It will soon be 2 years since Crayta is available, first rolling out on Stadia (2020) and then a year later on theEpic Games Storehere he arrives (following a takeover) on facebook gamingthe gaming platform of Meta. Mark Zuckerberg took advantage of the launch to reproduce his Hacker Square while discussing the game with the creators/developers of the platform.
General presentation
To make this possible, Crayta relies on cloud gamingwhich makes for a much more pleasing experience to the eye than a HorizonWorldwhile being much closer to the announcements of Meta when Connect 2021 and much more from a certain Ready Player One. The boss of Meta said about it:
Crayta makes it possible to create complex environments in HD or 3D directly in the cloud, to transfer them over the network to put them online – which was previously impossible via a desktop browser or a smartphone.
You would have understood it, when you launch Crayta, it is not your device (PC, Mac, smartphone…) that calculates your game, but the servers of Meta. You are then only controlling a PC remotely, like a Shadow PC or the future Project Avalanche.
We still too often associate the metaverse with 3D experiences that can be experienced in virtual and augmented reality. Crayta makes it easy to build and experience this type of experience seamlessly across all kinds of 2D environments, including through the Facebook app on smartphones and desktops.
This passage calls out, for simple reasons of hospital and charity. How can Mark Zuckerberg dare to say “that we too often associate metaverse with VR and augmented reality” when he gave an entire lecture on this subject of 1h30 during the conference Connect 2021 ? This announcement is a cold shower for all those who one day wanted to live an experience Ready Player One wearing their helmets VR. To be able to escape easily, to feel things, to have this feeling of presence, all that could make the salt of a total immersion is swept away with the back of the hand. Especially since this immersion, Meta has made it its business for more than a year, promising us that over the years, the VR and augmented reality will look like the movie repeated many times in this article. So let’s bet in the future that the metaverse of Meta looks more like this feature film than that of Free Guy (which depicts a world in which players connect to the metaverse only through 2D screens, like Crayta).
Detailed presentation
In Crayta, we can reach the different games (universes) in two ways, the first is to physically move to the portal of the title in question, the second is to press the key Esc of his keyboard and go there by clicking on it. Players have a choice. If we were in virtual reality, the first would be much more relevant.
The games offered are repetitions of what is done elsewhere, whether on Roblox or Hatch Kids, with graphics comparable to Core Games (EU4 obligatory). So don’t expect to see narrative games a la The Last of Usbut more to games copying the existing (Battle Royaleparkour, golf…). Know that it is possible to recover objects in-game or complete objectives allowing you to unlock cosmetic elements, and that’s a shamebecause as everyone knows, the salt of a metaverse is to allow someone to obtain an item that boosts his abilities, allowing him to stand out in gamenot only in appearance.
As always, these are the first games that suffer from impostor syndrome, developers or apprentice developers like to first cut their teeth on what they know (by copying outdated concepts), before moving on to speed superior by offering us much more original games. Meta offers, through Crayta, rewards (up to $50,000) aimed at guaranteeing a certain emulsion between developers. Mark Zuckerberg had meanwhile announced during the Connect 2021 want to help those who would put their hand in the paw to build the future metaversething promised, thing due.
Like Core Games, you are not going to find the engine in a rough way EU4you will access an overlay of simplification allowing to facilitate your creative process. That said, it is a pity that Crayta does not integrate visual programming, in other words blocks to associate to interact with the environment (in a way scratch), which is the easiest way to create, unlike lines of code (programming language like Lua) that we see in the video. It is strange to see this possibility offered to users ofHorizonWorldbut not to see her at Craytawho nevertheless wishes to mix as many people as possible, moreover those who do not have helmets VR or augmented reality glasses.
Fortunately, the documentation is very complete, the trainers have produced tutorials allowing you to familiarize yourself with the tools available to you. Cherry on the cake, these are not videos, but a juxtaposition of text and images, which will allow the developer to return more quickly to a point that he will not have understood, and to avoid the incessant pauses inherent in video training. On the other hand, if Crayta changes its interface, it will be necessary to redo all the screenshots, we wish them a lot of courage.
Balance sheet
What can we conclude from this overview? First of all, it was a pleasant and fluid experience, the cloud gaming is totally transparent (only aficionados will be able to see compression artifacts from time to time). Too bad that the VR remains to absent subscribers, this would greatly facilitate its democratization and would give meaning to the principle of metaverse (if Crayta is part of metaverseso we were on it since the appearance of the first party game 3D online). We weren’t necessarily customers of experiments at the Rec: Room or at the VR Chatbut it is true that the upscaling of experiences at the Ready Player One has something to seduce us. That said, to pierce, metaverse as we conceive it must bring something Meta (no pun intended), something that viscerally involves the player or the community, such as looking for 3 hidden keys in the different games to obtain a prize or privileges on the game, looking for someone who has hacked this or that game or service, etc. Otherwise it will only be a copy of Roblox Where Core Gameswithout adding anything new!
Small precision all the same, there are comics dedicated to him by searching the Crayta site, so the cross-media seems to be of interest Meta. We will see in the future if animated series or films will point the tip of their nose. If this mixture of genres does not continue, it will irremediably serve as a wet firecracker. Therefore, for the moment, wait and see…
And you? What do you think ? Do not hesitate to let us know in comments. If you haven’t taken the plunge yet, you can treat yourself to a Oculus Quest 2 at the house of Bakerthe Fnac, Darty or Amazon for €349.99. You can also find good PCs for gamers there.