Discussion
relistening to the 90s VR podcast again and getting pissed off about how these guys are just so obsessed with ~brands~ and how it makes perfect sense that they all failed and also eventually bought into the NFT and metaverse hypetrains
perpetual braindamage inhumanness
AND they keep saying that lots of those things are really popular, but that the REAL metaverse is like.. about totally separate things which keep failing
and its like, guys, if videogames are The Metaverse, then just do that, just lean into the thing thats REALLY popular
like, either accept that your vision of the metaverse is crap and the good ones are successful and start emulating them
or stop conflating videogames with whatever your metaverse is
i have to complain some more about this podcast because the people who were working on these things had some of the fucking shittiest excuses for their work being kinda meh
like at one point they're talking about voice chat and how they couldn't rely on people having sound cards in 1995 or whatever
ok man sure but PC videogames were being released by that point with music for literally years, gimme a break
millions of people were playing these games, you can't tell me that that's a valid excuse for it being sooooo hard to make a successful product
videogames were DRIVING SALES OF SOUND CARDS
your voicechat was just not that compelling, demonstrably
"We couldn't even really do 3D graphics back then!"
guys, Ultima Underworld and Wolfenstein 3D came out in 1992, Doom came out in 1993, Heretic and System Shock were 1994, Mech Warrior 2 was 1995, Hexen was 1995, Quake was 1996
YEARS and YEARS before your stuff
you cannot claim that we couldn't do 3D worlds when PC games were doing far more compelling and popular 3D worlds than you ever made, for longer than you were working on these things
at one point someone even said "We didn't even have texture mapping!"
i mean, YOU may not have, but Catacomb 3-D had texture mapping in 1991, Ultima Underworld and Wolfenstein 3-D had it in 1992
like, it wouldn't be so bad if these folx could acknowledge that they SHOULD have taken inspiration from the world of videogames
but instead they claim that videogames are a primitive form of metaverse, not the REAL thing that THEY were trying to build
if you're going to denigrate video games, then you have to be putting in at LEAST as much effort into solving these problems, but instead they lamented how it was soooo hard to do anything
motherfucker, its YOUR JOB to do them! YOURE the one whos trying to make the future!
John Carmack didn't bemoan the fact that they didn't have nice 3D graphics when he came out of Wolfenstein and was contemplating Doom
he said "I guess I have to invented 3D graphics"
when he couldn't figure out how to go beyond the limitations of Doom's sorta 3D while making Quake, he didn't bemoan that he didn't have a full 3D engine, he hired Michael Abrash
why didn't YOU hire Michael fucking Abrash
Install bonfire.cafe
Get the full app experience
they also just like keep saying shit is part of The Metaverse -- things like videogames, voice chat, etc -- and it feels like they're desperately trying to find ways in which their dream wasn't a complete failure