Good conversation by readers around last week's post about a universal metaverse protocol, and whether we really need it. One reader was skeptical when I described Steam as basically "[A] metaverse portal, taking you from VRChat to Rec Room and beyond with a few clicks and several minutes of wait time", asking:
Are you serious when you're suggesting to readers of this post that we should be content with "a few clicks and several minutes of wait time" for hopping between destinations in the "worlds-wide meta-metaverse"... rather than striving for the simplicity (and instant transportation) of links between websites?
As broadband improves, I suspect we'll get to several seconds of wait time by this decade. But it's hard to see the clicks going away. Metaverse or not, we'll probably always need to go through some opt-in steps when going from one experience/IP realm to the next. Or as reader Adeon Writer puts it:
VRChat requires you opt-in to visiting any world it has not greenlit - so the idea of going from one experiences to [another] without clicks is a pipe dream. Even websites warn you when you are about to leave.
This points to a fundamental challenge to the Metaverse ideal, which typically describes a seamless immersive experience that is also open like the web:
I seriously doubt you can have both at the same time. If it's seamless, the Metaverse will have to be owned by a single company and its large partners. And if the Metaverse is open like the web, it'll have to come with web-like pop-ups and hurdles, asking you to confirm the use of cookies, login with your user ID, connect with your social media accounts, agree to a terms of service, etc, etc. It's yet another reason I believe the best end goal is where there are several Metaverses with seamless experiences competing with each other.
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