Wild

Reality can't compete.

We’re giving a sneak peek at @thatswilddotcom’s next (and namesake) virtual world - Wild! We all love VR and we all know it can be big. The opportunity to make lasting civilization in VR has literally never been bigger. It’s taking everything we learned about large scale virtual worlds with Factions and improving on all fronts. Quite a light tease at what it will have to offer, but excited to begin talking about it nonetheless. It’s the culmination of almost 5 years of technical and product effort. We’re working hard to complete it and have it out in about a month!

RecRoom was literally the reason I bought my first headset. If there’s anyone at RecRoom who wants to keep working on VR with a super talented and passionate team, please shoot me a message!

Rec Room shutting down is a sad day for VR. It was Wild’s players’ first exposure to VR and reason to get a headset. But those players aren’t going anywhere, and we think there is more opportunity than ever to make VR what it was always meant to be. To anyone at Rec Room who still wants to work in VR and spread it to millions of players, Wild is hiring. Wild is a bit unique - we work in an in-house engine and networking stack and are completely focused on VR. Our team is small, but extremely high talent and passion. We’ve got a title out already with an energizing player base, and a new world in the works. We’d love to connect with anyone at Rec Room who is still passionate about VR and can help us build even better worlds!

Every day we restock the shop in @thatswilddotcom's virtual reality world. And every time, 200+ kids hop in line to be first in the door. Everyone's in the same world, so the shop restocks are absolute pandemonium. Oh - and the entire city you see here wasn't built but our team, it was made by the world's users! As we've grown, they expanded the shop from one floor to three!

Factions is the top trending game on the Quest store today!

Odds are, you think VR is nothing more than Zuckerberg's most expensive failed experiment. But VR is home to the most unique consumer social products. Far more distinct than anything in AI consumer products right now, and a bigger opportunity in my opinion, too. In @thatswilddotcom's virtual reality world, over a hundred kids get in their headset to shop for new avatars. The only thing you can compare it to is Walmart during Black Friday, and it is only possible in VR.

When I'm not dismantling fraudulent AR companies, I'm building a virtual reality world! My company, @thatswilddotcom, runs a giant libertarian social VR world called Factions where everyone shares the same server. Everything is run by players - they have presidential elections, operate legal systems, start wars, host massive entertainment events, etc. The explored world is roughly 14 times the size of Manhattan and growing every day. Our latest experiment: opening a school in VR. This week, we'll kick off a school inside Factions. The first course will be on how to make social media content and, later, ones like world history, language arts, debate, and more. Fun fact: it's built in a custom game engine made for VR that we spent 3 years building!

Last March, @thatswilddotcom's virtual reality world was twice the size of Manhattan two weeks after launch. Now, since we reset the world 5 weeks ago, the world is more dense the user builds and 15 times the size of Manhattan in developed space. City -> State -> Continent -> World -> Universe

The VR/AR space is filled with opportunity. Software hasn't even come close to what the hardware is capable of yet! No need to lie about hardware until the software frontier is mapped out.

Well designed wirtual reality worlds are intelligent.

The turning point was today - I'll share more soon. I'm now very confident that Factions & @thatswilddotcom will consume what is left of the VR industry and turn it into something truly great.

After some added analytics features, we can now create daily rundowns for all the crazy stuff happening in Factions! 7/10 for accuracy - will improve!

First campaign video, a third candidate since recognizing the election as official

Wild Stream 1 x.com/i/broadcasts/1…

Why do I think the consensus around VR as a Holodeck with gaussian splats is wrong? I've written some extended thoughts on it. Check it out. open.substack.com/pub/thatswildd…

VR gaussian splats: virtually irrelevant Read it here: open.substack.com/pub/thatswildd…

VR will replace everything. Virtual worlds will be better than the physical world. And virtual worlds can only be entered through VR. SCHOOLS WILL BE BETTER IN VR Free, better-than-world-class education powered by PhD level LLMs while taking incredible advantage of the social and spatial elements of a K-12 education and beyond. No school shootings. ENTERTAINMENT WILL BE BETTER IN VR Cities, homes, nations in virtual worlds will be more meaningful, accessible, and relevant than physical locations. CULTURE WILL BE BETTER IN VR Unique cultures that are only possible without the constraints of the physical world and body. COMMERCE WILL BE BETTER IN VR: As needs are automated in the physical world, demand for virtual reality items will skyrocket because of the meaningful worlds they exist inside of. The fertile crescent for 'startup kids' now and increasingly. HUMAN AGENCY WILL BE BETTER IN VR Economic class becomes irrelevant. Meritocracy thrives. New currencies, new product classes, new land to develop. For kids today, virtual reality feels like the space where they have freedom. This will only grow and expand across ages. FRIENDSHIP WILL BE BETTER IN VR Meet anyone regardless of your zip code. Look the way you want. Dress the way you want. Sound the way you want. Languages, race, social class, etc. all disappear. WORK WILL BE BETTER IN VR 10 years ago we laughed at people making money on YouTube. Right now, people are laughing at kids making money selling avatars, virtual goods, and commissioning each other for labor in virtual reality worlds. SPACE EXPLORATION WILL BE BETTER IN VR Science fiction sold us the lie of humans farming potatoes on Mars. In reality, nobody will go to Mars until settlements are already built by robots. And even then, we'll teleport our meatspace bodies through terminals inside the virtual space command centers. LOVE WILL BE BETTER IN VR Humans you meet in VR - who can exist anywhere on Earth - and a vast population of AI humanoids will be a better option than the local selection of humans. Sex is already plummeting - virtual reality sex is the equilibrium between physical sex and rampant porn addiction. Baby factories will exist as necessary. WAR WILL BE BETTER IN VR After 90% of waking human hours are spent in VR, conflict inside virtual reality worlds takes mindshare over wars in the physical world - which will look very different than they do today anyways. War will be fun. CITIES WILL BE BETTER IN VR We don't have to die waiting for the fantastic cityscapes of imagination. They can be built by us today in virtual reality - and be just as important. RELIGION WILL BE BETTER IN VR Old religions will spread virally among people who are even more tightly connected in virtual cities. New religions will form - bringing even more meaning into increasingly meaningful virtual reality worlds. SPORTS WILL BE BETTER IN VR Quidditch, zero gravity space soccer, massive simulated battles. Thousands of people in stands. It will be like filling up the Colosseum with water for a naval skirmish but 100x better. FITNESS WILL BE BETTER IN VR Better-than-world-class instructors, the best social encouragement groups, beautiful scenery, and engaging fitness routines that squash Peloton. Peripherals you can buy outside virtual gyms to ship to your doorstep. It all starts with a lasting virtual reality world that can have history, consequences, and maximized human freedom.

Billions of people in virtual reality.

@thedowd 🤔

Is that the Deckard?!?!!