(2020-07-21) Koss What Is The Metaverse A Complete Guide

Hal Koss: What is the Metaverse? A Complete Guide. *The metaverse, broadly understood as a persistent, shared virtual realm — like an evolved, more-immersive internet — is no longer just fodder for science fiction.

It’s “the newest macro-goal for many of the world’s tech giants,” according to Matthew Ball, venture capitalist and former head of strategy at Amazon Studios.*

*There’s no universally agreed-upon description of the metaverse, but there are some widely recognized characteristics. (Sadly, it being a neon-lit cyberspace is not among them.)

Ball, the VC, identifies seven: The metaverse is always on; it’s experienced live and in real time; it can host any size audience; it has a fully functioning economy; it spans across platforms, as well as digital and physical realms (think augmented reality); it allows digital assets to be carried across platforms; its experiences and content will be created by individual users and huge corporations alike.*

Roblox, the gaming platform of 120 million users that has metaverse ambitions of its own, offers a (similar) list of descriptors: it’s immersive; persistent; vast and diverse; enables each user to have a core identity across experiences; has a social network component; enables seamless access from any device; has an economy; and is governed by rules and order

That sounds a lot like ... the internet.

De Witte explained it to me like this: Platforms such as Fortnite, Minecraft and Roblox are not in themselves metaverses, but destinations within the metaverse. There will be lots of them, not unlike individual websites on the internet today. To make the proliferation of destinations feel less fragmented and overwhelming, we’ll rely on indexes. Discord and Twitch are examples of indexes. They’re useful in connecting people to destinations and to each other. (aggregators)

And on top of indexes will be browsers. De Witte expects services like Microsoft xCloud and Google Stadia to pull indexes together, offering a more personalized experience

Once this all shakes out, de Witte said, we should expect there to be millions of destinations, between 10 and 100 indexes, and between one and 10 browsers.

How Will the Metaverse’s Economy Function?

Take Roblox, the gaming platform that’s especially popular with kids and teens, as an example. On it, users have the ability to create their own games using Roblox’s developer tools. They can then monetize their creations. If they cash out, Roblox takes a cut.

not just about taking money out of the ecosystem, it’s also about using the same virtual currency and spending it across the ecosystem.

Most of them put that money back into the platform’s economy, by spending it on games or avatar customizations that other users create.

“We actually have to pretty much simulate the entire real world. The only thing I think we don’t have is stocks,” Chandrasekaran said. “But ... I think it’s inevitable that we may end up there.”

In 2016, Vice reported that users of the virtual world game Second Life had redeemed $60 million from the businesses they operated inside of it. The gross domestic product of Second Life’s in-world economy? An estimated $500 million.

Who Will Build It? Who Will Own It?

*tech giants operate in closed ecosystems, William Burns explained to me. And it’s a huge barrier for the vision of the metaverse to be fully realized.

Burns is an advisory board member to the Infinite Metaverse Alliance and co-author of an article titled “3D Virtual Worlds and the Metaverse: Current Status and Future Possibilities,” which was published in the journal ACM Computing Surveys in 2013.*

But Burns directed me to OpenXR, by Khronos Group, as an example of an organization that challenges the walled garden mentality. It’s an open, royalty-free standard

lots of experiences within the metaverse will be user generated

I would contend that whoever masters the main universe and writes the APIs, etc. to allow everyone to tie in and portal out, will be the real winner,” Burns told me. “Everybody else will just be a destination.”