Just had a great conversation on Kent Bye's excellent Voice of VR podcast (stream above) around Making a Metaverse That Matters, and since Kent is an expert on the topic, we get into a super deep dive. Here's some highlights, including our debate around Meta not doing any research (far as I can tell) into sex differences in VR nausea:
- 9:10 -- How I got started with all this, and my approach to writing the book.
- 12:00 -- Why I have a strict literary definition of the Metaverse.
- 15:00 -- Unpacking some of the concepts which make virtual worlds and the Metaverse powerful.
- 17:00 -- What happened with Second Life when it was once touted as the coming of the Metaverse?
- 22:00 -- Why it's just as important to talk with the community creators as it is the platform developers.
- 23:00 -- My take on the "Metaverse is dead" media narrative.
- 29:00 -- The Second Life economy as the best model, as compared to cryptoverse / blockchain-based platforms, and compared with Epic/Fortnite's new model, and how it relates to creating for the sake of social motivation.
- 40:30 -- The necessity of having some kind of game mechanic in a metaverse platform, including the karma system in VRChat.
- 49:40 -- The importance of having diverse, non-human avatars.
- 54:30 -- My interview with Neal Stephenson and his influence on both metaverse platforms and cryptocurrency.
- 58:10 -- Ken and I debate the importance of danah boyd's argument that there may be a sex component to nausea in VR -- and that Meta has not researched the topic at all.
- 1:07:05 -- Why interoperability in the Metaverse is generally misunderstood, and why interoperability of community is far more important.
As always, feel free to discuss in Comments. Happy to follow up on questions!
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