Billionaire, inventor, and ecstatic genius Mark Zuckerberg is the figurehead of the entire metaverse movement. He has bet the entire future of Facebook on metaverse, he said, and I quote.
“Our overarching goal across all of these initiatives is to help bring the metaverse to life.” (1)
What is Zuckerberg trying to achieve?
Zuckerberg hopes to create a massive online world where users, regardless of their location, can interact with anyone across the globe. They can get together for meetings, watch concerts, explore the virtual world and even play games together.
Zuckerberg's vision of the metaverse is straight out of a science-fiction movie, he is hoping to create a world where everything can be done in a virtual world.
With such ridiculously high goals, it is only natural for him to face backlash and be the subject of critiques.
Recently Zuckerberg debuted Horizon World, the virtual social app which lets users interact with each other in a virtual world in Paris.
Safe to say, the release didn't go as expected, and he ended up facing severe criticism for this.
Horizon world? What's that?
Horizon world is a virtual world concept created by Facebook; created for the Oculus Rift S and Oculus Quest 2; Horizon Worlds is a free virtual reality video game that can be played online and has an integrated game creation system. It was created and released by Meta Platforms. (2)
The aim of horizon world is to let people make avatars that can interact with each other in the multiverse for various purposes.
Any person with an oculus VR headset or any other Meta-supported VR headset will be able to play Horizon world.
Although there is not a lot known about its official worldwide release, we can see a few snapshots of the In-game scenes.
So what is the $10 billion blunder?
Horizon world had a reported investment of $10 billion, that kind of money would warrant very high expectations from everyone and its reveal in Paris was disappointing, to say the least. (3)
Zuckerberg shared a selfie of his online Avatar in Horizon world which was met with harsh criticism and a lot of backlashes.
According to this post, the graphics in Horizon world are astonishingly bad, and the detailing is worthless.
The quality of this post was so low that it is safe to say the video games in the early 2000s had better graphics than this.
After this post, Twitter did what it does best and let Zuckerberg know what people thought of his grand reveal. (4)
However, after he got wind of how people felt toward Horizon world, Mark sent out a new post on Facebook suggesting that major updates were in line with Horizon World’s graphics and that the last selfie he posted was due to him wanting to celebrate the launch quickly. (5)
He also said that the graphics of horizon world have a lot of potentials and that the game is improving quickly.
Very bold words, but is he right about the magic potential or Horizon World or not?
After Zuckerberg publicly admitted that huge graphics updates were still needed in the Horizon world, public opinion became better, and people started showing support for him.
But this doesn't mean he's off the hook just yet.
Although this new avatar is much better than the previous ones, it is still lacking compared to the technological advancements other metaverse projects have shown.
What is the future of Horizon World, considering the latest developments?
No matter the issues Horizon World currently has, it still has massive potential; a virtual world where users can interact with each other will revolutionize technology as we know it.
The game has issues; the avatars look lifeless, sexless, and have nothing except a torso and a head. This unrealistic concept is only part of the issue. Currently, the biggest issue Horizon world faces is its lifeless avatars and terrible open-world graphics.
Mark Zuckerberg claims these graphics will be improved through various system updates, but that seems highly unlikely.
A Zuckerberg post claims this will be the new look for all avatars. However, reports show that it took nearly four weeks for this look to be developed and that it isn't even part of Horizon Worlds yet.
Even if Mark manages to pull this new look off, some people still think this avatar is too emotionless for a virtual world that claims to give real-life experiences.
Okay, bad graphics and avatar aside, is Horizon world a fun game?
The concept behind Horizon World is incredibly futuristic; the beta gameplay had quite a few good reactions.
The users noticed that the tutorial was incredibly detailed, and the basic functions were explained pretty well.
The issues started arising once the tutorial was over; the open world looks rather depressing and doesn’t have a lot of features at the moment.
Even the features it currently has are extremely difficult to use, and most people tend to roam around trying to find people who can help them.
The creation mode that this game boasted is also very hard to utilize, and most users could not learn to use it. (6)
However, the good news is that the game has certain individuals or gamemasters that can help you with such issues, they will help you utilize various features and get the hang of the game.
One specter in which Horizon World has outdone itself is the way the users can interact with each other; the game is designed for people all over the world to interact with each other.
As a social app Horizon world has outdone itself even though it is less than pleasing as a game at the moment.
Although not all hope is lost, Zuckerberg’s $10 billion blunder just might turn around and reap some rewards.
