e507 — VR is Dead? Let’s Play!

Games At Work dot Biz

Photo by Braedon McLeod on Unsplash

Published 31 March 2025

e507 with Michael, Andy and Michael – stories and discussion on AIs training humans, non-serindipious searching, doomed VR gaming, playlist portability and much more.

Michael, Andy and Michael get things started with a couple of AI articles dealing with how AI is training humans, and AI search results are impacting serendipity. Michael R points out that search engines used to bring people to you – and now, search engines are summarizing to the point where there’s not a need to bring users to the content.

After touching on a few of the Indy games from GDC2025, the cohosts talk about the latest article declaring that VR gaming is doomed. And not Doom – doomed. There are plenty of examples to the contrary, such as Civilization 7.

The team discusses the new LEGO Lord of the Rings set for Bilbo Baggins birthday party. It should be noted that there will be a designer signing event at the London flagship LEGO store at Leicester Square, next Saturday, 5 April for anyone who happens to be in town.

For the last main topic of this episode, the co-hosts unpack some stories on music sharing and playlist portability. First up is Napster, and the news that it will enable concerts in the metaverse. Andy noted that in 506 episodes, we have not ever brought up Napster (or at least tagged or put in the show notes). Last, the team discusses a couple of methods for moving your playlist from one streaming service to another.

Is your search history an accurate representation of you? Would you go to a concert in Napster? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @[email protected] (our home for now) and let us know!

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot. All rights reserved. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Selected Links

AI

The New Yorker article: Your A.I. Lover Will Change You

IMDb: Her

Wikipedia article: Replicas

https://replika.com

Paul Stamatiou blog: Browse No More

Ask Jeeves

GDC, Games, and VR

The Verge article: 7 cool indie games from GDC 2025

IMDb: Everything Everywhere All at Once

The Verge article: MainFrames is a charming platformer that takes place inside computers

Retrododo article: Prince Of Prussia Is A Free To Play Tribute To Wolfenstein & Jordan Mechner’s Prince Of Persia

PC World article: Game developers are losing faith in VR as a gaming market

Joseph Simpson, VisionPro blogger on Mastodon

Civilization VII VR coming in Spring 2025 announcement

LEGO

Slashfilm article: New Lord Of The Rings LEGO Set Builds A Brick Version Of The Shire (And The Dragon Firework)

Brickfanatics article: LEGO Icons The Shire designer signing event re-confirmed

Music

Ars Technica article: Napster to become a music-marketing metaverse firm after being sold for $207M

Wikipedia article: Napster

Obdura’s Playlisty

Games at Work e357: Real Reality, or Something for music portability

Last.FM Track My Music by scrobbling

Andy on Fireside Fedi

Fireside Fedi e7: Andy Piper – Mastodon (audio version)

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine