"This week in the ➡️ #Metaverse" #45
September 20, 2023
"This week in the ➡️ #Metaverse" #45
Your weekly roundup of the relevant trends, regulatory developments and policy insights, about the metaverse, AI, crypto, neurotech, and gaming.
😩I’m exhausted, just give me “the weekly snapshot”:
Oh, what a time to be alive this week! 🌟
Break a leg Meta! Legs have finally arrive to Horizon. Meanwhile, China has joined the metaverse chat, striving for regulation. Walmart's merging the aisles of its stores with the virtual lanes, and Microsoft continues business with the US military. In this week AI lawsuits, George R.R. Martin is taking on OpenAI (insert your <George not finishing The Winds of Winter> joke here). In gaming news, while Unity shot their feet, Xbox loosen its tongue, with a huge leak of emails and documents. And whatever you do, just remember, dont let Elon Musk access your head!
So, gear up, and let's dive deeper into the metaverse! 🚀🧠🕹️
👁️🗨️Now the full version, what's going on:
👀 => China to set standards for the metaverse
China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced it will form a working group to set standards in metaverse terminology and reference architectures, key technical standards such as metaverse identity systems, digital content generation, and cross-domain interoperability.
The ministry expained it has concerns about use of sensitive personal information in metaverses, proliferation of digital identities, pyramid schemes, and online violence
“Some capital and enterprises have taken advantage of the popularity of the metaverse to speculate, resulting in its concept far from the actual value, which restricts the development of the metaverse industry to a certain extent,”
More on => theregister.com
#interoperability: WordPress blogs can now be followed in the fediverse, including Mastodon
More on => techcrunch.com
Immersed Visor VR headset: prices, new models, and preorders
The Immersed Visor isn't a VR gaming device. It fits into the spatial computing category, making it an Apple Vision Pro competitor.
More on => mixednews.com
Horizon Worlds’ avatars now walk among the virtual universe with their own legs
More on =>theverge.com
Walmart to revolutionize retail with expansive commercial strategy in the metaverse
Walmart, announced it is experimenting with new ways to connect its customers’ physical and virtual shopping experiences in the metaverse.
For example, customers can now buy some of the same items for their physical houses that they can buy for their virtual houses in House Flip, a mobile game that lets players renovate and sell virtual homes.
Or, they can also buy virtual clothing items based on Walmart’s fashion brand Scoop in Zepeto, a mobile virtual world that lets players create and customize their avatars.
More on => venturebeat.com
US Army orders more Microsoft AR headsets now that they no longer make soldiers want to barf
Microsoft’s latest HoloLens-like goggle prototypes aren’t causing nausea to soldiers testing them, earning the company a go-ahead new contract.
More on => theverge.com
Meta ‘ruined’ the term metaverse, but now it’s evolving
Speaking to Cointelegraph at Token 2049 in Singapore, Yuga Labs CEO Daniel Alegre said the problem with the metaverse is that Meta ruined the term.
“[Users] go in and say ‘Hey, Mark, so cool to see you…So now what?’ It just flopped, there's a huge echo in the room.”
More on => cointelegraph.com
🤖I Am Not A Robot: AI news
Another week, another AI lawsuit:
The Authors Guild, George R.R. Martin and other 16 authors sue OpenAI for copyright infringement in the Southern District of New York. Complaint can be found here.
At the same time, plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit alleging OpenAI violated privacy rights for training data dropped their case against the company. Court documents showed the case was dismissed without prejudice, and the plaintiffs can choose to refile.
OpenAI announced Dall-E 3, an Art Generator Powered by ChatGPT
It uses ChatGPT to enhance prompting, now you can modify artwork by simply talking to the chatbot.
Dall-E 3 will also let users refine a creation through ChatGPT, as if they were asking an artist to make changes. One notable improvement is the ability of insert characters and quotes, something that other generators like Midjourney struggle with.
More on => wired.com
An impressive demo video can be found here
Also OpenAI launched its Red Teaming Network
They stated to be “looking for experts from various fields to collaborate with us in rigorously evaluating and red teaming our AI models”.
More on => openai.com
And Midjourney has this week released more details about new features and future Midjourney version 6 updates,
Including a significant enhancement to 3D model creation, the ability to upscale images and more. The company has announced updates to Version 5 (V5), including a less opinionated version and an aesthetic personalization system. This system is designed to allow users to better define their styles and quickly revert to them with a shareable code.
More on => geekygadgets.com
🤦The WTF award of the week goes to…
The humanoid-robot CEO of a drinks company says it doesn't have weekends and is 'always on 24/7'
Polish drinks company Dictador appointed the AI-powered robot, named Mika, as its experimental chief executive in August last year. Its role includes leading the company's Arthouse Spirits decentralized-autonomous-organization project, a collection of NFTs, and communicating with its DAO community
Does she paid the taxes, though? Unity reportedly told dev Planned Parenthood and children's hospital are "not valid charities"
Engine firm previously said charity games would be exempt from proposed Runtime Fee. Developers of indie puzzle game Orgynizer have claimed that Unity said organisations like Planned Parenthood are "not valid charities" and are instead "political groups."
More on => gamesindustry.biz
🎮Gaming news
Between Unity misshaps and the #XboxLEAKS, this week has been convoluted for gaming. Let’s see..
Unity got universal backlash from the gaming developers community and trade bodies, after announcing (and then haphazardly and ackwardly somewhat retracting) an “installing fee” that was not previously in the Terms of Service.
Context of this?
Unity is a game engine, a software that provides a suite of tools that allows game developers to integrate and implement different aspects of a game, like graphics, sounds, in addition to other reusable software components.
Developing a game is years long process and porting the game from one software enviroment to another game engine might be very costly, time consuming and almos imply startin from scratch. Hence chooing one game engine might lock in developers into it.
Meaning that this change in policy affecting in development games and their revenue models is not an easy change to adapt to.
A fee for each time a game gets installed is specially harmful to indie developers and free games.
The European Games Developer Federation has voiced its concerns over Unity's Runtime Fee as anticompetitive, talking about "looming game engine market failure."
“Install fees will lead to markets where game developers want to limit the downloads and try to avoid installs from the wrong players.
This can potentially kill part of the game market. For example, indie developers that have an unfortunate mix of being a success on the number of installs but that are struggling to generate revenue, or hyper-casual game studios based on combining a huge install base with minuscule revenue generated per game.”
Good time to remember that there are open engines like GODOT
More on => gamesindustry.biz
Microsoft accidentally leaked an unprecedented number of unredacted internal email exchanges, presentations, and meetings related to Xbox this week, amongst them:
An all-Digital Xbox leaked that reignites game preservation fears. According to a study on the commercial availability of classic games, from the Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) partnered with the Software Preservation Network, only 13 percent have been preserved.
Wich means that an alarming 87 Percent Of Retro Games Are Being Lost To Time. Good time to remember that GOG and itch.io support DRM free gaming.
More on => kotaku.com
8 web3 gaming experts discuss hurdles and opportunities in the road to wider adoption
Contrasting with the previous news on games conservation, one strong focus of web3 games is ownership “You channel so much time, attention, and money into the games you play — web3 offers the chance for the fruits of your fun to be truly yours.”
More on => techcrunch.com
💸CryptoLand:
Bitcoin Gets Its Own Take on Social App Friend.tech
Alpha is a decentralized social network protocol that lets users tokenize and monetize their online presence and content via tokens.
More on => decrypt.co
🧠Neurotech:
Neuralink’s First-in-Human Clinical Trial is Open for Recruitment
The PRIME Study (short for Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface) – a groundbreaking investigational medical device trial for our fully-implantable, wireless brain-computer interface (BCI) – aims to evaluate the safety of their implant (N1) and surgical robot (R1) and assess the initial functionality of our BCI for enabling people with paralysis to control external devices with their thoughts.
More on => neuralink.com
😬Meme corner:
✍️Ending nugget:
“For accessing nearly 9 in 10 classic games, there are few options: Seek out and maintain vintage collectible games and hardware, travel across the country to visit a library, or… piracy,”
Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) co-director Kelsey Lewin
That’s all for now!To continue the conversation, find me at https://linktr.ee/abogamer. And if you want to support my work, please consider sharing this newsletter!!