The game has become the leading force of the Metaverse, Where is the ceiling of the Metaverse?

The “successor” of the Internet may have taken root in the gaming industry.

The term “Metaverse” was coined by science fiction writer Neil Stephenson in the 1992 novel “Avalanche.” In “Avalanche”, Metaverse is a very popular virtual world that is experienced in the first person by users equipped with augmented reality technology.

In the past year, executives and creatives from the gaming and technology industries have injected new vitality into the Metaverse concept, designing massively multiplayer games such as “Fortnite: Battle Royale, “Roblox” and “Minecraft” which is a vast The predecessor of the digital world, it combines Stephenson’s fictional Metaverse with the increasingly digital real world during the pandemic.

Facebook (Facebook) CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Mark Zuckerberg) said in an interview with The Verge last week that Facebook will transform from a social media company to a Metaverse company in the next five years.

“It’s fair to say that what we have now is not exactly Metaverse,” said Moritz Baier Lentz, a partner at Metaverse Investment Fund BITKRAFT Ventures, but when you ask people to describe Metaverse, most people will focus on “Ready Player One” thing: a bridge connecting the physical world and the digital world, with unprecedented scale, interactivity and interoperability.

There are so many different explanations of the metaverse. In this article, we will start with five questions to understand the purest Metaverse and why it excites everyone.

This article focuses on:

What is Metaverse?

Why are video games regarded as the forerunner of Metaverse?

How close are we to the real Metaverse?

Apart from technical limitations, what is the biggest challenge for Metaverse?

Why is blockchain technology important to Metaverse?

Is Metaverse inevitable?

What is Metaverse?

Metaverse is a “successor nation” of the modern Internet, with fewer restrictions on all access to the same content no matter where and how. The current online platform allows users to move freely within the scope of a specific service, but limits the interoperability between platforms.

Metaverse will allow users to generate their own content and distribute it freely in a widely accessible digital world.

Unlike the modern Internet, Metaverse users will experience the changes of all users in real time. If a user makes any type of change to Metaverse, then the change will also be permanent and other people can see it immediately.

Compared with the modern Internet, the persistence and interoperability of Metaverse will provide users with more continuity of identity and experience.

In Metaverse, users do not need separate Twitter profiles, “Fortnite” roles, Reddit accounts, etc., they only need to maintain themselves in all channels. This continuity of identity will become the user’s purchase and consumption of content in Metaverse Core factor.

Why are video games regarded as the forerunner of the Metaverse?

BITKRAFT is a venture capital fund that invests in game developers and focuses on the technology of Metaverse. The company describes Metaverse as a product of a growing “synthetic reality”-the increasing integration of the physical and digital worlds. Accelerate during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, gamers have started to socialize and create content on the corresponding network.

Baier-Lentz of BITKRAFT said:,“What excites us when investing in games, e-sports and interactive media is that games are essentially the vanguard of this megatrend. There are many examples of what started as games. Innovation in use case development has led to far-reaching innovation, not just the entire media ecosystem.”

Lentz cites graphics cards, which were once developed for 3D computing in games and later became the backbone of artificial intelligence and other technologies. Video games like “Fortnite” and “Roblox” demonstrate a cultural interoperability that is common in Metaverse.

For example, in a single game, a player dressed as LeBron James can use the disguise of the comic character Deadpool or the Joker character to fight against others. In addition, the multiplayer experience of these games shows the real-time continuous experience that Metaverse can provide.

Last year’s “Fortnite” Travis Scott Concert” allowed more than 12 million players around the world to participate in the same concert in real time, but they were limited to interacting with up to 49 other users in any given “room” experience. A successful event triggered the “retro” trend.

Last month, marketers took this Metaverse concept a step further by recreating London’s O2 Arena in the game before a concert organized by the British band easy life.

How close are we to the real Metaverse?

There are still many obstacles on the road to the real Metaverse, and the biggest obstacle is the hardware limitation.

At present, global networking and computing power cannot yet support the persistent digital world experienced by millions of concurrent users in real time. Even with such network and computing capabilities, the energy consumption of this effort will cause problems for the national power grid and the environment.

With sufficient technology, extensive cultural changes are necessary to stimulate the development of a true meta-universe.

According to a 2020 report by Thrive Analytics and Cartles Intelligence, relatively high-quality virtual reality and augmented reality technologies can already be provided to consumers, but less than 20% of Americans have used VR headsets as a form of entertainment.

Of course, perhaps this situation may be changed. Bayer Lentz predicts that VR and AR headsets will have the opportunity to surpass game consoles as early as 2025.

What is the biggest challenge for Metaverse?

Interoperability. Currently, even so-called Metaverse predecessors such as “Fortnite” do not allow players to recreate their own user-generated content (UGC) on other platforms. In order to achieve true interoperability between platforms, companies that own these platforms must give up some control over their player content and user experience.

This process has already begun. Sony has recently started to allow PlayStation users to interact more frequently with players on other game consoles.

Shahar Sorek, chief marketing officer of the integrated UGC platform Overwolf, believes that giving up control is inevitable because UGC (relative to content created by developers) is rapidly becoming a core aspect of the modern gaming experience.

Sorek said: “Unlike a bank or any other centralized system, there is an experience shared with the community, and the community’s response to this experience is at the core of promoting participation.”

Therefore, if a game manufacturer sees that their community is only creating content by themselves, they must change, because they understand that if they do not change, competitors will appear.

Why is blockchain technology important to Metaverse?

Bayer Lenz said: “I hope that, according to our plan, the future will be a truly decentralized future controlled by users as citizens. So far, the best solution may also be our current The only solution is the blockchain technology and applications built on Web3.”

Without the supervision of Metaversal governance or other regulatory agencies, blockchain technology will ensure that transactions and identities in Metaverse are safe and public. In addition, non-homogeneous tokens (NFT) will allow users in Metaverse to have unique customized items, which is very similar to the situation in the real world, and cryptocurrencies provide a roadmap for the formation of the Metaversal economy.

The creation of this diversified economy has begun: some companies, such as AB InBev, have begun auctioning limited-edition brand NFTs for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Solek believes that “Metaverse’s currency may be between modern cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum and “Fortnite” V-buck. Maybe every game manufacturer will provide a token, you can be like V-buck Same purchase, they have their own exchange office, you can exchange from one to another.”

Is Metaverse inevitable?

Maybe in the future users can easily know its existence on the Internet, but they will not switch to the Metaverse channel under all circumstances.

It is also possible that with the gradual development of Metaverse, as cultural changes and technological upgrades enable Internet users to move more and more freely, it is easier for people to create and share customized content online.

Just as there was no formal change in the transition from web1.0 to web2.0, the development of Metaverse will happen naturally, because people spend more time online and associate more identities with their digital lives.

Although “Fortnite” and “Roblox” are often described as the predecessors of the metaverse, the most important predecessor of the Metaverse is the Internet itself. Therefore, assuming that the future Internet experience is a video tour of an apartment, and a short browsing of each room in a certain order, then Metaverse is the apartment video itself.

So, Metaverse may be really unstoppable.