In his groundbreaking novel, Ready Player One, author Ernest Cline describes a grandiose virtual reality where people spend the majority of their time and which offers an escape from a reality marked by social, economic and political conflict.
This is a world where digital currency is more stable than paper money and where players can assume any identity they wish. A world that is being built today.
In a few years, we will wonder how we ever lived without the Metaverse, much like we already do today with the Internet. In essence, the Metaverse brings together the digital elements of our lives - video games, social media, messaging, e-commerce - into one comprehensive experience.
Janine Yorio is head of real estate at Republic, an online investment platform for retail investors. Zach Hungate is director of gaming at Everyrealm, a Metaverse innovation and investment firm. This article is part of "Metaverse Week" and is the first in a two-part series.
Through a vast system of interconnected networks, 2D websites become 3D web spaces that are interactive, immersive and social. Instead of scrolling through web pages, you'll be aware of others simultaneously engaging with the same content as we gather to play, shop, talk and search.
The Metaverse has the opportunity to be a more productive and social Internet. It's also incredibly playful and offers real economic opportunities to developers who know a thing or two about building habitable worlds. In other words, game developers.
The actual platform or virtual world where communities form will fade into the background and become an invisible layer of infrastructure, similar to how websites are hosted on AWS or Google Cloud today.
Instead, users will choose a metaverse platform based on ease of use, technical capabilities, and quality of content. Creators who master metaverse content production, or developers who build tools that make it easy for mainstream users to create and distribute their own metaverse content, will attract the most users and therefore build the most valuable platforms.
Users will come for the content (events, shows, Esports), but they will stay for the social connections fostered by shared gaming experiences.
People who are currently forced to hide their true identity due to cultural norms in their physical environment will be able to flourish online and flaunt their individuality. Perceived physical disabilities will no longer preclude participation, and the lack of a common language will not prevent communication.
Removing physical barriers will create a positive feedback loop that will drive the entire metaverse. Communities are always centers of innovation, and this will be true in our shared digital spaces as well. The metaverse will be self-actualizing when it is personally fulfilling.
The metaverse will also become our primary form of procrastination, just as the Internet has claimed our free moments. We'll use it casually, slipping in a few moments here and there when we can, but we'll also spend extended periods of time in it when our schedules permit (or perhaps when they don't, to the detriment of our real lives and commitments).
The metaverse, however, may be more mundane than we imagine. The metaverse is not a science fiction, futuristic, or dystopian version of the world, but probably looks a lot like the real world.
We know this because people who already spend time in the metaverse (on platforms like IMVU, High Rise Second Life, and Fortnite) generally buy clothes that resemble street clothes and build houses that look pretty ordinary.
While the metaverse enables futuristic versions of reality, the human mind may prefer to live in an environment that is largely reminiscent of the environment it already knows best. Perhaps we all live our best lives in the metaverse, but this version feels quite familiar.
True diversity and communities
The metaverse will be equally attractive to all genders. The metaverse will transcend cultures and geographic boundaries. The metaverse will be a home for people who want to play games, produce music, socialize, or just people-watch. With a place for everyone, the Metaversum will be a place of culture for future generations and an economic engine. Brands large and small can find their way to their respective audiences and strengthen their digital identities.
New brands that are and will be created in the metaverse have a unique opportunity and could one day compete with today's global brands and become more successful. The most well-known brands in the metaverse right now are Bored Ape Yacht Club, RTFKT, Genies, and Zed Run, to name a few. You may not be familiar with some of these brands, and that speaks to our point of view.
The metaverse and Web 3 are ushering in a new wave of business activity. In some ways, the Web 3 community sees large corporate brands as anathema to the crypto ethos that values community, evangelists, and profit sharing. The metaverse has its own brands that represent authenticity and quality. Many of these brands are still very new, but they are already truly global and have an enthusiastic, cult-like following.
There is an opportunity to do things differently. Business should serve people, not the other way around - the central premise of cryptocurrency.
The most valuable brands are likely to be born in the metaverse and be metaverse-native, and companies know this. Nike (NKE), for example, acquired digital sneaker company RTFKT as part of its Metaverse activities. In other words, one of the most powerful brands in the world has not entered the metaverse with its existing brand, but has bought a young company born in the metaverse to engage in this next-generation Internet.
Basically a game
One thing we're all likely to do together in the metaverse is play video games. That's the main activity that gets us there the first time and then keeps us coming back over and over again.
And in some ways, a version of that reality has already arrived. Kids around the world have spent the last decade getting comfortable with the Internet. They spend their time in interactive environments playing games, meeting friends, building small businesses, and buying and selling things.
Video games, in particular, have become a primary form of socialization. This "metaverse generation" (which now includes kids up to age 18) has very different expectations of technology - even compared to Millennials.
For them, the Facebook of Meta (FB) is really for older people. TikTok is interesting, but perhaps not interactive enough. Netflix (NFLX) is something you use when you want to spend time with your parents. YouTube's short, always-on, community-developed content has replaced regular television programming.
Today's youth are just as addicted to technology as their parents, but they're consuming it in a new way.
The upcoming Metaversen video games will not be spin-offs or mini-games, but the heart of it all. The games will look very different.
Not all games will be first-person shooters like Fortnite or Valorant. Sometimes we'll play old-school arcade games reminiscent of Super Mario Brothers or Pac Man. Other times, we'll distract ourselves with rather pointless sample games like Candy Crush, or build worlds like The Sims or Second Life.
The video games we play in the metaverse are of extremely high quality, often developed by AAA gaming studios, and they will keep us coming back for more. They may also be built on the blockchain. Today, blockchain-enabled games and blockchain games are still in the infancy of development - there are only a few titles, and the blockchain infrastructure itself is still being built.
Similarly, video game developers are likely to be the primary creators of the Metaverse, as the Metaverse is a video game at its core. Video game developers tend to be some of the best and brightest computer science graduates because video game development is highly complex; the person writing the code must think in 3D.
When a person turns a doorknob in the metaverse, the door swings open. This is not just a 3D architectural model, but a world of cause and effect - and few programmers outside of game studios know how to program this world.
These developers can't be trained in programming schools as quickly as HTML developers can. This means that there will be a greater demand for game development talent from remote locations and emerging markets, leading to a new economic opportunity for those skilled enough to teach themselves game development.
In some ways, the metaverse is developing rapidly, but in other ways, the pace of improvement seems almost glacial. It's important to remember that these new environments are robust and highly customizable video game worlds, and they take a long time to develop and test.
We are encouraged by the wave of new entrants in this field and believe that the Metaverse we are all hoping for will develop and reach the market much faster than previous technological innovations.