Veteran Metaverse Analyst Gwyneth Llewelyn on Meta's Horizon Woes -- And How They Might Be Improved

Longtime metaverse analyst and developer Gwyneth Llewelyn recently posted a good reader comment analyzing Meta's early efforts in the space. And I do mean "longtime" -- this is her avatar from 2006 when she was in a trademark dispute over a collectivist utopia in Second Life. (Yes, that's a thing.)

Leaping off from my observation that Meta's Horizon Worlds ad for the Super Bowl seems depressingly targeted at middle age people who feel washed up, she dives right in:

Actually, let me play Devil's Advocate here. What's so wrong about targeting GenXers with a depressing video? Most of them are on Facebook anyway, and already depressed (and getting worse). So that's Meta's target audience — trying to recapture those GenXers who finally gave up on Facebook and are ready to try the Next Best Thing.

Interestingly, the best part of that ad is the most depressing one — the one that uses real life action with CGI for the animatronics. That's the bit where the director's got creative.

The worst bit is, well, Horizon. I'm sorry, but shelling out a small fortune for a VR headset to get legless, low-polygon avatars that seem to do little more than crowd around you, having a weird minimalistic almost-wireframe-y background of speeding flying cars... I don't know, but the appeal is simply not there.

Unless things start to improve soon and fast, I'm not really sure that Horizon will last long as a Meta product...

However, I'm not saying that Meta will move out of VR gadgets and games. These are lucrative businesses by themselves, with strong, well-proven business models. And with hundreds of millions of computer game players world-wide, that's not a niche market. What Meta could attempt to do is a long-running series of (independent) games that use the same avatar technology, and capitalize on the ability of players to personalize them (even outside of the game itself) on a 'social' VR platform where outfits and props for avatars are for sale — a bit like the old PlayStation Home, which has been resurrected by the fan base, and, looking at their Git repository, it's being actively maintained.

Now, I never owned a game console (I have no time for that!), so I cannot tell how much interest PlayStation Home has (or had). There is clearly a reason for why Sony abandoned it in 2015 (I just don't know what reason was given at the time). Nevertheless, the notion that a fan base can resurrect such a project shows that there is some interest in such a product. How 'niche' it will ever be is anyone's question. But I'd say that Horizon could become the next 'PlayStation Home' for the Oculus ecosystem.

Ah, PlayStation Home. Remember when Second Life had so much industry buzz, one of the top console manufacturers in the world launched a (poorly executed) alternative? Pepperidge Hamlet remembers.

Gwyn, who's led development on metaverse projects for major companies through her firm Beta Technologies, goes on to analyze Meta and Horizon's future prospects, and has some good advice for Meta going forward:

The question is just if Meta is really interested in such a niche audience. 

It's also weird to think that Facebook acquired Oculus back in 2014, Horizon is just starting to roll out after 7 or 8 years of 'development', and the best they can show is an ad with legless avatars — while in 2018 they were internally discussing that it would take them perhaps another decade until they get some traction from a VR-based 'metaverse'.

Ha. I predict that Facebook will not be around in a decade any longer! I hardly believe that Zuckerberg will manage to push all his Boomer/GenXers currently on Facebook into his home-cooked VR social environment — even if he gives them all some Oculus goggles for free. The issue here is that most Facebook users are not using it on a desktop computer, but rather on a mobile phone, and that's the kind of experience you need to get billions of users.

No, people will not spend 'all their time' with VR goggles on, no matter how sad and depressing their lives are. On the other hand, they will carry their smartphones everywhere — and everybody will have one (or more than one). The popularity of Meta's 2D environments comes from the simple fact that 2D social spaces only require a mobile phone and an opposing thumb, and can be accessed anytime, anywhere.

You can't do that with VR unless you get a brain implant from Elon Musk's Neuralink. That technology is already here and it's not sci-fi, but it'll require another decade or so until it gets approved by the FDA and similar regulatory bodies world-wide to become a routine surgery that can be done anywhere in safety.

It will also cost substantially more than an Oculus Quest :-)

Yes. To Gwyn's Gen X comments, I should clarify my original point: There's nothing at all wrong about Gen Xers playing in the metaverse or using VR, far from it. But as I wrote, "[a] key advantage to Metaverse platforms is indeed that they transcend user age, bringing together people across generations."

Or to put it another way, very shortly after Meta's Horizon ad aired during the Super Bowl, Gen X rock gods Foo Fighters "performed" in Horizon Venues. (Kinda sorta, it was pre-recorded.)

Live or not, isn't it a more exciting message for Horizon to say that this virtual concert shows how cutting edge Foo Fighters still is -- and how to enables the band to find and build a new generation of fans among Gen Z's metaverse denizens?

Comments

[camilia fid3lis nee Patchouli Woollahra]

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. What are the chances Meta will listen to Gwyneth when they won't even listen to first-party veterans they hired from the field?

[Martin K.]

> The popularity of Meta's 2D environments comes from the simple fact that 2D social spaces only require a mobile phone and an opposing thumb, and can be accessed anytime, anywhere.

For anyone who has missed it: Meta is planning to bring Horizon to mobile this year, see https://uploadvr.com/zuckerberg-horizon-mobile-announced/

[Martin K.]

> shelling out a small fortune for a VR headset to get legless, low-polygon avatars that seem to do little more than crowd around you, having a weird minimalistic almost-wireframe-y background of speeding flying cars... I don't know, but the appeal is simply not there.

Without experiencing eye contact with the avatar of another familiar person in VR, most people will probably not understand the fascination of legless, low-polygon avatars in VR.

From the perspective of VR players, meeting another person in flat-screen apps like SecondLife feels like you are controlling a tiny puppet that stands next to another tiny puppet controlled by another person. In VR, on the other hand, it feels like you are actually meeting another person face-to-face (including having eye contact etc.) while both of you wear full-body costumes. The fact that these costumes consist of few polygons and have no legs is a minor detail in comparison.

[sirhc desantis]

Been reading ser Llewelyn since - actually, think was reading ser L and you before making an account in SL. So I blame you both =^^=
Very sensible stuff.
Especially the 'outside' dev stuff. Even been playing with a few 3d 'engines' again out of curiosity since my makie stuff genes were piqued when I was tempted to try out for one of these 'gamejams' the kids seem to like and got some pos feedback.
Now - who are Gen X meant to be this week agewise? I lose track.

[Adeon Writer]

I said it back in 2007 and I'll say it again:

Second Life was around before Facebook is a thing, and Second Life will still be around when Facebook is no longer a thing.

[Adeon]

As a rule, Gen X is 40 to 59.

20 to 39 is millennial aka Gen Y.

Younger are Zoomer aka Gen Z, with the youngest being sometimes called Gen A.