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The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft

clivethompson.medium.com

251–260 of 377 posts

Re: The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft

#251

> Mojang thus far hasn’t built microtransactions He must have a different Minecraft. Minecraft on xbox has a shop for skins and plugins and all kind of stuff right on the very first menu you see. It even has some kind of daily deal. It has its own funny money currency system. (Google "minecoins")

I think the author is talking about "in-world" microtransactions. The Xbox (really, Bedrock edition) marketplace exists outside of your world. You have to leave the world to go there, even though you can use items purchased there in-world.

Re: The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read a recent interview from mark zuck about the metaverse and someone asked him a similar question. He had an actually really insightful answer. 1) Most american adults watch several hours of TV per day. alternatively, many play a few hours of video games. (The actual per-person-per-day numbers are very high compared to the average 2hr/week i watch tv but whatever). Most of TV and Video Games are about ignoring re…

"Thats 8+ hours a day you can spend in metaverse." I hope he plans to be spending 8 hours a day in "metaverse" but I'm sure as fuck not going to be.

I'm going to sleep in the metaverse

Re: The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read a recent interview from mark zuck about the metaverse and someone asked him a similar question. He had an actually really insightful answer. 1) Most american adults watch several hours of TV per day. alternatively, many play a few hours of video games. (The actual per-person-per-day numbers are very high compared to the average 2hr/week i watch tv but whatever). Most of TV and Video Games are about ignoring re…

The problem is that the more you make the virtual world like the real world the less relaxing it is. I don't have the mental energy these days for things that are too immersive. Some people are just not going to want to spend 8 hours a day interacting with people to go home and interact with other real people in a reality-like medium.

It's up to you what you do in the metaverse. No one is forcing you to socialize.

Re: The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft

#255

There will never be a metaverse! The amount of electricity and device manufacturing required for it to exist at scale will likely exhaust our capabilities as a planet and lead to yet more conflict and strife.

My take is almost the complete opposite. In the Metaverse, you can spin up a office building for an unlimited number of users who can access from across the globe. Please compaire that use case, and so many more like it, to the real world alternatives in terms of resource consumption. It's an economy of infinite bits, not limited atoms.

Re: The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft

#256
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read a recent interview from mark zuck about the metaverse and someone asked him a similar question. He had an actually really insightful answer. 1) Most american adults watch several hours of TV per day. alternatively, many play a few hours of video games. (The actual per-person-per-day numbers are very high compared to the average 2hr/week i watch tv but whatever). Most of TV and Video Games are about ignoring re…

Can you actually wear the heavy goggles for that long?

Yes, and HMDs are only going to get lighter in the coming years.

Re: The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft

#257
post #249

The only reason Minecraft doesn't have microtransactions is because they haven't gotten around to it yet. I recently interviewed for a position on the team that's going to make it happen.

Bedrock edition already has microtransactions. Unlike what many JE players think you can still download resource packs, skins, maps, etc off the intend instead of the marketplace.

Re: The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft

#258
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly the problem is, none of these are really well defined. I think Zuck wants the general consensus to lean towards: VR - Is a user interface. Metaverse is a network built for that user interface. Historically, we had screen and keyboard based user interfaces, and with it text based gaming like Zork. Then we had screen and controller based user interfaces, and with it games like Pong. At a certain point we got th…

The issue is VR is in practice a really terrible interface for widespread shared user experiences. MMO’s are almost exclusively played in 3rd person perspective in part because looking at eye level prevents you from seeing behind the person in front of you, and removing collision detection doesn’t help. Think of walking around a crowded convention and you really can’t see many people at the same time. You can of cour…

> MMO’s are almost exclusively played in 3rd person perspective in part because looking at eye level prevents you from seeing behind the person in front of you

I mean, yes I agree. There are some workarounds, i.e. you could jump, in VR it’s very fast to swivel your head, look around the people in front of you or look behind you.

That said, I very much agree, I wouldn’t want to play WOW in VR. The DBM style warning zones on the ground alone would kill the UX. Meanwhile, as a HPally, I played WOW primarily in 2D :)(specifically raid frames). I’m very certain I would continue to play VR WOW in 2D as well. Some sort of console attached to my arm or floating in front of me to 1. See who has my beacon/buffs/debuffs 2. Quickly chose targets to spot heal or cure.

However, I’m very excited to try the second big VR-first MMO (basically the WOW not the EverQuest) built exclusively for VR!!!

Maybe, it’s a lot more skill shots, maybe it’s more aoe heals. I can’t even imagine how spot heals or cures would be targeted. Maybe it would feel like being a QB and Id need to literally throw Madden style spirals to land my spot heals??? THAT COULD BE SICK (although that skill floor/cap might be too high to balance boss fights well).

I’m not smart enough to predict the actual implementation. But I know there is enough money to be made that someones will iteratively make it happen.

Re: The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft

#259
post #18

(Aware of the fact that I'm taking time out of my day to read HN) I really wonder how many adults > 25yrs and < 60yrs have the time to immerse themselves in any type of digital world / metaverse experience. If I was a teenager or in college, then yeah I can see it... but there are so many things to do in the 16hrs we have each day, and I already kick myself for not finishing that book, or getting an extra workout in,…

Seriously. I don’t have time to do the things I need to do, much less the things I want to do. I haven’t had time for TV, books, movies, etc. in years.

Re: The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft

#260

No, it is not. Neither is Roblox or Fortnite, or VRchat. A single game or world is NOT the metaverse, what is so hard to understand about that for journalists and companies? The metaverse is the immersive internet, as a successor to our current one that is more 2D oriented around photos/videos/text today. It's a paradigm shift in how we interact, but most importantly there will be many of these virtual worlds/spaces…

> More specifically, the way we use the web today to navigate from webpage to another is how we we traverse the metaverse. The core problem that needs to get solved right now is interoperability, to enable the "web of 3D".

May be I lack vision, but I'm not able to understand why we need this. What I have realised during lockdown is that I don't want to or can be fully immersed in one thing. I'm always multi-tasking different things on a computer and in a real world around me. Metaverse seems to be opposite of that. So while it was an interesting demo, it felt very unintuitive to me at this point.

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