"Metaverse" has become such a powerful buzzword that Facebook will change its name to "Meta" in 2021. And last year, Meta laid off more than 11,000 employees. That may be part of the gaming industry's loss of confidence that the topic of the Metaverse means nothing, according to a survey of video game professionals released annually by the Game Developers Conference (opens in new tab), the industry's big event held in March, There has been a slight but noticeable increase in skepticism in responses to questions about the Metaverse and blockchain over the last year.

Similar to last year, survey participants chose Fortnite as the most likely candidate to deliver on the promise of the Metaverse, followed by Meta, Minecraft, and Roblox. However, 45% did not predict a winner for the Metaverse, saying instead that "the Metaverse concept will not deliver on its promise." The same was true of 33% of respondents to last year's question. Doubts about the metaverse are growing.

GDC's "2023 State of the Game Industry" report, which summarizes the survey results, includes a six-point explanation for one respondent's metaverse skepticism. The following is a summary of the reasons, which the GDC states "seem to represent the voices of a significant majority of respondents."

According to this year's survey, gaming industry opinions on cryptocurrency and NFT-related topics have not changed all that much. Of the developers surveyed, 5% said they were previously in favor of the use of blockchain technology in gaming, while 5% said they are now against it, and 2% said they are against it. 25% expressed no opinion, while the rest said their opinion was the same as a year ago: 12% in favor of using blockchain technology in gaming, 56% remained opposed.

Slightly fewer respondents than last year said that studios are actually interested in using cryptocurrencies or NFTs in their gaming projects.

In a written response, one video game expert said that blockchain is "a textbook example of a solution looking for a problem," while another expert, after spending three months researching blockchain use cases for games, "came to the I have firmly concluded that there are none."

A more positive respondent stated, "Now that the hype has died down and the scammers have moved on, I think now is a good time to seriously investigate the utility [of blockchain] for a positive player experience. I don't think something as big as blockchain has any use at all."

(You may be right that a good use for blockchain can be found, but I would argue that the scammers have not moved on.)

The majority of the GDC's 2,300 survey respondents' opinions reflect the same skepticism I and many PC gamers feel about the promise of the Metaverse and blockchain; Meta's job cuts can hardly be attributed to CEO Mark Zuckerberg's love of buzzwords. It is not. He attributed the layoffs in part to his misguided prediction that the frenzy of Internet use that was so prevalent in the early days would not die down anytime soon. Or, as Wes sharply put it in 2021, "bullshit." (Though I still think VR itself is exciting. I'm starting to use my old Oculus Rift CV1 every week after years off.)

Meanwhile, NFT has yet to become an integral part of the games we actually want to play, and in some instances, monetizes NFT with fervor through manufactured scarcity and empty hype driven out of mainstream gaming by gamers who see it as one of the cynical ways to do so.

GDC 2023 kicks off on March 20. We will be in San Francisco covering the event as usual, but we are curious to see how many blockchain companies have purchased ads and booths this year. I've seen quite a few in the last year, and my gut feeling is that machine learning, not cryptocurrencies or NFTs, is actually the most important emerging technology right now, and will become an increasingly large part of the game we play over the next decade (as well as an increasingly dangerous ethical quagmire).