For a minute there I thought I had written your message and forgot about it. It resonates strongly with how I feel. Infocom, the leading maker of the text adve

For a minute there I thought I had written your message and forgot about it. It resonates strongly with how I feel. Infocom, the leading maker of the text adventures you talk about, used to advertise that the brain is the most powerful graphics technology (https://thedoteaters.com/?attachment_id=6312 https://thedoteaters.com/?attachment_id=6312). When playing their games as a kid, I remember the sense of wonder with what then felt like an entire universe contained inside the computer. I tried to "trick the computer" into letting me go places that weren't technically part of the game! When thinking about the games back then - and I say that not with a sense of nostalgia, but simply remembering how I felt about these games before I understood how they worked - I wanted to go to every house in the scenery, every city building I was driving by. I wanted to see if I could go there, knock on the door and there would be people and adventures waiting for me everywhere. That dream was the metaverse indeed. Great graphics of course helps a lot, but they are not the main characteristic of this immersion. It's depth, content, the sense that every couch in the room could have a long lost and forgotten receipt under it. Adding people often breaks the immersion, especially in Free to Play games. When you are in a medieval world and suddenly a player called "Memes4Ca$h" dressed in a pink armor shows up, it breaks the immersion. The ideal environment would either need true human role players or AGI-managed characters.