【Risa Sakamoto Archives】

Meta’s VRChat clone is Risa Sakamoto Archivesready for its close-up. 

More than a year after it soft-launched as an invite-only experience, Horizon Worlds, the “creator-friendly VR space” formerly known as Facebook Horizon, is finally emerging from its beta testing state. Starting today, the app will be available as a free download on the Quest 2 platform in the U.S. and Canada for users over 18 years old. Owners of the company’s first standalone Quest VR headset will also have the opportunity to experience these user-generated worlds, but it’s only for a limited time. Support for that now antiquated hardware will sunset in early January 2022. 

The virtual “explore, play, and create” environment is, by the company’s own admission, an evolution of Facebook Groups, offering visitors the ability to connect with other like-minded users and build communities. But to VR vets, it’s basically a glossier knock-off of VRChat, the popular platform-agnostic, “anything goes” third-party social VR platform that's brimming with creator-made worlds, activities, and games. And as we’ve seen time and time again, when it comes to the company formerly known as Facebook, imitation is the sincerest form of market domination.

To kick off Horizon Worlds’ official launch, Meta is trotting out an in-house-developed, 3v3 team-based shooter called Arena Clash. The experience is essentially “laser tag” but set in a virtual world, and it comes complete with its own leaderboards. While it’s rather standard fare when compared to more fully fleshed team shooters like Population One, the game is more of a showcase for what creators can do within Horizon Worlds — right down to the very programming scripts it uses.

Connect "building blocks" and create games using Horizon Worlds' visual scripting tools. Credit: Meta

Indeed, Meta is going hard on Horizon Worlds’ creator focus and, as such, is making the experience of game-building more accessible. Users who enter into creator mode will have the ability to write scripts by stringing together what can only be described as building blocks containing specific functions. It’s a visual-based approach to programming that should help to lower the bar for coding newbies.

Kevin Reilly, Meta’s product marketing manager, said this visual approach to scripting has already given way to a wide range of creator-made experiences, which has resulted in a somewhat even split between gaming and more community-based events. Of these, “Mark’s Riverboat,” a world that lets users simply ride along on a triple-decker boat, has proven to be among the more heavily trafficked offerings. 

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Reilly also said that many users simply enjoy conducting interviews within its varied worlds, which currently can host up to 20 people at a time, relying on an additional person to act as a “cameraman” and record using their POV cam, since Horizon Worlds doesn’t offer a filming toolset.

That community involvement has also yielded some current and forthcoming improvements to the overall Horizon Worlds experience. An asset marketplace — where users can easily access other creator-made world-building tools and objects — is among the most-requested features, and Meta is aware of its importance. While it appears the company has intentions to implement this soon, no concrete timeframe was given for its arrival.

You, too, can make your own "Shoot the dragons" game. Credit: Meta

As you might imagine for something claiming to be the VR-equivalent of Facebook Groups, safety is a clear concern, and those tools have been updated accordingly since Horizon Worlds’ soft launch. Users dealing with harassment can still enter a “bubble” that renders them invisible and allows for the ability to block and report troublemakers, but Meta has since expanded those options.

“Since the beta launch last year, we’ve added even more features with safety in mind, including invite-only worlds, improvements to blocking, poll to remove, and the ability for Community Guides to remove people who are being disruptive from the Plaza, among other improvements and updates based on feedback,” said Bryan Pope, Meta’s gaming communications representative, in an emailed statement.

As one of the more recent comments on the app’s download page attests, those updated safety tools and the 18+ age-gating are very much needed, but still not a cure-all. In a comment dated Nov. 11, a Horizon Worlds user by the name of Tarkis_ points to the prevalence of hate speech within Meta’s virtual playspace, stating that several teenage users lobbed around “the N word all day long” and even made threats of rape toward his wife.

Some things never change in the land of Meta. Credit: Screenshot: Meta/Oculus

Sadly, this abusive behavior, which also exists within VRChat, is admissible per Meta’s terms of service: “You understand that you may be exposed to content from a variety of sources when using Horizon and acknowledge that content may be inaccurate, offensive, indecent, or otherwise objectionable.”

So the company and app names may have changed, but the somewhat unregulated user misconduct persists. That’s just par for the course when it comes to Meta and the oft-controversial communities it engenders. Whether the social media-cum-metaverse company’s recent rebrand will amount to an about-face in this area remains to be seen. Only time, and a few weeks worth of Horizon Worlds’ public availability, will tell.

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