The metaverse, explained: what it is, and why tech companies love it

What’s the metaverse?

Good question. “Metaverse” is currently a major buzzword in the worlds of tech, business, and finance, and like all buzzwords its definition is fuzzy, contested, and shaped by the ambitions of the people using it.

Here’s one thing we can say for sure: The term was coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel Snow CrashTo describe the virtual world he imagined in his future 21st century dystopia. In Snow CrashThe metaverse, a virtual reality world, is depicted in a market around a planet where virtual real property can be purchased and sold. Users wearing VR goggles inhabit 3D avatars that they choose.

Bruce Jensen/Bantam Books

These three elements — a VR interface, digital ownership, and avatars — still feature prominently in current conceptions of the metaverse. None of these elements are essential to the concept. In the broadest terms, the metaverse is understood as a graphically rich virtual space, with some degree of verisimilitude, where people can work, play, shop, socialize — in short, do the things humans like to do together in real life (or, perhaps more to the point, on the internet). Metaverse proponents often focus on the concept of “presence” as a defining factor: feeling like you’re really there, and feeling like other people are really there with you, too.

This metaverse may exist in form of videogames. But there’s another definition of the metaverse that goes beyond the virtual worlds we know. This definition doesn’t actually describe the metaverse at all, but does explain why everyone thinks it’s so important. This definition isn’t about a vision for the future or a new technology. Instead, this definition looks at the past and the already commonplace technology of smartphones and the internet. It assumes that in order to replace them, the new metaverse will need to be invented.

The influential venture capitalist Matthew Ball, who has written extensively about the metaverse, describes it as “a sort of successor state to the mobile internet”. (Mark Zuckerberg, who last year gave his company Facebook the name Meta and said the metaverse would be its focus, has used an almost identical phrase; clearly, Ball’s essays are hugely influential on Silicon Valley thinking.) Are you aware of the revolution smartphones had on tech, economy and society? Many businesses are eager to make the metaverse a similar watershed.

There are many things to challenge in Ball’s vision, but the biggest is his proposition that the metaverse will be a single network as open, interconnected, and interoperable as the internet is now. That’s a very big ask. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Does the metaverse have a new name?

The short version is: lol no. We’ve already established that the term has been around for 30 years, and not just in fictional form. It’s formed a part of corporate visions of the future for quite some time. During the first VR boom of the ’90s, UK grocery chain Sainsbury’s put together a VR shopping demo that’s eerily similar to a video that Walmart made in 2017.

Metaverse-like virtual realms are more than just marketing hype-pieces or proof-of concept demos. They have been around for nearly as long as fictional counterparts. People will recognize hype pieces about getting married in metaverse. This virtual world is perhaps one of the most popular and closest to the metaverse ideal. Second Life an “online multimedia platform” which launched in 2003.

Image: Linden Labs

Second Life mostly resembles an early-’00s massively multiplayer online role-playing game like World of WarcraftIt is the same game, but with everything removed, including the story, combat and quests. The game fulfills many roles that were imagined for the metaverse, as it has since its creation. Avatars allow users to interact with one another in virtual space. Virtual versions of real world experiences are available, including business meetings and clubbing. They can also create and share their own services and content. There’s a virtual economy with its own currency, which can be exchanged with real-world currency. Second LifeThis is almost a textbook-style metaverse in the limited sense that one exists.

Image: Sony Interactive Entertainment

An example of an earlier metaverse that was notable and often forgotten is PlayStation Home. Sony’s ill-fated virtual social hub for PlayStation 3 launched in 2008 and closed in 2015, to the sorrow of its tiny community. It didn’t go anywhere and seemed, to a casual user, quite pointless, but it’s an interesting example of what a highly corporatized metaverse — as opposed to the anarchic, community-driven Second Life — might look like. You can see what it might look like. But the clean, blandly stylized, utopian futurism of its art style clearly prefigures Zuckerberg’s recent metaverse demo. These are the companies’ dreams.

However, the reality is likely closer to messy, grubby. Second Life. Give humans a chance to build a world without restrictions, and they’ll either come up with a branding opportunity or a fetish dungeon. It should either be seen as a warning or an opportunity for future metaverse architects.

Why are people suddenly talking about metaverses?

There are a few factors that have catapulted it to the forefront of the tech industry’s thinking in the past few years. The first is the maturation of a few technologies closely related to visions in the metaverse. Virtual reality, which was taking its first faltering steps in the ’90s as Stephenson wrote Snow CrashNow, it is a real possibility. There are a variety of commercially available headsets that can be used, such as the Quest wireless device. Facebook’s purchase of Oculus in 2014 was an early indication of where Zuckerberg thought his business might be headed.

One is blockchain. This technology, which can be difficult to understand and consumes energy very quickly, has allowed for cryptocurrencies as well as NFTs. The NFTs have been a fascination for crypto enthusiasts and snake-oil salesmen. They also allow the possession of real property and virtual goods within the metaverse.

Meta

It should be noted that it is possible to “own” and even trade virtual items in plenty of games and virtual spaces, Second Life included, without using the blockchain — but that ownership is pretty flimsy and usually subject to a license agreement. NFTs have different but equally flimsy methods for proving ownership. Metaverse supporters are excited about NFTs’ uniqueness and portability.

The coronavirus epidemic, which has drastically changed the lives of many people on the planet is just as important. With people spending so long in Zoom meetings for work, and with soaring use of video games as people seek to enter more colorful and exciting environments without leaving the comfort and safety of their homes, it’s natural for tech companies to look for ways to capitalize on the situation by bridging these two needs.

Late in 2021, Facebook’s rebranding and its metaverse-focused mission statement sealed the deal. Since then, the term has cropped up with increasing ubiquity — in the business world, at least. The world of government and politics may take a while to catch up as it focuses on how to contain the power of Big Tech in the here and now, as well as how to mitigate the deleterious effects of social media on actual society — which continues to be a thing. Boring!

Isn’t the metaverse just… video games?

Maybe! Who do you think so? Microsoft. Activision Blizzard purchased for just 70 billion dollars, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella commented: “When we think about our vision for what a metaverse can be, we believe there won’t be a single, centralized metaverse and there shouldn’t be. We need to support many metaverse platforms … in gaming, we see the metaverse as a collection of communities and individual identities anchored in strong content franchises, accessible on every device.”

Sulake Oy

It’s possible Nadella was just throwing shareholders the buzzword of the day in the hope it would help get them behind such an enormous acquisition. However, his vision was very different than the VR internet that Ball and Zuckerberg had envisioned. In his version, metaverses are plural, and they’re all around us already. They are persistent communities formed around virtual places where people want to be — like World of Warcraft Oder Warzone: The Call of Duty.

There’s consistency in Microsoft’s thinking here. Microsoft acquired Mojang in 2014. This was around the time that Oculus had been purchased by Facebook. Minecraft. Minecraft, with its social, creative, and deeply customizable gameplay, is often cited as a metaverse-adjacent game, and it’s notable that Microsoft has not tried to strongarm it into exclusivity on its own platforms; it views Minecraft As a platform of its own value.

These MMOs are like WoWThere is a strong kinship between metaverses and them in their form (if not function). Two post-existent parallels are even closer to each other.MinecraftThese games are very popular among children. Both RobloxAnd Fortnite, your avatar, your presence, your customization choices, and your social connections are almost more important than the game itself — or the games, plural, in Roblox’s case.

Roblox It is almost as free-form as the environment in which you work Second Life, where players author their own games and chase status and dreams of real-world success — and where brands create advergames as a way to reach the elusive tween demographic. FortniteIn-game events have been hugely successful, such as the 2020 Travis Scott concert, which attracted more than 27 million people. To many observers, including Ball, these events represent the closest we’ve come to a true metaverse experience.

Do I have to accept the existence of the metaverse as my reality?

Epic Games

It’s not yet. Despite the maturity of the idea and the current obsession with it in boardrooms, the technology still needs a lot of work — especially if it really is to become “the next internet” envisioned by Ball and Zuckerberg. Even though the epidemic has kept so many people in their homes, there is still a desire among consumers for a metaverse experience. isn’tIt is still not clear if a videogame exists.

The biggest obstacle to Ball and Zuckerberg’s metaverse becoming a reality is interoperability. You might want to call it standardization; it’s the idea that you will be able to take your avatar and digital possessions with you from one app, or game, or virtual world to the next. Ball imagines that this will bring a new dimension to the world. Counter-StrikeBring your gun skin along FortniteHere’s an example. The metaverse is the next step in the evolution of the internet. Interoperability, however, seems impossible. One technical challenge is how to move an asset from one graphics engine into another and make it work across multiple hardware configurations. It is also difficult to navigate intellectual property rights while convincing numerous businesses to not wallow in their gardens. It’s a Lot, lotFor example, it is harder to agree on a standard of hypertext link standards.

People must be convinced that they are interested in this technology. The technology through which we access these worlds needs to be at least as comfortable and convenient to use as a smartphone, and as portable, or it will seem like a backward step from the mobile internet it’s supposed to be replacing. While the appeal of a virtual universe might be obvious, it is important to consider how deeply the person’s desire to explore this world. From fiction Snow CrashYou can find more information here The MatrixAnd The Ready Player One, metaverses are usually envisioned as an escape — willing or not — from dystopian realities that are too awful to bear. I dare hope that we’re not quite there yet.