Remember last year when 12 million players virtually attended Travis Scott concert last year in Fornite? A digital version of Scott was fully-animated to help script a 10-minute concert performance. The effort was praised amongst netizens and virtual thrill seekers around the globe. This seems to be a prologue to previous virtual interactive games but with the addition of mass interaction through VR enablement.
Image credits: The Verge
Consider it as an embodied internet, where instead of viewing content – you are in it. And you feel present with other people as if you were in other places, having different experiences that you couldn’t do on a 2D app or webpage.
Image Credits: Business Insider
The word Metaverse coined by Neal Stephenson in 1992 novel “Snow Crash” which talks about a dystopian exploration of then-futuristic technologies: mobile computing, virtual reality, wireless internet, digital currency, smartphones, and augmented-reality headsets. The book which is widely hailed amongst top brass of Silicon valley are now competing to convert this idea into commercialization. Last few months the valley has been buzzing with the Meta talk but its only a matter of time when conceptualization will become a reality when brands and tech giants step in. Here’s a look into recent developments around the tech world:
Facebook:
Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that Facebook will be a Metaverse company in 5 years. Their project called Horizon which would offer a Multi-Platform support for not just AR/VR but also PC, and also mobile devices and gaming consoles. This platform will hosts concerts, AAA games and an economy. While there is still a room for lot of improvement in the word of VR, interoperability, portability and digital governance, this is where tech companies like Roblox and Epic Games are stepping up the game.
Image Credits: www.editoy.com
While some might argue that this initiative might be a distraction of the company’s current problems such as facing backlash from the antitrust laws and Section 230 bills approved by the U.S senate that would hit Facebook hard in coming times due to their involvement in autogenerating pages for white supremacist groups. Others suggest that Facebook has a history of doing these kinds of technical projects when it comes under heavy criticism under their lack of social responsibility.
Roblox:
Gaming company which recently went public in Mar, 2021 having over $38 billion in valuation has a real long-term goal to build a metaverse where millions of users can gather to take part in games, meetings, collaborative work and even Roblox’s own virtual economy fueled by its own currency Robux.
Roblox Metaverse supported games. Website image credits: Roblox.com
Epic Games:
The company behind the popular shooting game Fortnite, has its own sights set on creating a metaverse. The platform which regularly welcomes 250 million users on its database (roughly the same size of snapchat userbase). They are known to keep their members interested and entertained. Apart from the Travis Scott concert, the developers have previously hosted Marshmello and Star Wars tie-in events on their platform.
Image credits: www.gamerevolution.com
Microsoft:
The cash loaded giant was involved in a purchase of Minecraft developer Mojang in 2014 for $2.5 billion, suggesting they have their plans locked and loaded and we might see some announcements from them soon.
Image credits: www.evilcontrollers.com
It is true, no single company can bring in a change and revolutionize a radical change in the internet with the induction of Metaverse. It has to be a collective effort and there needs to be a commercial interest tied for the developers. But the real success lies with the acceptance of a user who is able to benefit from a community of creators, commerce, computing platforms and much more.
#SBPTech
#SBPAwareness
Information sources:
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-07-metaverse-internet-revolution.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52410647
https://uploadvr.com/zuckerberg-facebook-metaverse-company-vergecast/
