Linden Lab’s new board of directors (l to r): Brad Oberwager, J. Randall Waterfield and Raj Date
Back in January, I provided a piece on the Lab’s new owners / board of directors, including their biographical notes as posted by the Lab (see: Meet Linden Lab’s new board of directors).
Since then, user interest in the new owners has remained fairly high in some areas, with questions being asked on social media, in-world, during user group meetings (the most recent being the Web User Group), etc.
Some of the more common questions that have been answered by Lab staff (and that I’m aware of) comprise:
Have they been in-world? – Yes, they were in-world prior to the deal being finalised, and still hop in as needed.
Do they understand SL? – Yes, they are enthusiastic about the platform and have already been contributing thoughts / ideas.
Sansar had huge potential; the problem wasn’t that it made SL users unhappy (it was never about being another SL). Rather, I’d sat the problem was three-fold:
1) Unveiled to the general public far too early, with many features still being hammered into place or on the promise of “tomorrow”.
2) Lack of conviction over audience and direction, which in turn led to
3) Too much in the way of flop-flopping development priorities and attempting to grasp at audiences that crippled any sense of logical platform development, eventually pissing off many who had become enthused with the platform’s potential.
Whether this was a result of poor internal management or the result of pressure for the platform to offer some form of ROI (or both), I’ve no idea. But again, neither of these negate the basic promise of a platform like Sansar. As it is, the platform seems to be managing reasonably well for itself with its new owners.
The moment I learned Sansar wasn’t a continuous world but a series of unconnected “experiences”, that you can’t use any vehicle across borderlines, that our avies couldn’t even sit down, Sansar was dead for me. As it was for most SL customers.The hardware requirements were just too high. So you have to pay more in order to have a much worse experience than in SL. Most things we do in SL all the time were just not possibe in Sansar at all. 😮
Ya, that and the “typical LL” points you mentioned.
Sitting was one of the problems with launching Sansar too early.
As to “unconnected experiences”, Sansar offer “regions” big enough to contain all of Blake Sea in a single space – no need for region crossings – if desired, and the Lab did consider looking into making vehicle crossings between experiences possible – but vehicles never reached an advanced point of development where could practically used in Sansar prior to the final shift in emphasis / audience, and now the current direction of the platform sort-of negates their use.
I’d dispute “most of the things we do in SL were just not possible in Sansar” (and the lack of vehicles duly noted – considerable emphasis was placed on the development of gaming and other capabilities in Sansar that were easily equal to their opposites in SL; the problem was, just as LL got them to the point where they were rolling them out … they abandoned them in favour of an entire new direction.
And high-end hardware was only really an issue if you were using VR with Sansar. When running in Desktop mode, its specs are little different to the specs required to enjoy SL with elements like shadows enabled at a decent FPS.
“Sansar offer “regions” big enough to contain all of Blake Sea in a single space – no need for region crossings – ”
But that, for me, is the whole point of the Blake, that I can sail into it, cross it, visit the one or other yacht club, and then bugger off for better areas of Nautilus/Corsica. Without ever leaving my boat.
Live like you would die tomorrow, learn like you would live forever! (Gandhi) All artwork, music and photography is of my creation and all are originals if not otherwise stated.
Linden Lab’s new board of directors (l to r): Brad Oberwager, J. Randall Waterfield and Raj Date
Sansar had huge potential; the problem wasn’t that it made SL users unhappy (it was never about being another SL). Rather, I’d sat the problem was three-fold:
1) Unveiled to the general public far too early, with many features still being hammered into place or on the promise of “tomorrow”.
2) Lack of conviction over audience and direction, which in turn led to
3) Too much in the way of flop-flopping development priorities and attempting to grasp at audiences that crippled any sense of logical platform development, eventually pissing off many who had become enthused with the platform’s potential.
Whether this was a result of poor internal management or the result of pressure for the platform to offer some form of ROI (or both), I’ve no idea. But again, neither of these negate the basic promise of a platform like Sansar. As it is, the platform seems to be managing reasonably well for itself with its new owners.
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The moment I learned Sansar wasn’t a continuous world but a series of unconnected “experiences”, that you can’t use any vehicle across borderlines, that our avies couldn’t even sit down, Sansar was dead for me. As it was for most SL customers.The hardware requirements were just too high. So you have to pay more in order to have a much worse experience than in SL. Most things we do in SL all the time were just not possibe in Sansar at all. 😮
Ya, that and the “typical LL” points you mentioned.
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Sitting was one of the problems with launching Sansar too early.
As to “unconnected experiences”, Sansar offer “regions” big enough to contain all of Blake Sea in a single space – no need for region crossings – if desired, and the Lab did consider looking into making vehicle crossings between experiences possible – but vehicles never reached an advanced point of development where could practically used in Sansar prior to the final shift in emphasis / audience, and now the current direction of the platform sort-of negates their use.
I’d dispute “most of the things we do in SL were just not possible in Sansar” (and the lack of vehicles duly noted – considerable emphasis was placed on the development of gaming and other capabilities in Sansar that were easily equal to their opposites in SL; the problem was, just as LL got them to the point where they were rolling them out … they abandoned them in favour of an entire new direction.
And high-end hardware was only really an issue if you were using VR with Sansar. When running in Desktop mode, its specs are little different to the specs required to enjoy SL with elements like shadows enabled at a decent FPS.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Sansar offer “regions” big enough to contain all of Blake Sea in a single space – no need for region crossings – ”
But that, for me, is the whole point of the Blake, that I can sail into it, cross it, visit the one or other yacht club, and then bugger off for better areas of Nautilus/Corsica. Without ever leaving my boat.
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