Unless I’m mistaken, the most popular fiction in which VR is wildly popular is… Ready Player One, Snow Crash, and Neuromancer. And in all of them, VR is only popular because people are trying to escape the hellscape that unrestrained capitalism has turned the planet into.
I dunno. Give it a few more years, maybe.
That’s also because in VR you could build, inhabit, and explore worlds that felt real, giving you a sense of liberty in a world largely without. In the real world, VR has already been tainted by the capitalism - indeed, Decentraland specifically is largely a collection of vacant lots, half-finished projects, and corporate playgrounds. The most functional areas are those owned by megacorps.
Capitalism beat us to VR. The choice will be live in the real world, where there are at least some spaces for you outside of the system, or dive into a constructed one run by the people you were initially trying to escape.
And people still don’t know what the fuck a metaverse is
A masterclass in colossal failure
It was a cash hole the lizard man could pour money into so that the story became how bad they fucked up the metaverse, and not the burgeoning story about how they created an algorithm that destroys democracy for a few extra dollars per active user.
From what I understand Facebook/meta is just a very small part of the metaverse but I could be wrong
I can tell you what the Metaverse is not. A corporate social space. That said there is interest in what it could be out side of the corporate dystopia.
I have been imagineering a VR Theme Park with highly detailed dark rides that is online and thus a Metaverse by definition and it ranks in the top VR apps and miles above all the social focus Metaverses, especially the corporate ones. I am sure there will be other Metaverses that catch on too, it is just hard to see when the corporations shit all over the term by presenting such an awful, boring and downright creepy take on it.
The future is a dead mall
My local mall has made a huge comeback over the last three or four years. Every weekend all the empty kiosks are taken over and a bunch of tables are set up by antique dealers and traders, and they basically use the entire mall as a giant flea market.
There is also a large fitness center at the mall, as well as a large gymnasium where they do gymnastics and whatever they call it, like gladiator/ obstacle course type training. Those have scheduled classes pretty much all day, and so all those people are constantly coming and going.
Most of the store fronts that were vacated by things like Radio Shack and Aeropostale and other big chains that seem to have evaporated are now filled with small businesses. There’s an independent toy store, music store {instruments not records), liquor store, and a number of small offices such as a dentist and eye doctor, not really traditional mall merchants, but they are driving traffic better than Macy’s had been for decades.
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That’s the mall future I want tbh. As long as parking is free. Include a lil park on some corner away from cars and better/cheaper food options and I would hang there all day. Malls in Japan are on another level. Lots of small unique locally owned businesses.
Germany put their malls on top of their train stations. Those malls will always generate revenue.
This is great. Transforming malls into things that people actually want instead what they are told they want.
What, seven shoe stores and four jewelry stores all right across from one another isn’t sustainable?
It’s funny, like see the absurdity and unfairness of it, but hidden behind that is the fact that like, those four jewelry stores aren’t even competing, they are owned by the same one or two companies, and those one or two companies are owned by the same handful of old country club families, and they also own the mall, half of the other stores, and everything in them is made in factories owned by some other handful of oligarchs. It’s fucked.
And that report was like a year ago, imagine how it’s looking now lol.
Edit: Might be worth pointing out this is not Facebook’s Metaverse, but rather Decentraland, a web 3.0 crypto metaverse that is even shittier than Zuck’s version.
Half legit half rhetorical question. If I wanted to see what the metaverse is like, how would I even do that? It has always felt like something in closed beta, or like an obscure Sony service that you need a PS5 and multiple premium memberships to access. I don’t know if it’s a program you install, a website you go to, or what. The fediverse might have accessibility issues but it’s not nearly as bad as whatever the metaverse is. I actually didn’t expect to still be saying “whatever the metaverse is” at this point but it never got any clearer.
It’s an abstract concept that nobody is willing to pin down to specific requirements, only general principles. If you actually want a peak at what people are hyping just try vrchat. Prepare for massive culture whiplash, weird avatars, trolls, and things that are off putting to some like sexualized avatars and furries. And of course it’s not for everyone and every application, that’s corporate hype stupidity. Why do I still think there’s something really important there? Cause there’s something really special about all the small details. People who never would’ve met talking across thousands of miles “face to face.” It’s like our monkey brains process actual personal connection and bypass most the adversarial bullshit we’ve been cultivating in text social media.
I’ve seen vrchat and it looks awesome. I didn’t care about it until I found out anybody can make avatars and levels. It’s no IMVU. It’s also pretty straightforward to type vrchat in a search engine and find somewhere to download the client. I found the article for this post and they’re talking about a thing called decentraland. The metaverse is apparently any online game that uses a crypto wallet as the account, but decentraland seems like the only game available. What’s the thing where nobody has legs then? That’s what I thought the metaverse was.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/metaverse-decentraland-report-active-users
The quote I like the most on this subject is: “The metaverse isn’t a place; it’s a time in history when our digital identity and goods have as much or more importance than our real life versions.” I don’t think we’re there yet, but it also makes little (rational) sense that people spend money for virtual items in video games.
I think the closest playable analogues are actually Fortnite and Roblox. Interconnected worlds with external avatars that cross them. You play experiences vs. games. There’s brand integration so Goku can fight John Wick. It’s pretty close?
The fediverse might have accessibility issues but it’s not nearly as bad as whatever the fediverse is
Didn’t you mean to say metaverse the second time you mentioned fediverse?
If I wanted to see what the metaverse is like, how would I even do that?
But a Quest and install Gorilla Tag.
A Quest 1 at this point is about 100 dollars used. A Quest 2 is about 250, and a Quest 3 is about 500. Pick your level of bang for buck, then most of the things that could be described as metaverses are free to play/use.
A real metaverse would essentially just be “the internet” but for VR. We don’t have that. But the most popular metaverse-like stuff we have is akin to second-life type stuff. User created spaces all connected together by a hub and spoke system. VRchat is the most populous, rec room is also pretty big, Altspace might still be good, I haven’t checked in a while. Probably lots of other options. Meta of course wants their “Horizons” to be the metaverse, but in actuality it’s the crappiest free option.
Speaking of Second life, they did make a VR port of it, but last I tried it sucked and was hard to get working. Don’t know if they have done any more work on it or if they gave up.
I think it’s mostly just still too early. We are only just now getting headsets that are worth it for normal people and not just us Autistic people. So VR is only just starting it’s trek towards mainstream. I know 20 million headsets have been sold, but retention is not high yet. It should be starting with the Quest 3 and other headsets of this generation, since normal people actually like it now.
https://horizon.meta.com/ I don’t care what anyone else says, Horizon is the Metaverse.