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The metaverse is bullshit

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Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#91

Post by Animats »

wokwokwok wrote: post #43

the good news is that the metaverse and the tech industry's very expensive obsession with trying to make it a reality will be a schadenfreude generator the likes of which we've never seen before The tech landscape is littered with failed attempts, but we have here two very technically successful companies, Epic and Facebook, both trying to re-imagine the internet as something different. I'm not sure I'd write them of…

Epic

Tim Sweeney has been talking up a technically reasonable vision of the Metaverse for several years now. But Epic hasn't shipped much. You can load new game maps into Fortnite. That's about it. Unreal Engine 5 doesn't have much in the way of support for a world where users can change almost everything. It's still based on a model where you do massive optimization during build time.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#92

Post by AlexandrB »

NortySpock wrote: post #67
AlexandrB wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, this idea of avatarism seems to completely ignore the fact that access to avatars (or technologies that allow "photonic override") will be gatekept by profit-maximizing entities like Apple or Facebook. To me it sounds like just another form of conspicuous consumption where the rich will show off their opulence by buying artisanal avatars (on the blockchain, no doubt) and lording them over the plebs. To see this i…

Wouldn't there be Creative Commons licenced, remixable avatars?

None of this stuff exists, so it's impossible to predict how it will go. But the last 20 years has seen a closing and re-centralization of the internet and computing in general. Concepts like right-to-repair, first sale, and ownership itself are under attack on various fronts. I'm pessimistic that these trends will generally reverse. Given this, why wouldn't an avatar shop be a tightly-controlled and monetized affair? Meta (or whoever) can always offer the excuse that they can't open up access because they need to curate the content to prevent sexually explicit, or otherwise offensive avatars.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#93

Post by pmontra »

AlexandrB wrote: post #68
Jasper_ wrote: post #52

> In a September 2021 Washington Post interview, Tim Sweeney imagined the future of advertising. "A carmaker who wants to make a presence in the metaverse isn't going to run ads," he said. "They're going to drop their car into the world in real time and you'll be able to drive it around. And they're going to work with lots of content creators with different experiences to ensure their car is playable here and there,…

One way to make money in a metaverse would be to artificially create limitations to what a user can do and then sell them the solutions to those problems. So why not add thirst and hunger meters and then sell food items? Or why not make travel non-instantaneous and then sell faster modes of transit? This is how heavily-monetized games work today and it's not surprising that some in the industry are salivating at the…

If I have to pay for food and transportation to go to a metaverse location to pay my taxes I'll go to the good old web site for free and a fraction of the time.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#94

Post by laingc »

The Metaverse is definitely bullshit. It will fail for the same reason that Amazon never managed to beat Barnes & Noble, that the internet failed to become popular, and that nobody ever bought a PC. Just ridiculous.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#95

Post by radicalcentrist »

Jasper_ wrote: post #83
AlexandrB wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way to make money in a metaverse would be to artificially create limitations to what a user can do and then sell them the solutions to those problems. So why not add thirst and hunger meters and then sell food items? Or why not make travel non-instantaneous and then sell faster modes of transit? This is how heavily-monetized games work today and it's not surprising that some in the industry are salivating at the…

If the metaverse is truly a decentralized, collaborative space, how can we add these limitations without others breaking them? If all that's stopping them is code, why wouldn't everyone have all the most powerful items, all the time? If the metaverse ever becomes a reality, I promise I will publish a blog post for people to copy/paste some code to make their own custom overpowered equipment and free food and break th…

Hey now, you wouldn't download a car

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#97

Post by renewiltord »

Let me be honest: the metaverse may or may not be bullshit. But the Zuck is a doer. Y’all are talkers. Your opinion counts for as much as it did back when you cheered FB down to $13.

Y’all don’t have a clue. Blind men trying to describe why color doesn’t matter. Less memory than a nomad. No insight. Lame.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#98

Post by noduerme »

Jasper_ wrote: post #74
modeless wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why the heck am I driving a car around? I can fly, can't I? By this logic nobody should play Gran Turismo because a Superman game exists. > You can't test legroom or the seat cushions, because your avatar doesn't don't have a body. So I don't see how you can realistically sell an actual real-world car, because isn't most of its function and design unnecessary in the metaverse? By this logic it's pointless to make a…

I'd say a sizable majority play Gran Turismo because it's a fun test of skill -- learning the controls of an intricate machine, the layout of the game's tracks, and achieving some form of mastery over it. And I'm also sure some people play it for the fantasy of doing car racing in a safe environment, which is a very dangerous, expensive, and inaccessible sport for a lot of people. So, perhaps I misread Tim Sweeney's…

I have two cars - a 1980 Datsun and a Fiat Spider. They're both a "test of skill". There's no reason it wouldn't be massively fun to play with lots of other cars on tracks or in all kinds of conditions in VR. "Fun test of skill" is the whole point. The original, like, Stephenson-ish "metaverse" was somewhere people fought with swords. This was getting directly at the idea that skill and challenge were more valuable than raw code. [edit: "entertainment"]

Stephenson has a passage in that where he talks about Hiro Protagonist and his friends being coders who would race infinite-speed Tron style "cars" around an endless black plane, before the city of the Metaverse was built. And this was of course, pretty boring in the end. Because infinite speed isn't very interesting. What makes driving fast cars interesting is the limitations -- and knowing them. Then what makes a metaverse interesting is the same type of puzzle. People play "Flight Simulator" for a couple reasons, but a primary one is to figure out how to recover from a catastrophic engine failure. So... how would that not be a great way to sell a car?

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#99

Post by efitz »

I think the biggest disconnect between the vision and the reality of the metaverse is that the vision includes a “locality” that does not exist on the internet.

There might be interesting reasons to simulate distance in the metaverse that correspond to real world phenomena like latency. Probably not IMO but who knows.

But “traveling” in the metaverse has always been a dumb idea; what’s the point? Anyplace you want to go is at most seconds away; the idea of “moving” to get there doesn’t add any value.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#100

Post by swiftcoder »

redisman wrote: post #76
emodendroket wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hard to see much of a serious case for NFTs, but I mostly agree with what you're saying. Even if it is a "schadenfreude generator," Amazon's attempts at having third-party sales on their site with "zshops" were a laughing stock until they weren't.

We’re seeing only the first iteration of NFTs. Gaming can be interesting. Like if WoW had some unique Legendaries in NFT form I think that would be interesting and lucrative. I’m not sure if the incentive is there for existing games because you’re giving away control of the economy. But for upstarts they can use this as a way to get players to try their game instead since you could maybe sell some of the items for re…

What on earth does the NFT part add here? WoW can add unique, auctionable items at any time using their existing tech. It's already a centralised platform, so decentrilisation doesn't add much...
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