Meta has opened up its Horizon Worlds “metaverse platform” to younger users for the first time.
Horizon Worlds has been intended for use by adults only until now. However, 13-17 year-olds in the US and Canada will be able to access the virtual world “in the coming weeks”, with other countries expected to follow.
Meta says it has introduced “a robust set of age-appropriate protections and safety defaults” to make the platform safer for younger users.
These include hiding teenage users’ location and status, blocking them from game worlds marked as mature, and limiting the interactions teens can have with adult users. Meta also offers something called Voice Mode, which “transforms the voices of people a teen doesn’t know into quiet, friendly sounds,” and “garbles” the younger person’s voice.
Why stop at 13? This is the lower age limit Meta asserts for its Quest VR headsets. “Younger children have greater risks of injury and adverse effects than older users. While we know that children under 13 may want to use Meta VR systems, we do not permit them to create accounts or use Meta VR system,” the Oculus website reads.
What is the metaverse?
Horizon Worlds lets people create their own 3D environments, which other users can then explore. This is where potential issues for younger users arise — any platform with user-generated content is likely to surface stuff unsuitable for kids, regardless of how rudimentary the building tools are.
The platform is also home to curated areas and mini-games, including battleground Arena Clash and a virtual comedy club.
Horizon Worlds was launched in December 2021 in the US and Canada, before being released in the UK in June 2022. The app reportedly failed to meet Meta’s expectations. An initial goal of 500,000 monthly active users was revised down to 280,000 last year, according to the WSJ.
Meta’s own platform is also eclipsed by VRChat, which has a significantly higher user rating on the Oculus platform, and many more user reviews. VRChat is also far older, though. It was released in 2014 for the first Oculus Rift headset, a few months before Facebook announced its intention to acquire Oculus in March 2014.
The Meta Reality Labs metaverse division lost the company a reported £11 billion in 2022, Tech Crunch reported. The company has admitted issues in keeping the audience engaged in virtual reality. “We need to be better at growth and retention and resurrection,” said Meta VP for VR, Mark Rabkin, in a company presentation outlined by The Verge. “We need to be better at social and actually make those things more reliable, more intuitive so people can count on it.”
Meta’s attempts to make the “metaverse” a thing are yet to connect with the public. They can at times seem more like a repeat of Sony’s failed PlayStation Home social platform, rather than a new frontier. PlayStation Home was a 3D virtual world for PlayStation 3, in which users had their own apartment and could interact with other people.
How to play Horizon Worlds
Want to try Meta Horizon Worlds? You will need a Meta Quest 2 or Meta Quest Pro headset, as it is a VR-only experience.
The teen-friendly version of the app is yet to launch in the UK, so you should pay extra attention to the in-game settings if you are going to let the kids have a go.
