Differences Between Korean and International Metaverses: Ensuring the Metaverse’s Permanence
Summary:
Over the weekend, I organized the spaces I had developed or commissioned, which were intended for future use, and backed up data from Hubs’ Spoke that I had accumulated for potential future use.
I tasked an intern with managing the data for about a week, but I hadn’t reviewed it in detail until now. Here are my observations:
1. Differences Between Korean and International Metaverses
During the review, I noticed similarities and distinct differences in how metaverses are utilized in Korea and internationally.
Commonality: Use for Pandemic Events
Both Korean and international metaverses were actively used for events like WebXR Conferences or university-created spaces during the pandemic. My own project began with events for Hyundai Department Store Group and Chonnam National University.
Difference: Underutilization of 3D Web Metaverses and Government-Driven 3D Game Metaverses in Korea
In Korea, the use of 3D web metaverses was limited. Unlike international practices, large-scale events in Korea primarily used platforms like Zoom, Gather Town, and 2D web-based tools like Zap, with Zepeto or ifland added occasionally. Large-scale events using game engine-based metaverses were rare despite significant investment in them.
Another significant observation was that Hubs featured many personal and team artist-driven spaces that created virtual art content in 3D. This was largely due to WebXR’s immersive experience with VR HMDs, a type of content almost non-existent in Korea. Korean media artists rarely utilized metaverses, and government support during the pandemic was mostly focused on corporate-based content that replicated reality in 3D game engine-based formats, such as tourism metaverses.
Conclusion: Demand-Driven Metaverses Are Needed, and We Want to See More Korean Artists
Regardless of the location, what stands out is the need for demand-driven metaverses. International artists seemed to be the demand themselves, and this field has potential. I wonder how Korean metaverse policies might have fared with support directed toward artists rather than just corporations. Many VR art events organized by the Gyeonggi Content Agency feature mostly international works, with Korean contributions being almost nonexistent.
Here’s a notable German project I found while organizing:
2. Das HOUSE 2.0 — Kepler’s Gardens Project
For two years, a shutdown has paralyzed public life. Cafés stand abandoned, and obscure avatars lurk around corners, perhaps ready to tell a story if you approach them carefully. The only place where something seems to be happening is the theater. Live music, an atmosphere akin to an opening ceremony, an array of bizarre characters — and then there’s this rumor about someone reconstructing an exact replica of Notre Dame on the stage over the years. What’s going on in this digital liminal space? What is real here, and what is still virtual? They say all this might have something to do with a house that disappeared and whose inhabitants are now untraceable. Is it time to uncover the mystery?
Das HOUSE 0.2 offers insights into the records, notes, and memories surrounding M., one of the former inhabitants of this house, who went into the house and vanished there. His fiancée A. attempts to make sense of this archive of loss, hoping to find perhaps a clue or even a trace of M.’s whereabouts.
Das HOUSE by minuseins is an invitation into an atmospheric and enigmatic intermediate world. The project begins with an explorable teaser and public test run, and later, the project is to be continued as a theatrical VR series. The core question of the project is always: How does community work online? How does digital co-presence function? What disappears in the process? The aura, the presence, the linear story? What new things emerge instead? The possibilities of research, the otherwise impossible spatial combinations, the abolition of death, a theater beyond the laws of nature — and beyond this eternal and miserable causality? Not least: How does contemporary storytelling work on the World Wide Web?
In addition to planning and preparation for Das HOUSE 0.2, the team is responsible for the artistic design of about 30 Ars Electronica-owned VR spaces as well as the technical setup for Mozilla Hubs of Ars Electronica 2020.
Project Credits
- Director & Text: Roman Senkl
- Technical Director: Nils Corte
- 3D Design: Nils Gallist, David Seul, Tobias Wüstefeld, Vincenz Neuhaus
- Music: Harald Günter Kainer
- Audio-Reactive Visuals: Max Schweder
- Narrator: Lisa Schützenberger
- Special Thanks: The entire Ars Electronica team
3. Metaverse Spaces Also Disappear
The 47 Hubs metaverse spaces we shared are currently unavailable because Mozilla’s Hubs service has been discontinued. The DasHouse project’s homepage is also broken. Currently, you can experience it on XRCLOUD. Click the link below to explore:
The intern’s mission was likely to pick out featured projects, and only a portion of the thousands of projects on Hubs were backed up. Despite Mozilla’s continuous reminders to download, many spaces used during the pandemic on Hubs have been lost.
It’s bittersweet to see that online spaces, which are supposed to be permanent, are not. The idea that cheap online spaces could last forever is contradicted by the closure of many metaverse services. Valuable user spaces or spaces created with investment have disappeared as metaverses close. While the internet can’t record everything — it’s costly — so much data is being generated.
Fortunately, DasHouse’s Spoke data was publicly available and released under CCL3.0, allowing us to share it again. I’m considering uploading it to a GitHub repository, but it’s a challenge since the Spoke files use relative paths, requiring file migration work. Managing this alone is challenging. However, being open source means there is always hope, and as long as 빌리버 (Believe) (a VR art project) survives, I believe we can contribute more.
Currently, the only way to ensure permanence is to record data in public repositories. Web3 aimed to offer this permanence, but it’s unclear if Web3 metaverses truly delivered. Like Google’s ambition to record all internet information, we hope to become a service that records web metaverses and spatial web. The web aims for connection, and the strength of connection is survival. XRCLOUD aims to survive.
#Metaverse #WebXR #SpatialWeb
