Unless you have been spending the last few years on an uninhabited island without wifi, you have definitely heard terms like Metaverse, Crypto and NFT being bandied about. And if (unfortunately) your first introduction to the Metaverse, was when Facebook changed the company's name to Meta and Mark Zuckerberg released that 80 min vision video, then you have missed out on how the virtual world has been metamorphosing itself in crazy ways over the last few years. And it continues to do so everyday.
You can easily be forgiven for thinking of all these developments as a passing fad, a giant ponzi scheme or a bubble which will eventually burst. Many others do too. You can also be forgiven for adopting a wait and watch attitude. "Let's see, what happens", you might say. This too is fine - not everyone has be an early adopter.
However, unless you want to sound like a reincarnated dinosaur at your next get together with friends, you should start at least familiarizing yourself with what exactly is this stuff that everyone is talking about.
This blog aims to help you wrap your head (and mine too) around all that is going on, and hopefully even get to understand why people are spending millions of dollars of real money buying digital land and other possessions in the virtual world. So let's get started.
First, what the heck is a metaverse. Notice, I am using the words a metaverse and not the Metaverse, as it is very often called. This is just to emphasise the fact that there is not just one all encompassing metaverse, but rather there are several metaverses (Once you know this, it doesn't matter whether you use 'a' or 'the'). It's not even one innovation or even one technology. It is just a term assigned to a loose interplay between trends in people's behaviour in the digital world, and the technologies that are driving and in turn being driven by these behaviours. These trends and technologies however, have certain distinguishing common characteristics.
In geekspeak, a metaverse is a set of interconnected, experiential, immersive 3D virtual world where people located anywhere can socialize, transact, work and play in real-time to form persistent, user-owned experiences, spanning the digital and physical worlds.
This is certainly a bit of a mouthful. So let's simplify it.
Imagine that man has been bestowed with god like powers of creation. And an adventurous guy (let's call him Dick) one day creates a planet very close to our Earth.
As the creator of his planet Dick is free to set the rules, the ways of life and even the monetary currency on his planet. But there is no fun for him if he is the only person who is there. So, Dick invites real people back on Earth to come visit his planet. Obviously, Dick can't send the people physically there. But with rapidly advancing technologies Dick can get people to experience things in ways which are not too different from the way things are done on earth.
In fact, to make his planet attractive to visitors, and to persuade them to stay longer, life on the planet must be engaging and also rewarding. To do this Dick creates ways in which they can play, buy stuff, party, hang around with friends, visit museums, laze in the park, go to concerts, work, have meetings, make money and do lots of other things one does in daily life back on Earth.Visitors should be engaged enough to make them (or rather their virtual 'alter egos' or avatars) 'travel' to and from the planet regularly. Once their alter ego is back on earth it merges with their real self. And soon, as people get used to switching between their real self and their 'alter ego', frequently and for extended periods, the distinction between the two lives starts to blur and people get very comfortable with switching from one to the other seamlessly. They start visiting the metaverse more often and stay for longer, living what has got termed as Metalives. This blurring and seamless switching with comfort is the essence of metaverse. In the words of Emma Chiu of Wunderman Thomson Intelligence, a metaverse is "... a place where our digital and physical lives converge; creativity is limitless; and location-defying worlds bring people together."
Take a quick look at the home page of Dick's actual metaverse - Decentraland - but don't start exploring it just yet. You will get lost in its bylanes. Just have a glance and come back here to the blog. (In fact do this for all the links in the blog. Go there, take a quick look and once you get the gist of the place, make sure you come back here to my story). By now the word has spread. Dick's friend Sandy is a huge gamer - so he sets up his own metaverse, and calls it Sandbox. Then along comes Mark and announces his own version called Meta. And now the snowball is really rolling and everyone wants to be a part of the ride.
While you were glancing at these sample metaverses, you would have realised that, while the scope of a Metaverse can be very vast and varied, these early setups are focused more on gaming, digital creative content and virtual commerce.
It's easy to see why Gaming is the low hanging fruit for a metaverse. First, any activity in the metaverse, at some level, seems to be like a game. As any avid gamer will tell you, that while playing, their immersion into game setup is total. Their actions and emotions are no different than that they would feel when playing or watching a physical game. Gamers are therefore in a sense already primed for the experience of a metaverse. Secondly the hardware of game controllers that they use and are familiar with provides for easier, better and more realistic ways for them to control their interactions in the metaverse, than other devices such mobiles or desktops can.
The pioneer in this field, Epic Games, focused their Unreal Game Engine to power the gaming community into their metaverse. Nothing exemplifies the seamless blending of the gaming world and the real world better than the surreal concert tours of American rapper Travis Scott and that of singer Ariana Grande, that were hosted in the virtual gaming space of Epic Game's hugely popular game - Fortnite - earlier this year. For their really unique performances for the millions of Fortnite gamers, the singers were reportedly paid $20m each. That's serious money even for American singers. Millions of fans bought tickets and 'gaming merchandise' to 'interact' live with these superstars. They could control the moves and gyrations (called emotes) of their avatars and do a hundred other things, which gave them a surreal, surrogate but realistic feeling of being in a real concert. For gamers who anyway are primed to feel immersed in their game surroundings it was first-of-a-lifetime experience. The paybacks for Epic were equally huge. How else could they have performed for a million people at the same time. The company earned an undisclosed figure which people are guesstimating to be in excess of a billion dollars. More importantly, it created a new performance venue category for not only the gaming world but also for the live music performance industry.
Forget superstars entertaining digital avatars for a minute, the blending of the real with the virtual becomes really complete when you get to know that, the biggest singing sensation in China today, is not an actual person, but a holographic image. This image (nicknamed Luo Tianyi) holds real physical concerts for real people. She 'sings' using a voice where every note has been synthesised digitally using vocaloid technology. She has millions of fans on the internet and in her country. This digital asset is, by herself, a multibillion dollar industry. She also is brand ambassador of fast food giant, KFC.
After gaming, the next big change happening is in the field of creative content creation. Today's creators do not necessarily create for others to consume. They also create for others to create further. Their creations get used by others in imaginative ways. Therefore the earlier paradigms, of what constitutes creativity and art, have to be recalibrated.
Among the several things driving this trend, is the omnipresence of the camera in all digital devices coupled with Augmented Reality (AR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
As Carolina Navas of Snapchat puts it succinctly "The camera is no longer a piece of hardware to commemorate special moments. It has evolved into a powerful software connecting digital experiences to the physical world..... Gen Z and Gen Alpha (ie those born after 1997) have grown up with a camera constantly in their palms... for them camera is what a keyboard is to the previous generation".
The driving force of this change are AR and XR technologies. 80% of Snapchat's 265 million users play with AR everyday. For these users AR is not an experiment - it's a daily habit. But AR with a camera is today not used merely to put cute filters on your display pics but it has pervaded every hour of their digital lives.
Businesses targeting these audiences use these technologies to build interactive experiences of their physical products, stores or services. AR shopping, curated virtual store experiences, or digital pre purchase try-ons of apparel, cosmetics and many other applications of AR enabled overlays are no longer a novelty (Example : Dior SnapLens for the B27 Sneaker).
During the pandemic, L'Oreal introduced their first ever virtual makeup line for only digital use during video calls. (Aside : "You can now sport a fully made up look while attending the 9 am zoom meeting while you are still in your pajamas feeling groggy and then have a different makeup on for the following 9:30 call. How cool is that !").
Even physical stores are being enhanced with virtual experiences. Checkout the Adidas's Adiverse - A Virtual Display Wall in their flagship stores.
AR enabled Digital fashion is another emerging trend. Considering that the number of times others see your digital personas (your Avatars, Emotes, Profile pics etc) how your digital self is dressed could become as important as your own physical appearance. This transition has already begun. The Fabricant, a digital only couture fashion house, believes clothing does not have to be physical to exist. Several others luxury brands like Auroboros and DressX have launched digital only couture collections.
A few months back Epic Games also launched a new AR based software called "Metahumans", which makes it really easy to create human faces digitally or to manipulate existing ones. Check out just a couple of minutes of this really long tutorial of the software and you'll realise how easy they have made the process. Next, watch a couple of minutes of this short animated film made using this software. I'm no expert, but I have a feeling that this software may be the next big thing for animators worldwide - specially for those who animate for gaming or for use in the metaverse.
And hot off the press is the news that, just this week, Nike announced the acquisition of RTFKT, a digital footwear maker. This marks Nike's first big step into the world of metaverse.
I would be totally failing in my duty if in the context of this blog, I didn't mention the initiatives of our own company-Aptech. Aptech, as you may know, is a major training provider operating in over 30 countries. In three of its business lines (Arena Animation, MAAC and ProAlley) it focuses on training freshers and working professionals who are seeking to make their careers in the fields of Animation, Visual Effects, XR and Gaming. Three years back, training material for Arena and MAAC was converted into AR enabled content. Students in their classrooms or at home learn not through plain pdf books but through motion enabled augmented images, sounds and videos. This leads to not only a more interesting learning experience but far better learning outcomes. To the best of my information Aptech still remains the only major training provider, which not only teaches students how to develop AR content but actually uses AR for teaching them these skills.
Checkout a live recording of the AR enabled learning content at Arena and MAAC. (This is a 2019 video. As I write this blog, we are just 4 days away from unveiling a completely revamped AR enabled content , which will take the students' learning experience to the next level. I will edit this link once that has been unveiled, and I have a demo link ready).
Hopefully, you now understand what a metaverse is and what are some of the related emerging trends. But we still haven't got to the really quirky parts of what motivates people to have virtual possessions, such as land, and why (and how) do they buy and sell on a metaverse. For that we will need to get into consumer psychology in the digital world and also into the world of NFTs and Cryptocurrencies. I will try and give you a flavour of that in Part 2 of this blog.
Like I said at the beginning of this blog, whether you yourself go into a metaverse or not, it is imperative for you to understand it, just to stay literate in the digital world of today and tomorrow.
If you are still reading this, I presume that you have found this useful and interesting. I would love to get a confirmation or a comment from you.
Looking forward to your feedback.
Anuj Kacker
