The “Metaverse” War
A true war between video game companies and tech giants
A perfectly spherical black planet does not really exist and has a circumference of exactly 65,536 km. Surrounding it is a road up to 100 meters wide.
All real estate on the virtual planet is owned by the Computer Association. This association sells plots of land to enterprising programmers.
It is these people who are responsible for the houses, bars, and skyscrapers that line the boulevards.
The avenue is often bustling with people, who are 3D characters.
Some are at work.
Others are dating.
There are people who drive or just walk around..
That’s how sci-fi author Neal Stephenson aptly describes what he calls the “metaverse,” in his high-tech (cyberpunk) science fiction novel “Snow Crash” (1992).
Three decades later, the metaverse – an immersive form of today’s text and image-based internet – is billed as Silicon Valley’s newest “Next Big Thing”.
Microsoft is integrating virtual reality offices and avatars into its remote collaboration software “Teams”.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is so passionate about the concept of the metaverse that on October 28, Mark changed the company’s name to Meta to signal a focus on this new “star”.
Metaverse – Gold Mine
The term Metaverse may be new to many people’s attention, but it’s not a new word, nor is it a term invented by Zuckerberg.
Metaverse is a compound word, combining the prefix ‘meta’ and the word ‘universe’, and is commonly used to describe a virtual universe, accessed using virtual reality (VR) technology. This word was coined by science fiction novelist Neal Stephenson in 1992 in the above work Snow Crash. It depicts a virtual world where people interact with each other through digital avatars.
Metaverse – sounds like a techno-utopia on the West Coast. However, the potential of the metaverse can be seen from the quarterly results released on November 8 of Roblox, an online game company with more than 200 million monthly users. The detailed numbers are as follows: daily players increased to 47.3 million, at a rate of 31% year-over-year, pushing revenue to $509 million.
David Baszucki, co-founder and manager of Roblox, said the company anticipated the metaverse’s rise when the business plan related to it was first created 17 years ago. In 2020, while still privately owned, Roblox was valued at $4 billion. The current value when Roblox is listed on the exchange is $ 68 billion, especially the company’s stock price has increased by more than 60% in the past month.
For metaverse enthusiasts like Matthew Ball, a venture capitalist, online games like Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite, Animal Crossing and World of Warcraft are proof that immersive virtual worlds can become popular and bring huge profits.
According to Newzoo, a market research firm, consumers spent $178 billion on video games in 2020. Besides clearings, many gamers use them to stay in touch with friends far away. They are willing to spend cash on virtual assets in the game. Newzoo reckons that about 75% of the industry’s revenue comes from games that allow the purchase and sale of virtual goods, such as power-ups or costumes for game characters.
Raph Koster, a veteran graphic designer, says the video game industry has been experimenting with virtual worlds for decades, exploring how players use them to socialize, create and run worlds. economy set based on virtual goods.
“Concern fades as each generation’s ambitions run into technical limitations. But now that the topic is heating up again, some metaverse enthusiasts say it’s beneficial,” he said. of all that experience could allow video game companies like Roblox, Epic Games, and Unity to beat the tech giants.”
Republic Realm, a US-based real estate company has spent a record amount of $ 4.3 million to own a digital land lot (Photo: SCMP).
Roblox is both a game and a platform. Similar to how Squarespace provides tools that allow new technologists to create their own websites, Roblox comes with a set of easy-to-use programs that allow players to build and monetize games and experiences. their own 3D.
For example, “Piggy” is a horror game inspired by the cartoon “Peppa Pig” created by the user himself. Or, in “Adopt Me,” users raise, collect, and trade exotic virtual animals. The latest craze is software shows based on “Squid Game,” a Netflix series.
Manuel Bronstein, Roblox’s product manager, said: “Every experience is built by our community. The company takes care of the aftermath, providing the server space and infrastructure to support it. support for user creativity.It has its own currency, called Robux, which is purchased with cash.In fact, users can spend it on an app store that sells equipment. upgrades or accessories like shirts, hats, wings to make their characters stand out.The developers of those virtual items get about 27% off from each sale.
The popularity of the game led to other companies offering the Roblox experience as a marketing strategy – a simple yet effective way to merge the digital world with reality. Users can wander in the virtual version of the Star Court Shopping Center, a location from the Netflix series “Stranger Things.”
In May, a user resold a virtual copy of a real Gucci handbag for around $4,100. On November 15, Roblox announced $10 million in grants to develop educational experiences, including a simulated trip to the International Space Station.
Baszucki isn’t the only boss in the gaming industry with ambitions for the metaverse.
HOW TO MAKE MONEY?
Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, the privately held company that develops “Fortnite,” has been a fan of the metaverse since he wrote “Unreal,” a 3D shooter in 1998.
Like “Roblox”, “Fortnite” – ostensibly a simple action game that was taken as an early example of what the metaverse might look like. Marc Petit – Vice President of Epic said: “We do not consider ‘Fortnite’ to be a metaverse, but a beautiful corner of the metaverse”.
Just like Roblox, Fortnite has achieved a lot in practice. In 2019, Fortnite hosted a battle in cyberspace to promote “Rise of Skywalker” (“Star Wars”).
In July, Ferrari loaded a virtual version of one of its luxury sports cars into the game for players to directly use. It doesn’t quite resemble the image of traitorous hackers racing virtual in the “black desert of the electronic night”.
The virtual world “Fortnite” is known for its applications in the music industry. In 2020, Travis Scott, a rapper, put on a virtual concert – using the power of digital to do things that no other kind of craft can do in reality. Travis Scott’s giant virtual figure surrounded by lightning bolts, dances through the game’s stained universe, shaking the ground with every step. Around 12.3 million people attended the concert, about 60 times as many as could attend the major Glastonbury music festival.
The second target in Epic’s strategy, besides “Fortnite” is competition with Unity, a financial company founded in Denmark in 2004 and listed last year.
Initially, both companies sold sophisticated software “engines” designed to power video games. Now they are touting them as part of general-purpose simulation software that they hope will become a common language in building 3D worlds, in the same way that HTML underpins web pages.
Some of them have achieved their goals. For example, architecture firms use them to build virtual versions of buildings to engage clients before construction. Some use them to help with project management. The partnership between Epic and Cesium, a startup that specializes in mapping cities and landscapes, allows virtual replicas of real cities like Melbourne or Detroit to be fed into Unreal, the engine that powers for “Fortnite”.
Mr Ball pointed out that much of the movie “The Mandalorian” (“Star Wars”), was shot in a virtual world created by Unreal. Since they were built with the same software, audiences were free to explore most of these sets. This is a super twist in terms of charging fans for studio tours.
Unity recently paid $1.6 billion to Weta Digital, a visual effects studio founded by Peter Jackson, to direct the “Lord of the Rings” movie, for special effects. Metacast revealed: a piece of software designed to stream sports events into the virtual world. The company showed off a mixed match that viewers could watch from all angles – even the perspective of one of the gladiators.
Can game companies compete with tech giants? That is still the big question.
Meta’s annual revenue, at $86 billion in 2020, is only half the size of the entire gaming industry. But Ball points out that major changes in technology often lead to the rise of new competitors despite the efforts of old incumbents. And, in addition to experience, the early game industry was filled with willing people, with whom the virtual world became an established cultural norm.
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