I’ve been up since 5:00 a.m. and I can’t sleep. I’ve been thinking about the most recent two blogposts I’ve written about High Fidelity (here and here). I have been harsh and direct, and while some readers have congratulated me for my frankness, others have expressed their dislike of what I have written. I feel somehow as if I am contributing to the general sense of malaise in social VR just by writing those two articles.
It brings me zero joy to watch HiFi struggle to reinvent itself, and it brings me zero joy to watch HiFi’s userbase as they feel confused, upset, angry, and betrayed by a platform they have invested so much into over so many years.
But (as the tagline of my blog states) this blog is about “news and views” (viewpoints). What is going on with High Fidelity is newsworthy, and I do want to continue to share what I really think and feel about what I am reporting on. Otherwise, I am just a corporate shill, a PR parrot. I want to have the freedom to report on news and events in the evolving metaverse, to praise and criticize the various companies as I see fit.
A commenter on my last blogpost said:
Second Life must have been a strange anomaly, that neither its founders nor the current Linden Lab appear able to replicate.
And I would agree. Even the visionary Philip Rosedale is having trouble making lightning strike twice.
I predict that the social VR/virtual worlds/metaverse industry overall is going to go through some pretty rough waters. The initial honeymoon period (if there ever was one) is OVER. The idealism of the many metaverse company builders is coming face-to-face with an ugly, stark reality: that it is going to take more persistence, more creativity, and more innovation to build products which more than a handful of early adopters will use on a regular basis.
All I can do is to continue to cover everything that happens, as best I can.
