The Failure of Metaverse: What Can We Learn From It?

The Metaverse’s present inability to resonate with an audience, much less Meta’s employees who are arguably its least risky market, may be explained by its failure to satisfy a balanced breakthrough. While the Metaverse is lacking in a viable business model, its ultimate feasibility the technology is questionable, and the most obvious downfall of Meta’s strategy, namely the disconnect between Meta’s technology and the desires of its users. In this paper, we will focus on three specific areas where the Metaverse underperforms its users’ expectations: improving work environments, building communities that enable play, and fostering creativity and user-generated content.

As a result of the pandemic people's office forms have significantly changed, and online offices have gradually become mainstream. The shift coincided with Facebook's rebrand to Meta. As a metaverse company, Meta is developing a product called "Horizon Workrooms" to explore the workplace in the metaverse. Meta's official definition of it is: "Workrooms is the immersive way to meet teammates, brainstorm ideas, share presentations and get things done, whether you're wearing a virtual reality headset or joining from a regular video call." It shows that one of the essential prerequisites for entering Workrooms is the need for a device to connect users to the meta-universe, in its promotional video the main character only needs lightweight glasses to enter the immersive office space, but the reality is that currently if users want to experience this online office, they have to spend a high price on a bulky headset. However, wearing a VR headset to do basic collaboration tasks is a burden, not a boon, to our work lives. So, honest market feedback, such as the persistent global popularity of Zoom as an online meeting product, shows what users think.

The ingredients of play and community can be combined to create an experience that extends beyond a simple, momentary escape from everyday life or an amusing conversation with strangers. Meta intends to use these gaming and social components, presumably to expand its audience and provide value in a way that working or creating content within the Metaverse can not. When blended properly, play and community can be blended into an immersive, borderline-addictive activity, around which users shape their identities, social networks, and even careers – an emulsion the over-$180B-per-year gaming industry has perfected. However, approximately $36B, three-and-a-half years after stepping into the VR kitchen, Meta is still seemingly stuck without a whisk, unable to delight its guests due to poor execution and more than a bundle of delicious alternatives. One month after Horizon Worlds’ release, only a smattering of user-generated games was available to play, which were, “mere imitations of existing video games” and the situation has not improved much since. Meanwhile, myriad complaints exist about the quality of the graphics in Horizon Worlds, compared to other VR offerings, and its avatars will not be receiving a crucial body part – legs – until sometime in 2023. But Meta’s problem is not only its execution. It is also unclear why consumers might choose Horizon Worlds over more popular, established alternatives in the VR space and beyond. Between popular games like Fortnite or Roblox and social platforms like Discord, countless indirect alternatives exist for consumers to play and find community. Directly in the VR space, Rec Room a VR-focused game released in 2016 where users can play and socialize in a similar way to Horizon Worlds, “had about ten times as many users as Horizon Worlds” as of Spring 2022”.

Creativity and user-generated content is the pinnacle of attraction to users in the digital world. When Mark Zuckerberg first introduced the Metaverse he portrayed it as a space where developers, artists, and designers could come together and develop immersive experiences for users. It was not a new idea, but the incorporation of including designers and using NFTs sparked users’ interest in joining a sandbox-like world. However, despite the promising aspects, the metaverse still disappointed users as it did not achieve the level that it promised. Rather than being a sandbox game that allowed for creative freedom, it became centralized on virtual meetings and new workflows. Taking a step back and looking at other sandbox games and user-generated content can show what aspects Meta was missing. Minecraft (one of the most popular games for all ages) is a prime example of what makes a sandbox game successful. It creates an immersive experience and allows users to develop creative freedom to make what they want and even collaborate with friends. TikTok is another example of creative freedom as it attracts users and allows people to connect and make videos together. Creativity is what attracts users, especially when you can immerse yourself in space and interact with others to generate content, which Metaverse failed to present.

Arguments for the Metaverse’s inevitability seem more a condition of innovation by Technology Push rather than ones made from empirical evidence. As we see the explosion of democratized (for now) AI tools (ChatGPT, Dall•E, etc.) with high demand occurring simultaneous to a lackluster Metaverse rollout, it begs the question: what problems can the Metaverse solve for users in a way that will delight them, and how will it do so in a novel way?

The Failure of Metaverse: What Can We Learn From It?

Citations:

Authors