What's missing from the Metaverse?

What's missing from the 3d virtual worlds that companies like Meta and Microsoft are hyping as the Metaverse?

Philip Rosedale, founder of Second Life, offers his thoughts on how to build a Metaverse where everyone would feel included, based on his two decades of experience building online social spaces like Second Life and High Fidelity.

CHAPTERS
0:00 Introduction — dream or nightmare?
1:03 Who is the Metaverse for?
2:14 VR headsets aren't good enough (yet)
4:57 The Metaverse needs to be inclusive
5:49 The Metaverse is about being with other people
7:45 Humans need community
8:40 Conclusion

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[GwynethLlewelyn]

Disclaimer: Philip is my Guru.
While he is not _always_ right, he is _often_ right on the spot, but notice how carefully he frames his arguments. This is not a yuppy youngster launching the next cryptocurrency or discovering a new use for NFTs, round up a few millions, have a pitch to investors, opens office, collapses after a few months but keeps the money in his pocket. Rather, Philip is both a visionary and a researcher who just happens to know his personal technical abilities (and its limitations) very well: he's open to being questioned. He's not afraid of admitting publicly when he gets something completely wrong. He's willing to take the risk of putting one of his visions into practice, pay for it out of his own pocket, and shut the operation down when it fails — but keeping the experience and knowledge of what did not work, so that he won't repeat his mistakes ever again. Instead, he _builds_ on them, extrapolates from the failures and adjusts his vision — but does not give up on it.
The argument about Oculus Rift being 'useless' for a large-scale, long-lived virtual world is actually quite interesting; I believe I have never heard it from Philip Rosedale before — and most certainly not from anyone else. Personally, I see it as a 'gimmick' — an alternative controller for FPS games, if you wish. That's not a 'niche market' — it actually has a potential market of hundreds of millions of users. But you won't be using it to log into Meta's Horizon Worlds while riding the subway. And it's not because it's too bulky or too uncomfortable to wear. It's because you're essentially blindfolded — that is a surprisingly good analogy! — and there is a limit to how much you wish to interact with others ('strangers') while blindfolded, while that comfort threshold goes even lower if you have to do that in a _public_ place. Zuckerberg has good reasons for loving Oculus: it gives him a device enabling a 'social' technology which is under _his_ control. For years he has been complaining that Google and Apple 'set the rules' for their respective (mobile) hardware, and Meta has to follow such rules without having a saying; on the desktop, or on consoles, similar 'restrictions' are set upon Meta by their respective industry leaders. Facebook, as a purely service-based platform, runs on all platforms but has no 'control' over none. Meta _needs_ a _different_ kind of hardware where _they_ set the rules without any kind of limitation or restriction, and that's why Zuckerberg is _desperate_ to get 'his' virtual world up and running as quickly as possible.
Well, I won't pity his disappearance from the face of the metaverse (pun intended). He has gotten plenty of warning from his former employees (who quit when learning that he was ignoring their warnings and not taking them seriously).
The other potential contenders for the 'Metaverse Wars' (an analogy to the 'Browser Wars' of the mid-1990s) seem to be taking a much more careful approach; I suppose that they wish first to see _how_ Zuckerberg fails to deliver and learn from _his_ mistakes...

[burningisis]

Philip has this wonderful vision for a virtual space, and he has the experience having built Second Life and High Fidelity and has learned so many lessons from building these worlds. I think that currently, as it stands, Metaverse is a playtoy for the wealthy and doesnt have that level of inclusivity that Philip was talking about. I think Metaverse is trying to reinvent the wheel to be honest. Corporations largely were not willing to do business in Second Life despite it having a wonderful way to facilitate meetings and virtual work and it saw a renaissance with work from home due to Covid19. But at the end of the day, Philip is right. It is so largely dependent on those social cues. Highly social people do embrace these virtual worlds but introverts or people highly dependent on non verbal communication shun these virtual worlds as games. And I hate saying it because I wanted to love the Metaverse, but I dont see what Metaverse is doing what Second Life or High Fidelity or VR Chat, or any other myriad of virtual worlds werent doing already. If Metaverse can do more things, better things, etc, then I'm willing to change my mind, but I just dont see what they're doing better

[TribuneReckster]

I loved 2ndL. But, I had a job and I believe the key to the metaverse is jobs, jobs, jobs. And, wages; when a person can get a job that pays real wages people will be there. We don't worry so much about social interaction when we take a job. We expect fair treatment maybe health insurance bust for the most part we will deal with the adverse things later, first give me the job.

BTW, I left 2nd Life because I developed tremors in my hands, got old, retired and moved to Mexico to sit on the beach, eat shrimp and drink beer.

Thank you very much.

[kathleenwatson]

I found it interesting that there are gender differences in adopting VR headsets, which is a barrier to entry for females at this point in time. I agree 100% that social connection is key for humans & that by nature we are social creatures first and foremost. Ensuring this particular aspect of humanity into future 3D virtual worlds in crucial. COVID taught us how we whither without human contact. Thanks for sharing this video Amy. I look forward to more.

[laurendoe]

I hate voice in SL. I want a transcript of what is communicated for two reasons. (1) Potty breaks. No transcript means no "getting caught up" when I return. (2) My memory sucks, I need things in writing if I want a chance of remembering. A third reason is that I hate walking into the middle of a conversation - I'll log in and just go AFK for a while. A fourth reason is... most of my conversations are in group chat - which, by its very nature isn't "voice friendly". I don't want to be limited to communicating with only people in the same region. I tried Sansar, and once I discovered it did not have group chats, I immediately knew it wasn't for me.

[GameThinkingTV]

What about YOU? Are you excited about the possibility of living & working in the Metaverse? Sound off in the comments

[omegaman]

It's not was it missing. It is was will be present. If everything you do and you say can be turn again you. That become a big problem. The golden age of social media is ending. Peoples are getting more aware of the negative impact.