I’ve seen the metaverse – and I don’t want it | Hacker News Reader

I’ve seen the metaverse – and I don’t want it

metacpc.org

36 pointsjrepinc26 comments

I really wish the idea of a metaverse hadn't been coopted by the crypto community to sell tokens and NFTs. The author mentions crypto a few times, which is clearly coloring their opinion.

I always envisioned the metaverse as a large scale virtual world accessed largely through VR/AR devices, which is a vision that existed long before crypto was popularized.

That's basically what I've envisioned and it's how metaverse-like concepts have mostly been treated in literature, but I think the problem comes from a tiny part of that vision - the one where the metaverse is "a" virtual world. It's an intuitive analogy to our physical world but it doesn't really square with how digital technology works - we have lots of virtual worlds today, built with different purposes, different graphics and physics engines, etc. Second Life, Minecraft, WoW, Roblox, Fortnite, etc.

It's easy to imagine there being popular virtual worlds accessed through VR that benefit from network effects to become dominant, but that'd basically just be a different interface to commercial technologies that already exist. Viewed in that light, "the metaverse" is evolutionary, not revolutionary - cooler 3D worlds, with more fun stuff to do in them as our computing power keeps growing, some of which may be accessed through VR and not just a screen and keyboard and mouse. But to see the metaverse as anything bigger than that is to succumb to a marketing blitz, I believe.

So far every metaverse project I've seen has zero idea what they are going for. I don't even get Facebook's concept.

Meanwhile we have things like Second Life or even WoW that serve a perfect example for a metaverse already and for years.

At this point nobody really seems to know what a metaverse is. Especially not journalists

I really can't figure how metaverse differs from Second Life, especially if SL added VR support. Maybe someone can enlighten me? Or maybe its just hype.

My guess as to what will concretely emerge is protocols/standards for things like 3D user avatars and world hopping, so that worlds hosted by anyone can be linked up, rather than only uploaded to a proprietary game with rules/technical limitations decided by the game's devs. The "Metaverse" would be to 3D environments what the Web is to HTML pages.

But the article's "Ask 50 people what the metaverse means, right now, and you’ll get 50 different answers" is very true. I have no idea if this is what Facebook or Epic Games have in mind.

Nothing. No metaverse concept differs from second Life other than better graphics and less loading pains. VR also ist just a visual layer.

I'm thinking of it like Amazon's mechanical turk.. where you become enslaved to do work and solve tasks in a virtual world for fractions of pennies in the form of credits you can't pay your rent with. Zero point one star.

Neal Stephenson wrote a novel (Reamde) about pretty much that exact scenario - companies putting mechanical turkish tasks into an mmo-type interface for players to grind out digital currency.

Makes you wonder if Zuck read it and was like "this sounds like a great idea".

This is also reality for some in second Life and wow too. Hence why they are great examples

> So far every metaverse project I've seen has zero idea what they are going for. I don't even get Facebook's concept.

Neither did 99% of those who jumped on this World Wide Web thing about 20-25 years ago, and yet it turned out to be a big deal after all.

Not saying this is clearly headed in the same direction, and I couldn't think of a worse steward than Facebook, but there's a chance this will also be a big deal so people (and companies) are staking claims, associating themselves with it and hyping things up. It sounds like a load of bullshit, but hey, I've been wrong before. On the other hand, I have been wrong about being wrong before, too.

> Neither did 99% of those who jumped on this World Wide Web thing about 20-25 years ago

Since when was this true? As I remember it there were many strong and obviously articulated visions of what the web could be.

I think the metaverse concept is supposed to enable you to cross between virtual worlds (like WoW and Second Life) without losing your assets or identity. That's the "verse" part: a universe.

But also that might not be what Meta means. I don't know.

Thing is nobody is actually planning to do that. Right now some are trying to build their own small 'metaverses' but a connection, like a open standard is delusional at this point.

I am not delusional enough to think Zuckerberg wants an open standard. I think he wants "Login with Facebook" to apply to cross-platform immersive digital spaces.

This is similar to an idea we have been playing with:

https://www.betabytes.io/blog/introducing-the-metaverse

For instance, here is a video of a shared canvas:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unVzxgjJNdA

Your idea is interesting (if not practical) because it opens up some weird questions, like: what if Second Life were a life simulator for some people, but a FPS zombie shooter for other people? Or: what if Fortnite became a dating app, like Instagram has over time?

Your PoC at least proves that you don't actually need cooperation between developers to achieve something. You just need a compatibility layer.

This video by a game dev does a decent job explaining why transferring assets won't work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKzup7XDyq8&t=3s

It's in the context of games, but virtual worlds have similar dynamics.

Sorry, I should have been more clear: I think the decentralization of shared digital assets is nonsense in theory, and it's even more absurd in practice because of the realities of software. I was just trying to present my understanding of the vision these people seem to have of it.

Here is a different model that we have been working on:

https://www.betabytes.io/blog/introducing-the-metaverse

Connecting existing worlds that people already choose to participate in.

Metaverse is just strapping a screen to your face

We have been working on a different model, where we connect worlds people already participate in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unVzxgjJNdA

More here:

https://www.betabytes.io/blog/introducing-the-metaverse

The one definition of the metaverse the authour put in is:

> If a metaverse is where the real and virtual worlds collide, then Instagram is a metaverse: you create an avatar, curate your image, and use it to interact with other people.

In that case, seems like they have a problem with the present state of the internet, not the future.

Who wants to be in that facebook metaverse anyway? The fact that they could not evey make it look attractive in the video is telling. I almost wish magic leap back.

Either it will flop or split the world (once again) I too have zero interest in visiting a porn free, 'child friendly', ad invested Facebook metaverse while I have much fun exploring existing ones.

People are talking about the metaverse? I thought it was just a punchine in the robot clown's schtick.

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