Five News Stories from 2022 Likely to Be Even More Newsworthy in 2023

If you asked me which New World Notes posts from this year will become even more relevant in 2023, I'd say these:

Shock Stat: 1600 Second Life Community Creators Make $10,000+ Per Year From Their Virtual Content -- Despite Working On A Much Larger Platform, Far Fewer Creators On ROBLOX Make That Rate

Assuming Apple changes its policies around app monetization outside the App Store next year, as is expected, I suspect we'll see content creators start demanding a fairer split from mobile-centric metaverse platforms like, well, Roblox. They may even point to the fact that far more content creators make significant revenue from Second Life, even though it has a much smaller user base.

Metaverse Devs & Users: Government Regulation Is Coming Soon

Yes. "Soon", as in probably next year, even in the form of a Congressional hearing.

Lensa Scraping Artists' Work Without Their Consent Into Its "AI" Images -- Even The Artists' Signatures!

Similar to the above, I expect regulators and judges to step in with some early steps around copyright and AI image trainings.

AI Probably Won't Disrupt 3D World Creation, Argues Veteran Game Artist

Notwithstanding what I wrote above, plan for a slew of new startups and product launches in 2023 around the form of a "AI-based world generation!" pitch. And before these plans go awry, hopefully the founders will read the post.

Meta's New Vision Of The Future Doesn't Mention The Metaverse Even Once

I'm still pretty stunned no one else has pointed this out, but Meta didn't just post a year-end vision statement that was likely read and reviewed by over ten people, and forget to mention the Metaverse by accident. So expect the implications of that move to burst out and become more explicit in 2023.

Any 2022 news items I missed?

Comments

[bastocate]

I expect regulators and judges to step in with some early steps around copyright and AI image trainings.

[Martin K.]

Reflecting on 2022, I think it is notable that Crayta wasn't shut down after Unit 2 became part of Meta in 2021 but expanded to Facebook Gaming in June 2022: https://www.facebook.com/fbgaminghome/blog/welcome-unit-2-games .

Take this quote by the VP of Facebook Gaming: "..., we’ll expand the notion of a Facebook creator to include people who collaboratively build, publish and share games, worlds and new experiences on Facebook."

Or this one: "In the future, people on Facebook will create experiences in a matter of minutes without the need to code, while more advanced creators can make content limited only by their imagination. And we’re building these experiences by investing in and growing diverse engineering and product teams distributed internationally across the United States, United Kingdom and Europe."

Isn't it surprising that these quotes are not about Horizon Worlds but about the metaverse app Crayta?

What does this say about the future of Horizon Worlds?