Reflections after experiencing Walmart's Metaverse and Decentraland: does the metaverse have to be decentralized?

Let's visit two meta-universes, Walmart Land and Decentraland, as I attempt to answer the question: must all meta-universes be decentralized? In the process, I'll sort out the agendas behind each metaverse and weigh the costs and benefits of building metauniverses through DAO.

At Christmas dinner, my work drew a lot of discussion (or interrogation). "web3 gives power to the people," I said, though it was a bit of a cliché. "It's decentralized. Imagine what would happen if everyone could vote on how their social media works, instead of making decisions about Facebook like Mark Zuckerberg?" This example is good for me to understand, but some of these people are in their 80's and don't know much about the web3 world. I did my best. Anyway, my point is clear: web3 is intended to be fully democratized.

Right?

Then my grandparents asked me to explain a crash course on web3's hottest topic: the metaverse. I subconsciously flinched, and my mom kicked me in the leg under the table. While explaining the metaverse to confused elders (who probably didn't really care), I suddenly found myself living in a web3 Twitter cliché. In between bites of toast and stuffing, I ask them to think back to that episode of The Office where Dwight uses Second Life and the scene where I played Club Penguin as a kid, or even just the VR headset that said, "I swear the meta-universe has been around for a long time." They nod grudgingly as I detail one of the hardest parts of web3 to understand.

The metaverse - the immersive virtual world part of the new world of the Internet - provides a (usually) decentralized network of virtual spaces in which users can interact, transact and create content. It typically provides a web3-style core of digital ownership through gaming, socialization, and online marketplaces. It's not hard to find real-world apps that my grandparents might have been able to understand, and with a long history of pseudo-meta-universes such as Second Life and Club Penguin, the real meta-universe has recently gone mainstream. in late September, Walmart launched a pair of 'immersive experience' programs on Roblox - Walmart Land and Walmart Universe of Play.

So did Walmart executives create a mess labeled as a metaverse on Roblox, or will this centralized metaverse experience become the future standard?