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The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft

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

#331

Post by cesarb »

dividuum wrote: post #102
sweetbitter wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mojang would have a problem trying to control Minecraft because it's written in Java, their developers commonly associate with the players who hack the game, and the only control over the gameservers that they have is their authentication servers- which you can disable the use of by editing one flag in your server config files, allowing anyone to play even if they didn't buy the game.

But then you have absolutely no authentication whatsoever. So anyone can join your server using any player name and it's difficult to effectively ban. Good maybe for small private servers, but won't work for anything public. Also IIRC then you get no user-selected player skins.

> But then you have absolutely no authentication whatsoever.

There are other ways. For a while, I played on a private Minecraft server which disabled authentication (for reasons; that server also had the mod which allows Bedrock players to connect to a Java server, which probably played a part). However, once you connected to that server, you had 30 seconds to type a command with a password, otherwise you'd be kicked out, and before entering that command, the player is frozen and has no access to the inventory. The closest analogue is IRC's NickServ.

That server also had a way to allow everyone to use their own user-selected player skins, even without authenticating to the skin servers, though I don't know the details on how that worked.

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

#333

Post by rocho »

clpm4j wrote: 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,…

People already spend hours and hours per day on social media, very often just to fill time and avoid boredom. I can absolutely see the metaverse taking up some of that time.

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

#334

Post by echelon »

wruza wrote: post #172
echelon wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The metaverse that wins will allow 18+ content. Not Zuckerberg.

But there is no P in FAANG. And Steam/etc don’t make their living on adult games. And youtube has no porn on it. I think the issue with winning it with adult content will remain unchanged, at least for a while. Porn is so classic, that it cannot tunnel through this potential barrier.

Google and Microsoft absolutely serve porn. "Safe search"? It's what Bing is known for.

People use their Apple devices for porn, controlling sex toys, and much more.

Amazon sells lube, sex toys, lingerie, and a whole host of other totally NSFW products.

Netflix has a ton of shows with nude actors bearing their breasts. Their show "Sex/Life" shows penises in a very sexual way.

Twitter, though admittedly not FAMNGA, notoriously allows and supports porn. They're very much the opposite of Tumblr, which died the moment they banned it.

Patreon thrives on porn.

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

#335

Post by meheleventyone »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #310
meheleventyone wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not either or. These are complementary things. I’ve been extremely online since the mid-90s for example. There’s nothing sinister or world changing here. Online isn’t a separate universe it’s just a part of IRL.

I think you're proving his point beautifully. You've been online since the mid-90s, so you're ~40 or older? I don't mean to be derogatory, but you sound exactly like an "oldie" who is out of touch as described by the GP. Zoomers are absolutely spending more time online and less time IRL than previous generations. I'm only 23 and the difference between my childhood and my younger siblings is massive. They generally pr…

Don't worry you can be an oldie too if your childhood is massively different to your siblings!

You're looking at your younger siblings and I'm looking at my kids. We see different things and honestly I think this is a bit of a moral panic like we saw with rock and roll, comics, TV, video games during my youth, kids playing online games when I was your age and so on.

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

#336

Post by numpad0 »

eropple wrote: post #222
wruza wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there is no P in FAANG. And Steam/etc don’t make their living on adult games. And youtube has no porn on it. I think the issue with winning it with adult content will remain unchanged, at least for a while. Porn is so classic, that it cannot tunnel through this potential barrier.

Steam absolutely sells a whole bunch of porn. It may not be a majority, but it sells plenty.

Today. Since 2018. Steam itself launched in 2003, so literally took 15 years, and still in a very limited basis(IIUC).

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

#337

Post by GLGirty »

Guest19023892 wrote: post #99
astlouis44 wrote: post #87

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…

The 2D internet works though because it's an efficient means of communication and data transfer. When I search the weather, check directions, send a message, book a flight, buy a shirt, or view the daily news, I can get that done fast on the existing internet. I don't want to load a 3D world to read an article. I don't need to walk around as a 3D avatar to ask a friend what time they're arriving. It's inefficient. It…

> The internet will basically be an extension of your brain. What the internet knows, you'll know.

I'll know that the stone masons crashed planes into the world trade center to destroy the studio where they faked the moon landing?

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

#338

Post by Zababa »

PeterisP wrote: post #321
Zababa wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, can the Staff of Westfall be transferred to another simulation? Yes and no. The signifier, the physical (virtual?) staff can be transferred to another game in some sense. The 3D model can be transferred, the physical appearance of the item can be transferred. But that was always on your computer all along; it's not particularly meaningful. The effects of the item may or may not be transferable; if a game is no…

Your arguments support stating that taking an object from one simulation to another is a conceptually hard , not necessarily impossible. We do not have that compatibility now, but IMHO the word "metaverse" becomes applicable only when (and if) when it includes at least partial compatibility of this sort; that is the difference between separate environments and environments in a shared metaverse.

At first I thought of replying with something like

> "Yes, everything is possible with enough engineering time. My point is that you can easily do horizontal integration (lots of simulations, mostly cosmetic, almost no behavior) or vertical integration (lots of behavior, few simulation). Both of those have a small surface. But if you want the two at the same time, your surface begins to grow rapidly. You have to implement N behaviours for M simulations. That's not impossible of course. But it's hard."

but the more I think about it, the more I think it's wrong. It's not hard, it is impossible, depending on your definition of different simulations.

For example, what would the Staff of Westfall be in a virtual coworking space? Could you beat up people with it? That would make sense, although I'm not sure it would be suited to a virtual coworking space. Let's just hope your colleague doesn't play shooters. Would it make you "smarter" in a way, by increasing the speed of your computer for example? That is starting to be a bit weird. You could have a badge, or title to say that you've slain the boss, this could work. But how about all the generic equipment? The consumable? How would you express a mana potion in your coworking space? Stimulants maybe? But what would they do? WoW is a game where you (can) try to make your virtual character stronger than the others players/NPC. But that's not really how real life works. That's not how a virtual coworking space would work. "mana" doesn't even exists in your virtual coworking space.

And if your solution to that is to establish some base rules that all simulations follow (physics, capable of executing code contained in an object), then at this point all simulations start becoming the same.

A good analogy for that: how would you reconcile the world in people's dream and the real world? The more you want to bring things from one to the other, the more they lose their distinction. I think the key point here is that a "simulation" is not a name you give to something, but a bag of behaviours, expectations, things. When you bring those things from one simulation to the other, they start being the same. Thus my initial point, having diverse simulations and bringing objects between them are two opposing wishes.

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

#339

Post by VikingCoder »

4ggr0 wrote: post #296
VikingCoder wrote: post #124

I want a single contiguous Minecraft world that everyone can use. Each account could get a range of blocks allocated to them, after Credit Card validation, to prove you're a real person. You could pay to own some more blocks. The blocks you get are just a land grab. You can trade blocks you own for blocks someone else owns, and there could be a monetary transaction to go with it. You can build what you want to on you…

> You could pay to own some more blocks. Let's bring wealth-gaps to the metaverse, what could go wrong ;)

I was also advocating that people be able to make money by creating content that people visit.

Perhaps schools can hand out blocks for citizenship, and for things like the Duke of Edinburgh Award, for time volunteering at an animal shelter or senior center.

If you have ideas for how to "solve" the wealth gap, I'm all ears. Until then, I'm kind of stuck in that as a framework for how to solve problems.

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

#340

Post by VikingCoder »

PeterisP wrote: post #322
4ggr0 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You could pay to own some more blocks. Let's bring wealth-gaps to the metaverse, what could go wrong ;)

It's not like wealth-gaps will be left outside of any realistic metaverse (especially one made by FB, but not only that). If people treat it seriously, then it becomes linked with all the real world factors, and wealth is obviously one of those.

I saw an article years back about MMO gold farmers, I think in Mexico. They sat in an air-conditioned room, and the wages were decent - they liked the job.

If we can transfer wealth from people who have money but not time, to people somewhere else in the world, who have time but not money, then I'm calling that a good thing.

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