John Carmack predicts a web metaverse will happen, but won't succeed right away

I don't understand the Roblox = Protometaverse logic. Roblox seems like Second Life in theory, but in implementation its basically a crappy arcade. And not the nostalgic arcade; the Chuck-e-Cheese, $100 in game tokens > tickets > $10 in prizes, predatory kind. All the top games seem to be Baby's First Gachagame, which are inherently evil.

Maybe that is the Metaverse, just a new way to spend money? The internet is largely commerce driven now (ads and shopping). So it follows that so will its successor. But the internet exists because lots of smart people believe that the remaining sliver about information sharing is worth sharing. I just have a hard time believing a purely commercial successor will have such fervent supporters. Enough people are leaving social media, that I forsee many will push skip on this, at least for the first and second generation.

John Carmack works for Meta. His product (VR) is kind of essential to the vision for meta, so it's nor surprising he's speaking positively and optimistically about the metaverse.

WebGPU is coming, and VR hardware is only getting better. It seems obvious that WebXR is the path to a distributed, 3D web that is interoperable by default and not owned by any one company. The key here is open standards and protocols.

Here's a thread I made with more thoughts on the metaverse emerging from the web:

https://twitter.com/AlexStLouis10/status/1454641980542095363