Will the Metaverse Live Up to the Hype? Game Developers Aren't Impressed

The perfect version of the metaverse, to hear tech heads like Mark Zuckerberg tell it, marries social media, entertainment, and--most exciting of all--meetings in one pristine virtual space. Long ago foretold in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, it is a place where the online world offers more experiences than the flesh-and-bone one. But whereas Stephenson's metaverse was part of an apocalyptic future, modern inventors have promised a digital utopia. Unfortunately, the metaverse they've built has, so far, lived up to those expectations about as well as a Craigslist apartment rented based on photos alone. Zuckerberg's Horizon Worlds, clunky and strange, may have been at its most thrilling when Meta informed users that legs for their avatars were "coming soon."