Making a Metaverse That Matters: From Snow Crash & Second Life to A Virtual World Worth Fighting For

by Wagner James Au

An up-close account from the world’s first metaverse-embedded reporter In Making a Metaverse That From Snow Crash & Second Life to A Virtual World Worth Fighting For , the celebrated author of The Making of Second Life and Game Design Secrets , Wagner James Au, delivers an engrossing exploration of how nascent metaverse platforms have already captured the imagination of millions. Featuring powerful stories and dozens of incisive interviews with insiders including Metaverse creator Neal Stephenson himself, the author uses his unique, grassroots-level perspective as the first reporter embedded in a metaverse platform. Readers will learn Perfect for XR industry members and indie creatives, Making a Metaverse That Matters  is also for tech professionals, virtual world communities, and anyone interested in the future of culture and commerce.

Genres: Nonfiction, Technology

384 pages, Hardcover

Published June 27, 2023

Reviews

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Based on recent companies and interviews, brings a good perspective. Interesting and I’m glad I read it not long after it came out, not sure how long it will remain current.

[cypher · Rating 5 out of 5]

the book is great.
…but why do these “metaverse”s fail? i believe that they don’t have enough grip. as the book mentioned, users come, if they do, but they don’t stay. at no point in your life can you just leave the real world and exist in VR, so the demands of reality will always be pressing on you. you need to sleep, eat, move around and breathe some fresh air…and, yes, pay the bills. virtual worlds can’t change that about you and reality, on top of the fact that spending more than a few hours with a VR headset (the expected norm) will make most people feel sick. i seriously doubt working in virtual reality will ever turn out to be more comfortable than real life, so what’s the use of it beyond entertainment? from this angle, virtual worlds are incredibly limited, even if they come with the promise of limitless possibilities. there are use cases for learning in VR and digesting some types of content which give you an enhanced experience, like potentially walking down a street in a better version of a Google Street View application would, but beyond that it’s a world for gaming, no matter how much companies have tried in other directions, and i’ve been there personally to see some try and fail, until it lost meaning for me. VR is cool, but VR is gaming…mostly. pack in gaming with some social and you’re done, as long as you accept this will not bring unlimited growth unless you invest in evolving the games and bring novel content for people to keep trying, just like the still cool and used by many, PlayStation and Xbox, do. how can you expect adoption if users go in VR and don’t have much to do, and they got bored of what was already there? if they get to that faze, it’s hard to bring them back, they already formed an opinion, and, psychologically speaking, negative opinions are harder to change than positive ones. then companies would need to be vigilant and bring everything and more from what their competitors do - what was Xbox’s strategy with PlayStation? if ever a game developer refused to do an Xbox version, and the game was predicated to be “hot”, they payed at least for part of the development for an Xbox version, to keep their users coming. you can’t just expect for developers to use resources to build experiences, when it’s unclear for them that they’ll get money back when the user base is thin, thinning or uncertain. in the beginning, VR was a cool new gimmick-like thing and pulling in attention based on that, but, as it’s losing novelty, it can’t be expected to survive unless money is pumped into entertainment content, and, at the end of the day, it still has competitors, and they offer more right now.

back to the book, it brings great insight into how some of the decisions around building metaverse-like worlds were made, and context from the industry, including its incipit in the book Snow Crash, focused a lot on Second Life, where the author was an important player, pun intended.
would highly recommend it, interesting book, even if you do, even if don’t believe in the future of VR, as a parallel world to live in.
...but i guess if climate change hits us bad, and the world turns full on dystopia and we live locked up because the sun's radiation is absurdly high, we might not have a choice but to enjoy VR worlds...i'm sure there's someone evil out there banking on some VR profit like this :)
living in the real world more is just healthier, mentally as well. one way to think about VR's future.

[Lorelei Armstrong · Rating 5 out of 5]

I debated calling this review "The book that could have saved Zuckerberg billions" because it offers terrific guidance to the industry and those in the position to spend billions creating virtual worlds. I decided that title might limit the audience for a book anyone interested in the future of our relationship with the Internet should read. I've been in Second Life since mid-2007. I have three avatars running eight businesses. At one time I was making substantial (real) money. Now it pays my in-world bills. As I listened to the audiobook of Making a Metaverse that Matters, I found myself nodding often. Wagner James Au captures the divide between what science fiction authors imagined and what exists, explains the mistakes Linden Lab made along the way, and perfectly captures the "blind men and the elephant" feeling virtual worlds have now. I hope this book is being read very very widely by everyone building the virtual worlds of the future. Maybe we can avoid some damaging errors. Mahalo, Wagner James Au!

[Ari Ramirez · Rating 4 out of 5]

best book about the metaverse i’ve read to date

[Lee T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it, reread it, and read my notes. It’s that compelling.

[Charity]

read ish