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“What is so hard for people to understand” says HN commenter: “the metaverse clearly means [my definition of the metaverse] why can’t people see this?!!” Well,
by randomsearch 5y ago
“What is so hard for people to understand” says HN commenter: “the metaverse clearly means [my definition of the metaverse] why can’t people see this?!!”
Well, Zuckerberg didn’t give a clear definition, the term itself is made up, and it doesn’t currently exist (otherwise, what would we be building?).
So no you don’t know what it means or how it will turn out, and neither does Zuckerberg. He might have a vision of what he’d like it to be and how he’s going to make money out of it, but he’s very probably very wrong.
It’s obvious a deeply immersive experience will eventually arrive but it seems far from obvious how it will be used, much like predicting the rise of Tik Tok in 1990 based on email and usenet.
The best way to predict the future is to make it. Hackers built much of the early internet, so let’s go build the early metaverse and at least make something insanely experimental and magical and beautiful before the next Zuckerberg comes alone and devalues it.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago>It’s obvious a deeply immersive experience will eventually arrive This is like "self driving car" obvious. It seems like we're close, but we're really really not.
- randomsearch 5y agoI think that’s a very good analogy, not least because our incremental steps to self driving cars and similar to our incremental steps towards immersion - we already have some components (parking assist, social media) but there’s still a large gap.
- tim333 5y agoThough there's no problem understanding what a self driving car should be - like an Uber but with no human driver in. The metaverse on the other hand - no one really knows.
- randomsearch 5y agoGood point! Metaphors fail so easily.
- mohanmcgeek 5y agoFacebook over the years had several opportunities to buy game studios and become a gaming company themselves. This metaverse is a VR video game and Facebook has demonstrated zero abilities to make a video game. I would bet on Minecraft and Fortnite creators to be a better position to create this "metaverse" because they've done this before.
- nightowl_games 5y agoFortnite, yes, almost definitely. Epic is a true leader in videogame technology. Minecraft, no. Minecraft has failed to truly innovate since Microsoft acquired it, imo. I think the evidence of this is apparent in the existence of both Minecraft Bedrock and Java editions. The metaverse is about creating the one true videogame. The final videogame. The holodeck where gamers themselves can make new games at a rapid speed. The Unity Asset Store is actually a treasure trove of value for Unity in this regard. I could see Facebook buying Unity for a massive sum or licensing the engine and asset store somehow to make a play towards this vision of the metaverse. That is, unless Epic just makes it first.
- dmonitor 5y agoMy bet is on Valve being the dark horse in this race. Gabe already has expressed interest, they're assisting development on Garry's Mod 2 (s&box), and they have the highest quality VR hardware. They also have consumer trust, everyone with VR has a steam account, they have a method of sharing user-generated content (and making money off of it!) with the workshop. If they can coordinate, they can take off in this area
- nottorp 5y ago> “What is so hard for people to understand” says HN commenter: “the metaverse clearly means [my definition of the metaverse] why can’t people see this?!!” The point of the article is that the metaverse is here and it's decentralized enough that the other 7 billion people that don't care about the opinion of one specific HN commenter are doing their own thing.