[HN Gopher] The Metaverse: A brave, new virtual world
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       The Metaverse: A brave, new virtual world
        
       Author : laurex
       Score  : 37 points
       Date   : 2021-07-03 17:55 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (medium.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
        
       | titzer wrote:
       | After you upload your brain, how do you pay them to keep running
       | you?
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | the__alchemist wrote:
       | Tangent: Many people on HN are probably familiar with Snow Crash;
       | for those who aren't, you might enjoy it, or its less-sarcastic
       | meta-sequel, The Diamond Age.
        
       | jerf wrote:
       | Alright, I smell a submarine PR campaign here. Who's trying to
       | make "metaverse" happen and why?
       | 
       | Some initial suggestions:
       | 
       | https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:l4...
       | 
       | https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:l4...
       | 
       | https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:l4...
       | 
       | Although they could just be people trying to get ahead of the
       | curve.
        
         | Animats wrote:
         | There's a huge effort to hype NFTs in "the metaverse". They
         | need excessive hype, because the dirty little secret of crypto
         | based metaverses is that _nobody uses them_.
         | 
         | Decentraland concurrent user count link: [1] 252 right now.
         | 
         | Sominium Space concurrent user count link: [2] 25 right now.
         | 
         | Yes, the user counts really are that tiny. Both have been live
         | for more than a year, so it's not that they're new.
         | 
         | Somebody just paid almost a million dollars for a plot of land
         | in Decentraland. Sotheby's has an outlet there. But nobody goes
         | there.
         | 
         | The real metaverses are Roblox (about 1.8 million concurrent
         | users today), Second Life (about 50,000) and VRChat (about
         | 17,000). Maybe IMVU, but haven't found numbers for them.
         | Fortnite is even bigger, but is more game than metaverse. The
         | big ambitions outlined by Epic's CEO have not yet materialized.
         | 
         | [1] https://catalyst-monitor.vercel.app/
         | 
         | [2] https://somniumspace.com/parcel/4326?elv=0
        
         | hprotagonist wrote:
         | Too late.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | kaetemi wrote:
       | Any commercial company building a "metaverse" will to some extent
       | just end up with another walled garden. Which, I suppose, goes
       | against the ideals of a metaverse.
       | 
       | Only a fully open source project could give the freedom to do
       | anything in a virtual world. Something you can run yourself,
       | fully modify, and connect to others. Then again, open source
       | gaming isn't a very big scene. Something usable on this scale
       | seems unlikely for now.
       | 
       | So... commercial virtual spaces it'll end up being. Enjoy your
       | ads.
        
         | g5095 wrote:
         | As someone who's been part of a number of communities in
         | SecondLife for 15+ years, this is exactly the problem that
         | platform has had in becoming THE metaverse.
         | 
         | Despite technically having everything required to tick that
         | box, development is shackled to the funding capability of a
         | single company, land values are extortionary considering the
         | cost of server hosting these days ($300+ for a 'sim' a month,
         | when they shard them up 100s to a server).
         | 
         | The solution has to be a set of standard protocols and
         | interfaces that can be implemented by anyone, just as 'the web'
         | was. Every time I see a 'Secondlife killer' come along I judge
         | it's success at taking out the incumbent on it's openness, and
         | I'm yet to see a real contender.
        
           | cblconfederate wrote:
           | Opensimulator exists
        
         | cblconfederate wrote:
         | There is opensimulator (open source second life server)
        
         | fastball wrote:
         | I wouldn't say it needs to be fully open source, it just needs
         | to be federated, like the internet.
        
       | [deleted]
        
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