The Metaverse Is Gone for Good — Or Is It? |
To many, the metaverse is a childish-looking virtual world where Mark Zuckerberg invites us to socialize as clumsy, lifeless avatars. Few accepted the invitation. Now that Meta is scaling back several of its metaverse initiatives, commentators across the internet are closing this chapter with a cheerful mix of mischief over the company’s multi-billion-dollar losses and genuine bewilderment about how such a bizarre idea ever made it onto the agenda of an otherwise successful corporation.
And why wouldn’t we be bewildered? The metaverse never really offered a convincing use case for ordinary people. Unlike widely enjoyed online games such as Fortnite or Roblox — which provide fun game mechanics and opportunities for creative exploration — the metaverse mostly offered the chance to, well, stand somewhere and look around. The idea that we would attend concerts through such applications betrays a misunderstanding of why people go to concerts in the first place, as the metaverse conveys little of the energy and shared excitement that such physical gatherings can generate. Social interaction among friends or colleagues, perhaps the flagship use case, did succeed in reproducing the spatial layout of........