And they may have a point: after all, "the old folks" 30 years ago were saying the same thing about the Internet, well into 2000s.
I personally feel that hardware need to be next-gen as I am nauseus but would be happy to have discord alternative to play in VR. Imagine drawing board, fake cinema, sharing games, arranging common space minecraft-like. I think this will work. You login after work and do creative shit with buddies.
This is how it works for me now but we have discord and own game that we work on. Happy to upgrade XP when new hardware comes.
My high school and college friends and I are spread across the continent. The pandemic and a mix of Discord and Tabletop simulator brought us back together to do regular board gaming. This is effectively a VR environment without the headset.
My 12 year old hangs out on VRchat or Minecraft , simultaneously watching YouTube or Twitch streams at the same time with his friends when he is home. Today this is a mix of FaceTime , Discord etc, but all-in-one will be used if it’s better.
My younger daughter likes to explore VR worlds, and interact with them.
We are seeing what’s coming years in advance, but many aren’t looking. Facebook is going to eat this space up completely at their current rate of success, if Apple , Microsoft or Valve don’t step up.
This is the central problem for VR. The internet offers many experiences that are essentially "VR without the headset", from the Tabletop simulator you mentioned to World of Warcraft. What does the headset really add? You're still looking at a screen, except now you've got a damn thing on your head and are blind to the actual world around you. That virtual world better be really incredible to make up for it.
ultimately, people choose VR for the immersion. It’s why problem build home theatres or still go to the theatre, or visit amusement parks, etc., when they’d rather stay home. The headsets are getting far more convenient and comfortable. Still early.
That's anecdotal evidence. Just because there were user that age, doesn't change that their population, in general, was skeptical.
Zuckerberg is 37 years old, so he’d probably be lumped into “the old folks” category. Why would he get it and not us?
I’m, a decade younger than Mark, so idk if I’m young enough by your standards to get it, but my sister and her friends are in college and think this is all a joke. None of them are interested in putting on VR goggles, let alone joining the “metaverse.” None of them had heard of it until Facebook’s name change.
The Metaverse is a top-down Wall Street sponsored hype cycle. It’s not a matter of “old folks” not getting it. It’s Zuckerberg’s attempt to distract Wall Street investors and consumers from Facebook’s growing problems.
Those problems, at their recent peak, are that – recent. Yet I know, for a fact, they have been working on the new concept for very long now. I spoke to a FB insider about a year ago already and he, in very diluted way, described what we know as metaverse now.
I'm out of the loop, what problems are they having ?
People underestimate Zuckerberg’s ability to see socio-technical far in the future at their peril. He was ridiculed for making a MySpace competitor, for getting rid of Facebook Apps, for the look & feel changes, the ridiculous prices paid for Instagram and WhatsApp… and he was right each time (for growing his business and his customer base).
Where he has been wrong is in putting Facebook at the centre of his empire, when it’s increasingly a legacy platform for family members, old people and maladjusted conservatives. Metaverse corrects this by making Facebook just one of several properties.