Second Life on Steam?

[Selene Gregoire]

39 minutes ago, animats said:

Game completed!

That's the problem. Most on Steam will see it and judge it as a game. It's not a game. There is nothing to "complete". "Tourist trap" maybe, but not a game.

[Luna Bliss]

52 minutes ago, animats said:

Sansar is "OK, seen Aech's Garage, seen the Star Wars prop museum, been to the beach. That was fun. Game completed!".

Well maybe the most that can be hoped for now is that a few VR gamers will chance across Sansar and realize "wow, we can build VR experiences here"....and go from the more mindless game-playing into the creative realms.
I see more VR games & Experiences @ Steam now:

https://store.steampowered.com/vr#p=0&tab=NewReleases

And, did see a chart that VR use is increasing @ Steam.

 

[Janet Voxel]

Steam trolls are going to have a field day!

[Chic Aeon]

6 hours ago, ChinRey said:

30 positive and 10 negative reviews as I write this. Some of the positive reviews are obviously from people with some self interest in promoting Sansar but even if we exclude those, there seem to be more positive than negative ones. The balance seems to be shifting towards negative but it's really way too early to say.

 

Yes. So far Steam doesn't seem to bring in any significant number of newcomers at all. But it's still on early access and December is probably not a good month anyway since people tend to be busy with RL.

As I said probably somewhere else, according to info from the meeting following the STEAM announcement, the point of joining STEAM now wasn't about numbers as in citizenry, it was about TESTING with more people (this official comment). That seems to be going well and The Lab seems quite happy. Honestly, aside from the reported trolls it has all worked better than many folks expected.  

Some of the new folk have made "homes" (quickly for sure but still a good step), most have styled their avatars and some are creating for the STORE, so all in all I think it can be called a success.   

STEAM folks (like many forum folks) really just like to B**CH. They can't possibly say anything positive about anything. Not all of course, but plenty.  So the negative reviews were expected. Many of those negative reviews are just dumb with no reasoning.  Legitimate negativity counts, but the ones that are very off-topic --- not so much. 

Soon there will be an official onboarding process aimed at the STEAM folks (and likely others that just wander in but I am not clear on that).  But there are certainly people taking part and not just coming in for ten minutes and leaving. All good. 

Concurrency was up by 400% last time someone posted.   So I guess it is just how you look at it. 

Edited December 8, 2018 by Chic Aeon

[Bree Giffen]

Some have commented about the recent crackdown of sexual content on websites like Tumblr but Steam has recently made a stand against such puritanical purification efforts.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/06/valve-we-want-to-allow-everything-on-steam-including-something-that-you-hate/

In my opinion, Sansar needs to get onto the Sony store and connect to the millions of PSVR users. It seems like Sansar is going the more PG route and I'm fine with that. 

[ChinRey]

36 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

Concurrency was up by 400% last time someone posted.   So I guess it is just how you look at it. 

Or when you look at it. Right now, as I write this, there are a total of 45 people logged on to all the experiences listed in the Atlas. Last time I checked was on Thursday, the day after the Steam launch. There were 31 people in the Atlas experiences at that moment.

Edited December 8, 2018 by ChinRey

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, ChinRey said:

Or when you look at it. Right now, as I write this, there are a total of 45 people logged on to all the experiences listed in the Atlas. Last time I checked was on Thursday, the day after the Steam launch. There were 31 people in the Atlas experiences at that moment.

Thursday is Product Meeting day. There are always a lot of folks on Thursdays depending on the day. I was at the meeting (or a second or third occurance of it) and there were about 75 people then "showing". There were likely plenty of folks watching the meeting stream (you don't need to be logged in for that). 

Steam stats said 75 people the first day joining JUST from STEAM. They don't count those of us that log in through the traditional methods. Also those in Lookbook and in building in edit mode don't show up.  But while there are MANY ways to look at concurrency and count, there are definitely way more folks inworld. And sales are up for a fair amount of people too.  

 

Some varying statistics:  https://ryanschultz.com/2018/12/06/lets-talk-stats-the-various-sansar-user-statistics-now-available-and-why-they-differ-from-each-other/

Edited December 9, 2018 by Chic Aeon

[Callum Meriman]

37 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

Steam stats said 75 people the first day joining JUST from STEAM.

Looking at the time played against positive reviews, I would say a fair chunk of the diehard regulars swapped over to steam so they could leave a glowing review. This means most of those 30 positives will be in that 75.

Still, a 100% increase to start is likely ok. It's not to be sneezed at. But all the graphs I see show the daily average back at 50, so the spike was quite shortlived.

From here it depends what the Lab do, will they listen to what steam people want, or will they do "an SL" and add things people don't need and won't use.

A decent induction/tutorial would seem to - logically - be very high on the list. You can't expect people to swap headset to monitor to read a wiki, then back to headset to try it, then back to wiki to see what they missed.

Edited December 9, 2018 by Callum Meriman

[Wulfie Reanimator]

Regarding Steam stats, especially from sites like SteamCharts or SteamSpy, those are not reliable anymore. (I'm not disclaiming the numbers given though, this is just an aside.)

A while back, Steam changed the privacy defaults (and set everybody's settings to the new default) to ones that would hide game ownership and activity on a profile.

SteamSpy, which has been the longest-standing stat tracker before Valve even provided an easy API to poll for these things, has been interviewed about this many times.
https://kotaku.com/latest-steam-update-is-bad-news-for-steam-spy-1825163900
https://kotaku.com/steam-spy-is-back-but-not-as-accurate-as-before-1825608646
https://kotaku.com/valve-shuts-down-new-way-of-estimating-game-sales-on-st-1827374270

Just reading those URL headlines gives you an idea of how bad it is.

[ChinRey]

6 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Regarding Steam stats, especially from sites like SteamCharts or SteamSpy, those are not reliable anymore. (I'm not disclaiming the numbers given though, this is just an aside.)

The numbers I gave, were sraight from the Atlas itself, adding up the visitor counts from all listings there.

 

49 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

But while there are MANY ways to look at concurrency and count, there are definitely way more folks inworld. And sales are up for a fair amount of people too. 

I have a very strong feeling most Sansar users are in private experiences not listed in the Atlas and only LL has reliable stats for that.

 

But no matter how we look at it, the numbers we have now don't say very much. Let's wait two or three months and see.

[Phoebe Avro]

The good reviews of Sansar on steam are all fake! LL employees and people with an interest in Sansar i.e. creator there quite obvious by the fan boy wording in the reviews!

Edited December 9, 2018 by Phoebe Avro

[Chic Aeon]

39 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

The numbers I gave, were sraight from the Atlas itself, adding up the visitor counts from all listings there.

 

I have a very strong feeling most Sansar users are in private experiences not listed in the Atlas and only LL has reliable stats for that.

 

Yes that is absolutely TRUE and since a lot of folks there are busy building unless there is an "event" only The Lab counts us :D.

 

39 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

But no matter how we look at it, the numbers we have now don't say very much. Let's wait two or three months and see.

Well whatever happens to concurrency, the experiment was a success in many ways as it has already accomplished several testing goals. That's really all I am saying.  

 

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, Callum Meriman said:

Looking at the time played against positive reviews, I would say a fair chunk of the diehard regulars swapped over to steam so they could leave a glowing review. This means most of those 30 positives will be in that 75.

From what I know and Discord I would say more like 12. 

 

1 hour ago, Callum Meriman said:

Still, a 100% increase to start is likely ok. It's not to be sneezed at. But all the graphs I see show the daily average back at 50, so the spike was quite shortlived.

The AVERAGE daily concurrency was never at 50 before. That was more like the max (of people IN PUBLIC experiences). In the middle of the night there were like THREE LOL. 

1 hour ago, Callum Meriman said:

From here it depends what the Lab do, will they listen to what steam people want, or will they do "an SL" and add things people don't need and won't use.

While they do have their own roadmap, they very much listen to the folks (in general). The big stumbling block these days is that we cannot convince them that AVATARS actually matter.  That may not change. Lots of new possibilities each month though so that is a good thing. 

1 hour ago, Callum Meriman said:

A decent induction/tutorial would seem to - logically - be very high on the list. You can't expect people to swap headset to monitor to read a wiki, then back to headset to try it, then back to wiki to see what they missed.

There are some building tutorials by Elliot. Some info tutorials by Medhue.   The DISCORD group is quite helpful. I was having trouble getting an animation in and got help today. Not sure if that solved the problem, but I have learned a lot there. 

 

Callum, do you actually GO TO SANSAR anymore? Or are you just commenting from past experiences. I never see you on DISCORD.

 

[Chic Aeon]

6 hours ago, Selene Gregoire said:

That's the problem. Most on Steam will see it and judge it as a game. It's not a game. There is nothing to "complete". "Tourist trap" maybe, but not a game.

There are MANY game experiences in Sansar.  So games within the PLATFORM, definitely. There are places that are NOT games too, like mine. Some of the STEAM folks are having a great time with the games.  You might want to try it sometime. 

[Callum Meriman]

Just now, Chic Aeon said:

Callum, do you actually GO TO SANSAR anymore? Or are you just commenting from past experiences. I never see you on DISCORD.

I do sansar in my wrinkled old avatar, faster loading times pushed me over that bridge of ignore/visit about six weeks to a month ago. I never worked out how to rotate myself in 2D mode though so after that one attempt at 2D in scurry waters I resigned myself to be a 100% VR person. That does limit my playtime a little due to batteries and nausea.

You likely wouldn't see me, I don't do discord. I also don't use voice/speak for various reasons I don't need to go into.Most office hours and events are out of my timezone, I am 16 to 18 hours ahead of California time depending if it's summer or winter.

[femhalf]

Steam users are entirely different than SL users.  They are not creators or people who like to customize avatars.  They are mostly consisted of people who like building things with prefabs, such as it is in Minecraft.  These people usually upload pre-made avatars and objects from popular 3D websites such as Sketchfab and Unity.  They are the same people who like to import things inside of VR Chat.

If there was ever a mass exodus from SL, then Sansar would be the wrong platform to migrate to, because it's not a platform for creators, or for detailed avatar customization.  The only real alternative would be High Fidelity.  It's got major flaws though, such as their non-intuitive UI and creative process.

VR Chat would be another alternative, but the fact that there isn't a 3rd person viewpoint is a deal-breaker for most SL users.  There's also no building tools (they've become pretty much irrelevant in SL these days too though).

[Chic Aeon]

11 minutes ago, femhalf said:

If there was ever a mass exodus from SL, then Sansar would be the wrong platform to migrate to, because it's not a platform for creators, or for detailed avatar customization

I completely disagree. I have been over there CREATING almost every day. Some were items I made long ago and redid. Others were original to Sansar. I have learned a ton there and Sansar is filled with very creative people. Who do you think makes all those experiences?

These are experiences made TOTALLY BY ME.    I have others that are not published yet. 

https://atlas.sansar.com/experiences/chicaeon

I am getting a bit peeved about all the comments from people who obviously know nothing about the platform.

Get a life or be quiet. Geez. 

[Wulfie Reanimator]

54 minutes ago, femhalf said:

Steam users are entirely different than SL users.  They are not creators or people who like to customize avatars.  They are mostly consisted of people who like building things with prefabs, such as it is in Minecraft.  These people usually upload pre-made avatars and objects from popular 3D websites such as Sketchfab and Unity.  They are the same people who like to import things inside of VR Chat.

This is a MASSIVE over-simplification, arguably very narrow-minded, and just plain wrong.

Gamers, just like the non-gaming SL population, love to customize/personalize their own in-game character. In fact, gatchas and other paid aspects of character customization are one of the biggest sources of revenue in the gaming industry (for better or worse). Gear-based games even get dubbed things like Fashionframe (Warframe) or Fashion Souls (Dark Souls).

To pretend like no gamer wants to customize couldn't be more wrong, and then going on to say that the VR Chat population just imports someone else's work as-is and pretending like that's also the entirety of Steam is ridiculous. (I guess you're going to conveniently look past the fact that this is very common practice in Second Life as well...)

[cont.] I don't even have the words to describe how baffling it is to read something like "..building things with prefabs, like Minecraft.." when Minecraft is the modern equivalent of LEGOs, which is an incredible creative outlet. You just can't use the word "prefab" in the context you're trying to use it in. If you do, anybody in SL who isn't creating everything themselves outside of SL and importing it is just "building with prefabs." Prims? Just prefabs. Buying clothes? Just prefabs, someone made those for you. Choosing which clothes and accessories you want to put together is not creative if you didn't create those 100% yourself.

I am typically very calm and composed at the face of mind-boggling posts, but this kind of vast chasm of blind ignorance has me fuming.

Edited December 9, 2018 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Callum Meriman]

56 minutes ago, femhalf said:

Steam users are entirely different than SL users.  They are not creators or people who like to customize avatars.

Gunna have to majorly disagree with you there. Do a youtube search of "character customisation" sometime. In fact, clothing and weapon skins from lootboxes are one of the biggest money earners in the entire sphere of gaming.

I've spent days on my BDO avatars, and it's the same in most MMORPG's, the level of character customisation can be extremely high.

Edited December 9, 2018 by Callum Meriman

[femhalf]

14 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

I completely disagree. I have been over there CREATING almost every day. Some were items I made long ago and redid. Others were original to Sansar. I have learned a ton there and Sansar is filled with very creative people. Who do you think makes all those experiences?

These are experiences made TOTALLY BY ME.    I have others that are not published yet. 

https://atlas.sansar.com/experiences/chicaeon

I am getting a bit peeved about all the comments from people who obviously know nothing about the platform.

Get a life or be quiet. Geez. 

Calm down. 

I should've said, that it's not a platform for creative freedom due to all the restrictions.  I'm not just talking about adult content either.  I'm also talking about experiences.  The process in SL is a lot more streamlined.  Creators can upload, drag and drop objects freely, then change things on the fly.  From what i've read and seen, you cannot do that with Sansar experiences.  Correct me if i'm wrong though.  Creators also have the ability to build within SL using it's tools.

 

22 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

This is a MASSIVE over-simplification, arguably very narrow-minded, and just plain wrong.

Gamers, just like the non-gaming SL population, love to customize/personalize their own in-game character. In fact, gatchas and other paid aspects of character customization are one of the biggest sources of revenue in the gaming industry (for better or worse). Gear-based games even get dubbed things like Fashionframe (Warframe) or Fashion Souls (Dark Souls).

To pretend like no gamer wants to customize couldn't be more wrong, and then going on to say that the VR Chat population just imports someone else's work as-is and pretending like that's also the entirety of Steam is ridiculous. (I guess you're going to conveniently look past the fact that this is very common practice in Second Life as well...)

Yes, it's a generalization, but it's not entirely wrong.  Gamers do not like complex building tools or complex avatar customization.  If they did, then virtual worlds such as SL, Opensim, Sinespace, IMVU, would be popular.  Black Desert Online has one of the most advanced character customization tools on the market, yet, it's not that popular within the BDO community.  Gamers focus on other activities within the game instead.  Same happens in SL and other virtual worlds.  People are more engaged with events and activities.

Sansar and High Fidelity are struggling because they expect the average user to create content.  The average gamer isn't going to learn Maya or Blender just to create a detailed avatar.  They love pre-made objects and avatars, and this is why VR Chat is currently the most popular virtual world.  Most of them are Steam users with a large presence.

SL is the exception though because it was one of the first to do it and established a foothold with people who do like creating things.  You can't seriously think that even 1/4th of the SL userbase are creators.

[femhalf]

7 minutes ago, Callum Meriman said:

Gunna have to majorly disagree with you there. Do a youtube search of "character customisation" sometime. In fact, clothing and weapon skins from lootboxes are one of the biggest money earners in the entire sphere of gaming.

I've spent days on my BDO avatars, and it's the same in most MMORPG's, the level of character customisation can be extremely high.

I probably should've worded it better, because it seems people are missing my point.  I'm talking about detailed avatar customization as it is in SL, with sliders, appliers, attachments, etc.  Other games use pre-made objects made by the developers, such as Fortnite skins or lootboxes.  I'm not arguing against that, because those are definitely popular.  I'm talking about user-generated content, such as Catwa or Maitreya, or IMVU's own character customization process.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

3 hours ago, Phoebe Avro said:

The good reviews of Sansar on steam are all fake! LL employees and people with an interest in Sansar i.e. creator there quite obvious by the fan boy wording in the reviews!

My review is not fake and I'm not with LL or connected to them in anyway.   care to restate that?  and not a fanboy either.   you lumped everybody into one group.  smooth.

[Callum Meriman]

1 minute ago, femhalf said:

I probably should've worded it better, because it seems people are missing my point.  I'm talking about detailed avatar customization as it is in SL, with sliders, appliers, attachments, etc

You are still incorrect, sorry. I'd say close to 100% of gamers enjoy a unique avatar no matter what the game. They will all work within the limits and abilities the developers give.

Even in a game like FFXIV where you are mostly limited to minor face changes and different race, hair and markings, I have spent days making sure that my avatar looks to be a cute Miqo'te as possible! The size of the "show us your ____ glamour" threads on those official forums is proof to me that most people enjoy customising their character

[Selene Gregoire]

4 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

There are MANY game experiences in Sansar.  So games within the PLATFORM, definitely. There are places that are NOT games too, like mine. Some of the STEAM folks are having a great time with the games.  You might want to try it sometime. 

I don't have the kind of money it would take to buy the equipment needed. 

Besides, I'm waiting for the Holodeck to be released.

[Theresa Tennyson]

8 hours ago, femhalf said:

Steam users are entirely different than SL users.  They are not creators or people who like to customize avatars.  They are mostly consisted of people who like building things with prefabs, such as it is in Minecraft.  These people usually upload pre-made avatars and objects from popular 3D websites such as Sketchfab and Unity.  They are the same people who like to import things inside of VR Chat.

 

Silly me - I thought that most of the people on a game distribution website would like to, well,  play games.