When I think of “what’s next”, the genuine answer is, “I don’t know.”

I think AR will be world-changing the moment someone figures out how to do a socially-acceptable AR thing. I’d thought Apple was poised to do it, but it sounds like maybe it’s not coming any time soon. The Reality Pro rumors are interesting, and I’d certainly buy one, but it’s not the AR nuclear bomb going off. Not yet.

I feel pretty safe in saying it’s not “web3/blockchain”. I’ve spent months thinking about it, and find it so utterly uncompelling and pointless that I’m genuinely confused about what I’m missing. But everyone I’ve asked for help understanding has basically said some variation of the same things, which are all nonsensical to me. (To be clear, this is me being diplomatic. I understand why a company would get in on it, as investment money is there for the taking, but I haven’t heard a web3/blockchain gaming proposal that has *any* utility to the actual player.)

I do think, though, that the answer to “what’s next” is somewhere in the sea of people who just got laid off. Whether it’s some team within Meta that was pushing hard for something creative that didn’t fit the plan, or some folks in Google that was doing something strange, or a frustrated Hololens engineer… it’s probably not even anyone I expect, working on anything I can conceive of. But it’s out there. Bubbling away.

In 2008, when I got laid off from the company I worked for, the opportunity was there, and I saw it. But I wouldn’t have *taken* the chance if I’d still had my job. It was getting laid off that enabled me to co-found Self Aware Games.

I took the shot because I had nothing to lose, and the financial and social security to do it, along with the ticking clock of my first son’s impending arrival, which meant we knew how much time we had to make it work or it’d be over.

I imagine there are a lot of people out there who don’t want to put their fate into some huge corporation’s hands again. Folks whose severance gives them a bit of padding, and their specialized knowledge about cutting-edge stuff gives them a window into the future that few people have.

I’m super excited to see what comes out of it, and I know it’ll be something none of us expected.