I thought the market has repeatedly shown there isn't much demand for persistent virtual worlds?
I don't know if you have a more narrow view of this idea or specifically mean VR/AR, but that just sounds like what massively multiplayer online (MMO) games such as Ultima Online, Everquest, and World of Warcraft are. I think Roblox is even a broader use case, though I am fairly unfamiliar with that.
MMOs have been very viable from both a business and user stand point and have been a fairly big thing for going on a quarter century or so at this point. Whether these branch into more of the Second Life non-game social space or into being largely AR/VR driven is pretty up in the air, but it's not some sci-fi concept really.
They're an environment crafted to scratch a dopamine itch by providing instant gratification for work, with a social layer attached on top. I write this as someone who used to play MUDs back before MMORPGs even became a thing.
Unless Facebook is planning on releasing their own WoW branded as the metaverse, I don't see how they're the same.
There are some niche products with stable worlds, but those are a minority of a minority.
Really? Everything that's not named World of Warcraft seems to die out, usually in less than a year. It's a genre that's been a notorious recipe for failure for most companies not named Blizzard.
Blizzard was to the gaming industry what people often believe Apple is to the hardware industry. They were the only ones that invested in polished UI, coherent UX, etc. and it was so incredibly noticeable.
I'm sure a lot of this was pressure to get something out quickly to make a "WoW killer", which is what gaming media branded basically every MMO that launched after WoW.
MMOs aren't eating the world like in 2005, but they're a solidly-established genre that looks here to stay.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/276601/number-of-world-o...
[1] https://kotaku.com/wow-disappointment-plus-twitch-start-mass...
[2] https://www.ign.com/articles/2015/06/05/meet-the-man-who-red...
[3] https://tech4gamers.com/amazon-mmo-new-world-registered-a-pe...
But MMO in general today are massive, far bigger than WoW ever was. Though, there is also far more diversity regarding world-sizes. From smaller worlds for some dozen to hundred users, to bigger world with thousands and ten thousands, to the big massive virtual continents that WoWs era defined, we have them all now.
Then we have the endless amounts of wargames[1], shoots[2] and old browser-games[3]. Or the newer genre of battle royale, where we have hundreds of players per session in some game. Though, there is not much richful interaction between the players outside the game, it's all just simple chat or even none at all. Though, I heard Fortnite has gained some persistent world-aspects outside the game-sessions?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massively_multiplayer_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massively_multiplayer_... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massively_multiplayer_...
> but do you really see Facebook creating video games for it's blue site and instagram audience?
I think their point is more that they will offer the graphical virtual space for the players to wait and meet between the games and work, while others will create the games and apps which people than can enter from this space. My understanding is, they offer technology and the connecting point, not the content. The same way they already do it today with plain old 2D crud-interfaces.
You’re going to see more games like Genshin Impact and the phantasy star online update. Open world multiplayer games without the massively part.
Roblox largely is the modern source mod scene but monetized.
The video in the initial tweet is up to 2.1 million views: https://twitter.com/thecoopertom/status/1325710953305026560?...
VRChat or someone building on their proof of concept is likely to make it happen. It won't be Facebook with its VR Slack.
(And as for me, I'm stuck trying to figure out how to hack up a WebXR experience with, ah, limited programming skills. Until then, it should be at https://vrchat.com/home/launch?worldId=wrld_559152a2-44d3-44... , but it's inaccessible without adding me as a friend and accepting an invitation to an instance I spin up. So, practically useless. And support is no help in terms of what, exactly, I'd need to do to raise my trust level.)
I did enjoy wandering around the TARDIS though.