What is the metaverse?

The metaverse: Companies like Facebook, Microsoft, and Google see it as the future of the Internet. What was born as an idea from science fiction has long since become reality. The metaverse is more than just virtual reality, augmented reality, extended reality, or cy­ber­space - it’s all of those things at once.

At the moment, there’s not one un­am­bigu­ous defin­i­tion of the word. Rather, there are dis­cus­sions about what the metaverse could be, what it’s not, what it should be, what it has to be, and what comes along with it. If you ask Matthew Ball, whose essays about the metaverse made big waves in 2020, the metaverse is a ‘massively scaled and in­ter­op­er­able network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds which can be ex­per­i­enced syn­chron­ously and per­sist­ently by an ef­fect­ively unlimited number of users with an in­di­vidu­al sense of presence, and with con­tinu­ity of data, such as identity, history, en­ti­tle­ments, objects, com­mu­nic­a­tions, and payments’. (Source: https://www.mat­thew­ball.vc/all/for­wardtothemeta­versep­rimer)

Even though big tech CEOs like Mark Zuck­er­berg (Facebook), Satya Nadella (Microsoft), and Jen-Hsun Huang (Nvidia) are investing billions into it, the metaverse is still just a thought ex­per­i­ment. Nev­er­the­less, it has a couple of dis­tin­guish­ing features that set it apart from the Internet and tech­no­lo­gies like augmented reality, extended reality, and virtual reality. Matthew Ball em­phas­ises that it’s not just an extension of the Internet but a com­pletely new form of computing. In the metaverse, digital spaces don’t exist parallel to ‘reality’ - instead, they are a fusion of cy­ber­space, virtual reality, and the physical world. Mark Zuck­er­berg calls it the ‘embodied internet’, which users don’t just look at on a screen but actually inhabit. (Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/tech­no­logy-57942909)

All that being said, we can already say that the metaverse has the following char­ac­ter­ist­ics:

• Per­sist­ent, limitless 3D spaces that are rendered in real time, where users can move freely as
• avatars
• Col­lect­ive 3D spaces in which users explore, create, play, work, make con­nec­tions, and do
• business, without being in the same physical space with each other
• Companies don’t ‘own’ the metaverse, since it’s col­lect­ively shared technical in­fra­struc­ture
• Users can create virtual rooms that are freely ac­cess­ible to other users across devices and
• systems
• Extended and mixed reality
• tech­no­lo­gies are used and enable in­ter­ac­tions between digital and real spaces, e.g. VR goggles, virtual as­sist­ants, smart/voice user in­ter­faces (VUI), neural chips, machine learning, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and ar­ti­fi­cial neural networks
• Com­pat­ible virtual and real cur­ren­cies come together to form a unified economy for digital
• and physical spaces
• A totality of virtual and physical spaces requires com­pat­ible technical standards, protocols,
• in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity, digital property, block­chain tech­no­lo­gies, and uniform laws

For science fiction fans, tech­no­lo­gic­al in­nov­a­tions like smart­phones, smart glasses, and iPods didn’t come as a surprise. Ray Bradbury already described wireless earpods and portable media players in ‘Fahren­heit 451’ (1953). Virtual as­sist­ants like Alexa and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence already appeared in science fiction novels like ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (1968). Tablets, smart­phones, video calls, robots - the world of the 21st century is filled with tech­no­lo­gies that used to be nothing more than fantasies and fiction.

The same is true of the metaverse. The term first appeared in Neal Steph­en­son’s 1992 novel ‘Snow Crash’, but the idea itself is much older. The merging and in­ter­ac­tion of reality with virtual 3D spaces comes up in the cyberpunk genre from the 1980s and in modern films like ‘The Matrix’ (1999) and ‘Ready Player One’ (2018). But now the metaverse isn’t just fiction - there are already concrete examples of it.

The 3D online platform Second Life has been around since 2003. In it, users can move around in self-made virtual rooms, create contacts, do business, com­mu­nic­ate, and play games. Second Life was developed by Linden Lab as an open source platform and had around a million users in 2013. SL isn’t an online game in the true sense of the word, since there isn’t any ‘goal’ or any way of ‘winning’ or ‘losing’. Moreover, numerous companies such as Microsoft, Intel, IBM, and Adidas run ‘in-world’ shops, which demon­strates the pos­sib­il­it­ies for virtual marketing. Now more than 18 years old, Second Life is one of the earliest versions of a rudi­ment­ary, prac­tic­ally im­ple­men­ted metaverse.

Massively mul­ti­play­er online games like Fortnite, World of Warcraft (WoW), Minecraft, Roblox, and Final Fantasy XIV are wildly popular. MMOs consist of virtual, per­sist­ent worlds that thousands of users use at once. The various MMOs differ from each other in terms of concept and genre - there are online role play games, strategy games, and virtual bat­tle­fields. Users of games like WoW or Final Fantasy XIV move in skins or avatars through them­at­ic­ally limited online worlds, play in real time with other users from around the world, buy virtual objects with real money, and follow pre-defined game campaigns or campaigns of their own.

In sandbox MMOs like Minecraft, Roblox, and Animal Crossing, players can create virtual spaces with relative freedom and interact with other users. Since MMOs are them­at­ic­ally limited and generally don’t overlap with physical spaces, they still haven’t crossed over into the realm of the metaverse. This could change if MMOs become connected and users can move between different MMO rooms with their avatars.

The metaverse isn’t just a promising new space for users. It also opens up new pos­sib­il­it­ies for e-commerce. The corona crisis has shown how flexibly a connected world can react to re­stric­tions on contact. The live analysis of user data, online shopping, and crypto­cur­ren­cies like Bitcoin come with the promise of new marketing strategies, including the chance to expand customer groups, create brand vis­ib­il­ity, and interact directly with customers worldwide.

When social digital spaces are no longer limited to apps, web addresses and in­ter­faces such as smart­phones and laptops, ad­vert­ising and marketing campaigns will move far beyond targeted ads, keyword analysis, brand building, and social media marketing. One example is concerts and events, which are now happening in virtual spaces due to pandemic re­stric­tions. Other examples include digital equi­val­ents of real locations and products, which enable online open houses, virtual dressing rooms, and digital in­spec­tions (e.g. of used cars).

Facebook CEO Mark Zuck­er­berg is one of the biggest advocates of and investors in the metaverse. In 2021, he announced plans to transform Facebook into a metaverse company. Facebook recently provided 50 million dollars (36 million pounds) in funding to the XR Program and Research Fund in order to advance research and de­vel­op­ment programs on the metaverse in the next two years. This includes studies on the potential of augmented reality wearables like Facebook Reality Labs’ smart glasses. According to Facebook, the metaverse is the new ‘computing platform’. This is why the tech giant invests an estimated 5 billion dollars (almost 4 billion pounds) annually in the de­vel­op­ment of found­a­tion­al tech­no­lo­gies.

Facebook’s biggest metaverse project is called Horizon Workrooms and focusses on the ‘Metaverse for Work’. Currently available in a beta version of the Oculus app, it supports new forms of the hybrid work model. Horizon users can work together as avatars with co-workers from other places in a virtual con­fer­ence room. This offers pos­sib­il­it­ies for remote training programs and customer service. With an estimated 3 billion active users per month, Facebook is the biggest social media company in the world. The ‘Metaverse for Work’ is thus the first step towards a world in which users interact, create, play, and shop in the metaverse, without having to share physical space.