PERSPECTIVE
Journeys to the farthest reaches of interactive entertainment
Back in October 2021, Facebook rebranded to Meta, reflecting Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse-shaped destination for the company. This bold new future was laid out a year later, in a feature-length Meta Connect keynote co-hosted by an eerie virtual marionette version of the CEO. Now, a year and a bit on from that, the hardware meant to power all this – Meta’s Quest 3 – is sitting on my desk, waiting for an excuse to be slipped back on. I’m curious, then: what exactly does Horizon Worlds, the beachhead of this promised Meta-verse, have to offer?
The first step is making an avatar, using a character creator that recalls The Sims and Mii Maker – specifically their original, nowancient incarnations. Scrolling through the clothing menu screen, it’s nice to see a variety of traditional dress from around the world. But why is it all jumbled up, seemingly at random, with dorky power armour and wizard robes? Eventually the images stop loading in altogether – which is how I end up dressed head to toe in black, topped off with a long trenchcoat. Not exactly my vibe, but I suppose there is something apt in taking my first steps into the Metaverse looking like I’ve wandered off the set of The Matrix.
Over the next couple of hours I wander through portals that, after a 30-second loading screen, deliver me to dozens of worlds nested within Horizon. Super Rumble is a passable if basic deathmatch arena shooter, somewhat undermined by the fact that players’ avatars don’t disappear once they’ve been killed. In the Venues area, alongside Muay Thai boxing and some godawful standup comedy, Doja Cat is headlining – not with a bespoke digital performance of the kind you might find in Fortnite, but via a 180-degree concert video, projected in a void.
I think of all the versions of the Internet that have come and gone since – many of them killed off by Meta itself
Elsewhere there are branded areas, including NBA Arena, which pairs a flat screen showing basketball games with a selection of team shirts for your avatar, on sale at 79p a pop. Rather less officially sanctioned, you have to suspect, is ‘Metdonalds’, a user’s Roblox-like recreation of their local drive-thru, where I encounter a child roleplaying as a customer and flee in embarrassment. On the opposite end of the user-generated spectrum: an earnest lifesized diorama of MLK’s ‘I have a dream’ speech, where the real historical audio plays to a crowd of static gingerbread-man models.
The experiences that really linger, though, involve other live human beings. In Horizon Central, a liminal space that resembles an American mall, crowds gather around an officially sanctioned Community Guide, who has the energy of a kindly primary-school teacher losing control of a clas
