Ask HN: Are there any actual redeeming qualities of the metaverse concept?
As defined by all the companies claiming to be building one, do you see any redeeming qualities in the metaverse or is this just a marketing play?
From what I've read it seems all too dystopian to me so I'm wondering if there's anything redeeming about the concept that I'm just not seeing. Virtual and augmented reality will find uses and markets. Will Facebook be at the center? I know the only real VR headsets Best Buy sells are from Oculus (Facebook.). With stimulus cash burning a hole in my pockets I thought about buying a VR system and found that competitors for Oculus are more expensive relative than what you get considerably. No way am I logging into Facebook, but most folks won’t care. That might not turn into a meaningful advantage. See the movie Ready Player One that makes Zuckerberg look like a clueless follower instead of a bold leader. Sword Art Online particularly in the arcs after the death game is better science fiction, but Spielberg tamed the nostalgia of the book to make something which I think speaks to all generations in the ‘West’ and is a great jumping off point for conversations. The problem is that everyone wants to “simulate” reality. I’m not interested in that. No one wants to go to a virtual mall. They want to be somewhere unique. A game. A story. Something… else. Precisely. I don't understand that part of it either... owning virtual Nike sneakers or virtual land? Why? Idk, maybe I'm just old. Being able to take an item out of one game and move it into another game sounds like fun but keeping track of the ownership is a tiny problem compared to having the appropriate assets to draw the objects cross-game never mind implement the attributes of the objects. (And not let imported object "break the game") If you had it all in a unitary system like the OASIS from Ready Player One it might be possible but unless all the games are under the same framework it would take a lot of coordination. In the hope that it'll be worth real money someday, and you'll get rich off of it. That was even in Neal Stephenson's original concept of the metaverse. And it's what explains very nearly all of the money in today's virtual currency markets. I think "merged reality" will be a lot more fun than what we have today. This will be truly enabled by smart glasses which largely replace the 2d phone screen. Imagine collaborative art sculptures in the park that you only see of you want to. Cool art without disrupting the physical space. This is just one example. What might science or history class be like? Empathy training? I think there will be so many new ways of interacting with technology and each other, that the positives will outweigh the negatives. It's good for games. Games already implement a usable metaverse environment, which is why we see things like concerts in Fortnite, etc.. And AR games like Pokémon Go already connect a virtual environment to the real world.