China Steams Ahead in Gaming; MetaHuman Creator and the Uncanny Valley
We have two brief segments — taking up less than 16 Minutes! — in this week’s episode of "16 Minutes," where we talk about tech trends in the news, what’s hype/what’s real, and where we are on the long arc of innovation. Both segments touch on trends in gaming/ online worlds and entertainment — both now and "next." First, Steam China: Steam — the cloud library and marketplace for buying, selling, and storing games that was launched by Valve in 2003 and is now the largest distribution platform for PC gaming — just released an official Chinese version. Next, Meta Human Creator: Epic Games’ 3D graphics platform Unreal Engine revealed an early peek at a new content creation tool that aims to make creating digital humans easier. So what does this all mean? We talked to a16z partner Jonathan Lai, a former product manager at Riot Games, who joins 16 Minutes co-host Zoran Basich for both segments to share a quick take on these news items and the trends overall.