Some fluff on the metaverse
I love the metaverse, I hate the metaverse. I love the idea about our future, more interconnected than ever, and with a good mix of all the possible realities. I hate our present, in which many people use the word “metaverse” as a buzzword.
It’s a while that I want to write some ideas I have about this buzzword and how people are using it, and here I am, today, writing them down. This is not an article in which I define what is the metaverse, what are its rules, what it does mean… there are many smarter people that are already doing that (you can read what people like Avi Bar-Zeev, Kim Nevelsteen, Rob Crasco, Cathy Hackl, or Alvin Graylin are writing, for instance)… here I just want to be the grumpy guy that complains about some misconceptions of the metaverse, or better, how should be called at this moment, “the fluffverse”. They are not absolute truth, just opinions of mine that could be good to make some people think.
The fluffverse
The hype for virtual reality started when Facebook bought Oculus, and the hype for the “metaverse” started when Facebook declared it wanted to become a “metaverse company”. I think that Facebook’s power of influencing the tech world is a mix between its very powerful PR and the fact that being a giant company, many VCs and so-called analysts are following whatever it does… and so if Facebook does something, it is more probable that it becomes a trend. And it has not been only Facebook this time: also companies like Microsoft and Epic started promoting the metaverse (Epic got $1B to develop it), and this has created a big tsunami in the tech world.
From the day that Zuck said that famous sentence, it was the beginning of the end. Everyone started talking about the “metaverse”, what it is its exact definition, when it is coming, and all the rest. These discussions are actually healthy (when they don’t become affected by fanboyism), but the problem is that together with the real experts (e.g. the ones listed above), we started having the cowboys coming to dig some gold in XR following the latest trend. I have seen people starting immediately becoming metaverse experts, Linkedin descriptions filled with the world metaverse, startups starting pitching the metaverse for whatever. The metaverse has become the word to describe everything because it is trendy, and that’s why I created this meme that became pretty viral.
I remember some years ago reading an article on The Verge saying that like 40% of startups that claim to do AI actually don’t do AI. They just use the name AI because it is cool, but they don’t actually use it. The same goes for the metaverse. I’ve seen things like a company that does AR/VR software writing on Linkedin “WE CREATE METAVERSES”. I was really tempted to write them and ask them to make 2-3 metaverses for me as if I was ordering potatoes at the market, but then I preferred not doing that. A guy shared a video of the upcoming Alter Ego TV show (where singers become avatars) and wrote “A METAVERSE TV SHOW”. Stupid me that I thought they were only guys and girls with a mocap suit, I was not aware they were themselves a metaverse. Or that girl that defined herself as a “metaverse catalyst”, that I’ve still to understand what she does in her life, how does she catalyze the metaverse.
The metaverse is like the Fight Club, and the first rule of the metaverse is that no one knows what is the metaverse. It is like one of those Rorschach stains, everyone sees in it what he/she wants.
The fluffverse will end in some months probably, as we have seen dying the hype for NFTs or for Clubhouse (are there still people using it?) after just a little time… when people will realize that the real metaverse is something very complicated and will require a lot of time (like, years), the hype will deflate and the cowboys will chase the next big trend (Printable organs? Brain interfaces? Potato porn?). We’ll have articles asking if the metaverse is dead if it was all a bluff… we have already seen the hype cycle happening for VR, I think we know all the story. It will happen, but it will need time.
In the meanwhile, I’ll just keep using the word metaverse the least that I can (well, excluded this article). There are specific terms, and I think we should use them: AR, VR, mo-cap, cloud streaming, shared anchors, AR Cloud, AI, social VR, webXR… they are all part of the metaverse, but are NOT the metaverse. We have different words for a reason. Our game HitMotion: Reloaded is a VR/MR fitness game, it is not “fitness in the metaverse”, because it is just a standalone application. Let’s all avoid this continuous misuse of the world metaverse in what we are doing… it’s ok to use it to dream about the future in the usual 5 to 10 years, but not to talk about the present.
I honestly tell you that whoever tells me that is doing something related to the metaverse, loses my attention in like 3 seconds, because 95% of the time it is bullshit (the other 5% is people really expert on the topic). Whenever someone contacts me for my blog promising some interviews about the metaverse, I roll my eyes at 360°. “You have the exclusive opportunity to interview the CEO of the company Metaserve and he will tell you what is the future of education in the metaverse”. Oh, I have the exclusive opportunity to talk with someone that can tell me some random words, oh, that’s amazing, a one-of-a-kind opportunity… it would be a pity if my hand by error clicked on that delete symbol next to the e-mail. Oh…
The metaverse, Snow Crash, and Ready Player One
There is not a single article on the web that when mentions “the metaverse” doesn’t say that the term has been invented by Neal Stephenson in the novel “Snow Crash”. And since I’ve just written it, this post is no exception to this rule. Then there are usually also references to Ready Player One, and The Matrix.
I’ve never read “Snow Crash”, and given the current overdose about the metaverse, I have no intention to read it these days. I just know about Neal Stephenson because he was “Chief Futurist Wizard” at Magic Leap and that the company with him as a Wizard has gone close to bankruptcy (probably he made the wrong spell as a wizard).
Ready Player One and Snow Crash are about a dystopian future, and they are novels, not manuals about how to do things. So personally, while I appreciate that the authors have grasped something about the possible future, I don’t care at all about what they said about the metaverse. I love Back To The Future, but its predictions about flying hoverboards and multi-channel TVs turned out to be pretty impractical, and gladly we have not followed them (push scooters are already creating enough issues, flying ones would have caused a carnage, I guess).
Remember that almost no one that envisioned our future predicted the internet, the importance of video streaming, and social media. At the same time, no one has a clear idea of how the “metaverse” of the future will be in 25 years. There are too many variables like the convergence of technologies (6G, AI, robotics, XR devices, BCI), the evolution of our society, and some new startup ideas that could change all our way of living. So, in my opinion, it has no sense trying to get how the world will be in 25 years from now. It’s nice to play the speculation game (I love it), and nothing more. Most probably when we’ll get there, we’ll award the person that got right some predictions, ignoring that there were thousands of others saying wrong things and that it was just a matter of probability that someone said the correct prediction (eh, the survivorship bias…). I personally prefer to focus more on the present and try to push technology the farther that I can for how it is today than dreaming about something that will surely be wrong.
The VR world
One common misconception of the metaverse is that it is a fully virtual world. Facebook Horizon, Fortnite, etc… are all described as metaverses (or part of the metaverse, or whatever). When there are talks about the metaverse, given the influence of the above sci-fi novels, usually people imagine a fully virtual world.
Personally, I don’t know if the word “metaverse” is only about VR or not (I don’t care about definitions), but I’m sure that our medium-term future is not only in VR. In the upcoming years, the real world will still be more important than our virtual life: the two things will become always more blurred, but given that in these 7 years in VR I’ve just seen some improvements in ergonomics and audio/visual of headsets, I don’t think that in the next 7 years we will have a VR realistic like in Sword Art Online. VR will still be a “wannabe” recreation of reality for a long time and it won’t be able to mimic all the sensations on our body and especially in our body (like the pleasure of eating food, or feeling pain). Both from a hardware and software standpoint, we need much more, probably we’ll need decades and some brain-computer interfaces.
I’m a VR professional and enthusiast, but I would never spend all my time in VR nowadays, if not for an experiment. And if I had to decide between a meeting in VRChat or hanging around with my friends outside in the street, I would go for the second in the bat of an eye. The real world is still more convincing, more emotional, more satisfying… both in a good and bad way.
VR is good to have “sessions” of escapism to play a game, to attend an event, to live an incredible adventure. It is great also to meet with colleagues and work together with them. I seriously believe in its potential and I think it will be important in our life of the future, as my computer is important for my life today. But I don’t see why I should be immersed night and day in a virtual environment… I don’t think it has sense, especially for the biggest part of the population. I work in front of a computer, but what about people that for instance work in a factory? They can’t work in VR. Who has a shop, who works in a hospital… not all jobs can’t be carried in VR. And not all experiences are better in VR: supermarkets in VR are not a thing because buying in 2D on Amazon is much more efficient. I see VR used in sessions, when it is needed… as today you may read a book for some hours just to live inside a story.
I see VR become pervasive all the days and nights if and when there will be BCIs so powerful that we could live an alternative believable reality: if you could live in another world, with all the sensations of the real one and even more, without the limits of the current one (e.g. you can fly) would you live it? If all humanity is in such a system (with all the unsolvable political issues to solve to put humanity in a single system), and we all just live with our brain like in a Futurama episode, has sense living all in VR? Well, well, this becomes an interesting question… when there will be The Matrix (if it will ever happen), a future where we just shape the best reality for every brain could be interesting. But I’m talking about… 50-100 years from now? I’ll probably be dead before this can happen (when I die, if there is not the Matrix yet, please someone remember to all the XR community that I got this prediction right!).
The cross-platformness of the “metaverse”
Most people in the XR communities agree that with the term “metaverse” we should intend something accessible from all possible devices: AR glasses, VR headsets, PCs, smartphones, Tamagotchis, and Nintendo 64. Whatever it means the term metaverse, I agree that in our future we should all be more connected, with all our realities blending together, whatever device we are using.
Here comes a big problem though: are we sure that everything can be compatible with all devices? Personally, I think that this can’t be always the case. Nowadays it’s already complicated for websites to be compatible with all browsers and all screen sizes, so I find it hard that making everything compatible with many different technologies that span from 2D to 3D can be always doable.
Let me make you two examples. The first is 360 videos: they are nice to be watched in VR (I know, someone of you now is thinking “360 videos are not VR!”, well, I don’t care…), but if you try to watch them on your computer screen on Youtube, using the mouse to rotate them, the experience is super-shitty, with all the visuals distorted and the usability that is terrible. The second one is virtual concerts: you know that I’ve worked on Jean-Michel Jarre’s concerts in VRChat, and it could be enjoyed very well on PC and PC VR headsets. But one day I tried enjoying it on AR glasses and the experience was mediocre however I tried to fit it in my room. A concert is an experience of escapism: you want to feel somewhere else with the audience and the singer… living it within your real room is a bit disappointing. Not to mention games: balancing a game so that it could be played from users on all the devices can be a true hell.
I know that some of you may think that “in 5-10 years we’ll find the solution to this”, but no, unless in 5-10 years someone comes and destroys the walls of my house, having a concert here in AR will keep being bad. And talking about a “responsive design” for all the possible devices through which we could enjoy all the experiences in our mixed reality future is something that could make all developers, already desperate for the responsive design of websites, hung themselves to the ceiling in the next 5-10 years. Anyway, I think that I should trademark the term “spatial responsiveness”, because it fits very well for the purpose.
Some people say that the “metaverse” is the evolution of the internet, and probably it will be as messy as the internet. The internet is already accessible by all the possible devices, and there is already 2D and 3D content, there are also pages that try to support all the devices (see for instance A-Frame websites that can be used with mouse and keyboard or VR headsets), but most pages are optimized only for certain kind of devices. I think the situation will keep being that one.
There is only one metaverse…
There is a big debate about if there is only one metaverse or there are multiple metaverses. I think that it depends on what you mean by metaverse, as always. There is only one internet, but there are many networks. You pick your side.
The AR World
The other big cliché is sharing HyperReality, the short movie by Keiichi Matsuda (I love this man) about a dystopian AR future. Many years have passed by, but this video keeps be very popular among people talking about our future.
As I said when talking about Ready Player One, this is not a documentary, this is a movie made to provoke us, to make us think. 99% of the chances are that all of this is not going to happen. And with this all the other dreams about our future in AR with many writings around us as if we had the same visuals of Iron Man or Terminator, or when everything is made with the help of gamification. I remember one of the first patents from Magic Leap talking about possible AR games that could help us in doing our basic tasks like going shopping or doing the chores. But when I have to buy food, I don’t want dragons coming out from the fruit aisle so that I can play a game to entertain myself while doing that task. Usually, I have little time, and I just want to grab the f***ing fruit, not wasting my life playing games whatever thing I have to do. That would be like a nightmare, a future designed by a psychopath. I also don’t need to see visuals everywhere around me, my eyes are enough for most tasks.
Say what you want about Facebook, but they are smart people. And when they talk about the future for AR glasses, they talk about an interface where the device gives you suggestions about something that you need at that moment, and to which you most probably only need to say “yes”, because the AI is so often correct, that you most probably only have to nod to it. Yes, this means profiling and privacy problems, but this is not the main point of this post (it is of Facebook’s business, instead). So being in the supermarket and seeing dragons, virtual neon lights with offerings, thousands of notifications, many things around you would just be a big nuisance, and no one would want to wear glasses just to have garbage in front of his/her eyes. Instead, having a glass that when you are picking fruits analyzes what you have in front of you and shows you which are the best items to choose with a virtual arrow, without you even asking, is very useful. And an ad that advises you that your favorite fruit cake is in offering at the next aisle is interesting as well. So no thousands of info, no mess in front of your eyes, just a few contextual useful info.
Yes, there could be gamification used to make you do more things, but there are already many apps for the purpose (e.g. to entice people to train every day). But there won’t be gamification notifications for everything and there won’t be an overload of information around you. And there will be no one putting ads on 80% of your visuals because it is the maximum to not give you a seizure (remember when I told you that RPO is not a manual about our future?). Not even Zuck, he’s smarter than that. A single useful unobtrusive banner is much more effective than dozens of useless banners in front of your eyes.
The UX
No, please, not again that video of Minority Report, with Tom Cruise moving the hands so much that he has lost 10kilos just to find one picture…
Minority Report is a movie and that scene has been made just to entertain. In real life, it would be impractical, too tiring, and ineffective. Every time this video gets shared to hint that it is the future interface of the metaverse, a UX designer dies.
Social VR
In the “metaverse”, we’ll all meet in XR, make friends, and be happy with all people of the world. “People are the killer app of VR” said Charlie Fink, and I think he is not wrong. That’s why Facebook is invested so much in its social VR world, Facebook Horizon, which should become the evolution of Facebook.
Honestly, I’m not sure that social VR worlds are the evolution of social networks. The problem with Horizon and all the other virtual worlds (VRChat, etc…) is that they are not focused on what made social media successful:
- They don’t put the user at the center of the world. When I write on Twitter, on Linkedin, or I make a Youtube video, I know that people will see my content and someone will put a like. I am at the center of attention, and the more my content gets shared, the more I have attention, the more my ego becomes bigger. We all like consideration, we all like being at the center of attention, we all like being considered special and important. Social media are perfect for these purposes, and in fact the most shared kind of content is something about ourselves: selfies, dances that we make, sketches that we make, etc… A social VR world has nothing about it. It is… a world where you meet with other people. There is you and your peers, and that’s it. This is amazing, but gives no dopamine rush… unless you are a performer there;
- They are too realistic. Entering into a social VR world, in some years, will look like the real you entering a real world room. A room filled with people you don’t know. Your avatar, following Zuck’s dreams, will have your appearance, your real name on top of it, and your real voice. Now the question is: how many of us are comfortable in entering a room full of strangers and go talking with other people? Very few of us. Social media like Twitter and Facebook let us express our opinions masked with a nickname, and without the need of having the courage of expressing our opinion in front of others. We just write, hit send, and that’s it… little courage is needed. Speaking with your real voice in front of other people… well, this is harder. I’m not saying that people don’t do that (lots of friendships have born on online gaming platforms), I’m saying that it is harder;
- Synchronicity causes friction. If we loved so much speaking with people, SMS would have failed. Instead we prefer usually to send a message instead of calling someone. This is because a message requires little time, can be sent in any moment when you have time, and the other person can read it when he/she has time. Furthermore, again, it requires less effort in writing, and you can be shy and still be able to write it. Synchronous communication by voice is always more complicated to organize, and more expensive for what concerns your mental effort. This is why also I never got in love with Clubhouse meetings or Twitter Spaces meetings: I don’t have one hour to waste when someone else has decided to start a meeting, just to talk about the metaverse. Can’t we just write some messages on Telegram about it?
I’m pretty convinced that social VR worlds are not the evolution of social media. They are a nice addition, a new possibility to meet people, and a future substitute for Zoom and similar means (maybe). They are cool, and the success of VRChat proves that. But… social media must evolve in something else, that keeps the user at the center of attention, and that lets him/her create content in an asynchronous way. What is this evolution? Well, I don’t know, because if I knew, I would be a billionaire already. But just to make two examples of things that made me curious: some time ago there was the startup Ubiquity6 (now acquired by Discord) that tried to create a social network of spaces: you scanned an environment around you, and shared it with other people, that could so download it and enter inside it. It was a social network of environments, something that had no sense in 2D, but that can be interesting in immersive reality. And Where Thoughts Go by Lucas Rizzotto is a spatial VR experience where you can grab some orbs to listen to short vocal messages left by other people where they unveil some episodes of their lives. I think we need ideas like this to make social media evolve.
The paradise
When I was talking about how I don’t like the ad-centric future that Facebook has in mind, someone answered me on Twitter that the metaverse won’t be the paradise where everything is perfect… it will be made by humans, carrying inside it all the problems of the world that we already have. Ads and commercials are everywhere in our lives, from the physical world (billboards) to TV (commercials) to the internet (banners), and will be part of our immersive future, too. Hate and violence are in the real world, and on social media, and will be in the metaverse too. The metaverse won’t be used by humanity to restart everything from scratch, it will just be humanity expanding its reality, carrying on the new reality the same problems as the previous one… maybe solving some, but creating new ones.
The metaverse won’t be the hell and won’t be the paradise… it will be a mess like our current lives are.
And that’s it with this rant on the “metaverse”, whatever it means. Recently I have usually stopped using that word, and I prefer using terms like AR Cloud, or “our mixed reality future”, or “Web 3.0” when talking about what is going to happen in the next years. I’ll wait for the hype to end to return to use it. The good thing about all this hype is that for once there are many people getting interested again in AR and VR, and this is anyway positive for the whole ecosystem. Let’s look at the positive side of this thing, and let’s hope that we’ll all manage to build a good future that will remove the barriers between people and between realities.
See you in the metaverse. Maybe.
(Header image from Hacker Trip, all rights to Fox)
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