“Metaverse” was such a potent pandemic buzzword that Facebook even changed its name to “Meta” in 2021. And then last year, Meta laid off more than 11,000 employees. That may be one reason for a waning confidence in the games industry that all this talk about the metaverse will amount to something. In an annual survey of video game professionals published by the Game Developers Conference (opens in a new tab)— a big industry event coming up in March — responses to questions about the metaverse and blockchain showed a small but noticeable increase in skepticism over the past year.

Similar to last year, survey participants chose Fortnite as the most likely candidate to fulfill the promise of the metaverse, followed by Meta, Minecraft, and Roblox. But 45% didn’t predict any winning metaverse, and…