I think back when Occulus was a thing and Carmack was involved, Zuckerberg thought it was just cool and bought it because it would've been fun. A complete guilty (and kinda expensive) purchase. There was no way from the get-go to make it profitable. Nobody wanted to see ads in their eyeballs. But he did it anyway. Maybe he thought they could branch into gaming, but somehow that dream died. Now 8 years later Carmack is gone and VR hasn't really progressed beyond chat rooms. They're left scrambling for ideas as their valuation is tumbling. They tried rolling their own crypto and that shit failed hard. People already have instagram, and whatsapp is slowly eroding in the west. A dumb little rebranded music app is eating their lunch.
"What can we do?"
"What about facebook, IN VIRTUAL REALITY?"
Because absolutely the last thing anyone wants to do is see their dreary fucking facebook feed in 3d. So here we are, a rename later, somehow thinking that will do anything. The last hurrah is to pretend we somehow operate as a parent company with independent subsidiaries because our brand is so toxic that years of bad press and a myopic pivot of our core product has finally caught up to us.
>Maybe he thought they could branch into gaming, but somehow that dream died.
Personally, I saw some logic. Before social media, many people socialized in online games. They could meet and talk to new people, and navigating the map was a natural way to avoid a deluge of messages. IMO, Facebook and Twitter were the two biggest reasons MMOs lost popularity.
Which, ironically, supports your point:
>"What about facebook, IN VIRTUAL REALITY?"
This won't be popular. People left immersive worlds for Facebook because they preferred a simple message feed they could glance at while doing something else. They often get sucked into Facebook and don't do something else, but I think putting on VR equipment and deciding not to do anything else for a block of time is enough of a barrier to make it unpopular. Even if VR ends up dominating the gaming market, VR social media will be niche.
> IMO, Facebook and Twitter were the two biggest reasons MMOs lost popularity.
Interesting, never looked at it this way. You're likely correct.
To add to this as a former MMORPG player, I'd say those games also lost popularity because there was no development there. You got through several super slow grinds -- leveling and gearing up at the very least -- only to land in a quicksand from which there's no escape: end-game dungeon and raid grinding for better and better gear which is done for... you guessed it, so you can do higher level dungeons and raids. You do that and you're waiting for the next tier to be released. Warframe and the Destiny games suffer from that same thing as well.
We the humans don't like annoying and soul-draining routine. We like leisurely routine, and sadly MMORPGs are often not that. Heck, a lot of modern games are not that. They are like jobs.
Thinking back, I cherish most moments in WoW when I socialized with people while doing the raids and dungeons. I never enjoyed the grinds however. I kinda sorta liked them up to a point -- beautiful scenery, nice voice acting, some role play etc. but it quickly loses its appeal and just becomes dreary.
At one point this catches up with enough players for there to be mass exoduses -- although mind you, all these games have a core fanbase that will never leave no matter what; that however is no indication of popularity or success (something I believe people constantly use to shut down discussions like "is the game on a downward spiral?", "lol no it still has X million players").
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Back to topic at hand, I'd say something like this definitely applies to social networks as well. People's careers get cancelled over a seemingly offensive comment on Twitter, for example. Other people take notice and start self-censoring while others are like "feck this, I am out".
It seems that all social networks and MMORPGs -- or maybe all communities in general? -- eventually succumb to being an echo chamber and are driven by tradition.
Apparently that's the best that we as a species can offer. Sigh.
This is why they bought it. Go back and check the interviews after the aquisition years ago. Whether you think that's realistic or not, Zuck doesn't care about things like gaming.
I think back when Occulus was a thing and Carmack was involved, Zuckerberg thought it was just cool and bought it because it would've been fun. A complete guilty (and kinda expensive) purchase. There was no way from the get-go to make it profitable. Nobody wanted to see ads in their eyeballs. But he did it anyway. Maybe he thought they could branch into gaming, but somehow that dream died. Now 8 years later Carmack is gone and VR hasn't really progressed beyond chat rooms. They're left scrambling for ideas as their valuation is tumbling. They tried rolling their own crypto and that shit failed hard. People already have instagram, and whatsapp is slowly eroding in the west. A dumb little rebranded music app is eating their lunch.
"What can we do?"
"What about facebook, IN VIRTUAL REALITY?"
Because absolutely the last thing anyone wants to do is see their dreary fucking facebook feed in 3d. So here we are, a rename later, somehow thinking that will do anything. The last hurrah is to pretend we somehow operate as a parent company with independent subsidiaries because our brand is so toxic that years of bad press and a myopic pivot of our core product has finally caught up to us.