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.