Tag: Editorial

UPDATED! MetaWorld: A Brief Introduction (No, Not THAT One…No, Not the Other One…This Is a BRAND NEW ONE!)

This Sunday, after a weekend spent working on various deadline-driven projects for my full-time paying job as a university librarian, I lay down on the sofa, exhausted, and opened up YouTube on my trusty iPad, eager to see what their recommendations algorithm would suggest to me on this fine and frosty Winnipeg evening (-20°C/-4°F).

And so I have YouTube personality KiraTV to thank (whom I first introduced you to when blogging about the continuing Cryptoland fiasco) for alerting me to this new metaverse project!

Yes, it’s called MetaWorld!

No, not that MetaWorld!

It is also not Dedric Reid’s MetaWorld, the sad, sorry project which I have written about at length on this blog (here’s a link to all those posts).

Yes, that’s right! It’s a brand new platform called MetaWorld! (Oh, joy! Oh, bliss!)

Here’s the requisite promo video:

Yes, that’s right, there are now three different projects called MetaWorld! This latest one is by an Australian company, so (to keep it separate from the other two), I’m just going to call it Australian MetaWorld.

Honestly, I totally would watch a reality TV show where Judge Judy presides over a court case where all the companies building the various and sundry MetaWorlds are suing each other for copyright infringement! 🤣

Seriously, though…couldn’t the company behind Australian MetaWorld come up with any other name? Didn’t anybody bother to Google “metaworld” to see what other platforms have already snagged that name? (I’m quite sure there’s more than two…somebody took over Dedric Reid’s old website domain name, so there’s at least three out there now!)

The first MetaWorld (this is the Dedric Reid project)
The second MetaWorld (by the people who took over Dedric Reid’s original MetaWorld website)
The third (Australian) MetaWorld

Here, from their Kickstarter page, is a bit about the company behind this third MetaWorld:

Hi there, my name is Matthew Sheath and I am the CEO of Elite Interactive Gaming Studios, the creator of the MetaWorld. We are a software company based in Sydney, Australia and we have a small team of 5 programmers and designers currently working on our MetaWorld project.  I have been in the software and gaming industry for over 20 years and have worked on many different software applications for companies in the finance,  gaming, and business sectors. 

During my time in the industry I have developed my skills across many different platforms, and have accrued a vast knowledge of computer programming and software applications. For the previous six years,  we have been mainly focusing on projects using Unreal Engine 4 and we are very excited with the upcoming release of Unreal Engine 5 (UE5). 

Unreal Engine 5 offers programmers exciting new possibilities to break boundaries in the gaming industry like never before. With the introduction of World Partition and a new robust multiplayer framework, UE5 gives us the opportunity to create worlds with many more multiplayers than ever before.  We are currently working on a ground breaking new host server platform called MetaHost, which will allow more users at any one time to access the MetaWorld and interact with hundreds and even thousands of other users in the MetaWorld.

Not so very long ago, I wrote a extremely snarky blogpost about a platform called Metafluence, which coined such ridiculous “meta” terms as metafluencer, metapreneurs, metaclans, even something called metahuts! 🙄

Well, Australian MetaWorld looked at Metafluence, and said, “hold my beer”…because here’s what it has:

Australian MetaWorld looked at Metafluence and said “hold my beer”…seriously, you couldn’t make up this shit if you tried! 🙄 The jokes just write themselves at this point…

So here’s the rundown, with all the metajargon…with descriptions taken from their Kickstarter page (oh yes, they have one of those, too; more on that later):

  • MetaEvents: “Host, perform and visit real time live music and events at the various stadiums and venues scattered throughout the MetaWorld.”
  • MetaMusic: “Well known and aspiring musicians will be able to book performance time slots and promote their performances ahead of time to fill venues and entertain crowds of fans.”
  • MetaSports: “Host, spectate or play in real time sporting events at the various stadiums and venues scattered throughout the MetaWorld.”
  • MetaGaming: “MetaGaming is the MetaWorld live multiplayer gaming platform that will enable members to host or join multiplayer games in various gaming genres.”
  • MetaShopping: “MetaShopping will offer an expansive array of shopping facilities, where you can purchase digital real world products and services for your homes, businesses and Metatars. Shop online in the comfort of your MetaHome, or visit the shopping precincts in person with friends using your Metatar.”
  • MetaSocial: “MetaSocial is the social networking platform we use to stay connected in MetaWorld. Keep in touch with your friends, family and business contacts using your interactive MetaWorld Personal Communications Device (MPCD). Choose to connect your MPCD to your phone, to receive alerts when you receive messages from friends or business contacts in the MetaWorld.”
  • Metatars! “Metatars are the are the characters we create and use to move around and interact with other people in the MetaWorld. Metatars are created using Metahumans, a brand new innovation by Epic Games and Unreal Engine. You will be able to create characters to look like yourself, or anyone you choose to.”
  • MetaHomes! “Come home to comfort and style in your brand new MetaHome. Beautifully designed homes and personal spaces will be available for you to enjoy in the MetaWorld. You can build your very own dream home, purchase an existing home, or rent a property that is perfect for you.”
  • MetaBusiness! “There are many different business opportunities and ways to promote and build a successful business in the MetaWorld. Whether you have a new concept for a start up business, or an already proven track record for success, you can take advantage of the endless opportunities to promote your business brand and increase sales.”
  • MetaFinances! “MetaFinances is your one stop shop for all of your financial and banking needs in the MetaWorld. Visit the MetaFinances tab at the top of the MetaWorld website to view the detailed lists all of the MetaWorld services that MetaFinances provides.”
  • CRYPTOS!!! “Cryptos is the currency used to purchase all land, buildings, building materials, vehicles, services, businesses, food and drinks, clothing and all items used within the MetaWorld Metaverse.”
  • METAWALLET!!! “The Cryptos will be exchangeable for real world currency using the MetaWallet feature, allowing you to withdraw your Cryptos into your nominated bank account and receiving the exchange rate value at time of withdrawal. All of your Cryptos will be stored in your electronic MetaWallet and used for purchasing items in the MetaWorld.”
  • CRYPTOSMARKET!!! “The CryptosMarket is the MetaWorlds equivalent to the stock market and will be responsible for keeping track of the value and exchange rate of the Cryptos in real time. A comprehensive software program is being built to handle all of the CryptosMarket requirements.
  • METABANK!!! “MetaBank is our online financial app that allows businesses to easily keep track of MetaWorld business transactions and safely and securely withdraw real funds into their nominated banking account.”
  • METATRADE!!!1! “You will be able to buy and sell anything you own in MetaWorld on the MetaTrade trading platform. Land deeds, real estate, building supplies, businesses, investments, vehicles and preowned items can all be purchased and sold using MetaTrade, and will fluctuate in value depending on many different factors. These factors will include things such as neighbouring land values, popularity and demand, age and condition, growth of investment and past business success.”
  • METACREATOR!!!!!1!!1! “MetaCreator – Making your dreams a reality. Our select team of licensed MetaWorld creators will help you to achieve anything you want or need in the MetaWorld. They will include everything you need from architects, builders, programmers and designers.”
  • METAVEHICLES!!!!!1!!1!!!!!1!!! “A beautiful, ever increasing range of vehicles is available to own in the MetaWorld. These include vehicles such as cars, trucks, motorbikes, boats and aircraft. You wont need vehicles to get around MetaWorld thanks to the innovative MetaWave instant transfer system, but they are nice to own and cruise around town in when you feel the need. MetaVehicles will increase or decrease in value at times, and can be bought and sold on the MetaTrade trading platform.”
  • METAWAVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!11!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11!!!! “You will be able to move to any location in the MetaWorld instantly using MetaWave. MetaWave will be accessible through your MetaWorld Personal Communications Device (MPCD) and will transport you to any predefined location you need to get to. This service will cost Cryptos to use and the price will vary depending on the distance required to travel. To save money, for short trips it may be worthwhile to use one of your other modes of transport such as one of your vehicles or the public transport systems which will be operating throughout the MetaWorld.”

Oh f**k this, I have to go metavomit 🤮 …you can read about MetaConstructions on your own, if you’re still interested. Sweet minty Jesus. Elite Interactive Gaming Studios definitely needs some responsible adult supervision when it comes to naming products. MetaWave? It’s called TELEPORTING, people. 🙄

A company of five people, no matter how wildly talented and experienced you are, cannot even begin to build everything so breathlessly promised in the Kickstarter description and on the website for Australian MetaWorld. That’s a red flag, right there. (At least they’re a step up from Dedric Reid, who has no “team” to speak of.)

And using MetaHuman for avatars? I hate to break it to you, but that is also a huge red flag to me. There is no way in hell they are going to get such highly-detailed and resource-heavy avatars into any metaverse platform and expect it to perform at scale! Even bringing a small group of such avatars together would bring any computer rendering them to a stuttering halt (so much for the crowds of hundreds and thousands of Metatars at MetaEvents!). It’s just completely, utterly ludicrous.

As I said at the start of this blogpost, I have KiraTV to thank for first alerting me to Australian MetaWorld, so I leave you with his snarky take on this project:

As KiraTV did, I did some searching for the name of the company that is supposedly building Australian MetaWorld, Elite Interactive Gaming Studios. Like him, I came up with a lot of companies with similar-sounding names, but nothing. Nada. Zip, Bupkis. A Google search on “Elite Interactive Gaming Studios” Australia pulls up exactly one hit: the Kickstarter page. Hmmm….

At about the two-thirds mark, KiraTV does a reverse image search of one of the pictures used in the promotional materials for Australian MetaWorld (a futuristic-looking stage), to discover that it’s taken directly from an advertisement for an Unreal asset which literally anybody can buy and use.

He also points out that there are no avatars (sorry, Metatars) walking around the footage of the downtown cityscape used in the promo video (another red flag…it likely is another Unreal asset picked up at a store). Much like Dedric Reid’s MetaWorld, Australian MetaWorld appears to consist of pre-packaged assets thrown together into a slick-looking video, all to persuade you to invest, with maximum buzzwords per minute.

Oh yes, and did I mention? Australian MetaWorld has a Kickstarter, where they have already raised almost $14,000 Australian? Funny how these NFT metaverse projects all raise their money up front…before launching anything.

So, yeah, there’s a MetaWorld. No, not the first MetaWorld, and not the second one, either; this is the NEW one (although, if you squint, they sure do look a lot alike). Welcome to The War of the MetaWorlds, folks. Pop some popcorn and pull up a seat, because this looks like it’s going to an epic battle!

Or, not… 😉

At this point, based on all three MetaWorlds, plus innumerable other NFT/crypto metaverse projects to which I’ve been giving some serious side-eye, the modus operandi for these sorts of projects seems to be:

Step 1: Buy a bunch of pre-made Unity (or Unreal) assets, the more realistic-looking the better.

Step 2: Create a slick promo video using those assets (or even better, reuse existing video and images used to promote these assets!).

Step 3: Mint a cryptocurrency and some NFTs for assets like virtual land, virtual vehicles, avatar wearables, etc.—whatever you think you can sell to people who don’t know much about the metaverse. (Sneakers, even though you don’t have avatars or even a platform yet where you can wear them? No problem!)

Step 4: Create a slick website with a lot of jargon, and lots of images and videos of the assets you bought in Step 1, to promote your new platform and sell your associated cryptocurrency and NFTs. Appeal to users’ FOMO and use lots of buzzwords like “blockchain” and as many “meta” terms as you can coin!

Step 5: PROFIT! (It doesn’t matter if you can actually deliver a product; you already collected your money in Step 4.)

P.S. I would love it if those of you with more world-building experience could carefully watch the Australian MetaWorld promo video I linked to up top, and tell me from where they grabbed the various assets used: the house, the concert, the sports matches, the game, etc. My hundreds of blog readers (and the over 600 members of the RyanSchultz.com Discord server) are the best army of metaverse bullshit detectors out there! We’ve already done this for Dedric Reid’s MetaWorld, and now I ask you to look at this new one, too.

Thanks in advance! I cannot wait to see what you discover! ❤️

UPDATE February 7th, 2022: Well, that didn’t take very long at all! Enverex, a member of the RyanSchultz.com Discord, tells me:

Here’s your break down. Very annoyed that I can’t figure out what the music video/event is though.

0:14-0:36 – Stock Unreal Asset Pack – “Hillview – A Modular Modern House” (https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/hillview-a-modular-modern-house)
0:36-0:42 – (this concert footage is the only one I’m drawing a blank on)
0:42-1:02 – Fifa, NBA2K then Call of Duty Vangard.
1:02-1:08 – Unreal Promo Roll (Meet the MetaHumans – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mAF5dWZXcI)
1:08-1:22 – (this is just misc stock background animations)
1:22-1:37 – Mexico City Mall mockup by Lifang UK (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak_pxQMTXa8)
1:37-2:04 – Stock Unreal Asset Pack – “Downtown West Modular Pack” (https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/6bb93c7515e148a1a0a0ec263db67d5b)
2:04-2:20 – Unreal Promo Roll (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa2drgVThbs – 1:41)

Bonus Bullshit: The only other video on the Metaworld channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkom-li6yw4) is again stolen content, this time from a concert last year on the (now defunct) Wave virtual platform. Info on the event itself (https://ew.com/music/justin-bieber-metaverse-virtual-concert-trailer/). No mention that this is from Wave or anything else, again just blindly stolen content with any existing branding hidden.

Many thanks to you for your diligent detective work, Enverex! He adds, “the house may look more familiar from this image [of the Hillview asset] (which ironically isn’t compatible with UE5 it seems? LOL. Supported Engine Versions 4.21 – 4.25, 4.27)”:

Image of the house used in the Australian MetaWorld promo video

Here’s a still of the concert footage from the promo video; can anybody help us find out where it’s from? (Google image search isn’t helpful here.) Thanks!

UPDATE February 8th, 2022: I have it from a reliable source that Dedric Reid is once again shilling his MetaWorld on the social audio app Clubhouse. In addition, I have found a fourth MetaWorld, although it appears to be more a token than a metaverse platform:

I also came across a fifth MetaWorld project:

And then there’s a sixth MetaWorld, a Chinese blockchain-based game:

Which only goes to prove that all the people building these projects are singularly lacking in imagination when it comes to naming their products. C’mon, people. Don’t be so lazy! (I reminds me of the two platforms called Oasis, although one of them has now ceased operations.)

I leave you with my standard warning: Please remember to do EVERY. SINGLE. SCRAP. of your own research before investing a penny in ANY blockchain, crypto, or NFT project! Caveat Emptor!

UPDATE February 15th, 2022: A big thank you to eagle-eyed reader Daniel Trujillo, who emailed to tell me he had located the source of the concert footage! It’s Madison Beer’s avatar in Life Support, an immersive reality concert experience:

So, every single scrap of footage in that Australian MetaWorld promotional video is bought, borrowed, or stolen from somewhere else…there’s no there there, people! And I believe that it is highly unlikely that there will ever be an actual, working metaverse platform, and that those who are already investing in their Kickstarter campaign will not get anything back for their money. Look before you leap; research before you buy!

Caveat emptor!

Real Estate Brokers for the Blockchain-Based Metaverse Platforms: Trend or Fad?

See also: The Billion Dollar Real Estate Company Using VirBELA For Its Virtual Offices

Of course, virtual real estate brokers are not new; Second Life, over the 18+ years of its existence, has had dozens and dozens of companies who buy, subdivide, and sell virtual land for your home or business use. In fact, that’s how the first person to earn a million dollars (U.S.) in Second Life made her fortune! Anshe Chung even had her avatar featured on the May 2006 cover of BusinessWeek magazine (see image, right), an event which sparked a boom period for Second Life, as many people and companies piled on, lured by the opportunity to make some money.

And the newer, much-hyped blockchain-based virtual worlds are going through a similar boom at present, with a predictable result: the rise of the real estate agent who specializes in selling land on the blockchain to individuals and companies!

The Metaverse Property website homepage

Among the pioneers in this rapidly-evolving market are Metaverse Property, which was established by the Canadian cryptocurrency entrepreneurs Michael Gord and Jason Cassidy. They describe their service as follows:

The Metaverse Group is a leading virtual real estate company offering exposure to this burgeoning industry via the Metaverses. We facilitate the acquisition of virtual property along with a suite of virtual real estate centric services that are provided by pioneers of the crypto, blockchain and non-fungible token (NFT) industries.

We currently offer (or plan to offer) the following services to help you enter and engage in the metaverse:

• Buying and selling of virtual real estate across the Metaverses
• Development of virtual land (we help bring your dream to life)
• Expert level consulting for all major metaverses
• Finding a rental within the metaverses to fit any need
• Property management of existing real estate
• Marketing and advertising your business in the metaverse

At press time, Metaverse Properties is brokering the sale of NFT-based virtual real estate in Decentraland and Somnium Space (both of which have already launched), and The Sandbox (which recently completed a first, closed alpha test, and is expected to launch later this year):

And even some real-life real estate brokers are jumping on the bandwagon. Kim Velsey wrote in New York magazine last month:

Tal and Oren Alexander, the brothers who became famous for closing megadeals in their early 20s then moved onto the biggest deals ever in their early 30s — they represented Ken Griffin when he bought that record-setting $238 million penthouse at 220 Central Park South in 2019 — recently announced that they’ll be developing and selling luxury real estate in the metaverse…

The brothers have formed a partnership with Republic Realm, a metaverse developer that recently paid $4.3 million for virtual property in the Sandbox, one of the more popular metaverses. (It also owns a 259-parcel virtual estate in Decentraland that it bought for about $900,000.) “We want to just focus on trophy properties in the various metaverses,” Alexander told the Real Deal. This will take the form, according to Republic Realm, of an “architecturally significant master-planned community.” Which sounds a little (or very?) depressing.

Real estate has always been about status and shelter, skewing increasingly toward the former as one moves up the economic ladder. Speculators like Republic Realm and the Alexanders are banking (literally) on the fact that you can take the shelter piece out of the real-estate equation altogether, leaving just speculation and status. 

Kim raises an important point about all this speculation in blockchain-based virtual real estate, which is all about artificially-induced scarcity: that it’s a luxury item, a status item, something to give you (or your company) bragging rights. Real-world real estate agents like the Alexanders wouldn’t give a toss about the metaverse unless they smelled an opportunity to make money.

As I have written before, we’ve already seen the rise and subsequent fall (circa 2006 to 2008) of Second Life, when everybody and their dog trooped in, set up shop, then just as quickly trooped out a year or two later, when they realized that the money-making opportunities were just not what they had hoped for. It takes more than just setting up a virtual version of your brand to make money in the metaverse!

And, while the current signs for the blockchain-based social VR platforms and flat-screen virtual worlds certainly do look very promising, it still remains to be seen whether all this excitement will translate to the average, non-crypto consumer. All the people and companies who are currently investing in virtual real estate in Cryptovoxels, Decentraland, Somnium Space, and other NFT-based real estate won’t have a problem attracting the blockchain enthusiasts, the crypto bros (and women, and those who identify as non-binary).

They will, however, also have to entice Joe and Jane Average Consumer to pay a visit, set up a wallet and an avatar, obtain and spend cryptocurrency, and stick around long enough to help build a strong community. And that’s going to be a much harder sell.

We could see a repeat of what happened in Second Life, as companies realized that they were spending a lot of money on something that wasn’t helping their bottom line, and then largely pulled out. Or we could see great success, who knows? (God knows my track record at making predictions on this blog is absolutely abysmal. I once infamously predicted that Cryptovoxels would fail miserably, and they have been going from strength to strength! I also predicted that Virtual Universe would be a hit, only to have it fold. So, meh, what do I know??!?)

But I do find it amusing how so many people are breathlessly talking about the metaverse like it’s some new thing, as if the non-blockchain-based virtual worlds and virtual worlds never existed for them. Half the time now, when I click on an article talking about the metaverse, all it talks about are NFT-based virtual real estate. There’s just so much more out there, and I believe it’s important to take a broader view of all this, especially in the current hype cycle of all things metaverse.

So, to answer the question in my admittedly click-bait blogpost title: are virtual real estate agents a trend or a fad? I would argue, based on my 14+ years of experience in Second Life, that they are an already-established trend worth watching. I think that there is a possibility that in the future, real estate agents will buy, sell, and trade virtual properties, acting as brokers for individual and corporate customers who don’t want to fuss with their purchasing experience on OpenSea and other NFT marketplaces, and are willing to pay to have somebody advise and navigate them through all the fussy details of owning a piece of the metaverse.

Editorial: Why Focusing Exclusively on Blockchain-Based Metaverse Platforms Ignores the Bigger Picture, and the Rich and Vibrant History of Social VR and Virtual Worlds

Have you also read: The Problem with NFTs: the Growing Push-Back from People Who Are Sick and Tired of the Current NFT Craze?

As I wrote a couple of days ago, I am angry—mostly about the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and our failures in dealing with it, both at the individual and societal levels. I’m also angry at myself for my own personal failings in navigating through these past two years of pain and chaos, trying to find a way forward in these unprecedented, heartbreaking, soul-destroying times.

But that’s not the only thing that has me irked, peeved, and annoyed me lately. So buckle up, because I have some opinions to share…I’ve been meaning to write this editorial for a long while.

A couple of days ago, I saw via a tweet that Cathy Hackl (a tech pundit who has dubbed herself “the Godmother of the Metaverse” in her Twitter profile) had been named Dean of something called the Repulic Realm Academy, which I had not heard of before. Intrigued, I began my investigation by visiting the Republic Realm website.

Featuring a trailer of footage compiled from various blockchain-based platforms (I recognized a couple, such as Decentraland and the Sandbox), the website states:

Developing the metaverse: Investment, development & infrastructure innovation across the global metaverse & NFT ecosystem.

Republic Realm is one of the most active investors in and developers of the metaverse real estate ecosystem.

We invest in, manage, and develop assets including NFTs, virtual real estate, metaverse platforms, gaming, and infrastructure. Today, we are among the largest landowners in Axie Infinity, Decentraland, The Sandbox and Treeverse.

We have holdings in 24 metaverse platforms and own over 3,000 NFTs. 

We develop our own metaverse real estate NFT projects, including:

• Metajuku, the first metaverse shopping mall with retail tenants and leases 
• Fantasy Islands, a luxury, master-planned real estate development in the Sandbox metaverse, and
• Republic Realm Academy, the first online university set in the metaverse and driven completely by tuition NFTs.

(“The first metaverse shopping mall with retail tenants and leases”? *cough*Second Life*cough*cough*)

Taking a look at the web page describing the Republic Realm Academy, you get the following slickly-produced, 40-second promotional video…

…as well as the following explanation of what the Academy is supposed to be all about:

shield_3d_colors.png

What is Republic Realm Academy?

Republic Realm Academy is a series of online courses about the metaverse and NFTs. Courses will be taught by multidisciplinary educators hailing from some of the most prestigious universities in the world alongside top industry professionals in web 3.0 technologies. After completing the coursework, students will earn a certificate in Metaverse Technologies and become a permanent part of the Republic Realm Academy alumni network.

Renowned metaverse expert Cathy Hackl is the dean of Republic Realm Academy.

Why Republic Realm Academy?

Republic Realm Academy is a place for people to learn and collaborate about the metaverse and NFTs, built for the metaverse in the metaverse by metaverse experts. Republic Realm Academy makes highly technical concepts easy to understand.

Apparently, they have set up a virtual campus in the blockchain-based social VR platform Somnium Space, and Somnium Space CEO Artur Sychov himself will be teaching “a class at the Academy about VR and the future of the metaverse:”

Tuition for four weeks, which includes a “limited edition Republic Realm Academy NFT Tuition Badge”, which will “be your campus ID card and unlock all Republic Realm Academy resources and initiatives at the start of the term”, six online courses, plus “limited office hours with professors, subject to availability”, costs US$1,000.

Taking a good look at the entire Republic Realm website leaves me with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Here’s a sample blogpost from their blog, touting their “2021 Metaverse Real Estate Report”, with the following illustrations:

Image source
Image source

Notice anything interesting about what platforms are discussed, and which are ignored?

A relative newcomer to the concept of the metaverse would be forgiven if, after coming away from this website, believing that the metaverse solely consisted of platforms which incorporated blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs)! And I, as well as countless others who have been working in social VR platforms and virtual worlds for literally decades, are starting to get a little pissed off at this myopic viewpoint (VRChat even felt forced to issue an official statement today).

More and more often lately, I am seeing the term metaverse being used ***ONLY*** to refer to blockchain-based platforms, and NFT-based virtual real estate, as if the previous quarter-century of metaverse history had never existed! (I take my start date as June 28th, 1995, when Active Worlds was launched.) Those of us who know better have been watching all this NFT metaverse madness unfold and grow steam since Facebook’s pivot to Meta, and now it seems as though the blockchain bros (and women!) have completely taken up all the air in the room.

Let’s face it: it’s to Cathy’s and Artur’s and so many other people’s advantage to sell (and yes, I deliberately use the word sell) as many people as they can on this frankly blinkered perspective on the metaverse—even to the point of offering thousand-dollar certificates for things could probably be learned just as easily from others for free! The overall messaging here is that the non-blockchain-based metaverse platforms which predate this boom in artificially-scarce NFT-based real estate are simply not worth bothering with or investing in.

I am officially fed up, and I think it’s high time that those of us who were the true pioneers begin to push back on this narrative. There’s a whole history of the metaverse which is being completely ignored, as if it never existed. And that’s wrong. There are valuable lessons to be learned here from those who went before, which are being forgotten in the current greed-driven gold rush of the NFT metaverse.

Enough is enough of this deliberately misleading view of what the metaverse is. What good is a “2021 Metaverse Real Estate Report” which completely ignores one of the biggest success stories of the past two decades, Second Life, simply because it doesn’t have NFT-based real estate which can be inspected via the blockchain? Or the absolutely incredible content creators working in places like VRChat, AltspaceVR, ENGAGE, NeosVR* and countless other successful platforms?

This is just too simplistic a picture to paint, and if I have to haul myself up on stage in every single goddamn metaverse-themed room on Clubhouse to remind people, once again, that there is more to the metaverse that just the blockchain and NFTs, then I will.

Look, I am not opposed to the idea of a blockchain-based metaverse. I’m not opposed to NFT-based virtual real estate. I’m not even opposed to selling thousand-dollar courses to people! But I am getting rather angry that so many people are deliberately focusing on just one segment of the rich and vibrant history of social VR and virtual worlds, to the exclusion of all others. There are many ways to organize and run a metaverse, not just on the blockchain! And this perspective overlooks all the work that is being done on dozens of useful and popular metaverse platforms, which do not use cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens.

*Note that while NeosVR does have an associated cryptocurrency (NCR), it does not have NFT-based virtual land sales, a key distinction.

UPDATED! The Problem with NFTs: the Growing Push-Back from People Who Are Sick and Tired of the Current NFT Craze

If you’re tired of the current level of NFT hype, you’re not alone!
Photo by Dylan Calluy on Unsplash

There are fewer topics which provoke such a sharp divide of opinion as Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs for short). NFT madness has reached stratospheric heights, and looks likely to rise even further. And some people have had enough.*

When Kent Bye and Molly White (who are heroes of mine, but in very different ways) both highly recommend a YouTube video, you can bet that I pay attention!

Of the two, Kent Bye is probably the better known; he is in indefatigable, intelligent host of the Voices of VR podcast, and someone whose thoughtful, philosophical insights into any and all aspects of immersive tech I value greatly (I wish I had his brain!). As for Molly, she is someone whom I first encountered because of her truly epic thread of snark about that infamous Cryptoland promo video, but she, too, is definitely someone to follow (she maintains the wonderful Web3 Is Going Just Great website, which chronicles the scandals, misdeeds, and crimes of the many crypto, blockchain, and NFT projects out there, an increasingly difficult task as the number of schemes proliferates!).

Here is the 2-hour-and-18-minute video itself, titled The Problem with NFTs, by Dan Olson, a Canadian whose YouTube channel Folding Ideas has just over half a million subscribers:

Dan starts his video by providing some historical context, discussing the financial crisis provoked by the mortgage bond crisis of 2008, and then moving on to Bitcoin, trumpeted as an end to the evil of centralized banking. Here’s a prime quote:

Rather than being a reprieve to the people harmed by the housing bubble, the people whose savings and retirements were, unknown to them, being gambled on smoke, cryptocurrency instantly became the new playground for smoke vendors. This is a really important point to stress: cryptocurrency does nothing to address 99% of the problems with the banking industry, because those problems are patterns of human behaviour.

—Dan Olson

He then talks about Ethereum, and how it was created in part to address some of the problems posed by Bitcoin. Dan provides one of the best overviews of “proof of work” versus “proof of stake” that’s I’ve encountered to date. After covering the basics of blockchain, he turns his attention to the Non-Fungible Token market, discussing the whole “code is law” premise of smart contracts at length. His highly entertaining exploratory foray into the current NFT market space is well worth the price of admission alone! Near the two-hour mark, Dan discusses Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs).

Honestly, this video is so good, and so information-dense, that I would strongly encourage you to set aside two-and-a-half hours, and watch it in full, with the subtitles on. Like me, you’ll probably rewind it several times to review some of Dan’s better arguments! Molly and Kent are right; this video is *chef’s kiss* (Dan even briefly includes screencaps of Molly’s website and that infamous Cryptoland promo video!).

But it’s the final chapter of this video where Dan is on point, and on fire:

In 2008, the economy functionally collapsed. The basic chain reaction was this: bankers took mortgages and turned them into something they could gamble on. This created a bubble, and then the bubble popped.

When you drill down into it, you realize that the core of the crypto ecosystem, the core of Web3, the core of the NFT marketplace, is a turf war between the wealthy and ultra-wealthy. Technofetishists who look at people like Bill Gates and Jess Bezos, billionaires minted via tech industry doors that have now been shut by market calcification, and are looking for a do-over, looking to synthesize a new market where they can be the one to ascend from a merely wealthy programmer to a hyper-wealthy industrialist. It’s a cat fight between the 5% and the 1%.

Ultimately the driving forces underlying this entire movement are economic disparity. The wealthy and tenuously wealthy are looking for a space that they can dominate, where they can be trendsetters and tastemakers and can seemingly invent value through sheer force of will.

This is, in my opinion, the blindspot of many casual critics. The fact that tokens representing ape PFPs are useless, yet somehow still expensive, isn’t an overlooked glitch in the system, it’s half the point. It’s a digital extension of inconvenient fashion. It’s a flex and a form of myth-making.

And that’s how it draws in the bottom: people who feel their opportunities shrinking, who see the system closing around them, who have become isolated by social media and a global pandemic, who feel the future getting smaller, people pressured by the casualization of work as jobs are dissolved into the gig economy, and want to believe that escape is just that easy. All you gotta do is bet on the right Discord and you might be air-dropped the next new hotness… This is your chance to stick it to Wall Street and venture capitalists, as long as you pay no attention to the VCs behind the curtain. The line can only go up.

It’s a movement driven in no small part by rage, by people who looked at 2008, who looked at the system as it exists, but concluded that the problems with capitalism were that it didn’t provide enough opportunities to be the boot. And that’s the pitch: buy in now, buy in early, and you could be the high tech future boot.

Our systems are breaking or broken, straining under neglect and sabotage, and our leaders seem at best complacent, willing to coast out the collapse. We need something better. But a system that turns everyone into petty digital landlords, that distills all interaction into transaction, that determines the value of something by how sellable it is and whether or not it can be gambled on as a fractional token sold via micro-auction, that’s not it.

A different system does not mean a better system; we replace bad systems with worse ones all the time. We replaced a bad system of work and bosses with a terrible system of apps, gigs, and on-demand labour.

So it’s not just that I oppose NFTs because the foremost of them are aesthetically vacuous representations of the dead inner lives of the tech and finance bros behind them. It’s that they represent the vanguard of a worse system. The whole thing, from OpenSea fantasies for starving artists to the buy-in for pay-to-earn games, it’s the same hollow, exploitative pitch as MLMs. It’s Amway, but everywhere you look, people are wearing ugly-ass ape cartoons.

(UPDATE Jan. 23rd, 2022: if you have a bit more time left after watching Dan Olson’s video, you can peruse this thread of comments on the r/Documentaries community on Reddit. Be sure to sort by Best to read the best ones first!)

I leave you with another very recent YouTube commentary video I watched a couple of days ago, this one by the incomparable Josh Strife Hayes, who has sharpened his patented snark by reporting on countless questionable MMORPG projects over the past few years (a growing cottage industry).

From now on, this 22-minute video is what I am going to send to anybody who asks me what an NFT is, because Josh so mercilessly strips it down to its bare essentials, so that everybody can see just how ludicrous the whole setup is! The NFT-owner emperor is truly wearing no clothes; in fact, he’s just holding a spot in a line-up!

If, after watching Josh’s video, you have a bone to pick with it, I’d love to hear your comments (aside from his British pronunciation of the word “fungible”, which makes me wince). Where Dan Olson slays with facts, Josh Strife Hayes prefers to devastate with sarcasm, and he’s so good at it that it’s a joy to behold.

So, it would appear that there is now a determined push-back on the current silly season of NFT hyperbole, and I for one welcome this development. Too many people—particularly baby investors—are buying into the breathless hype of ill-thought-out NFT projects, which are proliferating like the Polynesian rats introduced to Easter Island. Commentators such as Dan and Josh are doing us all a service with their bracing commentary on this madness.

*FULL DISCLOSURE: I possess zero NFTs, and I only own one cryptocurrency, the Neos Credit (NCR), which I earn as a side benefit of being a monthly Patreon patron of NeosVR social VR platform. And, in that case, NeosVR is an actual, working metaverse platform for which you can create an avatar, and which you can currently visit, explore, and build in! In other words, there’s a THERE there, unlike so many currently hyped blockchain-based projects, which are essentially handwaving and hot air. Caveat emptor!