From 2D to Web3: Disney is working on a metaverse game plan.
April 27, 2022 10:49 PM Subscribe
"A key goal of the meetings is for Disney to figure out what it actually means when it talks about the concept, loosely defined as a new version of the internet based on decentralized digital ledgers known as blockchains ... As Disney gets further into businesses including the metaverse and sports betting, that will have to change.
I still don’t understand why “web3” and “metaverse” terminology encompasses both AR/VR and blockchains, and until very recently I worked at Meta. Maybe it’s just a bad pundit view. Both ideas could be interesting on their own terms. I even believe that Disney can make AR/VR fit nicely into Walt’s still-current 1957 business strategy diagram, but the NFT and decentralization tech is so wildly unnecessary as to be almost a non sequitur.
posted by migurski at 11:28 PM on April 27, 2022 [20 favorites]
posted by migurski at 11:28 PM on April 27, 2022 [20 favorites]
I think the web3 brainworms are already in a lot of computer industry folk, and sadly Disney execs are in a very vulnerable group when it comes to web3 brainworms - older, capitalist men who think they know how money works.
posted by The River Ivel at 12:39 AM on April 28, 2022 [16 favorites]
posted by The River Ivel at 12:39 AM on April 28, 2022 [16 favorites]
Putting the web3/metaverse of it all aside, Disney has not demonstrated any internal expertise at "next generation storytelling" whatsoever in recent years, unless you're talking about immersive stuff at the parks rather than, say, games.
Fundamentally its tech play has been about new ways of making and distributing video content rather than digital-native stuff. So I don't know why anyone takes these kinds of grandiose strategies seriously.
posted by adrianhon at 1:54 AM on April 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
Fundamentally its tech play has been about new ways of making and distributing video content rather than digital-native stuff. So I don't know why anyone takes these kinds of grandiose strategies seriously.
posted by adrianhon at 1:54 AM on April 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
Is blockchain really any different than the fabled Disney vault their films disappear to for a decade at a time?
posted by pwnguin at 2:30 AM on April 28, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by pwnguin at 2:30 AM on April 28, 2022 [4 favorites]
Roblox is 88% off their 52-week high. Just buy them before Microsoft does.
posted by JoeZydeco at 5:23 AM on April 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by JoeZydeco at 5:23 AM on April 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
Smells like hubris.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:26 AM on April 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:26 AM on April 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
the NFT and decentralization tech is so wildly unnecessary as to be almost a non sequitur
It's not just unnecessary, it's antithetical to Disney's business model if you take web3 seriously as far as the claims made by its proponents (which, to be clear, you really shouldn't do).
In what world is Disney interested in decentralization? In what world is any huge company?
If for some reason there's someone out there who isn't yet convinced that the big talk about decentralization in web3 is just a fig leaf to avoid talking about what it's really about (digital rent seeking, fraud, unregulated gambling, etc), seriously ask yourself why a company famous for creating walled gardens that try to lock consumers into them is looking at it and sees no problem imagining that they could use it to make money.
posted by a faithful sock at 5:53 AM on April 28, 2022 [16 favorites]
It's not just unnecessary, it's antithetical to Disney's business model if you take web3 seriously as far as the claims made by its proponents (which, to be clear, you really shouldn't do).
In what world is Disney interested in decentralization? In what world is any huge company?
If for some reason there's someone out there who isn't yet convinced that the big talk about decentralization in web3 is just a fig leaf to avoid talking about what it's really about (digital rent seeking, fraud, unregulated gambling, etc), seriously ask yourself why a company famous for creating walled gardens that try to lock consumers into them is looking at it and sees no problem imagining that they could use it to make money.
posted by a faithful sock at 5:53 AM on April 28, 2022 [16 favorites]
Roblox, that's a good point well made (gpwm). Also have a think about Epic (for Unreal Engine), Unity and/or AutoDesk as interesting 3D modelling tools.
Web3: Storing immutably in an append-only datastore or having an unusably-slow micropayments ledger will hamper Disney. There's not even a reliable lock and DRM situation to move the costs of streaming those gigabytes of moving-picture record onto a store at the ISP or within a few miles of everyone's homes.
posted by k3ninho at 6:16 AM on April 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
Web3: Storing immutably in an append-only datastore or having an unusably-slow micropayments ledger will hamper Disney. There's not even a reliable lock and DRM situation to move the costs of streaming those gigabytes of moving-picture record onto a store at the ISP or within a few miles of everyone's homes.
posted by k3ninho at 6:16 AM on April 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
…blends the physical with the digital and the virtual, dubbed by futurists, tech executives and investors as the metaverse, or Web3.As migurski notes, "metaverse" and "Web3" are orthogonal concepts, and the author does readers a disservice by conflating them. And a faithful sock has it exactly right—corporate behemoths will not be creating actually-decentralized platforms, although they may embrace the language of "Web3" and decentralization in order to later extend and extinguish them.
posted by ArmandoAkimbo at 7:13 AM on April 28, 2022 [4 favorites]
It's generally not in corporate interests to make compatible systems if they're starting from a fresh design. We see this already in console spaces: xbox and PS4 and PC and switch are all separate game universes, often even if the platforms share a particular game. Players are often system-locked and walled off from playing on heterogenous platforms together. Because then the systems don't matter so much.
We're never going to have the cyberspace imagined in the '90s. We're going to have two or three from every large company. meta is Facebook, but also WhatsApp, Instagram etc, all with separate communities and networks. They can't even be internally consistent because of internal NIH syndrome and external purchases.
I'm not convinced this generation can even make a reasonable version of a "meta" at this point. The tech companies struggled with 1-to-1 calling for voice chats for years. The breakthrough though was adapting video conferencing software to meet a weird social need---it's Zoom than got big as the social solution during the pandemic shutdowns, not Facetime or a Google product. the group video chat was the thing people wanted. The person to person version wasn't as compelling (and was a subset of the problem Zoom solved anyway). My point is that tech companies decades on don't know what new social networks will work very well, and are still mostly throwing stuff at the public and hoping it works.
"meta" just seems like the next iteration of "maybe it might work?" from formerly-Facebook. It seems hobbled out of the gate by both the structural problems any product of a corporate maker, and their continuing problem with the genuinely hard problems of matching a product to social needs/wants.
posted by bonehead at 7:42 AM on April 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
We're never going to have the cyberspace imagined in the '90s. We're going to have two or three from every large company. meta is Facebook, but also WhatsApp, Instagram etc, all with separate communities and networks. They can't even be internally consistent because of internal NIH syndrome and external purchases.
I'm not convinced this generation can even make a reasonable version of a "meta" at this point. The tech companies struggled with 1-to-1 calling for voice chats for years. The breakthrough though was adapting video conferencing software to meet a weird social need---it's Zoom than got big as the social solution during the pandemic shutdowns, not Facetime or a Google product. the group video chat was the thing people wanted. The person to person version wasn't as compelling (and was a subset of the problem Zoom solved anyway). My point is that tech companies decades on don't know what new social networks will work very well, and are still mostly throwing stuff at the public and hoping it works.
"meta" just seems like the next iteration of "maybe it might work?" from formerly-Facebook. It seems hobbled out of the gate by both the structural problems any product of a corporate maker, and their continuing problem with the genuinely hard problems of matching a product to social needs/wants.
posted by bonehead at 7:42 AM on April 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
Everything I've been hearing about this space -- the intersection of distributed ledgers, walled gardens, microtransactions, and AR/VR -- seems to be very top-down: executives bandwagoning some buzzwords plus the extra factor of some of these buzzwords being primarily championed by hucksters. Are customers, the market itself, asking for any of this? Are consumers sitting around asking "how can I get the shit rent-sought out of me?"
posted by majick at 8:25 AM on April 28, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by majick at 8:25 AM on April 28, 2022 [5 favorites]
I think you only have to look at the reaction in gaming spaces to get the answer.
The cycle that keeps repeating is:
1. A game publisher announces a web3 / NFT project with lofty claims about how great it will be to be able to "own" digital things or be "a part of" ... whatever
2. The community reacts with intense negativity and hostility to the idea
3. The publisher either abandons the plan or walks it back dramatically
It's to the point where they're barely even mentioning the things even if they launch them, because they know how people feel about them.
They're not a product anyone asked for; they're a product the executives wish people were asking for and that they're willing to burn a lot of goodwill trying to make people think they should be asking for, because they're dreaming of going to the moon with that shit.
posted by a faithful sock at 9:06 AM on April 28, 2022 [4 favorites]
The cycle that keeps repeating is:
1. A game publisher announces a web3 / NFT project with lofty claims about how great it will be to be able to "own" digital things or be "a part of" ... whatever
2. The community reacts with intense negativity and hostility to the idea
3. The publisher either abandons the plan or walks it back dramatically
It's to the point where they're barely even mentioning the things even if they launch them, because they know how people feel about them.
They're not a product anyone asked for; they're a product the executives wish people were asking for and that they're willing to burn a lot of goodwill trying to make people think they should be asking for, because they're dreaming of going to the moon with that shit.
posted by a faithful sock at 9:06 AM on April 28, 2022 [4 favorites]
a faithful sock: "1. A game publisher announces a web3 / NFT project with lofty claims about how great it will be to be able to "own" digital things or be "a part of" ... whatever"
Yeah it's funny, when I started getting into console/computer games "owning" the game meant I had it on disk or cartridge or whatnot. Now it means "using some stupid asinine blockchain BS to 'prove' that I 'own' the game, and also we'll need you to have an always-on internet connection so we can spy on you or you can't play"
This past weekend on a group video call one of my son's gamer buddies was lamenting that he needs to pony up for a Nintendo+ account because he really wants to play a classic game from 1998. My son responded by holding the game cartridge up to the camera. "You need to pay? We already own it," he said. Ownership is an Actual Thing that companies want to get rid of, because owning it means you can't be charged for it again... and that's bad for profit margins
posted by caution live frogs at 10:23 AM on April 28, 2022 [13 favorites]
Yeah it's funny, when I started getting into console/computer games "owning" the game meant I had it on disk or cartridge or whatnot. Now it means "using some stupid asinine blockchain BS to 'prove' that I 'own' the game, and also we'll need you to have an always-on internet connection so we can spy on you or you can't play"
This past weekend on a group video call one of my son's gamer buddies was lamenting that he needs to pony up for a Nintendo+ account because he really wants to play a classic game from 1998. My son responded by holding the game cartridge up to the camera. "You need to pay? We already own it," he said. Ownership is an Actual Thing that companies want to get rid of, because owning it means you can't be charged for it again... and that's bad for profit margins
posted by caution live frogs at 10:23 AM on April 28, 2022 [13 favorites]
As migurski notes, "metaverse" and "Web3" are orthogonal concepts, and the author does readers a disservice by conflating them
Technologically orthogonal, but inextricably linked for marketing. If you describe the "metaverse" by itself to somebody, it just sounds like Second Life. Because it is, except owned by an evil adtech company, and they're not going to let your avatar be a winged dick, so it will be less fun. Not new, not exciting.
But then you say "and metaverse will have its own economy re-invented from first principles using magic crypto beans"... and people have already heard about the magic crypto beans so they figure this metaverse thing must be very cutting edge.
Now we've reached the point that companies like Disney are afraid of missing the boat, and are going to forge ahead despite not understanding what the boat is.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 10:51 AM on April 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
Technologically orthogonal, but inextricably linked for marketing. If you describe the "metaverse" by itself to somebody, it just sounds like Second Life. Because it is, except owned by an evil adtech company, and they're not going to let your avatar be a winged dick, so it will be less fun. Not new, not exciting.
But then you say "and metaverse will have its own economy re-invented from first principles using magic crypto beans"... and people have already heard about the magic crypto beans so they figure this metaverse thing must be very cutting edge.
Now we've reached the point that companies like Disney are afraid of missing the boat, and are going to forge ahead despite not understanding what the boat is.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 10:51 AM on April 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
majick: Everything I've been hearing about this space -- the intersection of distributed ledgers, walled gardens, microtransactions, and AR/VR -- seems to be very top-down: executives bandwagoning some buzzwords plus the extra factor of some of these buzzwords being primarily championed by hucksters.
I saw someone somewhere (probably either Twitter or TikTok) mention that the whole NFT/web3/metaverse brain virus seems to have infected the ranks of executives at media and media-adjacent companies (e.g.: studios, talent agencies like CAA, etc...) and that's why we're seeing so much of it. I'm not sure if this comment was from was before or after Max Read's Substack post, "Mapping the celebrity NFT complex", but it did sound plausible to me.
posted by mhum at 11:08 AM on April 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
I saw someone somewhere (probably either Twitter or TikTok) mention that the whole NFT/web3/metaverse brain virus seems to have infected the ranks of executives at media and media-adjacent companies (e.g.: studios, talent agencies like CAA, etc...) and that's why we're seeing so much of it. I'm not sure if this comment was from was before or after Max Read's Substack post, "Mapping the celebrity NFT complex", but it did sound plausible to me.
posted by mhum at 11:08 AM on April 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
the whole NFT/web3/metaverse brain virus seems to have infected the ranks of executives at media and media-adjacent companies
Traditional media companies missed out on the social media and streaming (Netflix) revolution of the late 2000s/2010s, and were often either defending their IP in ways that made them seem dated or were making horrible investments. Their top-down nature which suited traditional media really well collapsed when someone with much less capital can come along and be embraced.
Hollywood used to be able to force even bad movies to turn a profit in the 90s, and that quickly went downhill. They wanted to own all content like Quibi when the future was really letting influencers own their content for comparatively little (TikTok/Youtube). They're just not getting that there's a huge shift in their organizational and institutional thinking. You don't buy the rights to a book, hire a big name director and do a top down careful marketing campaign with worldwide rollout plus merchandise. It worked really, really well and made the talent at the top really, really rich. With TikTok you can't promise investors a hit like you could tapping Spielberg and that makes a lot of people and institutional investors nervous.
They don't want to make the same mistake twice and if anything this article is revealing in that the executives admit they don't know what web3/crypto/blockchains are or how it fits in their business only that there's a lot of money there selling things like art that are just at the periphery these media companies deal with.
posted by geoff. at 11:21 AM on April 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
Traditional media companies missed out on the social media and streaming (Netflix) revolution of the late 2000s/2010s, and were often either defending their IP in ways that made them seem dated or were making horrible investments. Their top-down nature which suited traditional media really well collapsed when someone with much less capital can come along and be embraced.
Hollywood used to be able to force even bad movies to turn a profit in the 90s, and that quickly went downhill. They wanted to own all content like Quibi when the future was really letting influencers own their content for comparatively little (TikTok/Youtube). They're just not getting that there's a huge shift in their organizational and institutional thinking. You don't buy the rights to a book, hire a big name director and do a top down careful marketing campaign with worldwide rollout plus merchandise. It worked really, really well and made the talent at the top really, really rich. With TikTok you can't promise investors a hit like you could tapping Spielberg and that makes a lot of people and institutional investors nervous.
They don't want to make the same mistake twice and if anything this article is revealing in that the executives admit they don't know what web3/crypto/blockchains are or how it fits in their business only that there's a lot of money there selling things like art that are just at the periphery these media companies deal with.
posted by geoff. at 11:21 AM on April 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
If companies and people loved decentralization so much, both the internet and media wouldn't look anything like it does today. Walled gardens upon walled gardens.
posted by meowzilla at 11:56 AM on April 28, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by meowzilla at 11:56 AM on April 28, 2022 [4 favorites]
The customers don't want the NFTs is right... it's gotten to the point that every time Squareenix or Nintendo or Shounen Jump or whomever says "exciting news tomorrow!" the replies on twitter are FLOODED with people saying it better not be NFTs.
https://twitter.com/shonenjump/status/1483515879006642183
https://www.dexerto.com/gaming/square-enix-fans-hit-out-at-company-over-nft-plans-for-2022-1731169/
https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/canceled-gaming-nft-2022-2021
https://www.kotaku.com.au/2021/10/big-nft-project-cancelled-after-just-five-hours/
It seems like the only people who are excited about NFTs, are 1) the people who think they'll be the scammers and not the scammed, or 2) the people who don't know anything at all about them.
posted by subdee at 1:49 PM on April 28, 2022 [7 favorites]
https://twitter.com/shonenjump/status/1483515879006642183
https://www.dexerto.com/gaming/square-enix-fans-hit-out-at-company-over-nft-plans-for-2022-1731169/
https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/canceled-gaming-nft-2022-2021
https://www.kotaku.com.au/2021/10/big-nft-project-cancelled-after-just-five-hours/
It seems like the only people who are excited about NFTs, are 1) the people who think they'll be the scammers and not the scammed, or 2) the people who don't know anything at all about them.
posted by subdee at 1:49 PM on April 28, 2022 [7 favorites]
Arghh I'm still hating on NFTs in the LAST thread. I'm so behind.
posted by Wood at 4:00 PM on April 28, 2022
posted by Wood at 4:00 PM on April 28, 2022
Media Execs: ...making horrible investments.
Also Media Execs: They don't want to make the same mistake twice...
posted by majick at 5:57 PM on April 28, 2022
Also Media Execs: They don't want to make the same mistake twice...
posted by majick at 5:57 PM on April 28, 2022
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