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Comment by monero-xmr | Hacker News Reader

I have friends that got married, never had kids, and spend large chunks of their free time in MMORPGs, League of Legends, and a seemingly endless array of virtual-based entertainment. They also seem to get a lot of personal meaning and satisfaction from nerd pop culture like Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings which is evidence that their rich fantasy lives have such deep meaning for them.

So I find it totally plausible that a huge amount of people would spend large amounts of time in a more immersive virtual world, provided it wasn’t clunky and caused headaches.

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> So I find it totally plausible that a huge amount of people would spend large amounts of time in a more immersive virtual world

I, on the other hand, know nobody that uses virtual worlds. I find it plausible that a tiny amount of people would spend large amounts of time in a more immersive virtual world. I find it completely implausible that a huge amount of people would.

>I find it completely implausible that a huge amount of people would.

there are 2.5 billion adult gamers in the world. A good percentage of that are partaking in games that easily qualify as virtual worlds.

no personal anecdote needed, huge amounts of people are already spending time in places that qualify as virtual worlds.

Our interfaces are clunky, and you can shift 'virtual world' around to mean something else, but it feels evident to me that this isn't an uncommon pastime/desire among people.

> there are 2.5 billion adult gamers in the world.

I don't think casually playing a mobile game every once in a while translates to going full VR. The amount of gamers that care enough about the medium to buy a console or gaming PC is only around 500 million or so.

I'm an adult gamer, and I also own a Valve Index VR kit.

VR is fun, but has serious limitations. A nice way to take a walk on the rings of Saturn, but no way in hell am I going to trust it with my privacy. And it's totally overkill for something like scrolling cat-meme videos or wishing someone happy birthday via social media.

Plus the Index is pretty good but it still gives me headaches and dizziness after extended periods.

I absolutely think there is more to come with VR, but it's only after there is already a flourishing ecosystem that social media will find its place there, not before.

You're making a giant unsubstantiated leap from "there are 2.5 adult billion gamers in the world" and the idea that the current types of "virtual worlds" means that a significant number of these folks want anything resembling the metaverse.

I am one of those "adult gamers". I even occasionally play VR games with an Oculus Quest. The thought of living substantially more portions of my life "in the metaverse" is pretty much the definition of dystopia for me. I've seen Wall-E, and I'll pass, thanks.

I find it completely implausible that a huge amount of people would.

But people already do.

Email, Facebook, twitter, messaging, slack, all of it, is by no means real, human interaction. It is a step away from that.

Some even say that this type of interaction is so fake, so filled with disinformation, and algorithmic monkeying, that it is toxic poison.

Yet people will be with friends at a restaurant, or hanging out, and so addicted, so unable to stop, that they are constantly be staring at their screen instead of interacting in person!

People cannot help themselves, and people cannot resist addictive platforms.

So sadly, Zuck probably has a good idea. He's probably a bit early, but you can be sure when VR takes a Musk implant, and a simple pair of glasses for full immersion, people will be in VR while having lunch with you.

It’s a huge jump from what you mentioned rather than a “small step away.” (I see you edited your post, but I’m sticking with the original quote) Everything you mentioned can be done in short spurts of time and interwoven with other parts of someones life. VR as it stands today is way too burdensome and all consuming to pull that off. I’m not even getting into the additional hardware costs.

None of those things you mentioned are an immersive virtual world, at least not by how I understand that concept.

Jaron Lanier made an incisive point many years ago. Someone asked him what virtual reality was. "Virtual reality is where you are when you're on the telephone."

I'd extend that to, "Virtual reality is where you are when you're not present in the here-and-now." That encompasses all forms of media, entertainment, and communication with people who aren't in the room with you. The idea that it has anything to do with goggles, 3D graphics, avatars, or Facebook is something some people made up.

I don’t think Lanier is right, regardless, virtual reality and immersive virtual world still sound like two different things.

I can see the point in Lanier argument, however there is a much bigger problem for VR: There is no VR analog to Reddit, Instagram, TikTok, Youtube and Co. VR is still very much an activity in which you have to actively engage, you have to find a game that is interesting, load it up and play. You can't just casually doom-scroll in VR and have the algorithm find interesting content for you. There is no app for that. And the retention rates of VR aren't great either, as once you are done with a game, it's quite difficult to find whatever you'll do next.

For all the hype around Metaverse and Zuckerberg wanting 1 billion people in VR, there has been surprisingly little effort in finding out what those people would actual do when they have the headset on.

there has been surprisingly little effort in finding out what those people would actual do when they have the headset on.

True. However, the internet was around for 20+ years, before profit entered. Radio took decades, TV too. These things take time.

Games like Gorilla Tag and VRChat have tens of millions of monthly users. They are on a hardware devices that give most people nausea after 30 mins. Meta has the most popular hardware by far. Seems huge

You have a few friends != large number of people will do the same.

I take the entire breadth of my lived experience when trying to predict the future, and I place high value on anecdata. My strategies have served me well thus far, but if you want to outsource all of your thinking to “experts”, good luck to you.

You don't need to "outsource all of your thinking to experts" to understand that data is not the plural of anecdote.

I, too, know people who met their future spouse online. However, after meeting online, they invariably meet in person before getting married, and then live together after getting married. Even the most plugged-in exemplars of the metaverse can't escape from the desire to interact outside of it.

And yet, while HN places zero trust in anecdata and personal observation, it it critical in real life decision-making. Most mega-successful entrepreneurs got there by trusting their instincts, not disregarding their own observations and instead only ever searching for studies conducted by others.

So while I agree with your point overall, I think here on HN we're too quick to dismiss people's personal stories.

recurring reminder - the original quote is "the plural of anecdote is data" http://blog.danwin.com/don-t-forget-the-plural-of-anecdote-i...

that was an excellent read and dispelled the attempt to recast the phrases negation.

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