The first mention of the term Metaverse was in the sci-fi novel “Snow Crash”, published in 1992. The story was set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, in which the metaverse was a pan-global virtual reality environment that resembled the world wide web in its present form – hyper-connected, and full of promise.
This literary invention was a cultural moment, influencing projects within the domain of entertainment and technology alike, for years to come. Cult classics like the Matrix movies pushed the idea of an idyllic 3D immersive environment as the future inevitability, while tech giants like Alphabet drew inspiration from the story for their Google Earth project. While the concept may have an origin in fiction, it has found resonance with FAANG titans like Sergey Brin and Mark Zuckerberg, among others.
In the three decades since its conception, the metaverse has come full circle – from a story element to a real-world entity inspiring media creation, its prominence and promise being discussed in diverse industries. Many have hailed the oncoming metaverse wave as the second coming of the internet – a massive paradigm shift in the way we live our lives.
What is Metaverse?
Any immersive reality experience that equips its user with an avatar to interact with their virtual environment is a metaverse. The most popular examples of metaverse use cases can be found in the gaming industry. Highest-selling video game titles like Diablo 3, Wii Sports and GTA V are all free-roam virtual worlds within which a player can move around and interact with other users. These Role Playing Games (RPGs) clearly demonstrate how even a flat-screen, a keyboard and a mouse can enable a long-form engaging immersive experience.
Given the immense potential that this collective immersive experience possesses, a number of organizations are working to develop this technology viable for the mass market. A subset of XR tech (which itself it predicted to grow to $ 33 billion by the end of 2021), metaverse is already being heralded as the next bastion of futurism.
This race has yielded some interesting results, key amongst them being varying interpretations of the metaverse concept. Different players envision the metaverse – and all that it makes possible – using different technologies. At present, Immersive Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality are taking the lead as de facto tools for creating the interconnected environment.
Red Pill, Blue Pill | AR vs VR Metaverse Apps
When it comes to creating a metaverse – just as the operative technologies differ, so do the supporting hardware. AR and VR emerge as the software of choice across sectors; while AR adds an interactive graphic layer to our existing world, VR blocks out the physical backdrop for a full immersion in a virtual 3D environment.
The most promising AR solution, at present, are Google Glasses and Microsoft Hololens. Through hi-tech spectacles, the lenses will add an overlay to the world for its wearers, greatly altering or enhancing their experience of their surroundings. Immersive VR, on the other hand, enables a plugged-in experience of a 100% 3D world. With Facebook announcing its Infinity Office Demo, the future for work may soon mean completely digital remote working for many of us. Both applications point towards a unified ecosystem for users, created for a seamless P2P experience.
Compounding engagement, the start-up Roblox provides a VR platform on which users can create and share games with other users – essentially, building within the Roblox ecosystem through a unique user-UI-user engagement model. But metaverse experiences need not be so meta. Simply providing users the ability to modify their virtual environment, and optimising their interface with one another, is a key component to creating an in-app metaverse.
The Essence of Metaverse: Gamification
The use of specialised hardware for creating spectacular immersive experiences is indicative of the tremendous progress XR technology has made in a short time. However, the creation of a metaverse is predicated on a much simpler (and device-agnostic) principle – gamification.
Gamification is the creation of a system of action and rewards, designed to keep users. Just as gamers can sit in front of their screen for hours without perceiving fatigue, elements of gamification can be applied to immersive VR software to make everyday digital communication less stressful.
Platform-agnostic immersive VR software such as NextMeet fit the bill of creating rich and engaging 3d virtual experiences for its users, by employing concepts of gamification. By creating a highly interactive virtual 3d environment populated with customizable 3D avatars, NextMeet’s users can interact with each other in-platform, relax in the lounge, and use specialized spaces like expo halls and art galleries within the platform’s ecosystem.
XR Technology and Metaverse: What Next?
As the barriers to co-location become an ever-growing issue, providing people the means to replicate real-life interactions in a virtual environment will emerge as the deciding factor in the adoption of XR technology. Replicating a physical environment activates the hard-wired social queues in our brains, to enable a deeply engaging experience.With the shortening of attention spans, using well-established psychological principles of gamification to reach this threshold of engagement is crucial. We are operating within an attention economy, and metaverse gamification can boost engagement among users, old and new.
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