The real reason Facebook is changing its name to Meta
What you must know from Facebook’s 2021 AR/VR conference.
For my long-time readers, you know I am a VR interaction designer & indie game developer for Isekai Ent, launching titles for Steam VR & Oculus.
That means other than getting mailed the newest VR kits “for free”, one of our Sword Reverie team's biggest excitement is to tune in for Facebook Connect 2021, the annual AR/VR conference, that was hosted today October 28th.
Although not as technical as last year, this year Facebook did not disappoint. The whole conference gave us truly a front-row seat to the future from Mark Zuckerberg himself.
If you are even remotely caught up with tech news, you probably already heard Facebook has officially changed its name to Meta. Here is what Zuckerberg had to say.
“From now on, we’re going to be the metaverse first. Not Facebook first,” Zuckerberg said in his keynote.
“Facebook is one of the most used products in the world. But increasingly, it doesn’t encompass everything that we do. Right now, our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can’t possibly represent everything we are doing.”
If everyone here at the Sword Reverie team were to sum up the conference in two words, it would be Future-Driven. As a developer, designer, or just a tech enthusiast, here are the three topics you should know about what Meta (Facebook) will bring to us moving forward in 2022.
- The future of VR/AR Gaming
- The future of VR in our everyday lives
- A bright future for investors, consumers, & developers alike.
The future of VR/AR Gaming
Yes, you heard it right, GTA is coming to VR & not just any VR device, the Quest. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the VR take on GTA: San Andreas as “an entirely new way to experience this iconic open-world in virtual reality.”
Currently one of the major selling points of oculus headsets is for gaming, no doubt this is a big consumer market. It is only natural Zuckerberg would touch on this aspect of VR to satisfy consumers and investors alike.
GTA won’t be the first classic console video game ported over to the Quest 2, there is currently a version of Resident Evil 4, which was turned into a first-person game for virtual reality. Nonetheless, today's announcement is still big news, especially to hear it first not from Rockstar, but from Zuckerberg himself.
Although more portable, currently there are still lots of technical limitations to the Quest. However, no doubt due to the added accessibility and easy-to-use nature of the Quest, that has been decided by Facebook as the way of the future.
This support and attention given by Facebook to the quest is not a big surprise to everyone working on Sword Reverie at Isekai ent. During our investment rounds with Oculus, we already heard a while ago Facebook will be mostly focusing its attention on the more portable and accessible gaming headset Quest.
Creating a Quest port for Sword reverie or our future VR titles will surely be something we keep in mind moving future as well. In fact, VR titles like blade and sorcery that has previously strictly stated they will not be porting over to Quest have announced a title launch in just a few days.
So what do you think, as a VR gamer, or someone looking to buy a headset, do you agree with this direction of VR? Would you still want more immersion through better hardware and other devices such as an omnidirectional treadmill?
The future of VR in our everyday lives
To impress investors and convince consumers a headset is more than just a gaming device like an Xbox or a Playstation, sharing examples and visions of how Oculus can change the lives of social connections, businesses, and productivity was naturally a big area for Zuckerberg to put into the spotlight for this year's conference.
Even before Covid, for my Google internship, one of the teams I matched with for the daydream VR team was to tackle the design space of remote conferencing. (Can’t share much here due to NDA)
So it is safe to say VR productivity & VR office spaces are definitely not new ideas. Many start-ups and other companies have experimented with the benefits of leveraging VR tech to have a “larger office space” or a multi-monitor set up to boost productivity.
However, in this year's conference, Zuckerberg has given us a lot more concrete examples of how we can use slack, zoom or messenger in VR.
How someone can launch a business in VR (Although we can probably all agree this seems much more like marketing material or something to get investors onboard than a “tech demo”)
How true to the name of Meta (Standing for metaverse), you as a user can easily switch between gaming, social, and work all at the tip of your finger with the power of VR. (See how there is also a lot of cross-device usage in these “trailers” phone, wearables, etc)
As a designer, I can't agree more here. Think big.
The power of VR will surely grow and scale far beyond gaming. In fact new ways of social interactions even behavioral sciences will most likely change, adapt, and evolve when VR becomes more mainstream. Designing, developing, and prototyping for VR is now easier than ever.
(Here is a school project I created in the past that leverages VR)
If you are a student, starting to explore the real-world capabilities and functions of VR usage will be a great way for you to stay competitive in this field and potentially catch on to the “next big thing”.
A bright future for investors, consumers, & developers alike.
To the “untrained eye”, you might find it interesting or unfathonmable that one of the only competitors Oculus currently thinks it has is “Epic games.”
To those unfamiliar with Epic games, they are the creators behind Unreal engine & the world's #1 battle royale game Fortnite. (You might have heard of Fortnite on the topics and recent lawsuits with Apple)
So shouldn't Oculus view maybe steam VR, HTC Vive, Google, or any other tech giant as their main competitor?
Wrong. Like I mentioned again and again in this article, one of the main audiences of this year's conference is investors. Zuckerberg wants to make a statement that they are so many years ahead of the competition and have already spent so much money in R&D of their VR products none of those companies can come close to competing with them. (Which I would argue probably is true, Facebook makes a lot of money) Facebook/Meta, in the foreseeable future, will probably still make a lot of money. Therefore it will be hard for any new VR headset start-up to keep up.
Fortnite itself generates revenue of around 7 billion USD yearly.
This is a lot since Fortnite is just one video game under Epic games. However, when compared to Facebook’s massive estimate of 85.6 billion revenue yearly is nothing.
So clearly they cant compete money-wise, why bring Epic games up then?
Epic games own Unreal engine which they are putting a lot of effort into giving VR development support. Their ultra-successful game Fortnite is built on this platform. Similar to how Epic games has the Epic games store to compete with Steam. If Epic tries to launch their own headset, they actually have a unique competitive advantage.
Don't believe me?
Here's why. Remember how in the first part of the article we mentioned Oculus kept emphasizing they are adding new games to attract their gaming customers? Well, Epic games own the unreal engine platform and a massively popular genre(Fortnite) which is a massive pre-established paying customer group. (7 billion revenue from a free-to-play video game remember?)
Perhaps with some speculation, you can conclude Epic games surely is working on VR projects, and if they were to launch something, there is definitely a huge competitive threat to Oculus.
However, everyone here over at our Sword Reverie team does not think Epic & Oculus bumping head to head is the most likely outcome.
What we would speculate is Epic probably has lots of high-level stakeholder meetings with Oculus where they talk more about collaboration, and how they can support each other to create a true metaverse with a Fortnite Creative in VR.
With VR growing in popularity Fortnite sure wouldn't want to lose out on a whole market of paying customers similar to what has happened with mobile on the Apple store.
One of our past Sword Reverie designers and current UX coaches I work with, Hannah, is currently working as a UX designer part of the Fortnite team. Although due to NDA she can’t share with us what she is working on, or confirm if my speculations of a top-secret VR Fortnite collaboration is coming soon.
But one thing is clear, Fortnite is becoming more of a social experience.
You see, Fortnite has been so successful because it has grown far beyond a simple battle royale game. It is a metaverse in itself. (Fortnite refers to itself now as the Fortnite Metaverse, see some similarities with Facebook calling itself Metaverse too?)
In Fortnite, you can watch live concerts from Ariana grande, be anyone you want to be (no seriously from DC to Marvel, Predator to the terminator, Anime(Naruto) to Will Smith, you really can be absolutely anything you want to be), hang out with friends, or build your own city.
Does all that sound familiar like I just mentioned it before? Does it almost sound exactly the same as the goals Oculus has? Well yes, it does, there is a lot of overlap.
So with my pure wild speculation, I will say a collaboration between Oculus and Epic is more than likely, both companies have a lot to gain from each other.
To me as both a designer and a serious Fortnite fan? Well, that is just great news. I would be so excited for a Ready player one style future built on the existing metaverse Fortnite and Oculus has been creating for us, and I can't wait to create new cutting edge designs in it!
Final thoughts
Today was just day one of the conferences, I am excited to hear more from the speakers this afternoon.
What did you think of the conference, you can watch the whole presentation from Zuckerberg free here, or sign up on the official site here for future talks.
For now, feel free to follow me for future articles and advice.
