Is Social VR the Answer?
The virtual reality community is afire with the news that AltSpace VR will be shutting their doors, despite having 35,000 monthly active users. Of course, given that they successfully raised $15.7 million, not everyone is convinced that the closure is a reflection on the VR landscape so much as an indictment of their spending habits. Still, high burn is an unfortunate reality for an industry that’s still being built, and finding investors willing to be there for the long haul can be difficult.
But with the successful launch of Facebook Spaces in March, and the ongoing positive publicity around it, we have a different question: is social VR something we actually want?
We’ve written before about the problems with social VR, but the landscape has changed a lot in the past year. Experiences like AltSpace VR and Rec Room, which prioritize spending time with strangers, are losing mindspace to Facebook Spaces or vTime, which encourage you to out with your real life friends. Note that the big difference here isn’t in the technology, but the marketing. There’s nothing stopping people from creating private rooms in AltSpace (er, sorry, that should be past tense), but all of their marketing was around big, public events where anyone could join.
Spaces, on the other hand, only lets you hang out with your friends. You can see a list of who else has signed up from your friends’ list, which makes it easier to find other people in the vast empty reaches of cyberspace, and you have access to your photos and other paraphernalia from your life. Of course, the downside is that there’s not a lot to do other than spend time with your friends. There’s something to be said for hanging out with friends who live far away (or friends who are grounded?), and the novelty is enough to keep it motoring for now, but does it have staying power?
We aren’t wildly excited about the chances, but it does seem to be winning the game. Of course, proving the lie of that statement is Project Sansar, which opened its beta this week. It’s a virtual reality offering from the creators of Second Life, and as we all know Second Life was all about hanging out with strangers. Except, once again, the marketing for Project Sansar is completely different from previous social VR attempts. It may let you hang out with strangers, but its primary message is “build your world,” not “sit with strangers and try to find something to talk about.” Sansar is all about design, letting users craft their own reality and then play inside it. There’s a drive and a purpose to interactions among users, and that gives it a weight and meaning that other social experiences lack.
Social VR has potential, but without a stronger call to action than “hang out with your friends but without an uncomfortable headset on instead of just curling up on your couch,” it’s unlikely to thrive.
Written by Wren Handman for www.hammerandtusk.com.
