After wandering into the living room this evening I caught the second half of the wonderful movie “Free Guy” - where Ryan Reynolds, Jodie Comer and Joe Keery explore what might happen in a virtual world such as “Second Life”, or “Grand Theft Auto” if the non-player-characters develop sentience through artificial intelligence.
A similar theme was explored in “Westworld”, where the non-player-characters were given access to their own memories in order to generate more nuanced behaviour. (Spoiler - a minor event in the first episode unravels the entire story over the course of several seasons of perhaps the best TV show that nobody seemed to watch).
As the closing titles of Free Guy scrolled past, I couldn’t help wondering why we still don’t have “The Oasis” that “Ready Player One” dreamed about. A virtual world that makes the world smaller, and more accessible to anybody and everybody.
When Mark Zuckerberg bought Oculus a few years ago, I wondered if he had read Ready Player One, and was putting the jigsaw pieces in place - when Horizon Worlds was announced, I will admit to being somewhat optimistic. It didn’t take long to realise that Mark was Nolan Sorrento - not James Halliday.
I still wonder if a ubiquitous virtual world might happen one day. The closest we have ever seen is “Second Life” - where anybody could (still can) create new areas, visit, chat with friends, and hang out. It’s based on a twenty-five year old code-base at this point though - without investment, or interest. The reason why is straightforward - it was owned by a corporate entity - it was a walled garden, designed to make money.
A virtual world - or worlds - would require the same kind of “moon shot” that brought about the world-wide-web. An agreed protocol to describe assets, characters, actions, animations, interactions, media, and so on. An open protocol, protected by a non—profit foundation for the benefit of all. The infrastructure would need to be federated - with no overall owners or gate-keepers.
Maybe the extention of the internet we now take for granted to embrace virtual worlds is inevitable. Maybe it’s already happening. Let’s just hope it’s not owned by anybody.