Extended reality has been in our lives for a while now but the hype around it seems to have died out surprisingly quicker than what had been initially anticipated.
Meta failed to reach its target to increase the number of daily active users, but an expert says that journalists should not give up on VR journalism quite yet as there is more exciting technology on the way.
What went wrong in 2022?
With VR headsets having become more accessible, journalists rushed to move their stories where the audience has gone. But it has proven to be a very time-consuming process in terms of production, and it hasn’t really paid off for many due to a small audience.
Meta was aiming for half a million monthly active users for its flagship platform Horizon Worlds by the end of 2022 but the figures were quickly revised to just 200,000 after having recorded around 8,000 daily active users on the platform Decentraland, where Vice set up its virtual headquarters earlier this year.
Building a habit within the users has turned out to be more challenging than what companies adopting the tech revolution had hoped for. The idea of journalism existing in the metaverse may well be shattered into pieces in 2023 after observing the negative results of the number of active users in the virtual space this year.
“Most of the things web3 claimed to do, web2 was already doing it better and easier. I still have not seen any good use cases of web3 that’s practical and scalable for publishers”, said Simon Owens, a media industry analyst, featured in Media Moments Report 2022.
VR journalism may be moving to different platforms in 2023
On a positive note, there are other ways of utilising the virtual space for journalistic work since some publications like Vice already invested in a whole new department to focus on VR journalism.
Interviews can be conducted in the metaverse and team members from all around the globe can gather in the “same room” for discussions to be held in a real-life-like atmosphere.
Stefania Buzatu, a digital media skills instructor, who attended this year’s Augmented World Expo in October, said that Haptic devices, which can create the sense of touch, are expected to “break to the general public soon and drop in price quite a lot.”
Her predictions for VR journalism in 2023, based on what was presented at the event, are that the gadgets will go into more day-to-day use and that it’s still worth experimenting with what the virtual world has to offer to journalism.
So, for those who are already ahead of the curve, a switch to similar, yet more developed pieces of tech should be less problematic and fun exploring.