Unless humanity destroys itself first, something like Horizon Worlds will inevitably become a massive success. A digital world is better than the physical world because it lets us override the laws of physics. In a digital world, we can duplicate items at will, cover massive distances instantaneously, make crime literally impossible, and much, much more. A digital world is to the real world as Microsoft Word is to a sheet of paper. The digital version has too many advantages to count.
Zuckerberg realizes this and is making a high-risk bet that Meta will be able to control the digital universe in the same way that Apple and Google control the landscape of mobile phones. For example, imagine Meta automatically taking 1% of every monetary transaction in the universe. Or dictating to corporate rivals what they are allowed to do in the universe, gaining massive leverage over them. Even if Zuckerberg is unlikely to succeed (and it’s still very unclear what direction the digital universe will evolve), he knows the potential payoff is staggering and calculates that it’s worth it. That’s why he’s investing so heavily in VR, and Horizon Worlds in particular.
As for the aesthetics of Horizon Worlds being creepy, boring, or ugly, there are 2 factors to keep in mind.
First, VR hardware and software are in their infancy and you simply can’t have very crisp graphics at this stage. That is fine according to the philosophy of modern tech companies. Just ship a minimum viable product, start getting users, and react to user feedback as you go. If Horizon Worlds succeeds, it will look far better in 20 years than it does today.
Second, Horizon may get attacked on the internet for being sterile and lifeless, but internet commenters are not the people who are putting direct pressure on Zuckerberg. Rather, he is surrounded by employees and journalists whose primary complaint is that Horizon Worlds is not sterile enough. I’m sure you’ve seen the articles: Harmful language is going unpunished, women are being made to feel uncomfortable by sexual gestures. Considering that Zuckerberg receives a constant barrage of these criticisms now, can you imagine the kind of heat he would get if he made Horizon more like VRChat, with its subversive culture and erotic content?
VR hardware and software are in their infancy and you simply can’t have very crisp graphics at this stage
As an occasional video game developer, I’m going to strongly disagree with you there. To give a counter-example:
Walkabout Mini Golf is a VR game that runs on Oculus Quest, Rift, and Steam VR, made by this fairly small studio (and most of the people listed there didn’t even work on the game) [EDIT: I reached out to the studio on Twitter and it turns out the game was mainly developed by a single guy, Lucas Martell]. It looks like this:
I’ve played this game with a friend of mine (who shows up as a stylized floating head that looks pretty great), and it was crisp, clear, high frame-rate VR perfection. Even in multiplayer, everything works smoothly, and it serves as a really nice virtual social space.
Having limited graphics capabilities does not place a significant limiting bound on aesthetics. As another example, Anodyne 2: Return to Dust is a jaw-droppingly beautiful game (developed by only two people!) deliberately made with PS1-era graphics:
Simplicity does not necessitate ugliness.
Rather, he is surrounded by employees and journalists whose primary complaint is that Horizon Worlds is not sterile enough.
This may very well be true (despite my personal distaste for that line of thought), but even if it is, being inoffensive and “bland” doesn’t mean you have to look bad! Nintendo’s oeuvre, for instance, shows that being friendly for all ages doesn’t require sacrificing aesthetic beauty. Meanwhile, in screenshots online and in the “selfie” Zuckerberg posted, model sizes are wildly inconsistent (look at the trees—or is that supposed to be grass?—on the ground), the clothing of avatars are almost surrealistically bad (why is Mark’s top button so far off to the left?), the shading is worse than what I could make in half a day with Unity when I was 12, and overall everything manages to look more slapped together than this notorious disaster of an asset flip.
I can’t help but feel that on some level this must be intentional, or at least the result of some absolutely horrific mismanagement.
Worth noting that even VRChat doesn’t want to be VRChat—as they just banned all the mods necessary to access said subversive culture & erotic content, much to the furry of their communities, one might say.
That seems like a bad move. Banning people from being human is always counterproductive. Any successful media of the future will be filled with weird porn; nobody wants to be censored.
I’d certainly like to believe that; the problem comes if a single company (which cares less about consumers than it does shareholders) is able to monopolize the market, as that then takes away consumer’s choice to be kinky if they so wish. Alternatively, a moral panic could plausibly cause regulations to be set in place for the metaverse which would make doing anything non-wholesome extremely difficult for the average person. But yeah, from the consumer perspective this is almost certainly a bad move.
Unless humanity destroys itself first, something like Horizon Worlds will inevitably become a massive success. A digital world is better than the physical world because it lets us override the laws of physics. In a digital world, we can duplicate items at will, cover massive distances instantaneously, make crime literally impossible, and much, much more. A digital world is to the real world as Microsoft Word is to a sheet of paper. The digital version has too many advantages to count.
Either there will be limitations or not. No limitations means that you can never be sure that someone in front of you is paying attention to you; your appearance indicates nothing but your whim of the moment; you can not be useful to others by providing something that they can’t get by themselves (art? AIs can make art). My first impression is that it will be very hard to build trust and intimacy in this environment. I expect loneliness and depression to rise as this technology is adopted.
But there will probably be limitations. Except that while in our world the limitations are arbitrary, in the Metaverse they will be decided by a private company and will probably enforce a plutocratic class system.
Unless humanity destroys itself first, something like Horizon Worlds will inevitably become a massive success. A digital world is better than the physical world because it lets us override the laws of physics. In a digital world, we can duplicate items at will, cover massive distances instantaneously, make crime literally impossible, and much, much more. A digital world is to the real world as Microsoft Word is to a sheet of paper. The digital version has too many advantages to count.
Zuckerberg realizes this and is making a high-risk bet that Meta will be able to control the digital universe in the same way that Apple and Google control the landscape of mobile phones. For example, imagine Meta automatically taking 1% of every monetary transaction in the universe. Or dictating to corporate rivals what they are allowed to do in the universe, gaining massive leverage over them. Even if Zuckerberg is unlikely to succeed (and it’s still very unclear what direction the digital universe will evolve), he knows the potential payoff is staggering and calculates that it’s worth it. That’s why he’s investing so heavily in VR, and Horizon Worlds in particular.
As for the aesthetics of Horizon Worlds being creepy, boring, or ugly, there are 2 factors to keep in mind.
First, VR hardware and software are in their infancy and you simply can’t have very crisp graphics at this stage. That is fine according to the philosophy of modern tech companies. Just ship a minimum viable product, start getting users, and react to user feedback as you go. If Horizon Worlds succeeds, it will look far better in 20 years than it does today.
Second, Horizon may get attacked on the internet for being sterile and lifeless, but internet commenters are not the people who are putting direct pressure on Zuckerberg. Rather, he is surrounded by employees and journalists whose primary complaint is that Horizon Worlds is not sterile enough. I’m sure you’ve seen the articles: Harmful language is going unpunished, women are being made to feel uncomfortable by sexual gestures. Considering that Zuckerberg receives a constant barrage of these criticisms now, can you imagine the kind of heat he would get if he made Horizon more like VRChat, with its subversive culture and erotic content?
As an occasional video game developer, I’m going to strongly disagree with you there. To give a counter-example:
Walkabout Mini Golf is a VR game that runs on Oculus Quest, Rift, and Steam VR,
made by this fairly small studio(and most of the people listed there didn’t even work on the game)[EDIT: I reached out to the studio on Twitter and it turns out the game was mainly developed by a single guy, Lucas Martell]. It looks like this:I’ve played this game with a friend of mine (who shows up as a stylized floating head that looks pretty great), and it was crisp, clear, high frame-rate VR perfection. Even in multiplayer, everything works smoothly, and it serves as a really nice virtual social space.
Having limited graphics capabilities does not place a significant limiting bound on aesthetics. As another example, Anodyne 2: Return to Dust is a jaw-droppingly beautiful game (developed by only two people!) deliberately made with PS1-era graphics:
Simplicity does not necessitate ugliness.
This may very well be true (despite my personal distaste for that line of thought), but even if it is, being inoffensive and “bland” doesn’t mean you have to look bad! Nintendo’s oeuvre, for instance, shows that being friendly for all ages doesn’t require sacrificing aesthetic beauty. Meanwhile, in screenshots online and in the “selfie” Zuckerberg posted, model sizes are wildly inconsistent (look at the trees—or is that supposed to be grass?—on the ground), the clothing of avatars are almost surrealistically bad (why is Mark’s top button so far off to the left?), the shading is worse than what I could make in half a day with Unity when I was 12, and overall everything manages to look more slapped together than this notorious disaster of an asset flip.
I can’t help but feel that on some level this must be intentional, or at least the result of some absolutely horrific mismanagement.
Worth noting that even VRChat doesn’t want to be VRChat—as they just banned all the mods necessary to access said subversive culture & erotic content, much to the furry of their communities, one might say.
That seems like a bad move. Banning people from being human is always counterproductive. Any successful media of the future will be filled with weird porn; nobody wants to be censored.
I’d certainly like to believe that; the problem comes if a single company (which cares less about consumers than it does shareholders) is able to monopolize the market, as that then takes away consumer’s choice to be kinky if they so wish. Alternatively, a moral panic could plausibly cause regulations to be set in place for the metaverse which would make doing anything non-wholesome extremely difficult for the average person. But yeah, from the consumer perspective this is almost certainly a bad move.
Either there will be limitations or not. No limitations means that you can never be sure that someone in front of you is paying attention to you; your appearance indicates nothing but your whim of the moment; you can not be useful to others by providing something that they can’t get by themselves (art? AIs can make art). My first impression is that it will be very hard to build trust and intimacy in this environment. I expect loneliness and depression to rise as this technology is adopted.
But there will probably be limitations. Except that while in our world the limitations are arbitrary, in the Metaverse they will be decided by a private company and will probably enforce a plutocratic class system.