Mark Zuckerberg is on a divine mission: he will hook you up. How else to explain Zuck’s hellish commitment to building the Matrix, if not to say that he is on some sort of divine quest? In October this year, Meta announced that it had already lost $9.4 billion on the metaverse. (opens in a new tab) before telling investors he expected to lose a lot more in the future and, despite a huge round of layoffs (opens in a new tab) within the company, its metaverse ambitions are unwavering. It sounds like a crusade to me.
Of course, Zuckerberg isn’t the only metaverse fanatic running a tech company, though he’s the only one who changed his company’s name to prove his dedication (and not for any other reason). (opens in a new tab) at all). Epic’s Tim Sweeney also caught the virus and even has a court ruling to prove it (opens in a new tab). Also, we have interest from Konami (opens in a new tab)Tencent (opens in a new tab)Nvidia (opens in a new tab)Microsoft (opens in a new tab) and, uh, Lego (opens in a new tab)as well as who knows how many crypto quirks and Web3 outriders.
But despite all that excitement, the metaverse…hasn’t really moved forward this year. There was a lot of bluster and noise and big promises about the world to come, but after nearly 365 days and tens of billions of dollars, the 2022 metaverse feels like it all comes down to very expensive hardware (opens in a new tab)a stupid selfie (opens in a new tab) and the announcement of the legs (opens in a new tab).
So where does it go from here?
Switch on, tune in, drop out
It’s remarkable that, eight years after Facebook bought Oculus, the metaverse’s biggest proponents still seem to be struggling to explain what it is. (opens in a new tab). A year ago, I probably would have told you it’s because they don’t really know; it’s just a quirk of the Silicon Valley oligarchs who never got over Snow Crash (opens in a new tab), and other people need to figure out the details. But now I think the reason is much more mundane: the metaverse is boring.
I can tell you what the metaverse is. It’s the Internet in VR. Instead of scrolling through Amazon pages, you’ll browse virtual aisles, pick up products with simulated hands, and meet other shoppers along the way. Rather than working in a physical space or from home with one eye on Slack/Microsoft Teams/GChat, you’ll inhabit virtual offices with virtual colleagues.
Doesn’t that sound… a little tedious? I think the reason why Metaverse’s Vice President of Metaverse, Vishal Shah, seemed to have such a hard time putting the concept into concrete terms in the company’s Metaverse 101 series (opens in a new tab) was because the metaverse in concrete terms looks pretty lackluster. Far better to talk in a messianic tone about creator economics and the “experiential” possibilities of the metaverse than to tell everyone you’re turning their 9-to-5 into a lackluster version of Second Life.
So basically the reason CEOs still struggle to explain the metaverse to us is because it only makes sense when they explain it to each other. From the perspective of tech companies, the metaverse is incredibly attractive: an infinitely expandable virtual space over which they have full control, which they can regulate and modify as they please (at least until/unless the government does not interfere), and whose “creator economies” provide an ocean of intellectual property to tax and monetize until the end of time.
That’s what former Greek finance minister (and former Valve economist, what a career) Yanis Varoufakis meant when he said (opens in a new tab) the metaverse was “a digital stronghold in which Zuckerberg dreams of being the techno-lord”. And it’s also a paradox that Second Life pioneers Philip Rosedale and Bradford Oberwager observed in an interview with PCG (opens in a new tab) Last April: The Metaverse needs residents, but to attract residents it needs to be filled with cool stuff, and to become filled with cool stuff it needs residents to build it.
A bit of a catch-22. And so far, these resident builders haven’t been ensnared by the fuzzy sales pitch (and they won’t be enthralled by the concrete pitch because, again, that really only appeals to tech capitalists). So we are left with how many millions of marketing and research dollars spent on metaverse flavored Coca-Cola (opens in a new tab)Zuck’s Stupid Selfie (opens in a new tab)and the legs (opens in a new tab). And that’s only last year.
…the reason CEOs still struggle to explain the metaverse to us is that it only makes sense when they explain it to each other.
So far, none of this has managed to generate the excitement the Metaverse will likely need to survive. He leaves 2022 as he entered it: at a standstill.
No. The truth is, if you spend enough billions on something, you risk distorting reality enough to get what you want. Not just Meta, but tech companies everywhere are feeling bloodshed with this thing, and if you bet me, I’d say they’ll probably find a way to spend it at some point.
All is not catastrophic. Despite my pessimism, it could still be that the tech industry just can’t find a way to make this thing attractive, even if it still spends more billions on it. And even if they do, we’ve had sketches of a better metaverse (better verse) written in these same pages (opens in a new tab), the one that makes us healthier and happier rather than finding another sinister way to extract value from everyday life. But I suspect that if the public wants either outcome, they’ll have to organize and vote with their virtual feet. I don’t know how you would go about planning this kind of thing, to be honest, although I do know a place where our avatars can meet to talk about it.