Why Meta's Retail Stores Miss Where the Metaverse is Most Powerful

What's our evidence that Meta's Metaverse strategy is helplessly muddled? Well, there's Business Insider confirming what I reported, citing an insider last year. But even more evident is Meta trying to market its metaverse platform in the real world:

Meta said Monday that its first physical retail space will open on May 9 in Burlingame, California. The store will be at Meta’s Reality Labs complex, the office where its engineers work on technologies like virtual and augmented reality... Although Meta will sell its video chatting device Portal and Ray-Ban Stories glasses on site, most of the store’s real estate will be dedicated to showcasing the Oculus headset, a Meta spokesman said. That makes sense given Zuckerberg’s reportedly obsessive focus on the metaverse lately.    

The practical difficulties are many. As I discussed with Bloomberg's Parmy Olson:

Wagner James Au, author of “The Making of Second Life,” who blogs regularly about metaverse platforms, says Meta can’t underestimate the psychological barriers to introducing people to VR. “I’ve worked for metaverse platforms and you really have to wrap your arms around someone and manipulate their head and their face while you put this headset on them.” 

And that was a challenge requiring "VR condoms" even before there was, you know, a deadly global pandemic. But even beyond those issues, the fundamental problem is this:

The magic of metaverse platforms is inherently about users socializing together as avatars in remote places.

The metaverse "wow" moment comes not from using a VR headset per se, but the sensation of socializing and collaborating in the same virtual space in real time with people from all over the real life world. And that's possible on pretty much any device capable of displaying 3D graphics, including iPhones/Androids.

What's more, based on my reporting, the people most likely to prefer VR headsets to explore a metaverse platform tend to be shy, introverted, or physically housebound for one reason or another, and gravitate to HMD rigs to fully express themselves -- putting on dance shows or even juggling -- in a virtual social space. But those are also the people least likely to visit a real life showroom with strangers staring at and jostling up against them.

If Meta insists on having real life showrooms, one partial solution (as I discussed with Parmy on my call with her) is that they could feature a Horizon demonstration where someone in the store could virtually socialize live with people around the world. But doing a demo like that would require up to 30 minutes of preparation, time for the user to get acclimated, and comfortable enough to reach a point where they're sufficiently immersed to feel a transcendent, Proteus Effect moment.

But if Meta asked me (and they didn't), the real solution is make Horizon about as compelling on a PC/Mac, videogame console, or smartphone as it is in VR. Let consumers explore their metaverse platform on the devices they're already comfortable using, get them excited about the user community already in there, and then they might want to buy a Quest for the full immersive effect. That's one key reason why multi-device meta platforms VRChat and Rec Room have so many more users on their own metaverse platforms -- even and especially on Meta's own VR devices!

Comments

[Luther Weymann]

Obviously, Wagner gets it, and Mark, well, not as much as he needs to. That VR demo showroom will need liability insurance, handy wipes, and a good bucket for those who have never spun around and moved their head for the first time in a VR condom.

[Martin K.]

I've introduced dozens of people to VR and developed a certain routine. Part of that is to start with something without artificial locomotion and without the use of controllers, e.g. Apollo 11 VR or Wevr's theBlu. The next phase is to use controllers but no artificial locomotion, e.g. Beat Saber. Only if people are hooked by that, I introduce social VR using teleporting, but with muted mic and muted voices. This works for people from 8 to 80.

Does this convey the full experience of social VR? Hell, no! The ugly truth is that the first real impression of social VR is seriously off putting for most people due to toxic behaviour of other users. (And that's well documented, see for example https://www.extendedmind.io/why-women-dont-like-social-virtual-reality .)

Is that a problem? No, because the purpose of a demo in a store is not to convey the full experience but to get people hooked. Think of it like a trailer for a movie or video game: what attracts people are the visual aesthetics of the trailer - not the great storytelling nor the addictive gameplay, which you simply cannot convey in a trailer.

[Luther Weymann]

@Martin K. The Extended mind study was a good read. Thanks for including that. It reminds me exactly of my experiences trying to help day one avatars in SL.