Metaverse: the future of the Internet and the present of video games
An old science fiction utopia emerges in the technology industry.
By Juan Pablo Veiga, Head of Business Planning & Digital Experiences at etermax Brand Gamification
The new buzzword in the tech world, the metaverse, comes from science fiction. From a 1992 novel by Neal Stephenson, to be more precise, in which he talks about a virtual world where people interact, trade and fight through avatars.
For those of us who remember that era, the idea of living in a cyberspace, a second life that mirrors and replaces the one we know, was for a long time a promise and a dystopia. The Internet was either absolutely admirable or absolutely frightening. Perhaps both predictions were true.
The virtual worlds we have
It’s no surprise that this last year and a half of virtuality has made the concept popular. Perhaps for the first time in history we feel the tangible need to share one of these immersive virtual spaces. In this context, the idea of multiverse appeared strongly linked to the world of Gaming this time.
As we mentioned on other occasions, the pandemic made room for and gave visibility to a particular way of playing video games. Gaming was consolidated as a space where we not only go to entertain ourselves, but also meet others and witness memorable moments.
Open-world games, which users can freely explore and modify, took on a new dimension. Hits like Roblox and Minecraft, or the new Animal Crossing: New Horizons, were more than ever a meeting point, especially for young people.
What is interesting is when the tendency to connect and just inhabit the fictional world moves away from the original idea of the game. Fortnite is an emblematic case: it was born as a Battle Royale but now has a Party Royale mode, where players can just hang out. Or maybe watch the premiere of the latest Nolan movie, or the latest J Balvin show. Red Dead Online, the multiplayer sequel to Red Dead Redemption, is also for many an opportunity to get together with friends to fish, hunt and wander the Wild West.
I find those cases interesting since shooters are often considered to make people violent, but what does it say about those suspicions that, even with the option to shoot each other, players still prefer to dance, try on clothes and watch an Ariana Grande concert?
Massive concerts, fashion shows, crowded and intimate events, political campaigns. Anything can happen in a video game, with a reach exponentially enhanced by streaming.
Metaverse and game economy
When we examine the characteristics of these video games, there are traits in their design that are linked to that liveness.
One of them is having a game economy that allows for earning or buying skins, customizations and other collectibles players can use to customize how they appear to others. There are many gamers who don’t pay attention to that, and may even think that cosmetic expenditures are totally useless. Only when we think of games as a metaverse does this desire to express ourselves make sense: the style of an avatar becomes as important as what we look like in real life.
Even the games we make at etermax, which are social but not particularly immersive, have a number of collectibles that are very popular with our users. For example, in Trivia Crack Adventure users can earn pawns and themed frames to express which topics they are most interested in and have more knowledge about in the game board.
And if we are hungry for collectibles, we have to mention the boom of NFTs as a desire to own unique objects in the digital world as well. In fact, this year we launched a limited edition of TriviaTokens. Users of Trivia Crack in the US who won the Cup now have an exclusive collectible.
Another technology race
Fully realizing the metaverse utopia, however, would require us all to participate in the same platform. And as with all the technological utopias we have left, several companies are racing to do it faster and better than the others. Epic Games, Sony and Atari are some of the players that are investing heavily in these developments, but perhaps Facebook is the most notorious case.
In July, Mark Zuckerberg stated that over the next few years the company will “effectively transition from being seen primarily as a social networking company to a metaverse company”, to the point where it just changed its name to Meta. In addition, it was recently announced that 10,000 people will join Facebook’s dedicated metaverse team.
As usual with these things, we can’t predict whether the metaverse will rule our future either. But it all points to it ruling the present of Gaming.
