Dirt: Worldbuilding, Pt. 1

In a world awash with information and eye candy, “social gaming” is rapidly evolving as the largest existential threat to legacy media’s claim on engaged consumer attention. Trust and manipulation issues are also causing people to look beyond incumbent social media platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.

Stories by Stephenson – which tend, predictably, towards singular heroes who win at technocracy – form the inspiration behind Amazon’s Blue Origin and Facebook’s Metaverse.

Consider today’s most popular Metaverse-like experiences, such as Fortnite or Roblox. While these platforms succeed through incredible creative achievements, it’s important to recognize that their underlying ideas are far from new — they’re just newly possible. 

if you give a user community powerful enough creator tools, what they create in these worlds will be far more interesting than anything a major company can officially create.