<
https://www.pcgamer.com/this-actual-anime-vr-high-school-where-youll-be-able-to-get-proper-qualifications-is-the-first-metaverse-based-project-that-makes-any-kind-of-sense-to-me/>
'Look, we've all been dunking on the whole 'metaverse' concept for a while now.
As Phil Iwaniuk wrote for us back in February of last year, anyone who has
played video games knows that the metaverse's promised digital wonderland has
existed since the days of the CRT monitor.
Second Life,
Everquest,
World of Warcraft. Heck: if you need a headset to
make the comparison,
VRChat got there first in 2014. Now there's an actual
challenger to that assumption. As reported by
Automaton (translated from a
press release on
PR Times), there's a metaverse project I'm weirdly
optimistic about.
It comes from the company Aominext, which develops distinctly anime-styled
metaverse spaces that slough off the disturbing, soulless avatars we're used to
from Zuckerberg and his crew—revealing the cute anime avatars underneath, like
a VTuber butterfly cracking open its uncanny chrysalis.
What's more, this doesn't smell much like a PR stunt to me—helped by the fact
that the company is working with an actual Japanese high school (Yushi
International) which already exists in the flesh-world. Automaton reports:
"The virtual high school will have a three-year, credit-based course with a
curriculum recognized by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports,
Science and Technology." Meanwhile, the press release promises virtual events
like cultural festivals and e-sports tournaments for participating students.
I want to be sceptical, but this genuinely does feel like the first
metaverse-focused project I've seen that makes absolute sense to me. While it
might be easy to point fingers and laugh at a bunch of VTuber-looking kids
gathered around a school table, correspondence learning has existed for years.
While it became more common during the Covid-19 pandemic, it's always been a
thing, and it's always been kinda socially isolating.'
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
