Metaverse- Beyond The Hype Cycle
What is behind the idea of the Metaverse?
As many may already be aware, the word “metaverse” was first coined in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 seminal novel,” Snow Crash.” In his book, Stephenson describes the metaverse as mainly a night-time virtual street in which people can do business and most large corporations have a presence, continuously bathing its avatars with all forms of neon-light advertising. In “Snow Crash,” all virtual property in the metaverse is managed and operated by an NGO named the GMPG.
But it is the word that has us polarised today, given Facebook’s decision to rename itself Meta and focus its non-negligible resources on the metaverse as announced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Oct. 28, 2021.
Some may also be familiar with the more recent” Ready Player One” (2011), a book by Ernest Cline turned into a movie by Steven Spielberg. In this book, the metaverse is referred to as “the Oasis”which is a virtual environment made up of worlds in which people learn, work, live, and play. In the book, the Oasis is owned and operated by a benevolent corporation and is coveted by a second corporation with much more nefarious monetary goals.
Maybe more fundamentally the Greek definition of “meta,” which stands for beyond, above, or transcending, tells us that the metaverse is meant to be a universe transcending ours. One of the main themes that each of the works relating to the metaverse has in common is that the metaverse is one place, one universe which everyone accesses through a variety of different hardware, yet one place, however vast, e.g., Ernest Cline’s “the Oasis” has the properties of a galaxy with multiple worlds, each with a different purpose.
The metaverse that we know today, and can be accessed by, for instance, VR headsets, is by no means one place, it is a vast range of “places” and “worlds” brought together by a variety of technologies, for which a grand unifying platform has yet to be defined, let alone created. The works of these authors do, however, provide us with a potential glimpse into what the future of the metaverse might look like.
Pieces of the Metaverse have existed before
Though the term metaverse may have gotten particular attention in 2021, virtual worlds have existed for a long time. The most notable example is probably Second Life.5 Second Life was released in 2003 as a user-focused, community-driven experience. After initial hype and a rapid user base ramp-up to more than 1 million users, Second Life stagnated with a user base of approximately 800,000 users.
Second Life includes a lot of the aspects one would expect from a metaverse – it has avatars representing its users, interactions, the ability to build content, and its own currency and exchange. The one aspect of the metaverse Second Life that has been lacking, though it was a key element of why it was originally conceived by Linden Labs, is an immersive capability using VR hardware.
Nevertheless, as an early metaverse platform, much can be learned about the benefits and pitfalls of a virtual environment.
When it comes to avatars, an integral part of the metaverse, Asia, and especially South Korea and Japan, has been prolific. Avatars have been a prominent part of social media since 2016, in large part driven by the entertainment industry. In Japan, virtual personalities, such as the AI-powered Kizuna,7 have been a large part of social media since 2016 with recent focuses on the gaming industry. We have much to learn from these early adopters, as avatars become an integral part of digital identities,8 both our own as well as the identity of some of the systems we will be interacting with.
State of the Metaverse Today?
A lot of ink has been flowing about the metaverse since October 2021, whether it is companies, such as Microsoft and Facebook, making announcements about their virtual or augmented reality platforms or Morgan Stanley building a presence in Decentraland. So much so, that it has become difficult to pin down what the metaverse really is. Is it a universe enabled by virtual reality technology, providing new experiences and interactions? Is it a 3D technology platform representing virtual real estate where every parcel is linked to an NFT (non-fungible token) managed through one or more blockchains? Is it a series of apps provided through your preferred VR app store which allows you to explore new gaming and productivity capabilities? Today, it is probably all the above. Maybe tomorrow, it will be closer to the visions of Neal Stephenson or Ernest Cline.
The Virtual Reality Enabled “Metaverse”
When it comes to productivity and enterprise solutions, several companies have launched platforms for virtual interaction and collaboration, including, Microsoft with Mesh and its acquisition of AltspaceVR9 (2017), and Facebook/Meta with the Horizon platform built by the Oculus team acquired in 2014. Not only are big technology companies looking to tap into the metaverse, but there are smaller players, like Spatial. io,10 Mesmerise, or Glue which are also working on providing virtual spaces for meetings and collaboration, like Microsoft and Meta.
The “Decentralised Metaverse”
Elsewhere in the metaverse, 3D avatar-based platforms, such as Decentraland and The Sandbox,16 provide a system where digital land and assets can be managed and transacted through blockchain and cryptocurrencies. These platforms, though not currently enabled with virtual reality support, have also been labelled as the metaverse. In the case of Decentraland, the creators are even taking steps to put in place a self-governance model through the DAO17 (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation) somewhat reminiscent of the GMPG in Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.
A Great Start with Many Things Yet to Come
Whether enabled with virtual reality capabilities or a decentralised blockchain-based economy, we must recognise that whatever the metaverse is or is not, it is still in its infancy. Though massive strides are being made on platforms and technologies to enable it, a lot more will be required to make the kind of transparent interactions described by some of its visionaries a reality. Whereas authors, such as Stephenson or Kline, envisaged interactions with these different universes that were lifelike and reminiscent of our existing day-to-day interactions with the physical world, today’s metaverses still
follow the portal/storefront/app paradigm that we have become all too familiar with on our mobile phones, and a unified metaverse, such as “the street” or “the oasis” is, at best, a distant goal to be achieved.
The MetaXPerience Designer – MetaXPerience
Unlike today’s experience designers, the MetaXPerience designer will have at their disposal a nearly unlimited toolkit of capabilities. This will allow them to design interaction in a three-dimensional space that can represent almost anything, giving limitless freedom to their imagination through stereoscopic visuals, spatial sound, and movement. Though fundamental experience design rules will not change, the MetaXPerience designer will have to apply these rules across the many dimensions of a 3D environment, spatial sound, interactions both with the 3D environment and between participants, locomotion, and more.
Enabling Hardware Is Evolving
Not only is the right software stratum necessary to make the promises of the metaverse come true, but so is the need for the right interaction hardware. As many who have donned a VR headset will have noticed, gone are the mouse and keyboard. New human-machine interfaces are used to interact with the 3D world in which the user evolves.
We Are Only Scratching the Surface
How software and hardware platforms will bridge to provide a seamless experience to the user will be a challenge to both framework developers for the “metaverse stratum,” as well as the MetaXPerience designers who will use these interaction capabilities to create extremely immersive user journeys.
And these are only the technical- and experience-related questions we will have to answer. Along the way, many other questions around privacy, regulation, and sovereignty of digital worlds, ownership, and inheritance of digital assets, etc., will all need to get answered. But let us keep those for future articles and let us focus now on how we can embrace the metaverse today in our industry.
In Conclusion
In closing, whether we call it “Metaverse” or “Web3” or “XR,” we believe we are at an inflection point where several technologies (AR, VR, blockchain, AI, …) are poised to trigger a significant transformational change in our digital world.
XR technologies (AR, VR, MR) and their ability to fundamentally transform how we experience the digital world or the interplay between the digital and real-world, will be central to this transformation. Though numerous aspects of the technology will need to be refined, we have shown that many solutions are ready to be explored and used to make your organisation more productive and more appealing to customers who are embracing the metaverse, and we recommend starting adoption to create the experience, awareness, and foundation to get ahead of the coming wave of change.
But first … put on a VR headset and start experiencing this new reality for yourself!
*The author is Michael Moerman, Associate Partner at Capco
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