Totally against the trend, the team around CEO and co-founder of SideQuest Shane Harris just relaunched AltspaceVR, one of the most popular social VR experiences—until it was sunset three years ago (Episode E030 in German).
While more and more experiences get shut down, Shane believes that this is actually the best moment for AltspaceVR: „I think some people could easily think that I’m nuts for trying to do that right now. And I understand that. But I actually think that this time right now, here today is probably a more hospitable time for something like this to exist than Altspace ever had over the entirety of its nearly a decade long existence. And the reason for that is primarily that with all these other platforms gone, there is really no competition for what Altspace can provide.“
What does AltspaceVR provide what no other platform does? For one, it brings an iconic campfire that helped kickstart events like Immersive X, and is a symbol of coming together like no other experience has. But let’s say the community of more grown-up, serious creators and event organizers made it a place for everybody who already completed their puberty vocal change. With all providers leaving the sinking ship of social VR, it might also just be the best investment opportunity for brands like that.
When we recorded this episode with the new boss of AltspaceVR, the social VR experience had been live for a week. His team worked for over a year to reinstate what Altspace was before its sunset. And the community seems enthusiastic and already started creating and uploading worlds.
First malicious users appear, which one might read as a sign of relevance. So the relatively small team of about 20 people has to build moderation tools for now. But of course, new features are also supposed to come in the years ahead. All that with the support of generative AI, which for now is only being used to support developing code and finding bugs, as Shane explains. That creators and creatives are important, Shane Harris keeps saying. They even paid the designer of the original robot avatar to design a modern version of it.
Shane Harris also got the chance to speak about the history of SideQuest, which started with Shane’s Editor, an editor which was built for AltspaceVR so that you could build worlds without being a developer in the first place. The problem: Meta never accepted the app in the app store, which triggered Harris to start SideQuest in the first place. What followed was support by Palmer Luckey and a 12-million US-dollar investment by Google.
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