The metaverse is bullshit • Hacker News Board

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#571

Post by zulban » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:29 PM UTC

notSupplied wrote: post #480

The whole point of games is that each game invents its own rules, unaffected by the real world, including the rules of other games. Works of creative authorship operate because the author can establish clear walls, then reinvent the rules of that world. Games are cool because they each are separate universes. They are closures. Metaverse billionaires who want to break the boundaries between games by connecting all ga…

> The whole point of games is that each game invents its own rules, unaffected by the real world, including the rules of other games.

Simple features like Steam achievements are clear and simple counter examples.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#572

Post by mdale » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:31 PM UTC

Watch a kid play rec room in VR and then explain how that pandemic home schooling would have made so much more sense if it worked the same way as the game building classes in Rec room work.

Observe the huge jump in fidelity of VRchat or rec room vs second life or Roblox.

Listen to how a kid describes the rec room versions of "squid games" without ever seeing the show on Netflix.

Metaverse is coming. Agree it driven by many distinct holistic experiences; but roblox v2 in a world like Rec Room puts the ball pretty far down the court in the groundwork for a platform of many experiences in one.

There will be aggregators that improve transactions, social networks, communication, ease of app building, distribution and discovery vs operating in discreet silos.

I see this meta name change as Facebook conditioning investors to rationalization of the huge amount of money it will spend buy companies that show early momentum in this direction.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#573

Post by notSupplied » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:34 PM UTC

zulban wrote: post #571

notSupplied wrote: post #480

The whole point of games is that each game invents its own rules, unaffected by the real world, including the rules of other games. Works of creative authorship operate because the author can establish clear walls, then reinvent the rules of that world. Games are cool because they each are separate universes. They are closures. Metaverse billionaires who want to break the boundaries between games by connecting all ga…

> The whole point of games is that each game invents its own rules, unaffected by the real world, including the rules of other games. Simple features like Steam achievements are clear and simple counter examples.

Steam allows achievements in one game to affect another game?

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#574

Post by me_me_mu_mu » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #66

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…

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.

There are non gaming use cases too

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#575

Post by axby » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

yoz-y wrote: post #453

reaperducer wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Along those lines, I don't care how interesting the title, I don't click links to YouTube vlogs posted on HN. If you can't be bothered to write down your thoughts, they must not be worth very much.

That is odd. A well made video takes orders of magnitude more effort than writing it down. Already the first step of making a video is writing the script down and iterating over it.

But the initial investment required to watch a new video seems much higher: it feels like you'd have to watch it for a minute or so to really tell if it's any good and interesting to you, but I can make the same decision for text articles typically in much less than that. (And as a bonus, I don't have to sit through ads or hear "hey everyone", "don't forget to like and subscribe", "thanks to so and so for sponsoring this video".

But I agree with your comment, while also agreeing with part of the spirit of the parent comment. Of course videos can be high quality, and making a high quality video probably takes much more effort than making the same thing into an article.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#576

Post by polio » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

silvestrov wrote: post #175

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…

Past performance is no guarantee of future results They were successful with one thing. Now they are talking about something else. Why shouldn't "MetaVerse" be compared to the insane optimism of AI in the 1980'ies? Something that seemed just around the corner, but never arrived. It's like Thorium reactors: half the people think it's the next great thing, the other half thinks it will never come into production.

Have you used a Quest 2?

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#577

Post by opyate » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

slightwinder wrote: post #569

dandotway wrote: post #71

Text is mightier than the Metaverse. Kids can do video calls with their smartphones but prefer texting. We could discuss Hacker News stories with video chat but we prefer text. News and politics junkies prefer reading text tweets on Twitter to watching talking news anchors. Once upon a time Amazon was a company that only sold books. Dried ink on dead trees. And in the early internet age this book seller outperformed…

> Text is mightier than the Metaverse. "A Picture says more than a thousand words." > Kids can do video calls with their smartphones but prefer texting. Because text is asynchronous, and persistent. Text is a weak medium, but with specific strengths which can beat others in certain situation if they can played well. > We could discuss Hacker News stories with video chat but we prefer text. I guess you haven't discove…

I'm waiting for the day I can Ctrl-F on a Youtube video, say a key phrase, then the video jumps to the point where someone says the key phrase (or the video is about the key phrase).

Meanwhile, text is so much more easily consumable. (Youtube Premium junkie here, BTW.)

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#578

Post by 13415 » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:38 PM UTC

emilsedgh wrote: post #305

Metaverse is not bullshit. It's a sign of desperation. Facebook has _nothing_ for the future. * Blue app is already on it's death bed. * Instagram is already seeing a massive decline in quality and engagement as its getting close to the end of its lifecycle. * They managed to survive Snapchat, but I think that made them think Instagram is too big to fail. Thus, they didn't go after TikTok. It was a mistake. * What's…

Whatsapp is monetizable. They're tapping into the almost realtime conversations of a billion users, their images and videos. They can extract a ton of information from that to sell to advertisers. And unlike Facebook, Whatsapp is still used actively,

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#579

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

qorrect wrote: post #463

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that successful projects like the internet, the original Oculus, Email, IRC ... these were not created by huge companies with huge budgets, they were projects of passion usually at most 5 people.

> One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that successful projects like the internet [...] were not created by huge companies with huge budgets

The US defense establishment is to huge companies with huge budgets what those companies are to garage projects with 5 people.

I mean, that's an exaggeration, but the direction of the relationship is correct.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#580

Post by aierou » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:41 PM UTC

tgv wrote: post #302

Jasper_ wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> If the metaverse is truly a decentralized, collaborative space We're talking about facebook here. I expect the metaverse to be designed 100% according to the wishes of ad buyers. And Cambridge Analytica.

Right. Just like we're currently living in a world where IBM controls all computers.