“Metaverse” is a buzzword that has become quite popular in the last couple of years. Fortnite is a metaverse. Web3 and blockchain will help power the metaverse. Maybe cows are part of it too? However, no one seems more invested in shaping our collective understanding of what the metaverse is than Meta and Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg. Unfortunately for anyone wishing to experience our glorious virtual future, what Zuckerberg has shown of his vision of said future looks dull, boring, generic, and downright miserable. It also serves as a nice reminder that rich tech bros don’t have to be in charge of the future. Earlier this week, the alien suit wearing person known to us as Mark Zuckerberg posted a VR selfie from within his company’s Horizon Worlds project. The selfie showed the Eiffel Tower and was meant to announce that its transformation is expanding to more countries. Instead, however, people immediately started pouncing on the terrible image, ugly avatar, and how everything looked like it came out of a 2005 arcade game. And oddly enough, this isn’t the first time Zuck’s shown off sinister avatars of himself in an attempt to lure people into his VR-fueled nightmare world. Screenshot: Meta / Kotaku In 2017, Zuckerberg introduced the VR app Facebook Spaces using an ugly-as-sin avatar that looked vaguely like the goal was to recreate the billionaire CEO as a smooth, cartoonish avatar you might see in a fever dream. Oh, and for some reason, he decided the best way to show off this app and his sinister avatar was to visit Puerto Rico via video after it had been hit by a powerful hurricane, killing thousands and destroying many of the homes and businesses of the island. In 2021, ol’ Zuckie returned with an avatar that looked better than before. However, this avatar, which appeared in a video showcasing Facebook and Meta’s big conversion plans, isn’t actually real. Instead, it was created as part of a larger concept video showing what Meta was working on. However, even this avatar looks like someone who fell off the Polar Express. Screenshot: Meta / Kotaku And that brings us to 2022, where Zuckerberg’s avatar is a legless knockoff of a Nintendo Mii with some really weird buttons and the eyes of a corpse. And not only is Zuckerberg like this, but this is how all the avatars in Horizon Worlds appear. I’ve played enough Horizon Worlds to tell you that missing legs quickly cease to matter. But the lack of style and the cold, dead aesthetic never goes away. Certainly, part of the reason these avatars and worlds look plain and ugly compared to modern video games is due to the limited VR hardware in Quest 2 and Facebook’s desire to make VR content that can run on as many devices as possible. . On the other hand, I can find Nintendo DS and Sony PS Vita games with better, prettier art and models than what we’ve shown so far in the Facebook metaverse. I also don’t think you can blame the people who make these things, as I assume they are more than capable of making better and more vibrant things. But more and more, it looks like that’s not what Meta and Zucklehead want. Instead, they focus on making a product that can be consumed by the masses and that lacks defining features in an effort to get more people to take the plunge. If you are a current or former Meta/Facebook employee and would like to speak to Kotaku in confidence about your experiences, please contact [email protected] This is the exact opposite approach we see in community-based VR metacomplexes like VR Chat, which looks better and is more warm and welcoming. In comparison, Horizon Worlds looks like an animated video I was walking through in some fancy hospital while looking for the bathroom. And if this bland and ugly metalink is the future that Mark Zuckerberg wants and is investing billions of dollars in, I worry that he could end up beating out other, better alternatives simply because he has the money and resources to squeeze or buy out competitors . Well, if it wins, at least I’ll be able to skip it and not buy a new VR headset.
