Metaversian News Issue 002
Thursday January 06, 2022
“It’s not the future. It’s already here.”
Building the Metaverse
“It ain’t gonna build itself.”
Back in 2017, Walmart released a video showing how they imagined shopping will be in the VR part of the metaverse.
It’s not great.
There are some pretty cool applications with digital fashion where you can see clothes in action in VR before you purchase them.
That’s something that makes sense.
But the Walmart video shows the point of view of a person in VR pushing a cart and walking from aisle to aisle buying groceries.
Just like in real life.
That is not what people are going to want to do.
Something I found interesting in the video is that when the user picks up and looks at an item, a really nice little info-pane comes out and you can read about the product.
AR like that is where brands and stores will really shine in the real world.
But virtual grocery shopping that feels like real grocery shopping is not something we should be building in the metaverse.
Check out the video and some fun Twitter responses here:
Metaverse Events
“Meet me in the metaverse.”
The biggest event coming to the metaverse is The Sandbox’s new LAND sale in their new “location” Mega City.
They plan on launching it January 13th, 2022.
Someone on Instagram informed me that 1x1 LAND is “always” 1011 SAND, regardless of SAND price.
Looking right now, as I write this, SAND is about $5.40 USD each.
So the smallest parcel of LAND would be $5459.40 USD.
As I said last week…everything in the metaverse is hella expensive.
And that seems pretty unnecessary to me.
Virtual real estate is theoretically infinite.
Why is it so damn expensive?
Here’s some more news about that:
And here’s a video of The Sandbox’s announcement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhaj31Huc1s
NFT News
“All the news that’s fit to mint.”
At least once a week, a game company announces they are getting involved in NFTs.
And every time, everyone gets upset.
This time, it’s Square Enix.
Personally, I support the idea of in-game items being NFTs that could (theoretically) exist beyond the life of the game or be moved to another game entirely.
But it has to be done right.
It can’t just be a half-assed money grab.
It kind of bums me out that I spent a lot of time (and money) over the years collecting cool mounts and pets and stuff in World of Warcraft and that will all just be…gone…some day.
This is actually why I stopped playing WoW.
After all I was learning about the metaverse, I decided games like that were not worth my time.
I also see a near future where instead of funding games on Kickstarter, we will fund them via buying NFTs that will become in-game items.
At least, that’s how I envision funding my future game endeavors.
Here’s a well written article on Forbes about why game makers are going to NFTs and what kinds of problems that may cause:
Metaverse (& NFT) Marketing
“Web3 is already an oversaturated market; here’s how you stand out.”
I rejoined Twitter because I heard there was a pretty strong NFT community on there.
(Follow me @megabyteghost)
When I got there, the first thing I noticed was that there are tons of posts that say something like “I’m buying NFTs! Post yours in a reply!”
And then they get tons of likes, retweets, and responses, which sort of “game” the algorithm and boost the post.
Even if I’m not following someone, I’m seeing these pop up as recommended because the Twitter algorithm knows I follow a lot of NFT stuff.
But it’s super annoying, I think.
Who knows if any of these people are even actually buying NFTs from their replies or if they’re just gaining followers for these posts.
It seems to grow their following at least.
You can try this for yourself, if you want, but I personally don’t want to be that kind of brand.
Especially if it involves lying and not actually buying the NFTs.
The ethical way to do it would be to actually buy some NFTs from the replies.
I still think it’s annoying to see those posts all the time, but if it works, it works.
Meatspace
“Life is only a dream, and the metaverse is an extension of ourselves.”
Last week was a course on coding AR but not everyone are coders.
Not everyone wants to code though.
I’ve spent thousands of dollars and many hours trying to learn to code and it just doesn’t click for me.
But you don’t have to code to be involved in augmented reality.
You can be making the 3D models that end up in AR.
I recommend starting with the free software Blender, which is also better than some of the expensive paid software anyway.
I picked up this Humble Bundle on Blender courses and started working through it this week.
It’s good.
I’m not affiliated with the courses, nor Blender, nor Humble Bundle.
I just like them.
Plus, money goes towards the organization Women In Games International.
Here’s a link to pick it up:
https://www.humblebundle.com/software/learn-create-game-art-blender-software
Touch Grass
“So we don’t lose touch with reality.”
For big birthday milestones, my dad (https://AIBD.org/4xfriday) always purchases a bunch of trees from the Arbor Day foundation.
Like when I turned 30, he bought 30 trees in my name.
I always love that and with all the environmental destruction some of the worst cryptocurrencies/blockchains are doing, I want to give back.
So, I will be donating at least 10% of all the money made from Approaching Utopia NFTs to organizations doing positive things for the environment.
For now, it will be to the Arbor Day Foundation and Tress.org to plant trees.
If you’d also like to buy some trees to be planted, check this out:
https://trees.org/arbor-day-foundation/
See you next week,
— Garrett AKA megabyteGhost
MetaversianNews.com
P.S. you can buy NFTs of this newsletter at FiveDollarNFTs.com
At least 10% of the money will go towards pro-environment causes.
The rest goes towards making more of this newsletter.