The Rocinante Essays

Episode 7: VR/Spatial Consultancies: The Rise and Fall of the Metaverse Industrial Complex

Episode 7 takes apart the Metaverse Industrial Complex: consultants, vendors, analysts, innovation labs, and executives all declaring the metaverse inevitable before anyone proved it was useful. The product was never VR. It was billable hours. The money didn’t come from ROI. It came from innovation carve-outs buried inside giant consulting agreements — budget fog with better branding. Vendors wanted enterprise margins. Analysts wanted a new category. Innovation labs wanted something demoable. Executives wanted to look visionary. Consultants wanted the next transformation wave. Then AI showed up. The metaverse vanished. Titles changed. Decks were renamed, and a lot of people that bought into the dream, woke up.

Why Enterprise VR Failed - Episode 6:User Experience — or, “You want me to wear this clunky thing on my head for HOW long?”

Welcome back, friends, to another episode in our ongoing autopsy of Enterprise VR — a bold vision of the future that somehow resulted in headaches, nausea, and the Operations VP quietly asking if VR training is mandatory. This series is a behind-the-scenes account narrated by someone who spent years watching Enterprise VR die the slowest possible death, not from lack of vision, but from friction, discomfort, embarrassment, and the very human statement: “Nope. I’m not doing that again.” If you came here expecting a story about elegant design, intuitive controls, and technology melting invisibly into the background, you’re going to want to sit down, preferably somewhere near a trash can. Because Episode 6 is about what actually happened when real employees were asked to strap a plastic brick to their face, experience cognitive overload, and trust that nausea was just part of the onboarding curve. These audio essays accompany the written series on LinkedIn and Medium, but they’re not word for word readings. They’ve been rebuilt for your ears. Shorter, sharper, and optimized for listening while commuting, cooking, or pretending to pay attention during yet another “camera-optional” meeting. Episode 6 was created to show that no amount of “immersive engagement” can overcome the universal truth of enterprise technology: if it’s uncomfortable, confusing, or makes you look ridiculous, nobody’s using it twice. This episode is divided into four scenes and is proudly sponsored by EvilCorp. Warning: Prolonged exposure to Enterprise VR may result in motion sickness, headset hair, or deep questioning of corporate priorities. Consult your manager before attempting another “immersive learning experience.” Side effects may include dizziness, nausea, the slow erosion of dignity, and a sudden urge to update your résumé. Scene One: The Human Factor. Employees are not gamers. Enterprise VR failed by assuming they were. Scene Two: Cognitive Overload. Users weren’t overwhelmed by the virtual world — they were overwhelmed by figuring it out. After 20 minutes, fatigue set in. By 40, even experienced users were done. Scene Three: The Body Revolts. Motion sickness became VR’s quiet assassin. Eyes moved. Inner ears disagreed. Even those who didn’t get sick walked away disoriented and exhausted. Scene Four: The Environment and the Ego. Cube farms were never designed for flailing adults in headsets. Psychological safety evaporated. Dignity followed. The tech didn’t fit the space, the space didn’t fit the people — and the ego never stood a chance.

Why Enterprise VR Failed - Episode 5 : Corporate Learning & Development: Where good ideas and dreams go to die

Welcome to Episode 5 of the Why Enterprise VR Failed series.  In this episode we’re asking a tougher question: Did one of the most critical groups for Enterprise VR’s success actually contribute the most to its demise? The answer? Let’s just say there’s no happy ending — because HR and Legal were involved. So silence your Slack notifications, brace for impact, and click below to read  Episode 5: Corporate Learning & Development — where good ideas and great technology go to die.

Why Enterprise VR Failed - Episode 4: The IT Problem or How the Middle Finger Can Be Used as a Pointing Device.

Now we arrive at the fourth installment of our "Why Enterprise VR Failed" novella. And if you were hoping this would be the triumphant turning point—where VR gets its act together, management and employees are happy, and we all ride off into the immersive sunset like heroes of the Metaverse… yeah, no.  This is the part where we teleport you to the boss level of dysfunction: Enterprise IT.

Why Enterprise VR Failed - Episode 3: Development Tools? What Development Tools?

Episode 3 of our series on "Why Enterprise VR Failed" pokes fun at the underbelly of VR software development tools to determine if software is the true villain of our story or was it wildly misaligned teams and a tech industry that promised a holodeck and delivered us Microsoft MESH?  From the Unity vs. Unreal holy war to bloated dev teams that needed more roles than a James Cameron movie, it was clear we had entered Crazy Town.  And just when IT finally got involved? Things got worse.