Is Metaverse the next BIG thing?
First, let’s talk about what the heck Metaverse is! What is Metaverse?
AR and VR have been around for a while now. We’ve all had a chance to learn the potential these technologies can create by now. With these technologies, it became possible to simulate alternative realities: a world that is completely new immersive experiences in different virtual spaces, owning and trading things that don’t exist in real life.
Today, we are talking about taking this concept to the next level: which includes AR, VR, NFTs, Virtual Try-On, and the Blockchain technology: the Metaverse.
In short, Metaverse allows people to have access to virtual spaces, services, and environments that are also created by other users. Meta who showed the commitment to invest 10 billion dollars in developing the Metaverse thinks that there will be a new and more natural way for people to interact with technology and devices. They predict that people will no longer own TV device, as an example, and screen will be replaced by hologram display. There will be no more tapping and typing, but technology will understand what we are trying to achieve with our simple body gestures, simple words or even just thoughts. With tech corporations investing billions of dollars into the project, and more companies joining the movement, Metaverse becoming the next big thing is certain.
( You may find this article talking about what Web 3 is, also interesting!)
Many futurists, folks at Silicon Valley, and tech giant players are working on this concept at full gear, and Meta ( formerly known as Facebook) is the most aggressive one. The company announced that it’s planning to reposition itself to the Metaverse company rather than social media platform company. Mark Zuckerberg expects that the Metaverse will be the place people will be referring to when they just want to meet up with a friend or get together with their families someday. The idea will be still pretty similar to social networking sites, but this time, interactions between the users would happen in what feels like a more 3D environment - with digital avatars, rather than a 2D environment.
Horizon By Meta
Meta is working on something called Horizon World. What is Horizon from Meta? Meta’s Horizon Worlds is a social VR application that lets users explore and engage with the virtual world both by consuming and creating content as a digital avatar. Horizon offers VR spaces with ready-to-use VR building components such as code blocks, sounds, and animation effects to help creators design and create experiences they want in VR. These experiences can be used by other users and the creators reserve the right to their creation. (When it comes to monetization, the revenue generated from these creations still needs to give up a percentage of their revenue. - we can revisit this at a later part of this blog post.) In this virtual world, where experiences, services, and environments are offered in 3D, users' focal point will no longer be on small devices, instead, users will have a sense of presence in the virtual world.
Fortnite Metaverse Concert
Fortnite, a video game published by Epic Games, hosted two large concerts with Marshmello and Travis Scott. The Marshmello concert recorded 10.7 million users in attendees and the Travis Scott concert had 12.3 million users in attendees!!!!
Last year in 2021, the show came back with Aliana Grande as a singer!
How is the Metaverse concert different from the real ones? First and foremost, the artists are digital avatars, and you as an attendee are also a digital avatar. A user goes into a platform like Fortnite one hour before the event starts as a digital avatar and can join the concert. Many describe the level of entertainment experience at the Metaverse concert as remarkable because artists can create performance experiences without dealing with limitations in-laws of physics. The easiest way to get a sense of what it looks like is by watching the video below.
Centralized VS Decentralized Ecosystem
One of the biggest concepts in Web 3 is "decentralization."Metaverse is too new that different entity has different ideas in how it should be governed at this point. So let me explain what the difference is between centralized and decentralized ecosystem.
Centralized Metaverses
In a centralized Metaverse, there is one central authority who has control and ownership over the Metaverse. This central authority has the power to shut down the entire network or decide what the rules should be in this network like how Tiktok for instance has their community guidelines and everybody is expected to follow them as long as they are in their platform. Anyone who decides to go into a centralized Metaverse needs to live within the confines of a centrally controlled space. Users can experience and even create contents in Metaverse, however, they are not able to 100% own the piece of their digital creation meaning, creators still need to pay the host ( intermediary platform ) a percentage of their revenue when they make money with it. Both Horizon and Fortnite fit into this category as of now. Although the CEO of Epic game who owns Fortnite seems to think that Metaverse should not be owned by no 'one company'.
Decentralized Ecosystem
Centrally, a decentralized Metaverse is an open-sourced, shared digital environment where users have the freedom to control their experiences entirely. The rules of the platform are aligned by the community and the platform uses the style of governance called DAO. When it comes to monetization, creators hence own 100% of their creation and revenue and users can even own a piece of digital property in the Metaverse. The example Metaverse will be one by The Sandbox and Decentraland.
What happen now?
For Metaverse to develop, this will not depend only on one company’s effort, but rather we have to keep investing in the necessary essence to build the right foundations and infrastructures. And by necessary essence, they are cryptocurrencies, internet infrastructure, blockchain infrastructure, virtual reality headsets, high tech wearable that supports Metaverse experiences and complementary hardware (Metaverse related devices). Developing the Metaverse will be group efforts, not limiting the efforts required by the tech companies but also artists, designers, architects, bankers, marketing people, and many other professionals. But when we can, in fact, give everything we got to develop Metaverse, the potential is significant and our life will transform into something exciting!