The consolidation of a rubbish future continues as Ready Player One-inspired "open metaverse" is announced
Chances are this will implode anyway.
2024 is feeling like 2022 (or 2023) all over again as Futureverse is teaming up with novelist Ernest Cline and Warner Bros. Discovery to potentially burn billions of dollars by attempting to create a Ready Player One-inspired, AI-powered metaverse that will probably only achieve a fraction of the power Fortnite already has.
The worst entertainment-related news of the 2024 so far (competition is already high) dropped today, January 4, with Futureverse announcing the launch of Readyverse Studios alongside Ready Player One creator Ernest Cline and Dan Farah, producer of the actually fun 2018 movie directed by Steven Spielberg, who did the best he could with such rancid source material.
The entire press release reads like a fever dream filled with the usual buzzwords and concepts that everyone but C-suites and aspiring tech bros has been clowning on for like two years now. With Meta walking back its embarrassing metaverse plans early last year and Warner Bros. Discovery being so broke that it's burying almost-finished movies for quick cash, one has to wonder what the long-term goal (besides scamming other C-suites and investors) is here.
The existence of a big, RPO-like virtual 'universe' of sorts does seem inevitable as huge brands and recognizable IPs near their natural point of collapse, but online video games have been doing everything each metaverse promises to do for a while. Epic Games in particular appears to be on the 'right' track to create an entertainment hub with social elements that's actually fun to play and inhabit (and is supported by major companies).
No one who's actually spent time playing video games in the last 20 years is being fooled by any of this baloney, thankfully, and we might as well go back to Habbo Hotel if tech startups and entertainment companies keep pushing the most unattractive virtual platforms created by man to siphon money out of unsuspecting Internet users.
Readyverse Studios has already set up a barebones website to let everyone know how unserious they are about all this, which you can check out here if you need a good laugh.