Horizon Worlds

About

Horizon Worlds is a virtual reality platform developed by Meta, the company behind Facebook. In its first year of existence, the platform has mostly been mocked and criticized online due to a dull user experience and substandard graphics. Additionally, there has been criticism towards Meta's apparent desire to be at the forefront of a Web3 future defined by the Metaverse, inadvertently inviting schadenfreude to stories of Horizon Worlds struggling.

History

Horizon Worlds was announced under the name "Facebook Horizon" on September 25th, 2019.^[1] In October 2021, it rebranded to Horizon Worlds.^[2] It was released in the United States and Canada on December 9th, 2021.

Criticisms

Graphical Quality

One of the most persistent criticisms of Horizon Worlds has been its graphical quality and the designs of its avatars. The look of the platform has been unfavorably compared to the much older metaverse video game experience Second Life and the more recent VR game VR Chat. ^[5]

Mark Zuckerberg's Avatar

Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse Avatar, also known as Mark Zuckerberg Avatar In Metaverse France and Spain, refers to a VR selfie taken by Mark Zuckerberg's avatar within Meta's Metaverse in front of CGI versions of the Eiffel Tower and La Sagrada Familia made to represent the Metaverse versions of Paris, France and Barcelona, Spain. The image was originally posted on Facebook in mid-2022 as a promotion for Horizon Worlds' expansion into new countries. Zuckerberg's post spread to Twitter and the rest of social media where it was mocked in memes, mostly due to how perceivably bad the build looked and how cringy Zuckerberg appeared by promoting it. Many compared the visuals to the Nintendo Wii Mii and Miiverse. Days later, Zuckerberg then updated his avatar and posted it on Instagram, proving to the critics that the render improved and was better than originally alluded. The update resulted in more memes and reactions on social media.

Legs

Horizon Worlds was criticized for not giving its VR avatars legs, which became a sticking point for its critics in its first year of release. In October of 2022 during the year's Meta Connect event, Zuckerberg's digital avatar announced that legs would finally be coming to the platform in mid-2023.

However, the look at Horizon Worlds' legs was actually not made in Horizon Worlds but rather by animators using motion capture.^[6] Meta revealed that information after the Meta Connect presentation, causing some to observe that the much-hyped legs they saw in the trailer were a lie.

Metaverse Sexual Assault

Leading up to the platform's release, women users during the platform's beta period reported getting sexually harassed in Horizon Worlds, as male users would walk up to them and simulate groping their breasts (see: "Metaverse Sexual Assault"). In February of 2022, Meta added a personal boundary setting, which prevented avatars from getting closer than 4 feet to each other.

Usage Concerns

On October 6th, 2022 The Verge^[3] reported that a memo to Meta employees from Meta's VP of Metaverse, Vishal Shah, chastised employees for not using the platform enough, writing, “Everyone in this organization should make it their mission to fall in love with Horizon Worlds. You can’t do that without using it. Get in there. Organize times to do it with your colleagues or friends, in both internal builds but also the public build so you can interact with our community."

The memo also noted that those using the platform found it buggy and unfun. Shah wrote, "The feedback from our creators, users, playtesters, and many of us on the team is that the aggregate weight of papercuts, stability issues, and bugs is making it too hard for our community to experience the magic of Horizon." He finally noted that the product had "not yet found market fit," implying the platform was struggling to find an audience.

In mid-October, The Wall Street Journal^[4] reported that the service was hemorrhaging users and that most users did not return after a month of use. The report says it has fewer than 200,000 users a month, a far cry from the company's initial goal of 500,000 users a month by the end of 2022.

Search Interest

External References