First, What Is The Metaverse?
A metaverse is a virtual world in which individuals can interact with one another and even play games together. It is essentially a digitally created space where users socialize and have fun. According to Investopedia, The metaverse combines virtual reality (V.R.) and augmented reality (A.R.) with the help of smartphones, VR headsets and AR glasses together to create a fabricated world. A.R. is when elements of virtual reality are included. For example, Pokemon Go is a classic example of A.R. because the user is using a smartphone to find Pokemons hidden in their area. The user is still interacting with their surrounding environment except virtual elements (Pokemons) are added. An example for V.R. is Meta’s Horizon Worlds, where the user’s surrounding environment is completely erased and replaced by digitally created surroundings when an Oculus VR Headset is being utilized. One way to easily recognize the difference between Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality is to remember that, A.R. is the virtual world coexisting with the real world while the environment of V.R. is completely made up.
What Should We Expect from Meta’s Horizon Worlds?
Meta released an hour long video explaining Horizon Worlds’ ambition during the next several years. After analysing the video, three key points for Horizon Worlds stood out:
1. Social Interactions:
Two of the anticipated aspects of Horizon Worlds are the social experience and gaming. Horizon Worlds users can fully expect to talk with one another and in the future invite others to their virtual home to hang out. Currently, there are nightclubs built into the Horizon Worlds that users can go to; One of which is Cub fuego which is fully inspired by latin culture (songs, drinks and environment). Additionally there’s even an American Idol VR world and a Comedy Club VR world where users perform in front of other users. Because Meta is internationally known as the parent company Facebook, a social site, users can expect Horizon Worlds to have a big social component in the future.
2. Gaming:
Gaming is also an aspect that brings about excitement when talking about Horizon Worlds. One game that has been promoted heavily by Meta is Arena Clash, a team based laser tag game. CNN’s Rachel Metz was able to join Horizon Worlds and played Arena Clash which according to her was “visually well thought out, easy to navigate and, most importantly, fun”. But unfortunately, Rachel was unable to find other experiences or games at Horizon Worlds as fun as Arena Clash. As far as researching for this article, I as well, could not find any other games on Horizon Worlds being spoken about or promoted. It seems the gaming aspect of Horizon Worlds still needs a lot of work. But it is no surprise that Meta’s social aspect seems to be stronger than its gaming as it is first and foremost currently the owner of the biggest social sites in the world.
3. Safety Features:
But Horizon Worlds isn’t just fun and games. Unfortunately in 2021, some users have claimed of being assaulted by other users in the game. Nina Jane Patel claims that she was verbally and sexually assaulted within 60 seconds of being in the game. Patel argues that because VR is an experience that encompasses the senses, she ultimately felt as if the assault happened in real life even though it occurred through her avatar. Thankfully Meta has implemented safety features such as “safe zone” and a “personal boundary” to Horizon Worlds as a response to users being assaulted. With “safe zone” users can step away from the game and mute, block or report others; while “personal boundary” allows avatars to have a mandatory gap or space when interacting. Although VR can provide us with alternate realities, it still can be influenced by the human factor. Meaning, even though we can create other worlds to replace the real one, it will be hard to control how people behave and react. At least there are safety measures in place to prevent certain people from acting and behaving inappropriately unlike in real life.
In conclusion, it is clear that Horizon Worlds is still in the beginning stages in its development due to its lack of games and few social interactions that it provides. Due to its limited features so far, Horizon Worlds is planning on working with creators and developers to provide more choices to its users. But, even with its few amenities, Horizon Worlds boasts 300,000 users since the beginning of this year. With its release to the public recently occurring in December, 300 thousand users is nothing to scoff at and is a huge success for Meta.
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