81–90 of 168 posts
For the record, I am not sure he is wrong. I just went in there with different expectations.
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Hasn’t VR been gaining steam for a while now, as in, never coming around? All I see are companies massively pushing for it, but I don’t see any real take up. Anything that I’ve seen seems like a gimmick and not something that will actually stick or resonate with people.
There's ~15 million VR units sitting around and there's steady growth. That's much more than the zero from a few years ago but you're right its not massive popular. There's just enough that some VR game devs are finding success but by no means is it a gold rush and I don't mean to imply that.
My theory is that I think the companies that sell these things are just really good at hyping and selling the headsets. I just don't see what the end game is. It's certainly possible that I'm wrong about all this though.
At this stage in development of a new “space” or perhaps I should say “plane of existence” in the case of meta, you need to get as far away from regulation as possible. There will be many casualties, as there always are in pioneering endeavours, but these are just a necessary part of advancement.
Plenty of heretics have been burned through history in the name of advancement to a superior moral plane. Of course, that was horse shit.
The criticism levied against crypto and the meta verse is in a similar vein. To what are we advancing? How do we measure progress? And who wants to go there?
I'm of the age that I remember getting sucked in to the Second Life hype. MMORPGs were also becoming popular, and there was this narrative that "virtual worlds" were on a rocketship to the future. Universities and companies paid stupid amounts of money for digital real estate. Wired ran profiles of Second Life speculators who got rich in the bubble. Now I guess we call virtual worlds "the metaverse" and think it'll b…
I seriously wonder whether there will be a cultural rebellion against the digitization of our lived experiences. It seems like everyone (even the youngest who grew up in a fully digital world) feels like we're on this path to black mirror dystopia, but there's yet to be a collective awakening/action to combat it. It wouldn't surprise me if down the road there's a cultural movement that decides "we're opting out of al…
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He's patio11 though that's his identifier like any in-game name, it make no difference if used as a username or as a 'metaverse' identifier. If I want to verify metaverse user 102372193, I'd go to their profile hoping they've linked their twitter
ENS is solving for this by creating a common identity across crypto wallets: https://ens.domains/ That way he can be patio11 across all platforms if he wishes (and doesnt need to worry about getting "patio11" on every new platform that's created). Or, he can just create a subwallet with a different identity but still rolls up into his main wallet. It also protects against somoene putting their twitter in their profil…
Casually, rather than e.g. legally or as a matter of trademark, I "own" patio11 across all the namespaces because I've put in the work over the years to make people associate that with me. This doesn't necessarily work in reverse; you should probably not assume patio11 DMing you in a Chinese MMORPG is actually me and will actually wire you money if you give them all your dragon eggs.
If I need to auth myself to a savvy technologist in a channel not known to be controlled by me, I don't say "Trust the display name" or "Trust that I also know my username on Twitter." I publish something somewhere where the technologist would know "Hmm compromise of that account would be a much larger problem for him than this transaction." (Bonus: invariably relies on public key cryptography; no blockchain required.)
This is not what I expected, but I guess it tells more about me than anything else given that stratchery doesn't typically cover such subjects. What I thought the subject is going to be about society bifurcation along the traditional 'haves' and 'havenots'. For the record, I am not sure he is wrong. I just went in there with different expectations.
Theoretically, isn't metaverse the height of commodity fetishism?
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He's patio11 though that's his identifier like any in-game name, it make no difference if used as a username or as a 'metaverse' identifier. If I want to verify metaverse user 102372193, I'd go to their profile hoping they've linked their twitter
ENS is solving for this by creating a common identity across crypto wallets: https://ens.domains/ That way he can be patio11 across all platforms if he wishes (and doesnt need to worry about getting "patio11" on every new platform that's created). Or, he can just create a subwallet with a different identity but still rolls up into his main wallet. It also protects against somoene putting their twitter in their profil…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I seriously wonder whether there will be a cultural rebellion against the digitization of our lived experiences. It seems like everyone (even the youngest who grew up in a fully digital world) feels like we're on this path to black mirror dystopia, but there's yet to be a collective awakening/action to combat it. It wouldn't surprise me if down the road there's a cultural movement that decides "we're opting out of al…
How many video game developers rarely play video games? I bet most game devs don't count gaming amongst their defining interests. There seems to be a majority swath of humans who get hooked on unproductive hobbies. Drugs, partying, social media, video games. I'm talking HOOKED, dreams framed by the TikTok UI, taking work off to watch a Counterstrike tournament, weeks of back-to-back hangovers. I mean, I've been there…
Every game developer I've ever known, which is a good number, was a hard core gamer who loved games. Most of them really reduced it as they get older - not just because as you get older you just don't have the time or energy, but because doing something for work just kind of ruins it for most people.
That last bit is very common: my wife is a professional artist and doing that as her profession has just about ruined her interest in painting and drawing despite doing it for a lifetime. I was a hobby coder my entire life until mid-way through my career. Now although I sometimes do short stints, I gotta say, it is kind of ruined for me.
So, sure, you are probably right, but probably for the wrong reasons.
As for "unproductive hobbies" the reality is that all hobbies are basically unproductive. The stained glass artists I know struggle to give away their output because there's only so much anyone around them wants, but their hobby is to produce it. Ditto the painters, woodworkers, etc. Yes, these can give you practice with useful skills, but they're still basically generating a waste product, and if you try selling it, on average, you're just trying to mitigate your losses, piece work is almost never financially sound. This is all to say that one shouldn't view hobbies as "productive" or not, you should view them as providing benefits not directly related to the activity. Hiking, running, cycling, weightlifting - these are all "unproductive" but they are useful practices. Games aren't devoid of value in this sense - hand eye coordination, rapid tactical thinking, etc. are all skills you develop and maintain with practice.
That said, I'm 100% on board with you about the parasocial relationship thing, but to note the obvious, the real elephant in that particular room is social networking in all of its guises. Video games aren't even close, and, if anything, are probably closer to the "real relationship" end of the spectrum than any other online endeavor. I know many gamer groups who have transitioned to real life on multiple dimensions, far more than "hey these are the people i interacted with on Twitter" and other purely ephemeral constructs.
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Wonder if the same will hold for books?
Ebooks never gained the completely dominant position that digital photography and music did. And even those among us who prefer ebooks for fiction consisting of flowing text still prefer printed books for a lot of more reference-oriented or "coffee table" books.
I'm of the age that I remember getting sucked in to the Second Life hype. MMORPGs were also becoming popular, and there was this narrative that "virtual worlds" were on a rocketship to the future. Universities and companies paid stupid amounts of money for digital real estate. Wired ran profiles of Second Life speculators who got rich in the bubble. Now I guess we call virtual worlds "the metaverse" and think it'll b…
A lot of dumb things happened in the past, especially with companies that tried to substitute virtual scarcity speculation for an actual business model.
It's easy to mock them for how ridiculous it all is, but I don't see any evidence that Meta is charging down a path of repeating all of the failed business models of years past.
I think a lot of the old timers who have seen hype cycles of past businesses are projecting too much of those old, failed businesses on to this new wave of activities. Everyone is so busy speculating that Meta is going to fail that it's hard to actually understand what they're doing or what their business model really is.
Regardless, it's trivial to see that video games and VR of 2021 are nothing like the Second Life of almost two decades prior. Back then, video games and even computer-based entertainment were a niche hobby. Today, video games are everywhere, VR is cheap, and everyone is already attached to their phones 24/7. I'm interested to see where this goes.