Maxim Perumal argues VR's value is in short, intense moments, not endless platforms. Growing up isolated, he built friendships and earned money through Minecraft servers. He wants VR built on limits, shared worlds, and user-generated content, not Meta's endless-feed model.
Something very important is to collectively build a very exciting idea, an image of what VR should be like. And to me, that idea is— it's very much, well, how I came to love VR, which is, I grew up in the middle of nowhere. I made my friends online, and much of who I am, both in the virtual world and the real one, those things were defined by very intense, meaningful experiences in virtual worlds that I wouldn't have been able to have otherwise. It's some of the people I've met in those virtual worlds, some of the design work I've done in those virtual worlds, some of the making money in virtual worlds. That was crazy. I was a teenager and we were trying to monetize our Minecraft servers and learning that, oh, wow, I have the power to make money and trying to organize that and then trying to recruit other teenagers to help me write more modes and create more Minecraft servers. This sort of experience of life, of working with other people, of learning how to manage people, of learning how to make money, That's just one example, but it's an experience I would never have had otherwise. I would never have had that experience without those virtual worlds. And the reason VR clicked for me is that it just seemed like the most intense way to offer those very, very meaningful experiences to people. And I think I think where my vision of VR and Meta's vision of VR are very, very different is there's basically 3 things I care about. The first one is this idea of limit. The second one is this idea of unus mundus. And the third one is what I like to call Minecraft 2.0. So what are those 3 things? If you sort of listen to the way Meta and all those companies are talking about VR, one thing that they love to repeat is how limitless it is, how you'll be able to do anything in there. And I think they don't realize how much that does not connect with people. People just don't— if you just repeat to someone over and over, this is limitless, you know, it's not helping you understand it. Yeah, because they're giving them just how it looks, but not the substance, what's within it. Exactly. Exactly. So, and I also think that making it limitless makes it seem vague. And I think people actually don't want limitless anymore. They're scared? Hmm? Out of scare? Like, yeah, absolutely. I think people realize that, you know, the limitless feed is just making them dumb scroll Instagram for 5 hours. You know, no one at the end of the week is like, oh, I'm proud. I spent 12 hours on Instagram this week. So people are dubious of this idea of limitless, right? I think the people that I know that are the happiest, the healthiest, the most creative, the most satisfied in their daily life, they had to put those limits in their usage of their phone by themselves. Of course. They turn off their notifications so they can focus. They are careful with their usage of Instagram to not basically plug their brain into the dopamine factory, right? So I think that idea of limitless isn't that exciting. I think people instead are much more excited by balance, by can you offer a product that brings more balance to your life as a whole? And I think VR can be really good at that, where you can put on the VR headset, experience something very intense for maybe an hour or 2, then put it off, and then you're back to your real life. But you've experienced something in VR that's going to stay with you. One crazy example that happened to me not long ago, I have this employee at my company. is transitioning into a new role, right? And it's been intense on him, right? He loves it, but it's been a lot of hard work, and I was working a lot as well. So it had been a little while since we really sat down together and sort of talked through everything. And sometimes you do need to do that, right? But we're in different cities, so unable to do it. And what was the first thing you said? We went in VRChat, actually, and we spent almost the entire night together, right? And I know he loves Naruto, the anime. And so I brought him to this virtual world that is a recreation of the anime Naruto. Nice. And we just hanged out there for the whole night and just talked through so many things. And I think it was a super meaningful moment for him, a very intense experience, probably Only 3 hours, but 3 hours of the kind of conversation that when you walk out of that conversation, you just feel great about it. You feel grateful that you had that conversation. And VR is just incredibly good at creating those kinds of very intense, meaningful moments. Then you put off the headset and you're done, just 3 hours. And that idea of bringing balance into your life, with those very intense, meaningful experiences, I think speaks a lot more to people now than this idea of limitless. Because people, they don't want a wearable dumb scroll device, right? I don't think people want that anymore.
