Metaverse: a huge potential audience of virtual worlds

What is your defin­i­tion of the metaverse?

Juli­en Pil­lot. A com­monly accep­ted defin­i­tion of a meta­verse is that of a fusion between vir­tu­al worlds which integ­rate spaces/zones anchored in real­ity. Today, we could even talk about meta­verses (plur­al), because there are already poten­tially sev­er­al in exist­ence that could fit that descrip­tion. Roblox or Fort­nite, for example, are examples of first gen­er­a­tion meta­verses. Fort­nite is primar­ily a Battle Roy­ale game; a very pop­u­lar game genre, which is a mix of shoot­ing and sur­viv­al based on the prin­ciple of “last man stand­ing”. Alone or in teams, a hun­dred play­ers fight each oth­er online to be the last on remain­ing. In addi­tion to battle aren­as, there is a social uni­verse that con­tin­ues to exist, with over 350 mil­lion registered accounts in 2020.

In this 100% digit­al uni­verse, the design­ers can open up space for oth­er developers – com­pan­ies or third-party brands – to design add-on mod­ules anchored in the real world. For example, Fortnite’s pub­lish­er, Epic Games, reg­u­larly organ­ises social events along­side its game. These include con­certs by glob­al music stars like Trav­is Scott attract­ing 27 mil­lion unique play­ers or Ariana Grande with 78 mil­lion view­ers. They are built on real­ity because these vir­tu­al con­certs, before being digit­ised by Fortnite’s developers, were estab­lished, and cho­reo­graphed by real artists, who spec­tat­ors could go and see on a phys­ic­al stage. Yet, the event is tak­ing place in a vir­tu­al uni­verse, and it is the play­er­’s vir­tu­al avatars who are attend­ing the con­cert instead. That’s what the meta­verse is all about.

Will it be easy to travel between the dif­fer­ent mod­ules of a metaverse?

Any­thing it pos­sible, actu­ally, because today the meta­verse is more of a vis­ion than a real­ity. The real meta­verse, the fantasy that many gamers and game developers have been liv­ing with for dec­ades, is linked to vir­tu­al real­ity. To enter this dream meta­verse, you would have to put on a vir­tu­al real­ity head­set with cap­ab­il­it­ies for sens­ory and immer­sion that are obvi­ously mul­ti­plied. And in this vir­tu­al uni­verse, you could have dif­fer­ent social exper­i­ences, some of which would be anchored in reality.

Why not vis­it a museum that has been com­pletely digit­ised? Why not go to a shop where your avatar could try on T‑shirts, dresses, jeans that actu­ally exist in the real world and that you could order to be delivered at home? Or con­versely, why not ima­gine that the T‑shirt you have just bought in a phys­ic­al shop could be digit­ised to equip your digit­al avatar as well? A par­al­lel eco­nomy could be set up, as well as a cer­tain form of soci­et­al organ­isa­tion and oth­er institutions.

How does this dif­fer from a past exper­i­ment that was both a suc­cess and a fail­ure, namely Second Life?

Second Life, a life sim­u­la­tion that appeared in 2003, is really the first attempt at a meta­verse. The ini­tial ambi­tion of the developers was to cre­ate, right down to the name of the game, a vir­tu­al exper­i­ence altern­at­ive to real life in which play­ers would be giv­en total free­dom to build the uni­verse. But it remained in the infancy stage because the tech­no­lo­gies of the time, which were not very sens­ory or exper­i­en­tial, were too lim­ited and the game has not aged well.

The idea of the major digit­al play­ers today, namely Face­book, is to design – in the long-term – a sort of Second Life, but with all the tech­no­lo­gic­al power of today, prob­ably with great­er con­trol over the degree of free­dom giv­en to play­ers, and a clearly estab­lished BtoB com­mer­cial rela­tion­ship with the mod­ule developers. Behind this, we can ima­gine pay­ment sys­tems in digit­al cur­rency, and finally, the cre­ation of a real par­al­lel eco­nomy with­in this meta­verse, which Second Life has not been able to fully achieve.

In a way, with Second Life, we had the smell of the meta­verse, but we did not yet have the taste. The cur­rent vis­ions of meta­verses make us sal­iv­ate, but they will not reach matur­ity for many years. The tech­no­lo­gic­al leap and invest­ments needed are colossal. We can expect the first large tech­nic­al demon­strat­ors, neces­sar­ily lim­ited to one type of exper­i­ence in par­tic­u­lar, to arrive quickly. Not­ably, Face­book’s Hori­zon Workrooms.

Since the com­puter revolu­tion, video games have often played the role of medi­at­ing new tech­no­lo­gies to the gen­er­al public.

This is nor­mal because video games have become main­stream enter­tain­ment and a medi­um in their own right. This means that today, the video game has replaced the cinema in the hearts of many vis­ion­ar­ies as a vehicle for innov­a­tion. Invest­ments in video games in the broad­est sense are now colossal. They cre­ate a way to fund innov­a­tion with the cre­ation of pro­to­types to be tested on the gen­er­al public.

It is the lead­ing cul­tur­al industry in terms of value. Of course, there may always be more people listen­ing to music than play­ing video games. But this does not mean that the chal­lenges in terms of innov­a­tion, in terms of tech­no­logy, in terms of industry, in terms of employ­ment if we take the logic to its logic­al con­clu­sion, are not focused on the video game sec­tor. Espe­cially since video games also have tech­no­phile play­ers who are poten­tial early users. For innov­at­ive com­pan­ies, this soci­ology of gamers is a real boon for test­ing their new value pro­pos­i­tions before mak­ing them known to the gen­er­al public.

Why is the meta­verse in vogue?

Let’s start by say­ing that it’s a buzzword because mar­keters have seized upon it. This cir­cuit is often found in the eco­nom­ics of innov­a­tion. The term has become estab­lished as long as mar­ket­ing people are inter­ested in it, and they are inter­ested because they sense that, firstly, there is a com­mu­nic­a­tion budget to be spent and, secondly, that there is a mar­ket behind it. If there is no imme­di­ate mar­ket, then some­times the buzzword falls into dis­use, driv­en out by the new fash­ion. But this does not mean that the ori­gin­al concept has dis­ap­peared and that the com­pan­ies involved in devel­op­ing the con­cepts and tech­no­lo­gies do not con­tin­ue to work. Behind the meta­verse, there is above all a tech­no­lo­gic­al vis­ion, a fantasy fuelled by vis­ion­ar­ies of the video game, and of the digit­al world at large. Hence its grow­ing pop­ular­ity, well sup­por­ted by the media and eco­nom­ic power of its biggest ambas­sad­ors, led by Face­book, Microsoft and Tencent.