Metaverse: Is it Where Our Second Life begins?
As the metaverse concept continues to enter people’s lives, the feeling that our lives will depend on the virtual digital world grows deeper and deeper.
* What is Metaverse?
The term “metaverse” is not a new idea, it was coined by Neal Stephenson in his novel “Snow Crash” in 1992. In the story, when people put on the goggles worn by the user and gain access to their terminals, they can appear in the meta-universe in various forms of avatars. This concept also appears frequently in subsequent games and movies.
The Metaverse itself is a collection of connected digital worlds, consisting of multiple applications and games that allow you to be part of an online community. For gamers, Second Life has been running a metaverse-like online world for a couple of decades.
Recently, however, with Facebook’s name change to Meta, more and more brands are focusing on the concept and investing a lot of money and resources into it. Here, it brings us to another iteration of the Metaverse concept, Blockchain, and NFTs. The massive rise in the value of bitcoin revealed the immeasurable value of virtual currencies. The world of crypto gaming is also fast approaching and slowly spans another sector altogether. People can have clothes, clean up, items, and other various elements in their virtual worlds and trade virtually with tokens.
* Brands in the Metaverse
Here, let’s start with some companies that combine them with the “meta” concept to get a deeper feeling of this hot trend.
During Disney’s previous quarterly earnings call in November, CEO Bob Chapek confirmed the company’s plan to create its own metaverse, “Our efforts to date are merely a prologue to a time when we’ll be able to connect the physical and digital worlds even more closely, allowing for storytelling without boundaries in our own Disney metaverse, and we look forward to creating unparalleled opportunities for consumers to experience everything Disney has to offer across our products and platforms, wherever the consumer may be.”
Disney has already begun integrating the physical, digital, and virtual worlds to help guests navigate Disney properties and platforms. Its MagicBand+ wrist device allows guests to engage with favorite Disney moments in new ways and discover new interactive experiences.
2. Microsoft
Microsoft announced this week that it was acquiring Activision Blizzard, the maker of video games such as Call of Duty and Candy Crush, in a deal valued at nearly $70 billion. Microsoft said the acquisition was a step toward gaining a foothold in the metaverse.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadelia recently declared on LinkedIn, “The metaverse is here, and it’s not only transforming how we see the world but how we participate in it — from the factory floor to the meeting room.”
This news deeply shocked me at the time. I did not think Microsoft would end up buying Blizzard. Although games are only one aspect of the meta-universe, it is undeniable that games can bring all players together in a world with “no edges and no barriers.” The hybrid world created by the game, where the real and virtual worlds can be separated from each other but affect each other, has a priceless value of benefits. Many players will buy virtual skins, characters, and props in the game, even if they are just a string of codes, but when combined with the characters in the game, they will become another version of themselves in the game with their characteristics. It cannot be denied that the game is one of the biggest bonus industries now.
* Reflection on Metaverse
The iteration of the technology is unstoppable, like the advent of the computer and the rise of Apple. are always voices against the ever-changing lives and unknown technologies. However, refusal to accept and change will always lead to their inability to keep up with the times and difficulty to fit in with the current society. In the movie “Ready Player One,” everyone lives in a mansion or a crowded building regardless of social class. As long as they wear glasses, they can equally appear in the world of “Oasis” in any form you want.
However, this is a romantic fantasy. Many people still think that the metaverse is just a concept that increases the gap between the rich and the poor and makes people waste their time and money on meaningless things. The future is still unknown, whether second life is achievable through virtual worlds or not. But I think the best way to solve this problem is to live every moment in your reality, without betting on anything that will happen and blaming it for it.
To be continued…
