All About Metaverse

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The Metaverse essentially is a digital world where your avatar can meet others – on a more personalized level. It goes beyond a video call which makes it more real than a social media feed. You don’t just get to catch up on what others are doing, but you can meet them in real-time. In addition, you don’t have to start all over again; instead, you catch up on whatever’s happening around you i.e., play games, work, shop, go to concerts, and more. All of this can be true, but only after the metaverse has come into existence – for now, it is just a concept.

What Metaverse is at the moment?

While the metaverse is not in existence right now, we do have some predecessors that will be a part of the concept.

1.    Virtual Reality

A lot of people already confuse virtual reality with what the metaverse is. While virtual reality and other kinds of spatial computing are meant to be included in the metaverse, it is more than just that. It will be used through a plethora of devices; it won’t be something you log into and out of whenever you feel like it, it will be with you throughout your day in your phone, AR, and VR glasses.

2.    Roblox & Fortnite

These games have a high fan base already and what’s marvelous is that they are often termed as incarnations of what the metaverse is. They are also social spheres online, which feature avatars and live events – not only online games. However, both the games are exclusive and do not share a common online space or business model.

Apart from these, the metaverse will have the following characteristics:

•    Persistence: This is essentially the continuity factor i.e., it never ends or pauses but goes on indefinitely.

•    Synchroneity: This points to the pre-scheduled events as they take place in the real life. It will also be life or in “real-time”.

•    No cap for users: Anyone can be a part of it at the same time as everyone else and with their sense of presence.

•    Real Economy: It will consist of businesses with the aim of selling, investing, buying. Your work will be recognized and valued just like in the real life.

•    A mix of the physical and digital life: It will be an amalgamation of private and public experiences in both the digital and real worlds.

•    Inter-operability: You will be able to use features or services of one app on another.  

•    Content-creation: There will be a variety of content producers creating the metaverse experience. They will not only be individuals but also commercially focused businesses.

What the Metaverse is not?

The metaverse is often incorrectly classified as:

1.    A “virtual world” – AI-based games online have existed for a while with characters in real-time. These, however, are not the same as metaverse as meta is a Greek word for beyond. So metaverse stands for a universe beyond; hence it is not designed for one purpose as the online games are.

2.    A “virtual space” – Second Life kind of content is often labeled as models of metaverses because they are devoid of gaming goals, have online hangouts, have synchronous features, and have digital avatars that represent real-life humans. That being said, they are still not enough to be classified as metaverses.

3.    Virtual Reality – as mentioned above, virtual reality will be used for metaverse, its ability to give a false presence in the digital world still does not qualify as a metaverse.

4.    New App Store – The metaverse is not another way of opening apps, nor is it enabled by adding on a VR headset. The metaverse is different from the online architecture we see around social media.

5.    UGC Platform – It is also not another platform like YouTube, which allows anyone to share or create content and become viral. It is a place that gives room to business to conduct business with the help of unit economies and the likes.

Why is there no Metaverse as of now?

The idea of a metaverse sounds great and all, but there is one primary reason why we still don’t have it as yet:

It is not one unified service as of now; it is still a collection of many services that can be joined together with the help of connectors. This is necessary as people need to be able to get from one destination to the other. Second Life, another online avatar-based community, is not a metaverse either. Since all apps on the internet are not connected, the creation of a metaverse is much more complicated.

Building the metaverse will take time and many new technologies and innovations for it to work. Moreover, it won’t come into existence overnight. It will slowly evolve with time as more and more services, capabilities, and products are integrated into it. However, it will require three elements that help it come into existence. These are concurrency infrastructure, standards and protocols, and lastly, the “on-ramp” experience – along with a game plan.