Mark Zuckerberg’s soulless Metaverse avatar keeps getting worse

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Mark Zuckerberg's soulless Metaverse avatar keeps getting worse

A spooky image shows a close-up of a large cartoon Zuckerberg head.

picture: Meta / Kotaku

“Metaverse” is a buzzword this has become quite popular in the last two years. Fourteen days is a metaverse. Web3 and Blockchain will help drive the Metaverse. Maybe Cows will even be a part of it? However, no one seems more interested in shaping our collective vision of what the metaverse is than Meta and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Unfortunately for anyone wanting to experience our glorious virtual future, what Zuckerberg has shown with his vision of that future looks boring, drab, generic, and really sucks. It also serves as a nice reminder that rich tech bros shouldn’t be in charge of the future.

Earlier this week, the alien known to us as Mark Zuckerberg wearing a human skin suit posted a VR selfie from his company’s Metaverse project, horizon worlds. The selfie showed the Eiffel Tower and was supposed to announce that his metaverse expands to other countries. Instead, however, people immediately started complaining about the horrific image, the ugly avatar, and how everything looked like it had fallen out of one 2005 edutainment game.

And oddly enough, this isn’t the first time Zuck has shown hideous avatars of himself to lure people into his virtual reality-powered nightmare world.

A strange looking avatar with curly hair pumps the air in front of destroyed houses.

screenshot: Meta / Kotaku

Back in 2017Zuckerberg demonstrated the VR app Facebook Rooms with an ugly avatar that looked vaguely like him when the goal was to recreate the billionaire CEO as a slick, cartoonish avatar you might see in a fever dream. Oh, and for some reason he decided the best way to showcase this app and its horrifying avatar was to visit Puerto Rico via video after it was hit by a powerful hurricane. kill thousands and the destruction of many of the island’s homes and businesses.

In 2021Old Zuckie returned with an avatar that looked better than before. However, this avatar, featured in a video showcasing Facebook and Meta’s big Metaverse plans, isn’t actually real. It was instead created as part of a larger concept video showing what Meta was working towards. Still, even this avatar looks like someone who fell off the ground polar express.

A digital Mark Zuckerberg stands alongside other avatars in a beige room.

screenshot: Meta / Kotaku

And that brings us to 2022, where Zuckerberg’s avatar is a legless replica of a Nintendo Mii some really weird buttons and the eyes of a corpse. And that’s not just how Zuckerberg looks, that’s how all avatars appear horizon worlds. I’ve played enough horizon worlds to tell you that the missing legs will quickly become obsolete. But the lack of style and the cold, dead aesthetic never go away.

Sure, part of the reason these avatars and worlds look plain and ugly compared to modern video games is because of the limited VR hardware search 2 and Facebook’s desire to create VR content that runs on as many devices as possible.

On the other hand, I find Nintendo DS and Sony PS Vita games with better, prettier graphics and models than what we’ve been shown on Facebook’s metaverse so far. I also don’t think you can blame the people who make this stuff as I assume they are more than capable of making better and more vibrant things. But it seems more and more that that’s not what Meta and Zucklehead want. Instead, they focus on making a product that can be consumed by the masses and lacks any defining characteristics to engage more people.

If you are a current or former Meta/Facebook employee and would like to speak to them privately kotaku about your experience please contact [email protected].

This is the exact opposite approach that we see in more Community-driven VR metaverses how VR chat, what looks better and feels warmer and more inviting. In comparison, horizon worlds looks like an animated video I would walk past in a fancy hospital while looking for the bathroom.

And if that boring and ugly metaverse is the future Mark Zuckerberg wants and invests billions of dollars in, I worry it might end up winning out over other, better alternatives just because it has the money and resources to crush or buy out competitors. Well if it catches on then at least I can skip it and not buy a new VR headset.

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