Image via Meta
The metaverse is a strange thing that not many people seem to be buying into, and it doesn’t look like Meta’s own employees are really into it either. In a report by The Verge, several obtained memos seem to show how the VR social network, Horizon Worlds, isn’t doing too well in quality or user numbers.
Vishal Shah, Meta’s new VP of metaverse, had reportedly encouraged employees last month to take time out of their day to “fall in love” with Horizon Worlds. He followed by detailing some of the issues with Horizon Worlds, including quality issues.
Shah wrote that “since launching late last year, we have seen that the core thesis of Horizon Worlds–a synchronous social network where creators can build engaging worlds–is strong.
“But currently feedback from our creators, users, play testers, and many of us on the team is that the aggregate weight of papercuts, stability issues, and bugs is making it too hard for our community to experience the magic of Horizon. Simply put, for an experience to become delightful and retentive, it must first be usable and well crafted.”
Shah went on to explain how the success of Horizon Worlds can be indicated by the number of internal users.
“For many of us, we don’t spend that much time in Horizon, and our dogfooding dashboards show this pretty clearly.
“Why is that? Why don’t we love the product we’ve built so much that we use it all the time? The simple truth is, if we don’t love it, how can we expect our users to love it?”
Shah implored employees to “make it their mission to fall in love with Horizon Worlds. You can’t do that without using it. Get in there. Organize times to do it with your colleagues or friends, in both internal builds but also the public build so you can interact with our community.”
The metaverse has been criticized heavily before. It was especially mocked when CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg posted a “selfie” of his avatar in the metaverse. Many called it out for its poor graphics and more.
Zuckerberg posted an updated version of his avatar to Instagram and stated that improved graphics would be rolled out at Meta’s annual Connect conference on October 11.
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Zainah Yousef
Zainah Yousef is the author of The Fallen Age Saga and specializes in gaming, social media advice, and reviews. She's been writing all her life and she probably won't stop anytime soon.
