Hacker News Reader

The problem is that everyone wants to “simulate” reality. I’m not interested in that. No one wants to go to a virtual mall. They want to be somewhere unique. A game. A story. Something… else.

View on HN

Precisely. I don't understand that part of it either... owning virtual Nike sneakers or virtual land? Why? Idk, maybe I'm just old.

In the hope that it'll be worth real money someday, and you'll get rich off of it. That was even in Neal Stephenson's original concept of the metaverse. And it's what explains very nearly all of the money in today's virtual currency markets.

Being able to take an item out of one game and move it into another game sounds like fun but keeping track of the ownership is a tiny problem compared to having the appropriate assets to draw the objects cross-game never mind implement the attributes of the objects. (And not let imported object "break the game")

If you had it all in a unitary system like the OASIS from Ready Player One it might be possible but unless all the games are under the same framework it would take a lot of coordination.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com