So after failing to enter the Australian Open metaverse concert, how could I refuse the opportunity to attend another great web3 gathering? I thought I’d jump into Facebook-cum-Meta’s Super Bowl LVI concert.
Well, I did that, or at least I tried. Turns out Meta’s Super Bowl concert would suffer a similar fate to the AO one when I tried to barge through the doors and find out what’s going on.
If you’re unaware, the Super Bowl LVI was held just a few hours ago, with the Los Angeles Rams delivering a crushing defeat to the Cincinnati Bengals (23 to 20). It’s the perfect opportunity for advertisers to wheel out some expensive ads, which we’ve been keeping track of here.
But every now and again we get something weird out of the Super Bowl. This year, for me, at least, it’s Meta’s afterparty concert, featuring the Foo Fighters. Meta would be hosting the brilliant rock heavyweights in Horizon Venues, Meta’s metaverse application for big events and common metaverse stuff, which includes exploring worlds, seeing virtual friends and playing online minigames. VR Chat beat Meta to it by a few years with way more user customisation, but we won’t hold it against them.
I shouldn’t tease it along any further; the Meta Super Bowl concert didn’t work.
Unfortunately this was the only screenshot I could nab of the event. It turns out that within Meta’s own application, screenshots on Meta’s own VR headset (the formerly named Oculus Quest 2) had been disabled.
Seems like a shot in the foot, but OK. Instead of raving to the Fooeys, I idled around the lobby for the event, waiting with several other people to get in. I tried taking screenshots with an integrated screenshot mechanic (involving holding a fake VR controller as a camera and aiming it) but I was unable to transfer these images to my computer.
Supposedly, while I was trying to get in, some 12,000 people were in attendance. Not me, not the other people in my lobby (of which there were only five). Perhaps everyone was stuck in a purgatory-like lobby like us. According to other posts on Twitter, this would seem to be the case.
“Grandpa, what were the early days of the metaverse like?”
“Well sport, long before the great meta-war and shortly before the meta-energy crisis I once spent 30 minutes clicking a “Join” button trying in vain to get into the first VR Foo Fighters concert.”
— Kirk Williams 🎙 (@PPCKirk) February 14, 2022
Stayed up to check out the Foo Fighters on Oculus VR but it’s not working apparently. 7k users overwhelmed the metaverse apparently.
— Jay Why (@John_D_Young) February 14, 2022
Nothing like stress-testing your VR experiences app by having a Foo Fighters concert and bringing the whole system to its knees 🙄
Wasted 30 mins trying to get in. Could’ve been a cool experience, ended up just being an experience in frustration.— BadgerByNature (@BadgerByNature) February 14, 2022
Regardless, I did snatch up a quote from one Metaverse concert lobby-goer: “It took me 45 minutes to get into the lobby”.
The application did take a while for me to get in as well, some 15 minutes, but all I did was restart the app and it worked. At least I got to see the lobby. Surely Meta assumed there’d be thousands of people trying to enter?
If you want to watch the experience without donning a headset, you can see it here.
Anyway, Web3 is doing just great.