Ask HN: How is the “metaverse” concept different from the Second Life boom?
Second Life was limited in many ways, as far as gameplay goes. Ultimately it failed because it was boring, in my opinion. More modern examples of games that approach this concept are Minecraft or Roblox (public company valued at $45B). Roblox in particular is interesting as it created a platform for others to make game experiences and re-sell them, and it&#x27;s been very successful. Minecraft, too, has had a lot of staying power and has an active community.<p>The problem with Roblox, is that it&#x27;s geared for kids primarily, it&#x27;s centralized and it also has I believe a 30% fee. You have the same issues as you have with the mobile app stores: an excessive take rate and risk of being deplatformed at any time (like the early Facebook and Twitter apps).  You don&#x27;t really have ownership. But it does underscore the idea that if you create the right environment for shared gaming experiences and creativity it can be very interesting and entertaining.<p>The crypto metaverse is attempting to use digital property rights represented as NFTs to facilitate permissionless value creation and exchange. Just as real world property rights give owners the stability and framework with which to build long-term investments, understanding they can take risks and potentially reap rewards for those risks, the hope is that digital property rights will do the same.<p>The NFT space is very interesting and the gaming sector in crypto is evolving pretty rapidly. Some interesting attempts I see at creating these experiences are Sandbox (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sandbox.game&#x2F;en&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sandbox.game&#x2F;en&#x2F;</a>), Decentraland (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;decentraland.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;decentraland.org&#x2F;</a>), and Treeverse (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.treeverse.net&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.treeverse.net&#x2F;</a>).<p>I think it&#x27;s still super early days for this stuff. It&#x27;s likely that a lot of the current attempts will fail, but I believe this concept is going through its 90s dot com phase, and we&#x27;ll get a few gems out of this movement that stand the test of time.