Meta’s new shooter game is the most fun I’ve ever had in the metaverse

theverge.com:

By David Pierce, editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.

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What are the ethics of repeatedly targeting an eight-year-old in a video game? What if that eight-year-old is demonstrably better than you at the game but is currently being forced to talk to his mom and isn’t really paying attention, and this is your best and probably only chance to mount a comeback? How much trash can you talk after you kill the eight-year-old a few times? What if that eight-year-old has been talking trash to you for the better part of the last hour while gleefully shouting “Expecto Patronum” every time they fire their shotgun?

These are the kinds of questions you’re forced to answer in Super Rumble, the new game for the Meta Quest. (They’re the same kinds of questions you’ll find anywhere in the metaverse and on most multiplayer online games, really.) Super Rumble lives inside Horizon Worlds, the virtual universe system that Meta has tried hard to make the centerpiece of the universe… to essentially no success. Meta hasn’t even been able to get its employees to spend time in Horizon Worlds.

But against all odds and historical precedent, Super Rumble is actually quite a lot of fun. It’s not the Quest’s best game or even its best Fortnite clone (that would be Population: One), but it’s the best — and maybe first? — signal I’ve seen so far that Meta might eventually be able to make a digital world that’s actually fun to be on. 

It’s a really simple game, which helps: you’re dropped into a simple arena filled with seven different weapons,