And yet... the dream of the metaverse as elucidated in this article is strongly reminiscent of the early dreams of what the Internet could be. In the end, basic economics dictated the outcome because all those server farms, engineers, and devops folk have to be paid for. It's difficult to see an economic model emerging from gaming that doesn't ultimately end up right where we are now, with eyeballs being monetized as fully as possible. After all, people already pay to play these games, upgrade their capabilities, etc. It's hardly a leap to envisage ever-greater exploitation in order to deliver a fatter bottom line for the corporations that make the games and provide the computing resources necessary to run them.