneider demonstrates just how different “Sansar” will be from Second Life, and offers a glimpse of some intriguing new possibilities for revenue generation which may not have been readily considered thus far, once the platform’s audience and use grows:
If you make a great experience in Sansar … you can resell that experience… which you really can’t do today in Second Life.
Picture, for example, a group such as MadPea Games, able to create and licence / sell entire game / hunt experiences to clients in the physical world, completely packaged and ready to go, branded for their client. but with full credit to MadPea Games. That the experience is actually running on the “Sansar” servers operated by the Lab is neither here nor there as far as the client is concerned, so long as they can use whatever mechanism they’ve chosen to engage their desired audience in the experience.
Equally, this also raises some potential questions around content, licensing and permissions, particularly given the earlier statements around those building an experience not necessarily being those would actually build all the models, etc., within that experience. For example, how do you cater for the model maker who doesn’t want their creations to be re-packaged and sold on to or licensed out to third parties? Or how do you ensure that models and content remain “affordable” to the majority whilst allowing the maker to generate sufficient revenue to make it worth their while in allowing they models to be “sold on”?
Again, it will be interesting to see how questions like this are addressed – or if they are even an actual concern as “Sansar” becomes more accessible.
Discoverability is also again touched upon, with Schneider nicely encompassing the approach being taken with “Sansar”:
Imagine going to a web page that goes in-depth on a given topic — Mayan temples, say — and then says, “here’s a VR experience that gives you another view” in the same way you might see an embedded video today. There will also be ways to find other experiences once you’re inside the ecosystem.
Alongside of this there are the by now familiar references to the likes of WordPress and YouTube, which initially appeared back in June and July. These comments have, to me, tended to confirm my own view (held since I first started reading what was being said about the platform in places such as the 2015 VWBPE conference) that Sansar, conceptually at least, is somewhat analogous to the idea of a platform as a service (PaaS) providing a “white label” environment to potential users. I’ve been promising for a while to expand on this, and rather than sidetrack things here, I really will make an effort to re-organise my thoughts on this and other speculations I have about “Sansar” and get them in print in this blog, hopefully within the next week.
Overall, while (again) not revealing anything that is really startlingly new, the Geek Dad article does make for interesting reading, simply because it does perhaps clarify certain things at least a little bit, and because of the possible questions which might yet be applied to the platform as more is revealed.
Related Links
- Project Sansar: Giving Virtual Reality a Second Life – Derrick Schneider for Geek Dad
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 
As I said right from the beginning no matter how Sansar’s relationship with its preferred users or how their monetizing concept works, as long as they are offering unrelated experience platforms rather than a contagious world, at least 50% of SL residents won’t be interested. I and many others want to be able to cross sim borders or get into a diferent part of the rid with a short TP hop. we understand Second Life as a world, not a number of experiences.
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The Lab hasn’t actually said that experiences will be “unrelated”. What they’ve said is, people will be able to travel between related experiences by some method which has yet to be expressly defined (comments from the Lab have in the past suggested passing through a “tunnel” or “fog”), and that they’ll have multiple “personas” associated with their account, some of which may be specifically geared towards involvement in a specific experience / environment.
My assumption from this is that it’ll be down to experience creators as to whether or not they want their experience connected to other experiences – but I stress that this is my assumption, rather than anything I’ve seen stated by the Lab.
Also, don’t forget that an individual experience in “Sansar” isn’t limited to 256×256 metre region of land – it can be of virtually (no pun intended) limitless size (allowing for the physics engine). Ergo, you could conceivably have an experience the size of SL’s Blake Sea, which is possibly connected to other related experiences.
Of course, size brings with it associated questions on price (I assume running larger expanses of “land” in “Sansar” will require heftier computing resources, and that the cost of these needs to be factored into things – but again, that’s purely my assumption), so it’ll be interesting to see how this works out.
In this respect, LL is right – “Sansar” isn’t a “world” in the sense that SL is a “world” – it is a platform for “worlds” – plural.
And even if this is not the case, again, that’s why the Lab state they’ll keep SL going for as long was is feasible, as there is a good chance “Sansar” won’t appeal to a good percentage of SL users (although that might fluctuate over time, obviously). In this respect, my own view remains that perhaps the majority of SL users are not the primary audience for the platform. We’re a “nice to have along”, certainly, but we’re not necessarily the primary audience.
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I knew I wasn’t the primary audience in the very moment when Ebbe said the world map didn’t do anything for him.
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I won’t be interested if the world is not contiguous. During the past few months I’ve been exploring open sim’s and my constant complaint is the time it takes to get from one sim to another. Time wise it’s not that long but I’ve been spoiled by a decade in SL where it’s not an issue.
The rumors I hear that you will have one master account in which you will have to supply lots of identifying personal data. Then off of that you can create multiple avatars but those avatars will be linked back to your personal data is something I view with a great deal of trepidation. In today’s world that database is going to be hacked. There goes trying things out with anonymity and I think that is an important feature of SL particularly in the more repressive areas of the world.
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Yep. There will be a master account off of which you can run multiple “personas” (as the Lab is calling them for “Sansar”). As to hacking, that’s a risk anyway with SL, where you can have multiple accounts with various levels of personal info linked to them (one credit card with one avatar, another card with another avatar, PayPal info for a third, etc). Does “Sansar” increase that risk? Maybe – but it’s a personal call. Certainly, the idea of a “master account” and being able to share inventory, L$ balances, etc., between the avatar accounts linked to that master account is something that has long been called for by some SL users (I’ve been one of them 🙂 ).
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I think being forced into a master account is a BIG mistake. As of now in SL you don’t have to associate anything including credit card information with an avatar. As for getting L$ into the second account just pay from your main account to the second account and a short while later it is there. As far as sharing inventory who says gender or even species is the same.
For you and I that is not a big problem because of where we physically live. But say you were a born male and wanted to explore what it like being treated like a female. Then add to that you live in a country where such a thing is illegal, which is much of Africa and the Middle East. Then the consequences are much more drastic than a hacked credit card number.
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“you Tube”? Don’t you mean YouTube?
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It is hard to say anything when you cannot view the product or review the platform.
Mitch Kapor left the board when he heard about Sansar so that should be telling. CEO Altberg does not really knows his stuff so based on that I have large doubts if Sansar will be a viable product.
There is also the fact about the competition that awaits, the competition that is not visible yet but you can be sure it will come in 2016. Not one or a couple but dozens most likely.
So you can go to Sansar and start building complicated meshes for hours, weeks, months and more. Then you get some visitors or you can try to sell some of your objects to the limited userbase. Average residents might rent a space and rez an experience which will cost them a lot and then they will get bored after a couple of weeks in their isolated environment.
That doesn’t really sound like anything I would want to participate in to be honest. I can also go to High Fidelity to build such an experience for next to nothing, same stuff.
I will look at Sansar but the more I hear the less appealing it sounds.
Also Linden is a loon company, Linden states, “Sansar will be the successor of Second Life” than later “Sansar will not be the sequel to Second Life”
We can all be in facebookVR in a couple of years from now. Linden is merely a player now.
Linden Lab is a company which hates their own customer base and flagship product. All these CEO character after Rosedale do not understand the product or care what it is about. Neither of these CEO characters used their knowledge to improve the actual product. Kingdon did the most but Humble and Altberg are disasters.
Humble did not like Second Life because it is not a game which he expected it would be.
Altberg just took a job he got offered by a friend.
Before you write a post to defend your Linden Lab buddies Inara be aware that Second Life lost 50 sims previous week and is now below 18000 private simulators.
Also Inara Second Life was not profitable yet in 2006 when it did have 8000 sims and those sims were all full sims. Now you have 50/50 full sims and Homesteads and a much larger overhead in terms of infrastructure and staff so just imagine how close Linden is getting to break even.
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“Mitch Kapor left the board when he heard about Sansar so that should be telling.”
Sorry, but we only know that Mitch Kapor stepped back from the board at the end of 2014 to focus on his attention Kapor Center for Social Impact. Any supposition on his motives beyond this is just that – supposition.
“Also Linden is a loon company, Linden states, “Sansar will be the successor of Second Life”
Could you cite a reference for this? So far as I can find, the Lab has studiously avoided all reference to “Sansar” being a “sequel” to Second Life; rather they’ve been at pains from the outset to emphasize it is a separate platform “in the spirit” of Second Life – which isn’t the same thing as a “sequel”.
“be aware that Second Life lost 50 sims previous week and is now below 18000 private simulators.”
I’m fully aware of region losses, as I watch Tyche Shepherd’s reports on SLU and keep an eye on her Grid Survey pages. And while no-one is denying the trends is continuing downwards, the rate of decline has actually substantially slowed since hitting a peak of anywhere between 130 and 200+ region losses a week in 2012.
That it is continuing downwards, despite the slow-down is obviously of concern. However, as I’ve in the past been at pains to explain, there is actually very little the Lab can do about it financially – not without hurting themselves and SL to a greater degree in the process. In this, they are somewhat hoist by their own petard.
“Also Inara Second Life was not profitable yet in 2006…”
That’s a very questionable statement.
In 2008, Simeon Brunozzi estimated the Lab’s profits on revenues could be as high as $40 million a year. Sorry I can’t cite her analysis, her website has gone.
However, I can cite New World Notes, which for the same period, estimated LL’s profits could be US $45 million from gross revenues of US $96 million (the article also references Simeon’s analysis, and has a quote from her).
At that time, the grid stood at 14,597 private islands generating around US $4 million in recurring tier a month. Today, there are 17,998 private islands generating an estimated US$3.857 million in recurring tier.
In terms of expenses, it’s hard to judge matters. However in 2008, the Lab employed around 250 people. Today that number is around the 200 mark.
So using these two admittedly broad brush strokes, it’s not unreasonable to assume that the Lab is currently generating profits pretty close to those they were generating seven years ago.
In the interim, of course, what we’ve had is the whole bubble of the OpenSpace / Homestead situation, which both saw the grid almost double in size for no appreciable growth in active users*, and an associated boost to revenue / profits. That this bubble has now been completely deflated is obviously cause for concern – no-one is denying that; but by the same measure, it’s nowhere near as bleak a picture as you seem to be painting.
Where I will broadly agree with you is that “Sansar” is a gamble. I’ve voiced a fair few of my own reservations around it in this blog. But I also see the potential for the platform, and so I can appreciate why the Lab is moving in this direction. Obviously, what they’re doing is a risk – and again, no-one is denying that. But just because it is a risk, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be taken.
*If you need verification of the sharp rise in region numbers as a result of the OpenSpace / Homestead situation, please check the metrics on Tyche shepherd’s Grid survey site.
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You speak about 2008 I did refer to 2006 before or at the start of the hype when there were about 8000 sims online on the grid which were all full sims at that point at 200 USD per sim.
1.6 million a month revenue without mainland so a bit below 2 million. Let’s assume Linden Lab did run break even on that and Linden makes 3.5 million these days so yes they still make profit but those numbers come from 6.5 to 7 million monthly revenue so it is getting close fast I would say.
As for references: quick google
http://www.vrbites.com/news-2/linden-lab-unveils-project-sansar-the-vr-successor-of-second-life/
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/linden-lab-project-sansar-vr,30054.html
http://www.newsunited.com/project-sansar-the-forthcoming-news/18506132/
http://www.mondivirtuali.it/en/2015/09/10/project-sansar-opening-by-end-of-2016/
http://mmos.com/news/new-information-on-project-sansar
and there are plenty more articles naming Sansar the successor to Second Life I wonder why they all call it like that.
When at the peak there were almost 30000 private sims and now it is getting close to half that amount or equal to 50% decrease that should tell a lot.
Linden Lab used to make 7 million a month and now that is 3.5 million or close to that amount.
It is simple, when the loss of regions does not halt it is not looking good for Linden and I see no reason why the decline would halt.
Each CEO looked the other way still it is the most important thing for the grid.
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“You speak about 2008 I did refer to 2006 before or at the start of the hype”
Yes, but you went on to infer that today, the Lab is just “getting to break even”. My reference to 2008 was to demonstrate this is unlikely to be the case, but rather profits have likely fallen by to the levels of 2008.
“As for references: quick google”
And if you read the articles, you’ll see that in them, the Lab – Ebbe Altberg – doesn’t directly refer to “Sansar” as a “sequel” or “successor” to Second life. He refers to it being “in the spirit” of SL, and also may indicate the two will continue side-by-side. The Lab isn’t responsible for whatever headline is associated with an article for the sake of hype from the publication.
“Linden Lab used to make 7 million a month and now that is 3.5 million or close to that amount.”
Which is precisely my point. For a number of years (particularly 2009/2010) those profits were artificially boosted as a result of the OpenSpace / Homestead situation, which has now come completely to an end. Is this of concern? Yes, without a doubt. Would it be better if the downward trend in regions could be completely reversed? Yes. But is it as bleak a picture as you are endeavouring to paint at this point in time? No.
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In 2006 200 staff at 5000 $ a month average salary = 1 million a month in wages
Datacenter server costs + offices + Voice + Havoc Licence etc….
This will give you a cost of around 1.6 million
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Apropos of nothing.
Doesn’t matter what the Lab did / did not generate in revenue / profit in 2006. The fact remains that by 2008, some were estimating the Lab’s profits, pre-Homestead situation, were as high as US $40-45 million pa (a figure I’d perhaps say was on the conservatively high side), and today, whatever the actual amounts generated in revenue / profits, the figures are unlikely to be too far removed from those of 2008.
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