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The metaverse is a dystopian nightmare – let’s build a better reality

nianticlabs.com

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Re: The metaverse is a dystopian nightmare – let’s build a better reality

#51

Post by spywaregorilla »

ericjang wrote: post #7

The title and content of the article, in which Hanke espouses the virtues if Niantic Labs (an AR company), were cognitively dissonant for me. > The concept reached one of its most complete expressions in Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, where virtually everyone has abandoned reality for an elaborate VR massively multiplayer video game. A lot of people these days seem very interested in bringing this near-future visio…

I really want to gripe about "Ernest Cline's" Ready Player One. There was an element of dystopia to it, yes, but it was only the movie adaptation that came away with the takeaway that the virtual world was bad. In the movie they decide to add in the protagonist making the executive decision to shut down the virtual world on a couple weekdays or something. That pissed me off. That world was people's livelihoods. This kid lived in a poor junky slum and had a great social life and presumably some level of income in the virtual world when the movie starts. At the end of the movie he is super rich and has a hot girlfriend (who's character arc was largely that she perceived herself as ugly?). There's really not that much in the film or the book that says that forcing people to go unplugged made any sense.

The actual book was about a virtual world gone extremely right. The dystopian part was the corporations that sought private control of the platform.

Bonus complaint: The evil corporation in the film literally enslaves people and brazenly murders others in public, yet it's CEO is brought down by some unremarkable local cops? What?

Re: The metaverse is a dystopian nightmare – let’s build a better reality

#52

Post by ineedasername »

klyrs wrote: post #44
ineedasername wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it involves interacting with the real world, I've always found Pokemon Go (and other Pokemon games) kind of brutal: basically capturing animals and making them fight until incapacitated. People go to jail for that sort of thing in real life. Of course there are plenty of game where you do things that would be illegal: GTA built an empire on it. But Pokemon is marketed towards kids .

The Detective Pikachu movie is actually premised on the recognition that battling Pokémon against their will is unethical. It's kinda strange to have that as canon, when the entire rest of the franchise encourages you to battle them and the games provide zero alternative. On the other hand... I think your concern here is just about the worst example of pearl-clutching over video game violence that I've seen. Kids don…

I doubt kids are getting anything bad out of the games, not clutching my pearls here. It just always seemed like a weird premise for a kids game.

Then again Mario went around killing turtles. Maybe Bowser was the tragic hero there.

Re: The metaverse is a dystopian nightmare – let’s build a better reality

#53

Post by spywaregorilla »

Animats wrote: post #49
kmeisthax wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The metaverse has a consistent definition - at least, if you read Snow Crash. It's just not what any company would actually want to bring to the market. 3D game worlds have value, open systems have value, but in completely opposite and contradictory ways. The value is in the entertainment of playing a well-built one, which means there has to be monetization and centralization. In other words, they have "production va…

A decade and change ago we had Second Life, a 3D game world built like an open system. After many struggles, Second Life achieved social stability. The company has mostly a hands-off attitude and a minimal "governance" group of about half a dozen people. There are landlords and tenants, with grumbling on both sides, in more or less balance. Griefing is rare. The large-scale scams, such as a fake bank, are gone. Copyi…

> Then they discover their default avatar sucks, that the clothing system is really complicated, and the good stuff costs money, or good free stuff has to be searched out.

In snow crash most of the population wanders around with a default avatar to save on cost

Re: The metaverse is a dystopian nightmare – let’s build a better reality

#54

Post by krapp »

ineedasername wrote: post #52
klyrs wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Detective Pikachu movie is actually premised on the recognition that battling Pokémon against their will is unethical. It's kinda strange to have that as canon, when the entire rest of the franchise encourages you to battle them and the games provide zero alternative. On the other hand... I think your concern here is just about the worst example of pearl-clutching over video game violence that I've seen. Kids don…

I doubt kids are getting anything bad out of the games, not clutching my pearls here. It just always seemed like a weird premise for a kids game. Then again Mario went around killing turtles. Maybe Bowser was the tragic hero there.

>Then again Mario went around killing turtles. Maybe Bowser was the tragic hero there.

Wait until you find out about the bricks...

Re: The metaverse is a dystopian nightmare – let’s build a better reality

#55

Post by spywaregorilla »

kmeisthax wrote: post #40
shock-value wrote: post #13

Whenever a company describes their vision of "the metaverse" (or I guess "reality channels" in this case) it's always exceedingly vague and never really explains in concrete terms what sort of utility or entertainment a person would derive from it. I guess it's just the latest vehicle to get investors or stockholders excited without needing to rely upon any work or logic beyond the unclear promise of technologies tha…

The metaverse has a consistent definition - at least, if you read Snow Crash. It's just not what any company would actually want to bring to the market. 3D game worlds have value, open systems have value, but in completely opposite and contradictory ways. The value is in the entertainment of playing a well-built one, which means there has to be monetization and centralization. In other words, they have "production va…

I don't play fortnite, but I get the sense it's closer to the vibe of Snowcrash's metaverse. Interoperability and freedom to create is cool, but stuff like Roblox doesn't strike me as a connected experience. Making games interoperable won't fit the bill unless it's about you, as the player, in the game; as opposed to you playing a character in the game. That's hard to do, because most games benefit enormously from having a structure and plot and characters. Even competitive FPS games to some extent.

You have to do stuff as yourself/your avatar. MMOs are close, but you never feel like you escape the world of the MMO. Fortnite has some purely social stuff like concerts and I feel like that's closer to the mark.

Epic released a very high quality character creator called MetaHuman recently. It's a great free resource to devs. But if they really want this to be a metaverse kind of thing they should be opening up unreal service apis to let players take their character models and port them into games. That would be a big step in the right direction.

Re: The metaverse is a dystopian nightmare – let’s build a better reality

#56

Post by vkou »

nine_k wrote: post #35
totetsu wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the physical world they mean the Coca-Cola vending machine, and the chain convenience store..

How about real-time explanation what plant you are looking at, what bird just flew by, what is interesting about the building next to you, etc? Look at the web — against all odds, it has tons of content beside ads!

> what is interesting about the building next to you

So, it'll tell me that it has a Zappos™, a Coke™ Vending machine, a Jamba Juice™, and a Wells Fargo™ ATM, with an average retailer Yelp™ score of 4.2?

Re: The metaverse is a dystopian nightmare – let’s build a better reality

#57

Post by nynx »

danShumway wrote: post #42

> Multiply this kind of channel x1000: Mario, Transformers, Marvel’s superhero universe, the world of Wakanda, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Bladerunner, Sherlock Holmes, Nancy Drew, The Maltese Falcon — all of these and countless more will exist as reality channels that you can turn on, transforming your daily routine into something a bit more magical, intriguing, exciting — and most of all, a little more fun. Important…

My worry is that it’ll be impossible to stop this from happening.

Re: The metaverse is a dystopian nightmare – let’s build a better reality

#58

Post by kmeisthax »

Animats wrote: post #49
kmeisthax wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The metaverse has a consistent definition - at least, if you read Snow Crash. It's just not what any company would actually want to bring to the market. 3D game worlds have value, open systems have value, but in completely opposite and contradictory ways. The value is in the entertainment of playing a well-built one, which means there has to be monetization and centralization. In other words, they have "production va…

A decade and change ago we had Second Life, a 3D game world built like an open system. After many struggles, Second Life achieved social stability. The company has mostly a hands-off attitude and a minimal "governance" group of about half a dozen people. There are landlords and tenants, with grumbling on both sides, in more or less balance. Griefing is rare. The large-scale scams, such as a fake bank, are gone. Copyi…

This doesn't sound particularly different from when I was active on there a decade ago.

Does Linden Labs still have a weird habit of banning people running large "Internet meme"/chan-culture sims? (Actually, TBH, that almost seems forward-thinking nowadays...)

Re: The metaverse is a dystopian nightmare – let’s build a better reality

#59

Post by accountofme »

nynx wrote: post #57
danShumway wrote: post #42

> Multiply this kind of channel x1000: Mario, Transformers, Marvel’s superhero universe, the world of Wakanda, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Bladerunner, Sherlock Holmes, Nancy Drew, The Maltese Falcon — all of these and countless more will exist as reality channels that you can turn on, transforming your daily routine into something a bit more magical, intriguing, exciting — and most of all, a little more fun. Important…

My worry is that it’ll be impossible to stop this from happening.

Don't use it then?

Re: The metaverse is a dystopian nightmare – let’s build a better reality

#60

Post by api »

accountofme wrote: post #59
nynx wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My worry is that it’ll be impossible to stop this from happening.

Don't use it then?

More money will allow them to develop vastly superior UI and user experience, better graphics, etc., and it will suck so many users from anything else that the other things will become tiny niche environments or die.

Just like what happened with everything else including most of the open web.

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