Why The Metaverse Was A Turkey
New World Notes: What Went Wrong With [Meta’s] Horizon Worlds [previously the Metaverse]? Former Meta Devs Share Surprising Insights. Sounds like it was doomed from the start:
Horizon Worlds / Workrooms, etc. is a pretty awful codebase with hundreds of people working on it. They grabbed a bunch of people from the Facebook/Instagram half of the company because they knew React. […] Horizon Worlds uses a VR version of that called “ReactVR”.
What this effectively means is that most of the people developing Horizon Worlds (HW) are 2D app developers driven by engagement metrics and retention numbers. So… HW became flooded with a ton of 2D developers who never put on the headset even test their menus, all competing to try to create the most “engaging” menu that would sell microtransactions, or drive social engagement, or make some other number look good – because that’s WHAT THEY DO at Facebook/Instagram. […]
The guy that was put in charge of Horizon Worlds needed help learning how to don the headset and launch the game after being in charge of it for 3 months.
I think that programming in HW will never work because it lacks so many of the everyday necessary features programmers need, and the spatial element gives it almost no advantage. I cannot easily work with someone on a script… it’s all scratch-style building blocks. […]
They were actively denying pull requests (code changes) that were awesome features; features that VRChat eventually put in, or Second Life already had to begin with 15 years ago.
It was dead as soon as they released it. Not a single developer thought it was ready, then when it dropped no one played it. Then, Facebook just tried to keep pumping it with “features” like little microtransaction stuff so they could say it made money.
Plus devs “automating” their dogfood testing because it was so annoying, and the CTO shouting at people not to mention kids using their app. Ouch.
Tags: vr meta funny fail horizon-worlds metaverse ouch facebook