In some ways, it works better than using goggles, for various reasons.' What happened is that everyone is accessing these 3D worlds through through two-dimensional flat rectangles on flat screens.

It seemed like a logical assumption at the time that that would be the the output device. 'I mean, that's how it is in the book and in other depictions of virtual reality and fiction. His examples of such games: Fortnite, Minecraft, and Roblox-games that have a 'mashup kind of feel, which I think is a much closer match for the spirit of the metaverse as described in Snow Crash.'Īnother mistake people make is 'to assume that it's always about using goggles, which is a reasonable assumption,' Stephenson said. But there are also games, very popular games, that aesthetically are mashups, right?' 'I hope that games will continue to exist as pure works of art, just just like they are now. 'If somebody brings a sniper rifle into my soccer game, or whatever, it's just an abomination from an aesthetic point of view, and it shows disrespect for what I do as an art director or a game designer,' Stephenson said. Stephenson said game designers who create 'coherent worlds that are exquisitely crafted' aren't about to make their games completely open realms where you can bring a digital item from some entirely different game. That's not to say that there won't continue to be games that are closed realms. One mistake people make, Stephenson said, is 'to talk about a metaverse, or multiple metaverses, which I think is wrong, that's always a signal to me that somebody doesn't get it.' In Stephenson's view, there's one metaverse, like the one internet, and companies creating closed metaverse environs aren't getting it.

Stephenson said there are two main things that people get wrong, in his view, when they talk about the metaverse these days. So, what is the open metaverse, and what isn't it?

I think people understand the way it works: companies latch on to a word and use it for their purposes in a way that helps them achieve their goals as a business, and and it's left up to we as consumers to kind of look at that and hopefully cast a skeptical eye on it.' Calling it an 'open' metaverse, Stephenson said on the latest episode of Decrypt's gm podcast, 'works pretty well.

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