Tag: Review

Two Recent Video Essays on the Metaverse: Straszfilms Looks at There.com, and Dan Olson Dissects Decentraland

I have a great deal of respect and admiration for those people who create metaverse-themed video essays and documentaries on YouTube. I simply don’t have the time and energy at this point in my life to fiddle with video editing software, and I don’t particularly consider myself photogenic enough to put my face on your screen! So today, I want to introduce you to two new (and very different!) documentaries about the metaverse, by two creators whom I admire.

A little over a year ago, I blogged about Straszfilm’s thoughtful and nostalgic video essay on Active Worlds, which can be considered the granddaddy of virtual worlds, founded on June 28th, 1995, and somehow still limping along 27-¾ years later. Well, Strasz (a.k.a. Chris Hornyak) is back with a second video essay about another almost-forgotten virtual world, There, in a video cleverly titled Nobody’s There: The First Failed Metaverse (I wrote about There on my blog here). And, as a fellow virtual worlds nerd myself, I really enjoyed it!

There has to go down as one of the worst possible names for a virtual world—something which becomes rapidly apparent when you try to search on Google for it. In his video essay, he compares and contrasts There with another virtual world started around the same time, Second Life. I recommend Strasz’s video because of his insightful commentary on why There ultimately failed, tying the discussion to Second Life and to the newer NFT metaverse platforms. Here’s a representative extract (but watch the whole 45-minute video, it’s great!):

It is utterly bizarre to me to look back on this almost two decades later for a bunch of interconnecting reasons. Obviously, the concept of buying digital goods isn’t new or interesting now. But in 2003, it absolutely was. Almost bizarrely so. It’s wild to read journalists fawning over buying Levi’s for your avatar [in There] in a time when buying actual Levi’s online was so new. It’s almost unbelievable, and I mean that in a very literal sense. So, just for a second, imagine taking that out-there idea and then deciding that you were going to build an online 3D chat program on it in 2003…While this sort of thing is a little more acceptable today, it’s still readily mocked, and for a pretty good reason. I was recently interviewed in Esquire for a story about virtual fashion in the metaverse. During that discussion, the concept of NFT clothing came up, or just metaversal clothing in general.

Fashion is expression. With it you can quickly communicate who you are to the world…Yet, in the real world, that expression is always a bit limited…On the internet, especially in 3D social places, you were free from those boundaries. You can be anything, you can wear anything. And yet, it’s in that context that folks have stood back, folded their arms, and gone, “Hey, what people really want to do is own things.” It’s so utterly bizzare to think that, in the period I’m writing this, places like Decentraland and The Sandbox are being widely mocked for the very same sort of attitude. These places took one look at past and current virtual spaces that exist, and essentially just tossed all the creativity and novelty to the side, somehow coming out the other end thinking that the most important part of a seemingly post-scarcity virtual world is owning something…

To be clear, I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with designers being paid. When someone in Second Life makes a piece of clothing for others to wear, or someone makes a model in VRChat, I think it’s important that those people get paid for their labour. Yet, when a big fashion brand comes in, it feels like you’re not paying for their handiwork, but rather the opportunity to paste a digital logo on your avatar. I mean, at least with IRL fashion, outrageous pricing is justified by craftsmanship, aesthetic leadership, small product runs, and exotic materials. But here, in this 3D space, there is limitless possibility, and we’re deciding to celebrate that by selling branded jean textures?

Of course, none of this worked. It didn’t work in There, and it isn’t working now. It would be fair to say that, in the last few months, the NFT market has just completely cratered. Just like with There, creators of these new technologies seem to have missed the part about people having to want to spend money before they, well, spend money. You have to be making something desirable before actual humans want to buy it.

There, as well as every metaverse/NFT/Web3 project or whatever, both fundamentally made the same mistake. They just didn’t pause to try and understand why people will dress up their avatars, or spend time in these spaces. It’s not just the peacock, it’s because it’s fun! It’s expression in its purest form. It’s finding your, well, YOU, then hanging out with other people who were doing the same.

In other words, it’s about the community and community-building first, with fashion as a secondary add-on, not the other way around! Second Life started as a place for people to gather, make friends, and form communities first. I was around during the big corporate boom in 2007 when companies like Playboy trooped into SL, set up shop, and tried to sell branded products. In all cases, these companies eventually left, because they didn’t understand what Second Life was all about. First you have to have places like role-play communities spring up, which then organically leads to things like stores selling medieval role-play outfits! Putting the sales cart before the community horse (for example, in Decentraland) doesn’t tend to lead to engaging metaverse platforms, which keep people coming back.

Speaking of Decentraland, last night I watched the latest documentary by Dan Olson, whose YouTube channel, Folding Ideas, is well-known for his year-old video critique on blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and non-fungible tokens (a.k.a. NFTs), titled Line Goes Up, which has racked up over 10 million views to date. Dan’s latest video essay is a nearly two-hour-long documentary about Decentraland titled The Future is a Dead Mall – Decentraland and the Metaverse, and it’s two hours very well spent!

Dan’s documentary, split into six chapters, is an intelligent dissection of the concept of the metaverse in general, and Decentraland in particular. He is obviously extremely well-read, citing a wide variety of sources, including Ryan Bolger’s concept of reified space and Johan Huizinga’s concept of the “magic circle”, in this video. Dan is someone who has clearly put a lot of research into this work, and it shows!

Like Straz, Dan casts a very critical eye upon recent corporate forays into the metaverse, remarking on Lindt’s virtual chocolate store in one section of his video as follows:

…[T]he whole of it is elevated to transcendental when you see the actual thing that they’re describing: a laggy, hideous, cheap, faux-3D website that would probably be a camp hit if it were pitched instead as a throwback to FMV video games from the 90s….The vast majority of these so-called metaverse offerings are virtual spaces only insofar as they are painted to resemble a store. We already tried this 25 years ago, and discarded it because it turns out the human brain can shop from a list of items or a grid of photos far better than in can from an imagemap photo of a display case.

However, the main part of this documentary is a devastatingly detailed critique of everything that’s wrong with Decentraland. Having followed the Decentraland saga almost from the beginning back in 2018 on my blog, I already knew most of this, but it’s a truly a joy to watch Dan do such a wonderful job of pulling everything together into such a neat package, with a bow on top! I highly recommend this documentary.

Among other topics, Dan Olson discusses the many corporate (mis)adventures in Decentraland, as well as a lawyer’s office that is really nothing more than a (presumably) expensive three-dimensional brochure with links to outside websites like Facebook. He critiques the Decentraland Report news site at great length. He also talks about marquee events such as the Metaverse Fashion Week and the Metaverse Music Festival, and he takes a whole chapter in his video essay to dissect, at length, Decentraland’s somewhat byzantine DAO or governance structure.

Dan sums up his tour-de-force opus with the following summary, again referring to Huizinga’s magic circle:

So the authors of Decentraland, its creators and users, paint a magic circle around it with a narrative of inevitability, a narrative of the metaverse, a narrative of a true, separate, new world that you will eventually move your life into. Because if your neighbours aren’t going to eventually be compelled to be here tomorrow, why would you ever want this today?

Decentraland is, at every level, a collective fairy tale. Just people playing pretend… Whether it be the Pedigree Fosterverse scraping data from Adopt a Pet, users playing lawyer in their corporate offices or purporting to be the future of news, Decentraland’s value to businesses is patently absurd. And, as we’ve seen, even its decentralized premise is a fantasy. The DAO has no authority and is comically hapless—content to play politics, all the while pretending they have a stake in a billion dollar product. And it’s not enough to convince themselves, they need to convince you. So that is what they do by any means necessary. They will pander, mislead, outright lie—whatever it takes for you to buy into their narrative. Because this only makes sense from inside the circle.

Decentraland is a farce and a tragedy. It is painted into a corner by a combination of ineptitude and inherently bad ideas, and it cannot escape its fundamental being. Whatever other ideals are spit out, whatever rhetoric about liberation or political experimentation is employed, the simple fact that it was materially born as a pre-sale of lots of “land” based on a fiction of people “moving in” sets off a chain of decisions and incentives about design and functionality that bind it, forever, to being little more than a fantasy real estate scheme, an endless world of uniquely scarce dead malls.

So, go pop some popcorn, perhaps grab some wine to go with it, and settle in for a some entertaining and enlightening videos about the metaverse! And please, leave a comment on the videos, and tell’em Ryan sent you. 😉

EDITORIAL: Two Recent YouTube Videos Take Aim at Mark Zuckerberg, Meta, and Meta’s Virtual Reality Hardware and Software Development

Horizon Workrooms get savaged in a highly critical review video by The Verge, a sign of the growing antipathy toward’s Meta virtual reality hardware and software strategy

This is worth negative ten billion dollars. I would pay ten billion dollars to never use this again. I wanted to have hope that we could do this, and it would be fun, but I mean, you guys agree that this one of the most buggy software experiences, ever.

—Alex Heath, The Verge (transcribed audio excerpt from the video below)

I’m still percolating, alas, but I did want to share with my readers a couple of YouTube videos which caught my attention.

The first, a 15-minute editorial video by The Verge‘s Adi Robertson, discusses Meta’s new Quest Pro VR headset and its Horizon Worlds and Horizon Workrooms social VR experiences. She and her colleagues did not hold back in their criticisms of both, particularly the Horizon platforms (the quote at the top of this blogpost comes from another writer for The Verge, as a group was kicking the tires on Horizon Workrooms).

The Verge staff make it very clear that they are less than impressed with what is on offer from Meta, and that they do not believe that remote workteams will be using either the Quest Pro or Horizon Workrooms, over a Zoom call.

The popular virtual reality YouTuber ThrillSeeker goes even further in the following 15-minute video, which has already racked up over 400,000 views:

In it, he takes Mark Zuckerberg and his team at Meta to task for dropping the ball with their virtual reality hardware and software strategy to date:

How in the hell did it go so wrong that Meta and Horizon have become the laughingstock of hundreds of videos and publications, and that Quests, for the most part, are just sitting on shelves collecting dust?

Meta, I understand that you are a massive corporation…and that running a business like Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Oculus is probably incredibly difficult.

But you have somehow managed to turn one of the coolest things I have ever seen in my life, into one of the lamest jokes in tech.

—ThrillSeeker

Among many other criticisms, he accuses Meta (rightfully) of focusing on wireless VR headsets to the exclusion of high-end PCVR (that is, headsets like his and my beloved Valve Index, which require a good desktop computer with a powerful graphics card, and can run a lot of applications which wireless headsets would struggle with.

What I find so fascinating about both these videos is that they are emblematic of a rising tide of antipathy against Meta, as it tries to repivot to become a metaverse company, sinking tens of billions of dollars a year into a VR/AR strategy that might take a decade or longer before it goes truly mainstream (that is, beyond the early adopters and the hardcore gamers). Both videos mention the recent massive layoffs at Meta, a further sign that all is not well with the company as it struggles to find the next big thing after social networking.

Mark Zuckerberg is placing a very expensive bet on virtual and augmented reality and the metaverse, but will that big bet pay off, and when? Stay tuned.

Book Review: The Metaverse, and How It Will Revolutionize Everything, by Matthew Ball

I am on holidays this week, and today I decided to set aside a couple of days to read through—and write a review of—a recently published book by the venture capitalist Matthew Ball, author of the Metaverse Primer and lead creator of the Ball Metaverse Index (whom I have written about before on this blog). The title of his new book is The Metaverse: and How It Will Revolutionize Everything.

Matthew Ball’s new metaverse book (image source)

As Matthew Ball writes in the introduction to his book:

In 2018, I began writing a series of online essays on the Metaverse, then an obscure and fringe concept. In the years since, these essays have been read by millions of people as the Metaverse has transitioned from the world of paperback science fiction to the front page of the New York Times and corporate strategy reports around the world.

The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything updates, expands, and recasts everything I’ve previously written on the Metaverse. The book’s core purpose is to offer a clear, comprehensive, and authoritative definition of this still inchoate idea. Yet my ambitions are broader: I hope to help you understand what’s required to realize the Metaverse, why entire generations will eventually move to and live inside it, and how it will forever alter our daily lives, our work, and how we think.

Yes, Ball capitalizes “Metaverse” throughout his book, which I find unnecessary and annoying. However, “Internet” was also usually capitalized in its earliest years of existence before most people settled on lower-case-i internet, so there is some precedent here.

It is not until chapter three, after a brief historical and philosophical discussion of the concept, that Matthew Ball provides his own definition of the metaverse (smartly leaving aside a discussion of blockchain until later on in the book):

A massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds that can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence, and with continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communications, and payments.

After laying the groundwork with history and definitions in the first four chapters, in Part II of his book Matthew Ball discusses in seven chapters the various components which he feels go into the building of a metaverse: networking, computing, virtual world engines, interoperability, hardware, payment systems, and blockchain technology.

In chapter 5 (Networking), Ball uses popular games such as Microsoft Flight Simulator to explain concepts such as network bandwidth and latency, and how game and metaverse companies work around such limitations. Chapter 6 covers the computational requirements and trade-offs in building the metaverse, while chapter 7 looks at virtual world engines such as Unreal and Unity. Chapter 8 addresses the thorny issue of metaverse interoperability and standards (i.e., the ability to take your avatar and its possessions from one virtual world to another). In chapter 9, Ball offers a concise overview of VR and AR hardware, calling it “the hardest technology challenge of our time”. Chapter 10 discusses a key component of the current and future metaverse, payment rails (e.g. credit cards, PayPal, Venmo) and the associated economics of buying and selling on metaverse platforms.

Finally, in chapter 11, Matthew Ball addresses the controversial and contentious issue of blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), stating “some observers today believe that blockchain is structurally required for the metaverse to become a reality, while others find that claim absurd.” Obviously, this book was written well before the current crypto crash, but Ball attempts to write a balanced take on the subject, including an entire section about the various obstacles currently facing the blockchain. He wraps up this chapter by stating:

How much of the blockchain remains hype versus how much is (potential) reality remains uncertain—not unlike the current state of the Metaverse. However, one of the central lessons of the computing era is that the platforms that best serve developers and users will win. Blockchains have a long way to go, but many see their immutability and transparency as the best way to ensure the interests of these two constituencies [i.e., platforms and developers] remain prioritized as the Metaverse economy grows.

The real meat of this book is in Part III, subtitled “How the Metaverse Will Revolutionize Everything”. In it, Matthew looks into his crystal ball and makes some predictions about how the metaverse will develop and be used across a range of industries, including education, entertainment, fashion and advertising, lifestyle businesses—even sex and sex work!

Chapter 12 is a discussion of when the metaverse is going to arrive, which of course is entirely dependent upon the definition of a “metaverse”; as I have often said, Second Life (which does get a few passing mentions in this book) is the perfect model of a fully-evolved metaverse, which the newer companies building platforms would be wise to study, emulate, and learn lessons from. However, Ball tends to lean towards the assertion that the metaverse is not yet truly upon us, despite these early platforms.

In a subsection of Chapter 14 titled “Why Trust Matters More Than Ever”, in a discussion of corporate strategies, Matthew Ball writes the following:

My great hope for the Metaverse is that it will produce a “race to trust.” To attract developers, the major platforms are investing billions to make it easier, cheaper, and faster to build better and more profitable virtual goods, spaces, and worlds. But they’re also showing a renewed interest in proving—through policy— that they deserve to be a partner, not just a publisher or platform. This has always been a good business strategy, but the enormity of the investment required to build the Metaverse, and the trust it requires from developers, has placed this strategy front and centre.

In the final chapter of his book (Metaversal Existence), Ball broadens his view to discuss how the metaverse will impact society, and what policies might be necessary to address that impact. Matthew warns:

Misinformation and election tampering will likely increase, making our current-day complications of out-of-context sound bites, trolling tweets, and faulty scientific claims feel quaint. Decentralization, often seen as the solution to many of the problems created by the tech giants, will also make moderation more difficult, malcontents harder to stop, and illicit fundraising far less difficult. Even when limited primarily to text, photos, and videos, harassment has been a seemingly unstoppable blight in the digital world—one that has already ruined many lives and harmed many more. There are several hypothesized strategies to minimize “Metaverse abuse.” For example, users may need to give other users explicit levels of permission to interact in given spaces (e.g., for motion capture, the ability to interact via haptics, etc.), and platforms will also automatically block certain capabilities (“no-touch zones”). However, novel forms of harassment will doubtlessly emerge. We are right to be terrified by what “revenge porn” might look like in the Metaverse, powered by high-fidelity avatars, deepfakes, synthetic voice construction, motion capture, and other emergent virtual and physical technologies.

He adds, “for the same reasons the metaverse is so disruptive—it’s unpredictable, recursive, and still vague—it is impossible to know what problems will emerge, how best to solve those which already exist, and how best to steer it.”

Matthew’s book is packed full of interesting anecdotes, such as the following tidbit from chapter one:

Not long after Tencent publicly unveiled its vision of hyper-digital reality, the Communist Party of China (CCP) began its biggest-ever crackdown of its domestic gaming industry. Among several new policies was a prohibition on minors playing video games Monday through Thursday that also limited their play from 8 pm. to 9 pm. on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights (in other words, it was impossible for a minor to play a video game for more than three hours per week). In addition, companies such as Tencent would use their facial recognition software and a player’s national ID to periodically ensure that these rules were not being skirted by a gamer borrowing an older user’s device. Tencent also pledged $15 billion in aid for “sustainable social value,” which Bloomberg said would be focused on “areas like increasing incomes for the poor, improving medical assistance, promoting rural economic efficiency and subsidizing education programs.” Alibaba, China’s second-largest company, committed a similar amount only two weeks later. The message from the CCP was clear: look to your countrymen and women, not virtual avatars.

The CCP’s concerns about the growing role of gaming content and platforms in public life became more explicit in August, when the state-owned Security Times warned its readers that the Metaverse is a “grand and illusionary concept” and
“blindly investing [in it] will ultimately come back to bite you?“

While Ball sprinkles footnotes throughout his book, there were not nearly enough to satisfy this librarian! As I tell my students when doing information literacy training, footnotes are useful to find what sources the author refers to, so you can look them up yourself. For example, in chapter one he writes the following tantalizing but non-footnoted sentence, without further explanation:

Stephenson’s novels have been cited as the inspiration for various cryptocurrency projects and non-cryptographic efforts to build decentralized computer networks, as well as the production of CGI-based movies which are watched at home but generated live through the motion-captured performance of actors that might be tens of thousands of miles away.

Now, after reading that, wouldn’t you also like to know the source of this information, and the names of such productions? More footnotes, please! (Also, I’m not sure that “cryptographic” is the correct adjective here, as Ball seems to be using the term to refer to non-blockchain or non-cryptocurrency projects in this sentence.)

Also, while Ball is quick to use popular games such as Fortnite and Roblox to explain various terms and concepts throughout the book, I found it rather frustrating that he was not nearly as quick in drawing examples from the many metaverse platforms which already exist (e.g. VRChat, Rec Room, Sansar, NeosVR). I mean, this is a book about the metaverse; why not use more examples from existing social VR and virtual worlds? I know he’s a busy venture capitalist, but it makes me wonder how many metaverse platforms Matthew actually visited in his pre-writing travels. The book would have greatly benefited from that extra virtual legwork, if not by him then by his research assistants!

But these are picky little quibbles; overall, the book is an excellent introduction to the metaverse, and an informative overview for users new to the concept and wondering what all the recent fuss is about. Even those readers who have many years of experience with the metaverse will learn some new things which they did not know before. I can recommend this book, and I look forward to Matthew Ball’s future writing on the topic.

Thank you to the person who gifted me a copy of Matthew Ball’s book!