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Facebook's Metaverse Vision Questioned by Gaming Veteran (bloomberg.com) 51

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Mark Zuckerberg's Meta Platforms is among the most vocal proponents of the future of the metaverse, but one gaming industry veteran is particularly skeptical about its vision. From a report: Like the cloud five years ago and even the internet of 20 years past, every business is now trying to latch onto the metaverse, said former Nintendo of America President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime. Instead of Facebook's parent, the digital future will be driven by smaller companies that are really innovating, while companies like Epic Games are doing "really compelling" things, he said. "Facebook itself is not an innovative company," Fils-Aime told Emily Chang at the South by Southwest event in Austin, Texas, on Saturday. "They have either acquired interesting things like Oculus and Instagram, or they've been a fast follower of people's ideas. I don't think their current definition will be successful."
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Facebook's Metaverse Vision Questioned by Gaming Veteran More

Facebook's Metaverse Vision Questioned by Gaming Veteran

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  • Oh wow. It's Reggie Fils-Aime. Ninento's bean-counter. Of course any dev or gamer is going to spot this as the obvious bullshit it is, but Zuckerberg has been seeding the managerial circles with his flavor of propaganda and it's weird to see the wealthy elites turn on one of their own. They usually just worship the pile of money as always being right.

    I still think the whole thing is just a PR stunt to get everyone to talk about anything other than the congressional hearing [nytimes.com].

    • I think Zuck should have at least read Snowcrash before he tried to recreate the metaverse.

    • He's looking for an assistant [penny-arcade.com]. If you're interested.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      Oh wow. It's Reggie Fils-Aime. Ninento's bean-counter. Of course any dev or gamer is going to spot this as the obvious bullshit it is

      wanted to say exactly this, thanks for saving me the effort.

      I still think the whole thing is just a PR stunt

      no, i think some up there actually believe in this crap, probably even zuckerberg himself.

      it actually makes sense: they are all clueless. facebook was just a lucky stray shot, and besides monetizing that and buying off half of the industry they haven't managed to absolutely anything else with that capital. they just wouldn't know how, but somehow think that if they hype hard enough the miracle will happen again just because they are touched by the

    • You'd be surprised by the number of gamers that like Reggie. He nails PR, but that's about it, and that's what people look to him for.

  • The Internet revolution would not be televised, and the VR revolution won't be Internet-ized.

    Also if a mainstream journalist is writing about something then it's already happening and has been for a while. And this holds true for VR: it's also already happening in the form of VRChat, and has been for a few years now. I joined at the start of the pandemic since I was stuck inside and have stayed, and it's absolutely incredible to see the amount of talent, diverse voices from around the world on 24/7, and the

    • So look at the 'join VRchat' page and there one line of noted print:

      * VR not required

      Doesn't that mean it is not fully Virtual Reality? I mean you are either in VR or you are not, and if you are not then it is not VR.

      This is like claiming internet access, but then saying '*Internet not required'.

      • You can play in desktop mode, but you don't really get the experience. It's useful for testing avatars quickly though

      • This is like claiming internet access, but then saying '*Internet not required'.

        I can't tell if you're being intentionally contrarian, a facebook shill, or just too old and grump to understand the tech, but to fix your half baked analogy: Participating in VRChat from desktop mode is like participating in the internet while having dial-up. Dial-up users aren't banned from the internet, they're just going to have a painfully subpar experience. In VRChat desktop mode you can stand there and talk to people, your avatars face will attempt to lip-sync your mic input, but you don't have anywh

        • I'm being grumpy, but dial-up is still internet while non-VR is not, well, VR.

          Does flopping down in true VR require a big empty room so you won't hurt yourself on real furniture? And how do people keep from bumping into real walls while dancing in VR? Wouldn't you need some sort of free floating body harness?

          • I'm being grumpy, but dial-up is still internet while non-VR is not, well, VR.

            That's splitting hairs. How about "participating" in the internet without a computer then? You could have somebody print the webpages out and show them to you, then you write messages or instructions ("post this text", "click this link", etc.) on them and hand them back to be transcribed and the actions performed. It would suck, but if somebody did it it wouldn't somehow make the internet no longer the internet.

            Does flopping down in true VR require a big empty room so you won't hurt yourself on real furniture?

            It requires about an armspan of clear floor area and a bed or beanbag chair (or just the floor).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jd ( 1658 )

      VR started in the mid 1960s, when the first systems were built. It became something you could wear, with garage developers going nuts, in the late 1980s, early 1990s.

      Graphical virtual worlds, such as Worlds Chat and Alpha Worlds were first on the Internet early 1995.

      CAVE systems sprang up, as an alternative to wearables, around the 2000 mark. Second Life also appeared around 2003.

      Occulus appeared about the time I'd expected - R&D follows a simple exponential curve with a small margin of error, so once y

    • Last I recall was something about flying pee-pees.

      Now this Internet thing seems to be doing well enough.
  • ...since, like, not having every previous console game available on the switch, or the terrible online play experience that they have been long criticized for, is ok?
  • I have been in games for over a decade now.
    The reality of the industry is that most large franchises are stuck in a world where innovation is only incremental - and every couple of cycles there will be a disruptor that the industry needs to follow.

    Incremental innovation is driven by hard project-driven requirements, years long engineering backlogs, and high precision in risk calculations - lots and lots of market value is riding on ~10 AAA blockbuster releases each year for the entire industry.

    Disr

    • I've been in the games industry for almost 30 years.

      You misspelt indie games. /s

      When Notch ripped off Infiminer to create Minecraft that was disruptive but only because it was refined.

      The only real innovation I've seen in the past 20 years is figuring out how to better milk customers with DLC, Season Pass, MTX, RTM, mounts and loot boxes. /s Maybe ragdoll animation would go on that short list.

      In the 90's we saw innovation in First Person Shooters with CTF, Team Fortress, and Mega TF. Raven Software did coo

      • My reference to open world was specific to massive multiplayer open world role play, using GTA as an example because there is no other game that has gainer more attention or engagement globally in that specific genre.
        And yep I don't disagree with your comments on innovation - I'd only add that what is technologically innovative is not always a disrupter from a player preference or business standpoint.
        Biz models and engagement end points are part of disruption - and funny enough I don't know if this is c

      • Yeah, you might persuade people to upgrade from Second Life 1. And kids. But who else?

        Unless FB's Metaverse is near the convenience of FB, who's going to use it? [And you may argue with the verb "convenient", but there are probably 400m people using FB right now]

        Yes, they might learn how to do it properly by 2030 but there are reasons to doubt that too.

        Mainly, Facebook is undoubtedly run by and programmed by idiots. The website is unbelievably bloated crap. If you say "men generally suck", you'll get b

  • both of nintendo’s VR products didn’t exactly hit the heights of success. why are they an authority on this?

    • because by now they know a faceplant when they see one

    • A) Reggie hasn't been at Nintendo of America for nearly 3 years. He retired. Doug Bowser is the new President of NOA (no, I'm not kidding; that's his actual name).

      B) Why is someone from Nintendo an authority on the subject? Nintendo is the company that drove the turnaround from the video game crashin '83 and nearly singlehandedly created the casual gaming market (with the Wii...which they promptly lost to mobile devices). Companies that push boundaries and expand markets, as they did in both of those cases,

  • Its odd, because Facebook makes a big deal out of hiring (presumably) elite programmers and paying them huge salaries. The result being a slow webpage packed to bursting with way to much crap to navigate through. They aren't good at innovating?

    Maybe its just that they are stuck with trying to figure out how to further monetize all those assets they bought, which were pretty fully developed already.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jd ( 1658 )

      Well, since they support Sparql and RDF, and can indirectly relate posts via graphs, it should be possible to offer some amazing threading and search options.

      From the noise in the feed, Facebook reminds me of old-fashioned BBS ideas, with a bit of AOL and maybe some badly reimolemented stuff from Usenet added in.

    • Its odd, because Facebook makes a big deal out of hiring (presumably) elite programmers and paying them huge salaries. The result being a slow webpage packed to bursting with way to much crap to navigate through.

      You're assuming that their end goal is a slick and streamlined webpage with minimal bloat and high utility. The time of those smart programmers isn't going towards that, facebook is using all that brainpower to figure out how to cram in more advertising.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Klaxton ( 609696 )

        Surely they want me to even be able to load their crappy web page? I was at a place with spotty internet over the weekend, the thing never did load.

    • Its odd, because Facebook makes a big deal out of hiring (presumably) elite programmers and paying them huge salaries.

      The problem is that the work culture is so bad at Facebook, that even if they manage to hire some elite programmers, most of them just leave after a year or so. That's what bad management and stack ranking will get you.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Klaxton ( 609696 )

        So many companies are that way. I interviewed at a place a couple of years ago where they reverently told me the lead programmer "came from Facebook!". I had to wait 10 minutes for him to show up for his turn to grill me. A millennial who slouched in with his dreads in a sock cap, the guy was a complete asshole. Sorry but I'm outta here.

        • It's the natural result of stack ranking. Because to survive you need to learn to stab someone in the back. It really messes people up psychologically.

  • Don't get me wrong they are innovating in many ways, but they aren't really on the ball with following industry trends. Just look to Nintendo Online as a great example of a company that was *LAST* to adopt something all competitors had already done.

    As for Epic Games doing something "really compelling" by literally buying IP and when not spending money simply outright stealing ideas from other smaller developers, all I can say is "fuck off Reggie" don't expect me to buy your next console if you're going down

    • all I can say is "fuck off Reggie" don't expect me to buy your next console if you're going down that cancerous path.

      Reggie Fils-Aime retired from Nintendo nearly three years ago (April 2019). The current head of NOA is, I kid you not, a guy named Doug Bowser [wikipedia.org]. Reggie, meanwhile, has been bouncing around for the last few years, occasionally giving his personal opinions in interviews about the gaming industry, now that he's no longer being forced to toe the Nintendo party line.

    • The blurb about Epic Games was *really* weird. Epic hasn't done anything to innovate. They have a really good game/3D environment engine and a middling battle royale game. Maybe I'm missing something but there is nothing compelling in any way about Epic.

  • Wow, that was a really weak, low substance article. So some business veterns of the game industry don't like Meta's new silly take on the metaverse. I don't either, but I was expecting something a bit more from these veterns. Very shallow article.

    Ironically Bloomberg said that was my last free article. Given the poor quality of the site and article, I can't say I feel at all compelled to sign up.

  • Perhaps Zuckerberg doesn't realize that he hit a sweet spot with Facebook and its popular offspring. It is hard to see the Metaverse as a similar self-starting phenomenon, at least in the current implementation. Perhaps when we all have ocular and aural nerve implants . . .
  • Maybe Meta will purchase Second Life and then their work will be done while also bringing new life to second life.
  • is trying to diversify. They're too hated to flaunt anti-trust law and keep buying their competitors, so sooner or later there's going to be another Instagram or something the kids latch onto and they won't be able to just buy it or bury it.

    When that happens they become an old folks home. They'll start bleeding consumers and with it advertisers. FB will become "uncool" and companies will ditch it.

    Trouble is, FB is all they have. Google has android, search, Chromebooks, etc. Microsoft has Xbox, Offic
  • are we shortening hype cycles?

  • Sorry but if games are going to require me to log into Meta to play, it's a non starter for me.

    • Has Steam dropped their log in requirement?
      Or PlayStation, or Xbox or anyone else that sells downloadable content?
      I get the anti-Facebook sentiment, but making a gaming account isn't difficult.

  • The Quest 2 hardware impressed me when I first got it, but the OS interface is a mess.
    It feels like something Microsoft would make. Wordy, redundant, and fragmented layers of settings.
    The rest is a sea of product thumbnails that assaults the senses with autoplay techno beats.

    The content is also about 80% way overpriced low-res crap with limited replay value.
    They can't figure out who their customers are, unless they are adolescent males
    that are really into VR office Zoom meetings with Playskool characters.

    I'

  • Many metaverses already exist and Facebook is trying to enter an already crowded market. But the problem is, people don't want to connect that way. The set dressing that online virtual communities provide is actually an obstacle that gets in the way of the act of communicating.

    People don't want to see an avatar, they want direct video feeds from a phone's camera. They don't want to waste battery life rendering 3D environments, physics, and interact with game-like controls to try and find each other in a vir

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