tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6711156850879162685.post5881342733962145847..comments2024-01-02T23:18:18.412-08:00Comments on Yeebo Fernbottom's MMO Blog: What do we want from MMOs of the future? Is it really the Multiverse?Yeebohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08028940396189544294noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6711156850879162685.post-12101362875031270932020-09-13T10:29:14.401-07:002020-09-13T10:29:14.401-07:00Thanks! A friend of mine, who is much younger than...Thanks! A friend of mine, who is much younger than me, immediately ran out and bought the latest VR set up when he came into some money. He obsessed on it for a few weeks and then went right back to mouse-KB and console gaming. I got the impression that it was the lack of an ancillary social pressure to engage in it that led to his interest fading. For him gaming is a very social activity. He is really into Twitch, and his gaming activities blend pretty seamlessly into his online social ones. He also sees PC, consoles and his phone as part of one ecosystem. If the few people his age I know are anything like typical, I think the road Fortnite is going down may turn out to be a very profitable one indeed.<br /><br />The issue I see with Fortnite becoming the Metaverse is that I don't think something like that can grow exponentially if only one studio is producing it. If Epic games made Fortnite into some neutral platform that anyone could plug their game into for a modest fee, maybe it would happen. Or maybe they are hoping to use the freeform game development product that's embedded into it (Fortnite Creative) as a way to get their users to make all the content for them. However, with users having to pay to access Creative (unlike the battle royal game), I think they may be limiting the growth. I believe they are still thinking more like a game publisher than the architects of the VR successor to the web.<br /><br />It will be interesting to see what happens when someone releases the first decent VR interface. I don't think anyone is quite there yet. I agree with you that a glasses and earpiece sort of set up kind of seems like the bare minimum you need to get to before most people would contemplate using it for long stretches.Yeebohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08028940396189544294noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6711156850879162685.post-86084532871992381372020-09-13T04:37:15.743-07:002020-09-13T04:37:15.743-07:00Great post. I was writing back at the begining of ...Great post. I was writing back at the begining of lockdown about the benchmarks Fortnite was setting for progress towards the kind of metaverse that's been so popular in fiction since the 1980s. I don't think traditional gamers want to hear it, though.<br /><br />Like most forms of social and societal change, though, it won't come down to what old people want (and by "old" I mean, as I always mean, almost everyone over thirty). Change will be driven by the young and exploited by the old, as it always has been. So if young people are gravitating towards a metaverse of sorts, which I would argue the dominance of all kinds of social media, among which I would certainly include "games" like Fortnite, suggests they are, then older people, the ones with the money and the power, will be only too happy to facilitate that change, even if it's at the expense of their peer group, who may not be so keen.<br /><br />I also think that you're 100% right in that the final barrier to entry is the interface. Clunky headsets that look stupid and cut you off from the world have zero chance of going mainstream. Keyboard and mouse is a lesser barrier but still quite solid enough to keep the walls up around the technophile garden. Once we're looking at something like a glasses-and-earpiece interface with gesture commands or even contact lenses or some kind of unshowy skin contact device we're getting close to something that most people will feel comfortable using. I think once we get to actual implants we'll be at another kind of barrier but I don't expect to see those outside of a lab in my lifetime.<br /><br />Meanwhile, though, I also agree that 3D virtual immersive versions of WoW and Destiny are probably where gamers are headed in the short term. Still need smaller, better headsets though.Bhagpusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.com