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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

#41
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,…

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 reality for entertainment in a fake world already. thats a few hours people can dedicate.

2) The metaverse can be more than traditional video game type entertainment. WFH has turned the office as a destination into a keyboard/monitor as a destination. You can use VR to have a much more immersive/focused work destination than either office or WFH desk. Thats 8+ hours a day you can spend in metaverse.

(I have tried the Oculus workrooms and if the virtual screen resolution was higher then i'd personally work in it.)

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

#44

Isn't the Metaverse(tm) really just 2nd Life given a second life?

2nd Life is still out there. I say s someone who was invited to (and attended) a 2nd Life based event during lockdown. I also was invited to a bunch of similar virtual events on the 100 competitors that seemed to spring up.

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

#45

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.

And that strife will be in the real world. The thing about “real” is that it always wins over “virtual”.

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

#46
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,…

How many people spend a lot of time on social media? Billions, this is just providing a more immersive interaction for that. VR is only a tiny portion of that and I'm expecting AR and haptics and a whole bunch of other tech that enable more diverse sensory experiences to play a part here.

I don't really want "Meta" to own all of that largely because what made the internet successful was having no gatekeeper and a very low barrier to entry. Not that that's true anymore, but having no initial gatekeeper let people do crazy things for 30 years while the current gatekeepers were establishing themselves.

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

#47
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought Roblox was what kids play before they 'graduate' to Minecraft?

I think it's more a generational thing. If Gen X grew up on arcades and the Atari (guessing), and Millennials on games like Quake or NES games, then Gen Z grew up on Minecraft and Gen Alpha on Roblox. Until VR technology gets better I probably don't think kids will grow up on it because I can't imagine headsets being safe to use for extended periods of time if you're under 10 years old.

> I can't imagine headsets being safe to use for extended periods of time if you're under 10 years old.

Oops. Well the only reason my kids play as much Roblox as they do is only because I don't let them play the Quest2 all day. They would if they could. (Especially the 8yo)

RecRoom is a really well done VR Roblox and my kids would live there if they could. I think we'll see a generation of kids with high interest and expectations of VR.

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

#48
post #2

its actually roblox

Does Minecraft go down for several days like Roblox does? Does Minecraft ban/cancel people like PewDiePie as Roblox did? Aren't monthly active users (MAU) around 100M for each? I think Roblox is eventually doomed to slowly fizzle like Second Life, etc. Internet history is littered with the corpses of dead closed systems. Remember Compuserve, Prodigy, and AOL? Remember Myspace? Microsoft might eventually, say, install…

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.

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

#49
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,…

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…

I'm frustrated that everywhere I look I keep seeing "metaverse" and "VR" used interchangeably. All of the things described above are VR, and none of them are the metaverse.

Watching TV or playing a game in an immersive, distraction-free VR environment sounds great, and will happen, and it's not the metaverse, it's just VR.

Working in a virtual home office has the potential to be extremely productive, ergonomic, and space-saving, and it's not the metaverse, it's just VR.

A metaverse involves some kind of shared space and shared experience across a networked medium. Not only is it more than just doing things in VR, a metaverse doesn't even require VR.

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

#50
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,…

The time I spend in Minecraft is either meditation time or social time.

It's an even better experience when there's a modpack on the server with a near-infinite number of things to do, too.

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