I've been watching stuff on Will Wright commenting on how he designed The Sims. I now believe there is a real demand for a metaverse, a place for people to just

I've been watching stuff on Will Wright commenting on how he designed The Sims. I now believe there is a real demand for a metaverse, a place for people to just do things without impact. People want to experiment. They want to voice things they normally wouldn't. They want to ask their boss or an in law to help them in Farmville. Or poke that dreamy former classmate. It's a little like those parties where they put masks on but everyone knows who the person under the mask is. Forums are an outlet, sort of like what we do on HN with the linked usernames and stuff. But forums limit you to text. There's a spatial aspect too. As a kid, I used to try to make a chatroom where you could fling snowballs at each other, except some of those snowballs had rocks, and some dude would come in with a flamethrower. There were rules, but they were not that restrictive, and these avatars were an extension of your identity. It's this ridiculousness, that Minecraft/Roblox/Second Life all understand. There's also lots of MU* and MUSHes for this kind of thing. I don't believe FB/Meta really understands this though, just the way they've failed to understand why Snap and TikTok are working. FB of today is great at imitating. They have the infrastructure skill and the technical talent but not the soul. They'll probably try to copy Roblox and they'll get some traction because they have such a huge platform, but it'll likely be something that sets the bottom bar.