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The metaverse is bullshit

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Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#251

Post by imiric »

harwoodleon wrote: post #53
xornox wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Things are changing and it is not a bad thing if corporates try to be a change. Probably they fail, but even trying is better than doing nothing.

Here’s a thought: maybe corporates will change and may even become obsolete.

I can think of endless scenarios of how this plays out, and that is not one of them.

Corporations rule us today and will only continue to grow larger and more powerful. There's not a thing any individual or even a group of people can do about it because the vast majority of people either don't care or embrace it with open arms. See the futile fight for privacy some of us still care about as an example.

We, the technologists, are complicit or directly benefit financially from this change. Governments are slowly catching up, pretending to control the monster they've let loose on their citizens, but are really in symbiosis with corporations, so nothing will change there.

This Metaverse thing is not something to laugh about or dismiss. It will happen one way or the other. And all of it makes me want to pick up gardening and go live in a mountain shed away from it all.

We've all read the sci-fi books or seen the movies to know how this plays out, yet are actively working towards that future. I have no words to describe it but mass insanity.

I'm trying really hard to think about the positive aspects of this, but I'm coming up short. Will the future be more convenient? Sure. Will this help some people live out a better life in the real world? Probably. But the vast majority will be mindlessly plugged into this thing, isolated from meatspace, at the direct benefit of the corporations that produced the experience.

There won't be a big war between man and machine. The Matrix will be built by humans, machines will help us do it, and we'll all want a taste of that juicy steak we saw in that ad.

What are we doing...?

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#252

Post by capableweb »

DeusExMachina wrote: post #227
fredophile wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Billions and billions spent on making movies as polished as possible, yet "I thought the book was better" is what we always hear. How many people watched game of thrones? How many people read all of the published books in a song of ice and fire? The book might be better but movies and TV are a lot more popular.

I could not find much data but it seems that the finale of Games of thrones had 19 million viewers [1], while the books sold 90 million copies [2]. Since I guess the latter are cumulative over all the five books, it looks like books and series have a similar performance. Looking at something similar, the Lord of the Rings had around 80-90 million viewers (very rough estimation from the global box office [3]) while th…

While this data is interesting, it doesn't say how many people watched or read something, only those who paid to watch/read something, which is very different.

I've purchased all of the books you've mentioned, but watched the films/series via other means that won't show up in the statistics, and I'm not alone in doing so or vice-versa.

Books like Lord of the Rings gets passed through generations and loaned around as well, so I'm sure the number of people who've read LotR is a lot higher than the number of people who bought the books.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#253

Post by Scarblac »

Jasper_ wrote: post #136
kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Second Life, you could create islands with their own rules, for example you could create a car racing game. Then when you enter the game, you can not fly around while you play the game. It really was very interesting, and amazing how many things people created in a very short time span.

You might not know this, but Second Life was not, uh, a wide success. And Second Life is the one we remember from that era. There are dozens of these metaverse things from the mid-90s through the 2000s, none of which achieved the notoriety anywhere near Second Life. Off the top of my head: Sony's SAPARi / Community Place (1994), ActiveWorlds.com (1995), There.com (1998), Habbo Hotel (2000), myCoke (2002), Google Live…

But now there is Roblox, isn't it kind of a metaverse too? And it's a huge success.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#255

Post by snovv_crash »

Animats wrote: post #86
cgriswald wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of watching a professional driver smoothly going around a switchback, you sit in first person POV in a car that feels, handles, and accelerates better and faster than the real thing. It even cheats to make you feel like you're a better driver—that the car makes you a better driver. You probably won't buy it on the spot, but you could ; the car as an impulse buy right at the peak of your high. Even if you don'…

I hate to tell you this, but in most driving games, the center of gravity is so low that it's below the ground. That keeps you from rolling the simulated car.

If it was below the ground, the car would roll in the other direction.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#256

Post by theshadowknows »

tsimionescu wrote: post #239
benatkin wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought modeless was wrong and that you weren't discounting the experience of driving, but rather the experience of driving a mediocre car. However, with your followup comment, it seems you're discounting the experience of driving. Suffice it to say that plenty of people genuinely love driving, both in video games and in the real world. Flying won't make driving obsolete any more than mountain biking has made hikin…

I think they are discounting that there would be anything new at all in a "Metaverse" offering driving compared to what exists today in gaming. Of course you can have fun with virtual driving, there already exists a plethora of ways, from realistic-ish high speed racing in Gran Turismo to wacky racing in Mario Kart to realistic-ish long-form driving in Truck Simulator.

And there’s the newest version of Microsoft Flight Simulator. People really love the vr mode and the videos I’ve seen (I’ve never played it) already look pretty darn realistic and engaging.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#258

Post by wccrawford »

rklaehn wrote: post #81
Hokusai wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> VR is very attractive for teenagers and preteens Headsets are horribly bad. The day I can get my VR onto my glasses, that's the day that VR will be for everybody. My headset, and many people I known headsets, is in a box. I love VR, I love the games, but I find it too cumbersome for day to day use compared with my screen. > NFT Yes. This is already extremely popular, but you do not need NFTs. Your old and proved in…

Got an oculus quest 2 this week. Better than last time I tried one, but still not great. Often going out of focus, and I have problems with fog. I tried all the things, from VR experiences to porn. Kind of neat, but I still very much prefer the real world. I guess I will play through resident evil 4 and half life alyx, and then the thing will collect dust in a corner again. One thing that felt quite dystopian was the…

My wife had that problem with fog and we found an adapter on Amazon that had vents around the padding and it fixed it.

I don't know what the focus thing is about, though, unless the headset is shifting around on your head, and the fix for that is a new strap. The stock strap is pretty meh.

On the Wii, the killer experience for most people wasn't Mario Bros, but was Wii Sports. On the Quest, there's a lot of games that let you use your body well, such as Walkabout Minigolf or Beat Saber. Alyx is good, but not as compelling as the sports games, IMO. It also plays on the computer and requires a wire or a good router and has occasional problems because of that link. Games that play directly on the headset are generally less frustrating.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#259

Post by zaptheimpaler »

This is it. This is the Dropbox comment everyone will laugh at in 10 years except its a post. Meanwhile PC Gamer is probably laughing all the way to the bank, they don’t care if its right or its wrong, it’s masterful clickbait provocative enough to get a ton of views and comments.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#260

Post by iamacyborg »

notafraudster wrote: post #193
lottin wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The connection is that both are instances of people paying real money for imaginary goods. I don't know how I feel about that, but intuitively it doesn't seem a smart thing to do.

But that's been a thing in videos for at least 30 years -- expansion packs shipped on disc for a long time -- and a common thing in almost the modern form since 2006 (Elder Scrolls Oblivion adds cosmetic-only horse armor to game for $2, online purchase only). If you think NFTs add to that the ability to resell as a hedge against initial purchase price, then Valve added a player driven market to TF2 in 2012, the same…

> analogously for real money gold sales in World of Warcraft since about 2004.

Even in the late 90’s folks were buying and selling virtual items in Ultima Online.

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