Big Mad Drongo posted:

Pretty much. I had to sit through a metaverse presentation for work and you could replace every mention of "metaverse" with whatever social media platform you prefer and the context would be unchanged. The only piece you're missing is them trying to find a way to get people to actually adopt VR en masse (lmao no one has the space or money or time for this poo poo)

Shame Boy posted:

Oh and then METAVERSE became a buzzword half-way through the process I described, so now every single Web3 idea has to have a metaverse NFT game in development coming Jan. 2024 or whatever. All of these metaverse NFT games have somehow already sold all their virtual property to corporations for millions of theoretical dollars, despite most of them literally not existing even in a pre-alpha form. None of them sound at all appealing to play. In Peter Moleneux's one, for example, you get your game key to enable you to play the game in the first place from a virtual landlord, who owns the virtual land that you then have to set up your virtual store on. All your virtual money you make with the virtual store is taxed by the virtual landlord for virtual rent.

Jazerus posted:

lmao why are people still giving peter molyneux money

quote:

The company launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds and met their funding goal of GB£450,000 (US$732,510) on 20 December 2012.[1] Godus was designed by Peter Molyneux, who described it as the spiritual successor to his earlier creation, Populous. While the mobile versions of the game continue to be updated, the early access Steam release has yet to see an updated beta since 2016. The contract of the lead developer of the game, Konrad Naszynski, expired 28 June 2016, and it has been reported that there is no one left working on the PC version.[2] As of December 2021, 7 years after the last update on the PC version, the game is still being advertised as early access.[3]

...

With the end of Molyneux's social experiment, Curiosity – What's Inside the Cube?, it was revealed that in Godus a single person will reign as the virtual god over all other players. It was also revealed that this same player will receive a portion of the revenue made by the game.[12] As of February 2015, the winner Bryan Henderson has still not received the prize.[13][14] In March 2017, Molyneux claimed that Godus had not made a profit and Henderson would not receive money.[15]

quote:

Described as "the first ever Blockchain Business Sim," Legacy lets players design in-game products and buildings that are then manufactured by virtual workers in in-game factories. Players can trade those items with other players in an "open market" and compete in in-game competitions for "leaderboard positions and big prizes" (denominated in the game's own LegacyCoin cryptocurrency).

To participate in that in-game economy, though, you'll have to be a Legacy landowner. Currently, that means purchasing one of 4,661 available plots of land in a virtual recreation of London using the Gala Games marketplace (it's unclear how many more plots of Legacy land will eventually be made, if any).

As of this writing, over 4,500 of those plots have already been pre-sold for a combined price of about 13,365 Eth (over $54 million at today's prices), according to public listings on Gala Games' site. That includes a unique "Heart of London" plot that sold for 220.607 Eth (over $900,000) and 2,000 "common" startup deeds that sold for about 0.8 Eth ($3,266). Just 140 plots remain, for a combined asking price of 527.04 Eth ($2.148 million).

More expensive pieces of land come with the ability to grow your business with "Business Partners," theoretically increasing your in-game creation and earning potential. Landowners can also act as landlords by using "Legacy Keys" to loan out a portion of their land to others, earning some of the lessees' takings as passive income (more expensive land comes with the ability to earn more Legacy Keys). And owners of land rated as "Rare" or higher (starting price: 4.55 Eth, or $18,576) are promised access to the game's Beta test, while the purchase of "Legendary" land (30.33 Eth or $123,838) grants access to the game's coming Alpha test.

Shame Boy posted:

This is very typical for basically every "metaverse" project I've seen though. There's a lot of "get in now and you can own land and earn passive income from future players who then have to rent land and stuff from you!" and nobody's answering the question of "ok but why would anyone want to play this if there's seemingly no game here and you have to rent everything?"

All of them really feel like products tailored to companies and investors that have been itching to get in on this booming "videogame industry" they hear so much about but have no clue how to do it. They're all creatively bankrupt nonsense that can be condensed down into a powerpoint presentation basically saying "in our videogame, we have easy-for-you-to-understand mechanics like 'being a landlord' and 'collecting on loans'" designed to have old white dudes in suits look at and nod and go "finally, someone who gets it"

Big Mad Drongo posted:

Pretty much. I had to sit through a metaverse presentation for work and you could replace every mention of "metaverse" with whatever social media platform you prefer and the context would be unchanged. The only piece you're missing is them trying to find a way to get people to actually adopt VR en masse (lmao no one has the space or money or time for this poo poo)

Shame Boy posted:

This is very typical for basically every "metaverse" project I've seen though. There's a lot of "get in now and you can own land and earn passive income from future players who then have to rent land and stuff from you!" and nobody's answering the question of "ok but why would anyone want to play this if there's seemingly no game here and you have to rent everything?"

All of them really feel like products tailored to companies and investors that have been itching to get in on this booming "videogame industry" they hear so much about but have no clue how to do it. They're all creatively bankrupt nonsense that can be condensed down into a powerpoint presentation basically saying "in our videogame, we have easy-for-you-to-understand mechanics like 'being a landlord' and 'collecting on loans'" designed to have old white dudes in suits look at and nod and go "finally, someone who gets it"

Peggotty posted:

multi-level-marketing schemes without the hassle of having an actual product to sell.

skooma512 posted:

VR also requires good hardware, which is uh, kinda hard to get and probably will be for 5 years at least.

Jel Shaker posted:

what do you mean i can’t run VR off my 2013 pentium II laptop

Arivia posted:

why the absolute gently caress were you buying a pentium 2 laptop new in 2013

was this some embedded systems poo poo

was it a toughbook with radiation hardening or something

did you bring it back with you from the ISS

Thanatosian posted:

I honestly don't know if he's gotten just so much more loving broke-brained over the last few years, or if I've just crack-pinged so hard that what previously seemed not all that unreasonable to me now sounds completely loving insane.

tokin opposition posted:

*hot take siren incoming* living under capitalism is literally gaslighting and all hithero existing class relations are literally abusive. The proletariat can do so much better.

no lube so what posted:

anyone say meta boner?

Centrist Committee posted:

I think web 2.0 was the final enclosure of the final frontier for the working class and web3 is like some kind of death rattle of capitalism desperately trying to invent another frontier as it rapidly asphyxiates itself on a planet it cannot escape

Peggotty posted:

They're literally trying to do multi-level-marketing schemes without the hassle of having an actual product to sell.

anime was right posted:

aperfectcirclefan posted:

I redrafts and overdraft fees are a scam and hurt the lower classes. My boss hasn't paid me in a month and I'm currently sitting at -$150. Sweet. Love capitalism.

CRUSTY MINGE posted:

That's going to depend on your bank and the ATM, but my credit union would let me draw up to $2k into the hole. I'd draw $400-500 from the ATM when I had $fuckall left in my account, get hit by one overdraft fee, and pay for everything with cash until I got paid again.

I have "overdraft protection" or whatever on my account, which doesn't do poo poo but allow me to overdraft. If I cut it off, they wouldn't allow the overdrafts and I'd have had to pay for bounced checks too.

E: it's been a few years since I've had to do that, but I got by and my accounts have been in the black for years.

Shame Boy posted:

"Overdraft protection" is specifically the thing that used to be mandatory (automatically allowing you to overdraft, then charging you huge fees for it) that Obama made them make optional, so they immediately rebranded it as a "feature" and push you to enable it all the time if its off lmao

aperfectcirclefan posted:

Draw the maximum from the overdraft account? I didn't even know that was possible.

CRUSTY MINGE posted:

Well it saved my rear end more than once. They probably charge me a monthly fee for it, too.

Not at all surprised that Obama had something to do with it. Pretty sure my overdrafts before Obama cost me $25 instead of $35, too.

quote:

In July, 2010 the Federal Reserve adopted regulations (revisions to Regulation E) which prohibited overdraft fees resulting from one time debit card and ATM transactions unless the bank customer had opted into overdraft protection. Consumers who opt into overdraft programs pay more than seven times as much in overdraft and NSF fees, averaging almost $260 a year, based on a recent report from the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.[18] Research by Moebs Services released in February, 2011 showed that as many as 90% of customers had chosen overdraft protection, resulting in the projection that United States banks would post record profits from overdraft fees.[19]

Arsenic Lupin posted:

I have seen no evidence that the poster of that is in a position to know what WalMart is testing in-house. My suspicion is that somebody in the VR community made that as an "if this goes on" thing.

Don't get me wrong, it's dystopia, but I'd really like to see a citation.

Arsenic Lupin posted:

I have seen no evidence that the poster of that is in a position to know what WalMart is testing in-house. My suspicion is that somebody in the VR community made that as an "if this goes on" thing.

Don't get me wrong, it's dystopia, but I'd really like to see a citation.