New dev data sheds light on the future of the metaverse
It's been a wild two years for the so-called "metaverse." When Facebook changed its name to Meta in 2021, I was not enthusiastic about the future it was offering. Looking back on that year, I think a lot of my cynicism on the topic was fueled by how executives seemed more excited about the prospect than any developer or tech user I'd run into.
Since then? Meta's pivot to the metaverse business has cratered the company's stock. Would-be metaverses (metaversi?) like Decentraland and The Sandbox aren't seeing impressive numbers, and even Roblox, the user-generated content platform with maybe the strongest use case for the term, has been grappling with some revenue struggles.
Reading that news, and just...you know, thinking about the metaverse still gives me plenty of reasons to be cynical about living in a world inspired by Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash or Ernest Cline's Ready Player One. But the 2023 Game Developers Conference State of the Industry report has some interesting new data that's inviting me to take a different perspective.
Though the survey's results show plenty of healthy skepticism on the concept of the metaverse, it's a different kind of skepticism than what it showed about the possibilities of blockchain technology. That actually makes a fair amount of sense. Developers working in the game-making process have a better sense of how technology can be developed, and a virtual world filled with interesting activities and sellable goods is easier to conceive of than using multiple Slurp Juices on one Ape.
If developers are to be believed, the assembling of the metaverse will come to pass if companies pursue products that are—well, useful. Or meaningful. Or even just fun! There's no reason to throw away your
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