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Metaverses: the Internet beyond is here

2021-08-12T10:11:24.383Z


They are virtual worlds where people meet, play, have fun, spend and even earn money. John herrman Kellen Browning 08/12/2021 6:01 AM Clarín.com Live Updated 08/12/2021 6:01 AM Often times the most important ideas of technology are introduced into the vocabulary before they are really coherent. The jargon appears out of nowhere, poorly explained and overused: the internet of things, the sharing economy, the cloud. It was once the web, do you remember? Get ready now because the


John herrman

Kellen Browning

08/12/2021 6:01 AM

  • Clarín.com

  • Live

Updated 08/12/2021 6:01 AM

Often times the most important ideas of technology are introduced into the vocabulary before they are really coherent.

The jargon appears out of nowhere, poorly explained and overused: the internet of things, the sharing economy, the cloud.

It was once the web, do you remember?

Get ready now because the "metaverse" is coming

.

The term comes from digital antiquity: it was coined by writer Neal Stephenson in his novel

Snow Crash

, (1992) and later reimagined as the Oasis by Ernest Cline in the novel (later film)

Ready Player One

.

It refers to

a fully realized digital world that exists beyond the analog we live in

.

In fiction, a utopian metaverse can be represented as a new frontier where social norms and value systems can be rewritten, freed from all cultural and economic sclerosis.

But more often than not, metaverses are a bit dystopian:

virtual havens from a world gone down

.

As a technical term, the metaverse (meta-universe shrinkage) refers to

a variety of experiences, environments, and virtual assets

that gained momentum during the online shift of virtually everything during the pandemic.

Together, these new technologies point to what the Internet will become in the future.

Video games like Roblox or Fortnite

, in which players can build their own worlds, have meta-transversal tendencies, as do most social networks.

If you have a non-fungible token (NFT) or even just a cryptocurrency, you are already part of the metaversal experience

.

Virtual reality and augmented reality are, at the very least, adjacent metaverse.

If you participated in a work meeting or party using a digital avatar, you are in the neighborhood of meta-versatility.

Business founders, investors, futurologists, and executives have tried to vindicate the metaverse by exposing its potential for social connection, experimentation, entertainment, and most of all, profit.

Prolific essayist and venture capitalist Matthew Ball describes the metaverse not as a virtual world or space, but as

"a kind of successor state to the mobile Internet

,

"

a framework for an extremely connected life.

Fortnite was defined as a social space by its creators.

We want as many people as possible to be able to experience virtual reality and be able to jump into the metaverse and have these social experiences in it.


Mark Zuckerberg

“There will be no clear 'before the metaverse' or a clear 'after the metaverse,'” he writes.

"Instead, that will emerge slowly over time as different products, services, and capabilities are integrated and merged."

Speaking to the CNET multimedia site, Mark Zuckerberg shared his Facebook-centric vision: "We want as many people as possible to be able to experience virtual reality and be able to jump into the metaverse and have these social experiences in it," he said, referring to Experimental virtual reality environment from the company Horizon, which hopes people will explore using Facebook's Oculus headsets.

In an interview with the technology site VentureBeat, Jensen Huang, CEO of computer chip maker Nvidia, shared a vision more than an idea:

"We can almost feel that we are there, along with the others

.

"

If this all sounds too heady, the following may help for now:

the metaverse is the internet, but so much more

.

And although it is still in the future, it seems closer than ever.

Money, money ...

Earlier this year, at the height of the cryptocurrency boom, the price of a currency called MANA began to climb positions on Coinbase, a well-known digital currency exchange.

MANA is the currency of a virtual world called Decentraland

, where in March lots of digital land were selling for the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

After two years of hovering around 10 cents, MANA briefly surpassed $ 1.60 in April, bringing the combined value of all tokens (indicators) to more than $ 2.4 billion.

Due to its size, Decentraland is rather a small commune (in July, only a few hundred people were connecting at a time compared to a peak in March of a few thousand), made up of user-generated NFTs.

Its creators have described the platform less as a place than as

an infrastructure on which to build a place

.

Decentraland's currency and real estate contracts are held in the cryptocurrency Ethereum.

Decentraland residents constantly create scenes and experiences for other users, such as concerts and art exhibitions.

There are casinos where you can bet in MANA currency

, with dealers who are paid in MANA to get to work.

The sense that Decentraland is a work in progress permeates the sparsely populated network of half-developed lots and theme zones.

Between one event and another, users are left wandering and wondering: "Now what?"

What sets Decentraland apart from its predecessors like SecondLife, a virtual world owned by private company Linden Labs, is that it is fairly decentralized.

The plan, according to the founders of Decentraland, was always for its users to take over the world, building and doing whatever they wanted.

Dave Carr, a spokesman for the Decentraland Foundation, maintains: “Fortnite is a centralized experience,” which means that it works from the top down, with the main decisions coming from its creator, EpicGames.

"Here, you feel that you have a defined role in the game."

Decentraland, a virtual community with its own cryptocurrency.

Fortnite is more than a game.

We are building this thing called a metaverse: a social place.

Matthew Weissinger, Executive, Epic Games

Our virtual life

When Epic was developing Fortnite, their plan was not to create a metaverse.

But what started as a tower defense-style game in 2017 in which participants fought zombies exploded, just a year later, into an international phenomenon.

"It took off in a way that none of us had anticipated,"

says Donald Mustard, Epic's creative director.


Seeing that millions of players flocked to Fortnite Battle Royale, a game mode that looks a bit like The Hunger Games, the company was quick to add social features, such as voice chat and dance parties.

In financial documents released in May in federal court in the United States as part of an antitrust lawsuit against Apple, Epic said Fortnite made more than $ 9 billion in revenue between 2018 and 2019.

Players invest money to dress their characters. in superhero costumes.

Now, Epic markets Fortnite not just as an interactive experience, but as a metaverse.

"It's more than a game," Matthew Weissinger, vice president of marketing for Epic Games, said in court.

"We are building this thing called a metaverse: a social place."

Last year, a concert by rapper Travis Scott as part of Fortnite garnered more than

12 million simultaneous views

, according to the company.

And nearly 50% of gamers use the game's creative mode, which allows users to populate their islands with buildings and games, notes Epic CEO Tim Sweeney.

Millionaires teens

Roblox, a platform on which independent developers create games that are very popular with kids, may be the closest and most extended view of the metaverse.

In the first quarter of 2021,

people spent nearly 10 billion hours playing Roblox

, according to the company's earnings report, with more than 42 million users connecting to the platform each day.

They also spent $ 652 million on the site's virtual currency

, Robux, which can be used to purchase hats, weapons, hot air balloons, and other digital items for their characters.

After going public on March 10, the company's valuation soared to $ 45 billion.

Dave Baszucki, co-founder and CEO of Roblox, whose shares in the company were suddenly worth $ 5.5 billion at the close of the market that day, expressed his appreciation on Twitter.

Millions of games are created on Roblox each year, and much of the money it generates - through the sale of digital items and upgrades - goes to independent developers.

In some cases, certain game creators in their teens have become millionaires

.

Ammon Runger, 16, and his colleague Stefan Baronio, 23, have made six-figure monthly wages in production of the prison escape game Mad City, which attracts more than 200,000 players per month.

Baronio bought a new car and paid for college with that money.

He claims that the experience has changed his life, but that it falls short of qualifying Roblox as a metaverse.

"I feel like they are definitely getting closer, but I think they are still a long way from getting there," he says.

Half of the platform's players are 13 and under, according to the company.

Regardless, the company moves on.

Craig Donato, Roblox's chief business officer, says 17-24-

year-olds are the platform's fastest growing consumers

, and as it expands its user base around the world the company is adding more languages.

Evo Heyning, meanwhile, has been working and playing in the metaverse environment for two decades.

She was even hired by the US State Department to help build its own presence in the SecondLife virtual community.

In his opinion, the metaverse is not the product or space of a single company or organization, or even all of them together, but the way they are connected.

In search of that connection, at 45 years old, Heyning has joined a few volunteers to form the Open Metaverse Interoperability Group, which aims to establish

technological standards to "unite virtual worlds"

, with the intention that the players of the metaverse adopt. 

Look also

Disney shows "real" Star Wars lightsaber in new video

A vintage copy of Super Mario Bros sold for $ 2 million

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2021-08-12

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