Future of Metaverse

For context, we currently have three major metaverses: Web 3.0; Decentraland; and Fortnite. If you don’t know what the last one is, it’s basically a virtual world where players battle in an online game and are paid to be there for that. The first two were revolutionary but they had flaws in their design. They couldn’t really offer player-obsessed experiences because all interactions (both inside and outside of games) had to occur through screens. As such, games that allowed people to socialize and play around with each other suffered from either poor user experience or having bad monetization mechanisms (i.e., no more ads).

What makes these three different? Well, while Web 3.0 can actually provide us with some unique features, like being able to buy land on a non-fungible token blockchain, these aren’t truly immersive. In addition to building your own space, the ability to use “real money” for purchases also creates issues for developers who want to make sure payments are safe and fair.

With the rise of mobile and AR/VR devices, this situation has begun to change. Now, even as new technologies like VR/AR continue to improve, there will always be problems associated with how players interact with those platforms. We’ll get into this more about that later. However, what I am going to talk about today is something rather interesting — the idea of using technology in a way that gives us the opportunity to do things better than ever before. This is something that was talked about in my previous article, which I wrote about a decade ago. A significant portion of the current development in tech is focused on creating environments and experiences that would allow users to go beyond the boundaries of whatever device or platform they happen to use. By making technology so ubiquitous, we could create a whole lot of fun for millions or billions of individuals. It just doesn’t seem like that’s possible right now. That’s why these are called the Metaverse.

The First Version of a Metaverse

If you thought that sentence above means we are just stuck with the same kind of digital worlds we’re familiar with right now, think again. There are already several versions of the future we should expect to see in the near future. One notable instance that comes immediately to mind is that of Roblox — a very popular video game that allows its users to build their own creations that they then sell for cash (this isn’t quite as good for gaming as the average person thinks it is, though). The problem with selling items in Roblox is the need for a constant stream of content, which means there will be another version of our reality soon enough that we won’t be able to keep up with that kind of thing anymore. Even if companies like Epic Games attempt to solve this issue by providing the most consistent supply of new items per hour of gameplay, it doesn’t help much when this happens every time you play Roblox, whether you’re playing alone or with friends. And when people play together, the amount of effort put into making sure everyone stays logged in at all times will increase exponentially.

Another example comes to mind right away. Imagine trying to look across a screen to find any information you require to complete work or study. Then imagine looking the wrong way across the entire surface of that display because of this error. When people are used to doing this in real life, they have developed a pretty advanced form of navigation, because all they need to be aware of is a single direction, or possibly their location based off of GPS and cellular signals. But with a large number of people using similar systems within a single place like Roblox, navigating towards a shared destination becomes a complicated task for both sides. With a system that relies on constantly updating information to ensure one thing doesn’t conflict with another, everything gets lost trying to navigate to somewhere else without correctly pinpointing direction.

These examples are not too far-fetched from reality. The point I really want to highlight here is that even if these types of scenarios are possible, we can’t assume that they’ll be popular experiences. People are used to interacting with other people in real life. Like me, they don’t consider themselves as having an active presence within any type of environment. Even in places like school, students and teachers interact with others very differently, but the fact is they are still there — sometimes it’s important that you know where someone else is going but most often you don’t care, because it feels like an unnecessary extra amount of effort. These sorts of interactions are hard to replicate in an ideal setting, let alone with a high degree of accuracy. Because it took ages to come to terms with the concept of a separate, distinct world within our physical environment, we tend to become comfortable with certain ways of being.

The Problem of Getting Involved with Other Worlds With Digital Surfaces

While the ideas of the present-day Metaverse are exciting and intriguing, people are starting to realize that those virtual spaces are simply too distracting to spend hours on. Instead, they prefer to read books, watch movies, or do a quick search while sitting comfortably at home. Unfortunately, there is no easy solution to getting people to engage with additional virtual realms. Not unless you invent them. Although reading and watching movies are certainly enjoyable activities, they aren’t exactly the primary reason people are interested in engaging with another place. Since we typically consume information that supports our beliefs through entertainment, there needs to be some kind of mechanism in place where people don’t feel obliged to get involved with anything involving another person that differs from their own.

That said, creators are already making efforts towards solving this problem. Take Second Life, for example. Back in 2010, Roblox released an app where players were able to purchase land and buildings in virtual scenes. Each item that was purchased came with a corresponding reward such as food, power, etc. Eventually, users created their own private regions that contained all the buildings and objects needed for survival. In order to acquire more pieces of property, players simply climbed them to gain access to different areas of the map. At some point, a story was added which explained the history behind each region. While this may sound extreme, it was actually fairly effective for many reasons. Users would start to develop respect for the properties and the owners of these islands, resulting in fewer instances where they found out their house is missing because it was built after a massive earthquake. No matter how you were feeling, it wasn’t long before people began showing interest in exploring newer areas and finding new homes. Additionally, users would meet other people and make friendships online. Overall, this kind of community-building environment didn’t exist anywhere else except maybe the actual internet.

The Current State of Things

The hope around the Metaverse remains huge. Many believe that if nothing changes, over 1 billion users will soon be spending their days inside virtual surroundings and eventually becoming fully immersed within one metaverse. With the progress that seems to be happening day by day, it is only fair to say that the possibilities regarding this Metaverse are endless. All of that begs the question — where does it end and when will it end. On the one hand, it’s nice to see all these projects working to get players involved with their offline lives and experiencing things that would be impossible otherwise. To think that the technology we’re developing will allow us to live perfectly normal life (if we haven’t been shown that already!). That said, things are moving faster than ever before. And as we know, fast tends to mean stupid.