New World Notes

Only People Not Already Using Metaverse Platforms Have "Lost Interest" -- And Most People In Them Don't Care About the Metaverse Per Se

I missed this Yahoo! News article from last week but I can't let this claim pass:

“People have kind of lost interest in the metaverse, because characters look like cartoons with no legs,” Marc Petit, Epic Games’ VP and general manager of Unreal Engine, told Yahoo Finance. “I mean, who wants to be that? This is not attractive.”

Petit’s critique is a not-so-thinly veiled reference to Meta’s “Horizon Worlds” platform. The company’s primary metaverse experience, “Horizon Worlds” features avatars without legs and graphics that are far from those found in modern big-budget video games.

It's true there's little public interest in Horizon Worlds, but then again, Rec Room's avatars are also leg-free and the company just reported 3 million monthly active users on VR headsets alone (mostly on Meta Quest, ironically enough), so this criticism doesn't generally apply.

The "people" who have lost interest in the Metaverse, broadly speaking, are not metaverse platform users themselves. But then again, well over 500 million other people are already active in one or more of them.

Which brings me to my other point: Most people in metaverse platforms aren't interested in -- or even aware of -- "the Metaverse" per se, but in the fun, creativity, and community they have in the specific platforms they play in, or that their friends are playing. VRChat is also thriving, and does not even call itself a metaverse platform. Any mass market product that depends on Gen Z consumers knowing what venture capitalists say about a concept from a 1992 novel is going to have a bad time.

Speaking of which, another burr from the article:

Reader Rant: Other Companies Are Delivering on Meta's Metaverse Vision More Than Meta Itself

Longtime reader Martin K. has a pretty excellent rant responding to Meta's vision for the Metaverse from its global exec Nick Clegg. And while I might recommend taking some of it with some dashes of sodium, Martin hits pretty hard:

Maybe the most interesting aspects of that essay are the things that Meta is doing today but Nick Clegg is not talking about. For example, regarding "Economic opportunity — how we can give people more choice, and maintain a thriving digital economy." The evolving metaverse crypto-scene is full of scams, fraud, rug-pulls, Ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes, bubbles without any real value, etc. What is Meta doing to protect their users? They just introduced NFTs on Instagram this month.

Or regarding "Equity and inclusion — how we can make sure these technologies are designed inclusively and in a way that’s accessible." Contrast this with all the people who are excluded from using Horizon Worlds today: To use Horizon Worlds, you need a Oculus Rift or Quest 2, but Meta still requires a Facebook account to use a Quest 2. In fact, they don't sell the Quest 2 in Germany, because bundling products in this way is probably unlawful in Germany. Even Quest 1 users cannot use Horizon Worlds (unless they run the app on a PC). Users outside Canada and the U.S. must not use Horizon Worlds. Users below the age of 18 years must not use Horizon Worlds.

That's not quite fair, you may think; for instance, Horizon is still in beta, right?

More from Martin:

I Love Tim Sweeney's Vision for the Metaverse -- But Don't Get How Apple & Google Are Such a Threat to It

As a good compare and contrast with Meta's questionable vision for the Metaverse, here's a long weekend read -- a Financial Times Q&A with Epic Games' Tim Sweeney. Who might disagree, but I totally think this is his nice way of saying "WTF is Meta even thinking?":

[Meta's vision is] in many ways broader than Epic’s. We see this as a central entertainment medium, and they see this as a medium that will connect everybody across distances for any purpose including work, and just hanging out chatting. And they talk a lot about open platform principles: they’re not building a Meta walled garden, they’re trying to contribute to standards and practices that lead towards an open metaverse. And I really like that vision that they’ve articulated. On the other hand, there’s all their actual existing business practices and all their actual existing businesses, where they run ads associated with your content feed and don’t revenue share that with the creators of the content that drove the engagement. And there is an ad economy that is completely controlled by them, which is not an open ad economy and has all the manifestations of an entirely closed ecosystem.

Wait, Mark said we're going to go into the Metaverse to do office work... right?

I’m not sure if that vision actually works, because it’s not very fun to sit around in 3D and just talk to people. It gets really awkward really fast. A bunch of guys can’t get together and just sit in a room for hours and have a conversation, right? You have to be shooting darts or playing billiards or shooting hoops or doing something together to break up the dull moments and keep you entertained for a long period of time. And that’s what this medium does. I think if you strip the entertainment aspect from it, you end up with a super creepy version of America Online chat rooms!

I might go a step further and suggest playing with building blocks while in the meeting, as a kind of focus-creating 3D doodler, like Sine Wave does in Breakroom. But yes, if it's not inherently fun, I doubt it will scale.

My one question (and hopefully I'll get to ask Sweeney myself sometime), is why so much concern over Apple and Google controlling the Metaverse? Here's Tim's case:

Three Fundamental Flaws in Meta’s Vision for the Metaverse

There’s a new long essay on Meta’s vision for the Metaverse from Nick Clegg, formerly a UK politician and now President of Global Affairs at Meta. (He was the company’s point person when Facebook and Instagram’s many failings were brought under harsh public scrutiny.) Given his position at the social media giant, Clegg’s essay has deep insights into Meta’s vision and strategy for the Metaverse. Give it a read, we’ll be here when you come back.

There’s actually much about it that I agree with, but with Meta putting the most money into Metaverse development of any company by far, it’s more important to point out key flaws which suggest a fundamental misunderstanding of how metaverse platforms work (and don’t work).

For starters:

Assuming that immersive 3D interaction is a “logical” evolution of text, voice, and video:

Clegg writes:

We don’t communicate through written words alone, so text-based internet services would never suffice. Static images are an important part of how we communicate, as are sounds and moving images. But we interact in three dimensions. We use multiple senses, body language, spatial awareness. We signify our intention to trust one another by looking each other in the eye, smiling, or warmly shaking hands. We express our feelings towards loved ones not only by saying what we feel but by expressing it physically. We show joy, sadness or anger through nonverbal cues that are embodied and experienced rather than written down.

Advances in speed and availability of connectivity have now reached a point that begins to make many of these three-dimensional interactions possible virtually. It is therefore logical that the next step in the evolution of the internet is one that reflects this.

Note the jazz hands employed to cover that last non sequitur. While it’s true that immersive 3D interaction is now much more feasible and affordable, it does not follow that it’s by and large more desirable than video or even text. Facetime was launched for the iPhone in 2013, but 75% of Gen Z and Millennials still prefer to text. And despite its affordable price point, the slow sales of Meta’s own Quest 2 headset should undermine any confidence that immersive communication is the next inevitable step. (As opposed to a successful niche.)

More questionable assumptions:

Watch: What Social VR / Metaverse Platforms Can Learn About User Safety from 2D Virtual Worlds

Here's the latest talk from Linden Lab veteran Jim "Babbage" Purbrick, who applied what he learned from Second Life and other pioneering virtual worlds in his work for Eve Online and Meta, with the focus here on user safety, i.e. keeping annoyances from trolls and other bad actors in the virtual world down to a dull roar.  

These are lessons, as he tells me, "from older, 2D and text-based virtual worlds [that] are often ignored by VR developers. This talk shows how we applied those lessons to Oculus Venues.

"Technologies change, people stay the same."

This is true. One key lesson Jim and his team applied was real time responses to active harassment. (Starting at around 29 minutes in.) If a troll is scurrying about causing problems during a live event, they need to be dealt with in real time, not after abuse reports have been filed by users and processed the next day: 

Metaverse: "The" or "A", Capital or Lower Case: A Naming Convention Proposal

I wrote out a definition of the Metaverse recently taken directly from Snow Crash citations -- my futile attempt to address the slew of "No one knows what the Metaverse is or when it will exist!" media coverage. Now here's another abuse worth addressing that sets my avatar's teeth on edge, as recently seen in a tweet from Gartner*, a highly reputed analyst firm:

It is expected that a Metaverse will provide persistent, decentralized, collaborative and interoperable opportunities and business models that will enable organizations to extend digital business

There. Is. No. Such. Thing. As. "A" Metaverse.

Here's my own naming convention, based again on Snow Crash, and on whatever expertise on this topic I can claim:

Watch: Improbable Demos Hundreds of Concurrent VOIP-Enabled Players in Close Proximity

As promised: company Town Hall for ⁦@Improbableio⁩ with m2 tech, same as we are using for otherside. All art placeholder. Everyone can speak in game. pic.twitter.com/FX5W9XBJrB

— Herman Narula (@HermanNarula) May 12, 2022

I haven't really written about Improbable in a couple years, when the single-shard MMO infrastructure startup/developer was struggling with heavy losses. This new local concurrency demo video is impressive, especially if (as CEO Herman Narula claims), the hundreds of people in-world everyone can also use VOIP.

Last month, by the way, Improbable spun out a (wait for it!) metaverse technology network called M2:

Watch: What VRChat Gets About the Metaverse That Meta Does Not

While VRChat does not actually describe itself as a metaverse platform (yet?), it is by far the leading contender in that space. I feel like I've been writing about that little appreciated theme for at least the last couple years, but this new video from Quintin Smith (Wired, Edge, Eurogamer) of People Make Games makes that case with copious interviews and examples (several of which I've also featured here, see below) and in a far more charming accent.

His video is a great and golden respite from the deluge of putative "metaverse" stories which generally turn out to be NFT-flavored cash grabs, or just as questionable, the latest bland announcement from Meta or another corporate giants. But as Quint tells me, they are missing something key about platforms like these:

The Sandbox's Terms of Service Says You Don't Actually Own NFTs Associated With The Sandbox

While I've written about how The Sandbox's blockchain-based metaverse platform has a small user base despite (because of?) NFT sales from major brands, Indiana University associate law professor João Marinotti recently made an equally salient point -- you don't actually own the NFTs associated with The Sandbox:

If The Sandbox “reasonably believes” you engaged in any of the platform’s prohibited activities, which require subjective judgments about whether you interfered with others’ “enjoyment” of the platform, it may immediately suspend or terminate your user account and delete your NFT’s images and descriptions from its platform. It can do this without any notice or liability to you.

In fact, The Sandbox even claims the right in these cases to immediately confiscate any NFTs it deems you acquired as a result of the prohibited activities. How it would successfully confiscate blockchain-based NFTs is a technological mystery, but this raises further questions about the validity of what it calls virtual ownership.

The Conversation reached out to The Sandbox for comment but did not receive a response.

Much more here. I took the screengrab here from The Sandbox's Terms of Service, and the terms are as drastic as Marinotti describes them.

I don't necessarily blame The Sandbox for having such a drastic "in case of emergency break glass" clause to cover itself.

Metaverse Content Creators in Developing Nations Can Do Quite Well -- Once They Break Into the Market (Comment of the Week)

Great comment from a reader based in Brazil, expanding on my point (and that of a fellow Brazilian) about the difficulty for metaverse content creators in the developing world to succeed, due to high costs of entry:

It works the other way round too, the $ is very valuable and gets me a higher standard of living than using that dollar in the USA.

I can eat well, afford rent and my bills, all from Second Life content creation. Adobe prices their monthly subscriptions in the local currency too, but yes [avatar software creation tool] Marvelous Designer is very expensive compared to Adobe's monthly subs.

Reader "Reiille" from Mexico, echoes that point:

 1 USD is worth 20 pesos to us, which of course, if you earn that back in revenue, it can be a huge financial help. I myself have been trying to break into the market, but the investment to be made to put a new brand out there is more than I can afford, so it's been a slow burn. 

So while breaking into a relatively static market* like Second Life is difficult for creators in the developing world, once they do break in, they have a tremendous edge: