Primer to the Metaverse: How Matthew Ball Analyzes the Metaverse
Matthew Ball's in-depth Metaverse article "The Metaverse: What Is It?" where to find it and who will build it? "After a fierce bidding competition, it was auctioned for 100 Ethereum (about 479,000 US dollars), with an average value of 60 US dollars per word. Given that this article was auctioned in the form of NFT, and part of the proceeds will be used to establish a DAO called OpenMeta - which aims to set the standard for an open metaverse, it can be seen that "metaverse", "NFT" and " The DAO" These three hot technology concepts are already an irresistible combination in the auction.
It is worth mentioning that the winning bidder will not only own the NFT paper, but also a seat as a founding member of OpenMeta, so this acquisition may provide the owner with the ability to shape the future of the virtual space.
Here is the original text of this article by Matthew Ball:
The Metaverse: What Is It? where to find it and who will build it? "
Note: This article was written in January 2020. In June 2021, I published a series of 9 updates, "Introduction to the Metaverse".
Technology often produces unexpected surprises. However, the biggest developments are often anticipated decades in advance. In 1945, Vannevar Bush described what he called the "Memex", a single device that could store all the books, records and correspondence, and link them mechanically together through "links". This concept was then used to formulate the concept of "hypertext" (the term was coined 20 years later), which in turn guided the development of the World Wide Web (again, 20 years later). The "streaming wars" are just beginning, but the first streaming video happened more than 25 years ago. What's more, many attributes of this so-called war have been assumed for decades, such as a virtually unlimited supply of content, on-demand playback, interactivity, dynamic and personalized advertising, and the value of merging content with distribution.
In this sense, rough outlines of future solutions are often understood and, in a sense, agreed upon before the technological capabilities to produce them. Still, it is often impossible to predict how they will be implemented, which features will be more or less important, what governance models or competitive dynamics will drive them, or what new experiences will result. When Netflix launched its streaming service, most in Hollywood knew that the future of television was online (TV over IP had been deployed in the late 1999s). The challenge is timing and how to package such a service (it took another 10 years for Hollywood to accept that all their channels, genres and content needed to be consolidated into one app/brand). The popularity of video game broadcasts and YouTubers still puts off many in the media industry, as the best way to monetize content may be to give it away for free and charge $0.99 for optional items, but so does the idea of having no indirect value. The fixed-line Internet giant AOL acquired the media group Time Warner in 2000. This decision was based on the view that media and technology/distribution needed to be integrated. However, it could only be disbanded in 2009 because it failed to generate large profits. Nine years later, it was acquired by mobile Internet giant AT&T under the same premise.
While many techies imagined some sort of "personal computer," its attributes and timing were so unpredictable that Microsoft dominated the PC era that began in the 1990s, rather than mainframe hegemon IBM. While Microsoft clearly foresees mobile, it misreads the role of operating systems and hardware. Hence the global rise of Android and iOS (and Microsoft's move from the OS layer to the application/service layer). In a similar sense, Steve Jobs' priorities for computing were always "right", they were just too early and focused on the wrong devices. Broadly speaking, the two most prominent examples of the early Internet were instant messaging and email, but until the late 2000s, the importance of social applications/networks remained unexpected. For that matter, all the prerequisites for building Facebook existed before the turn of the millennium, but Facebook didn’t exist until 2005 — and even then, it was an accident.
Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, many in the tech world have envisioned a future state (if not a quasi-successor) for the internet — known as the "metaverse." It will revolutionize not only the infrastructure layer of the digital world, but most of the physical layer, and all the services and platforms on top of them, how they work, and how they are sold. While the full vision of the Metaverse remains elusive, fantastical, and decades away, these productions are starting to feel very real. Like this change, its arc is long and unpredictable because its end state is profitable.
For this reason, the Metaverse has become the latest macro target of many technology giants around the world. As I outlined back in February 2019, this is an explicit goal of Epic Games, makers of Unreal Engine and Fortnite. It's also the driving force behind Facebook's acquisition of Oculus VR and its newly announced Horizon virtual world/meeting space, as well as many other projects such as AR glasses and brain-machine interfaces and communications. In the next ten years, various technology companies will spend tens of billions of dollars on cloud games, and it is this kind of technology that will support our belief in the online and offline virtual future.
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Chapter 1: What is the "Metaverse"?
The most common concept of the metaverse stems from science fiction. Here, the Metaverse is often portrayed as a digitally "embedded" internet - a representation of the real world, but based on virtual (often theme park-like) worlds such as Player One and The Matrix Those depicted in ". While such experiences are likely an aspect of the Metaverse, the concept is limited, as films such as Tron portray the Internet as a literal "information superhighway made of bits." .
Just as it was difficult in 1982 to imagine what the Internet of 2020 would look like — and even harder to communicate it to people who had never even “logged in” to it at the time — we really don’t know how to describe the Metaverse. However, we can identify core properties.
We believe that the Metaverse will...
1. Keep going - that is, it never "resets" or "pauses" or "ends", it just continues indefinitely
2. Stay in sync and in real time - even though pre-arranged and independent events will happen, just like they do in "real life", the Metaverse will be an always-on real-time experience for everyone
3. There are no restrictions on concurrent users, while also providing each user with a personal "sense of presence" - everyone can become part of the metaverse and participate in specific events/places/activities with individual institutions at the same time
4. Become a fully functioning economy - individuals and businesses will be able to create, own, invest, sell and earn rewards for a wide range of "jobs" that generate "value" recognized by others
5. Be an experience that spans digital and physical worlds, private and public networks or experiences, open or closed platforms.
6. Provide unprecedented interoperability of data, digital items/assets, content, etc. across these experiences - for example, your Counter-Strike gun skin can also be used to decorate a gun in Fortnite, or given as a gift via Facebook friend. Likewise, cars designed for Rocket League (or even for Porsche's website) can be brought to Roblox to work. Today, the digital world is basically like a mall, with each store using its own currency, requiring proprietary IDs, having proprietary units of measurement, such as shoes or calories, and different dress codes, among other things.
7. Filled with "content" and "experiences" created and operated by a wide range of contributors, some of whom are independent individuals, while others may be informally organized groups or business-focused enterprises.
There are other ideas that may be at the heart of the Metaverse, but are not widely shared. One of these concerns is whether participants will have a unified digital identity (or "avatar") that they will use across all experiences. This would have practical value, but is probably unlikely since each leader in the "metaverse" would still like to have their own identity system. For example, there are some dominant account systems today - but none of them provide exhaustive coverage of the web, and they often layer on top of each other with limited data sharing or access (e.g. your iPhone is based on an iOS account, and you might would log into an app using your Facebook ID (which itself is your Gmail account).
There is also disagreement about how much interoperability the Metaverse needs to truly be a "metaverse" and not just an evolution of today's internet. Many are still debating whether a true metaverse can have only one operator (as was the case in Ready Player One). Some argue that the definition (and success) of the Metaverse requires it to be a highly decentralized platform built primarily on community-based standards and protocols (such as the Open Network) and an "open source" Metaverse OS or platform (which does not mean that the Metaverse There will be no dominant closed platform in ).
Another idea has to do with the basic communication architecture of the Metaverse. More on this later, but while today's Internet is built around individual servers "talking" to each other as needed, some argue that the Metaverse needs to revolve around persistent many-to-many "connections" and "operate". But even on this issue, there is no consensus on how this will work and the degree of decentralization required.
While it's helpful to think about what the Metaverse usually is, it's also always wrongly compared to something. While each of these analogies may be part of the metaverse, they're not actually metaverses. For example, the Metaverse is not...
1. A "virtual world" - Virtual worlds and games with AI-driven characters have existed for decades, as have games populated by "real" humans in real time. This is not a "meta" (Greek for "beyond") universe, just a synthetic and fictional universe designed for a single purpose (gaming).
2. "Virtual Spaces" - Digital content experiences like Second Life are often viewed as "metaverse archetypes" because they (A) lack a game-like objective or skill system; (B) are persistent virtual residence; (C) provides near-simultaneous content updates; (D) has a real person represented by a digital avatar. But these aren't enough for the Metaverse.
3. “Virtual Reality” – VR is a way of experiencing a virtual world or space. A presence in the digital world does not constitute a metaverse. It's like saying you have a thriving city because you can see it and walk around it.
4. “Digital and virtual economies” – these too already exist. Individual games like World of Warcraft have long operated economies, with real people trading virtual goods for real money, or performing virtual quests for real money. Additionally, platforms like Amazon's Mechanical Turk and technologies like Bitcoin are based on hiring individuals/businesses/computing power to perform virtual and digital tasks. We are already trading purely digital items at scale for purely digital activities through purely digital marketplaces.
5. "Game" - Fortnite has many elements from the Metaverse. It (A) mashups IP; (B) has a consistent identity across multiple closed platforms; (C) is a gateway to countless experiences, some of which are purely social; (D) subsidizes creators to incentivize them to create content, etc. . However, as is the case with Ready Player One, it's still too narrow in terms of what it does, how far it extends, and what "work" can happen (at least for now). While the Metaverse may have some game-like goals, include games, and involve gamification, it's not a game per se, nor is it centered around a specific goal.
6. A "virtual theme park or Disneyland" - Not only are the "attractions" infinite, but they won't be as focused on "design" or programming as Disneyland, nor will they be all about fun or entertainment. In addition, the distribution of participation will have a long tail (that is to say, there are a lot of niche groups participating in niche projects).
7. A "new app store" - no one needs another way to open apps, and won't do so in "VR" (for example) - unlock/enable post-internet presumed kind of value. The Metaverse is very different from today's internet/mobile models, architectures and priorities.
8. A "new UGC platform" - Metaverse is not just another platform like YouTube or Facebook, where countless people can "create", "share" and "monetize" their own created content, the most popular content represents only the tiniest share of overall consumption. The Metaverse will be the place to invest and build proper empires where these well-capitalized businesses can outright own customers, control API/data, unit economics, etc. Moreover, it is likely that like the web, a dozen or so platforms have a significant share of user time, experience, content, and more.
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Chapter 2: Why is the Metaverse important?
Even if the Metaverse doesn't live up to the fanciful visions captured by science fiction writers, it could be worth trillions of dollars as a new computing platform or content medium. But in its full vision, the Metaverse becomes the gateway to most digital experiences, a key component of all physical experiences, and the next great workforce platform.
The value of being a key player (if not a driver) of such a system is self-evident - there is no "owner" of the Internet today, yet almost all leading Internet companies are among the 10 most valuable listings in the world list of companies. If the Metaverse does serve as a functional "successor" to the web—only this time with greater reach, more time spent, and more commercial activity—these may offer additional economic advantages. Regardless, the Metaverse should produce the same variety of opportunities we see on the web today—new companies, products, and services will emerge to manage everything from payment processing to identity verification, recruiting, ad placement, content creation, Security and everything else. In turn, this would mean the possible downfall of many incumbents.
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Chapter 3: Building the Metaverse
The Metaverse will require countless new technologies, protocols, companies, innovations, and discoveries to function. And he won't spawn directly; this suggests we won't have a clear "pre-metaverse" and "metaverse". Instead, it emerges slowly over time as different products, services, and capabilities integrate and converge. However, we need to think about putting these three core elements in place, and it will be helpful.
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concurrent infrastructure
At a fundamental level, the technology doesn't yet exist at the scale of hundreds of people, let alone millions of people participating in a shared, synchronized experience. Consider Fortnite's 2019 Marshmello concert. Shockingly, 11 MM experienced the event in real time. However, they did not do so together. In fact, there are over 100,000 instances of the Marshmello concert, all of which are slightly out of sync, with each instance capped at 100 players. Today, Epic probably does more, but not in the hundreds, let alone millions.
Not only does the metaverse require infrastructure that doesn't currently exist, but the internet was never designed to approximate this experience. After all, it's designed to share files from one computer to another. As a result, most of the underlying systems of the Internet revolve around one server communicating with another server or end-user device. This pattern continues to this day. For example, there are billions of people on Facebook today, but each user shares a separate connection with the Facebook servers, not with any other user. So when you visit other users' content, you're really just getting the latest information Facebook has for you. The earliest form of a pseudo-sync program was text chat, but you were still just pushing mostly static data to the server, pulling the latest information from it whenever and wherever it was needed. The internet simply wasn't designed for persistent (as opposed to continuous) communication, let alone persistent communication with countless others in precise real-time synchronization.
To be able to function, the Metaverse needs something more akin to video conferencing and video games. These experiences work because persistent connections update each other in real time, with a level of accuracy that other programs often don't need. However, they tend not to have high levels of concurrency: most video chat programs can have more than a few people at most, and once the number reaches 50, you often need to broadcast "live" to the audience, rather than sharing a two-way connection. These experiences are neither nor required to be completely real.
So part of the reason the genre of battle royale has only recently become popular in video games is that recent technological developments have made it possible for players to play with so many other users. While some concurrent games have been around for over two decades, like Second Life or Warcraft, they essentially trick players by "sharding" and separating users into different "worlds" and servers Create the experience of "being in the same world". Eve Online, for example, can technically have over 100,000 players "in the same game", but they are spread across different galaxies (ie server nodes). As a result, players can only really see or interact with a handful of other players at any one time. Also, going to another galaxy means disconnecting from one server and loading another (this is a narrative strategy for the game, they are able to "hide" that they are not actually on the same server by forcing the player to travel at the speed of light in order to travel through the vastness of space fact). When Eve Online does have battles involving hundreds of users, the system can slow to a crawl. This still works, as the game dynamic is largely based on large-scale, pre-planned shipboard battles. In a "fast-paced" game like Rocket League or Call of Duty, these slowdowns would render the entire game unplayable.
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Standards, protocols and their adoption
The internet we experience today works because it has a set of standards and protocols for visual presentation, file loading, communication, graphics, data, and more. These include everything from the consumer-recognizable .GIF file type to the websocket protocol, which is the basis for nearly all forms of real-time communication between browsers and other servers on the Internet.
The Metaverse will require a broader, more complex, and more resilient set of S&Ps. What's more, the importance of interoperability and a real-time sync experience means that we need to modify some existing standards and "standardize" around a smaller set of each function. For example, today there are multiple image file formats: .GIF, .JPEG, .PNG, .BMP, .TIFF, .WEBP, etc. While today's web is built on open standards, most of them are closed and proprietary. Amazon, Facebook, and Google use similar technology, but they weren't designed to transform into each other—just as Ford's wheels weren't designed to fit on a GM chassis. Additionally, these companies are very resistant to cross-integrating their systems or sharing their data. These moves may increase the overall value of the "digital economy", but will also weaken their super-valuable network effects, and will also make it easier for users to move their digital lives anywhere else.
This will be very difficult and will take decades. And the more valuable and interoperable the Metaverse is, the harder it is to build an industry-wide consensus around topics like data security, data persistence, forward-compatible code evolution, and transactions. Additionally, the Metaverse will require entirely new rules of censorship, communication controls, regulatory enforcement, tax reporting, preventing online radicalization, and many of the challenges we are still grappling with today.
While the establishment of standards often involves actual meetings, negotiations, and debates, Metaverse standards are not pre-established. The standards process will become more chaotic and organic, as meetings and opinions change on an ad hoc basis.
To use a meta analogy to the metaverse, consider SimCity. Ideally, the "mayor" (i.e. the player) would first design their metropolis and then build it from day one to the final vision. But in the game, as in real life, you can't just "build" a city for 10 MM people. You have to start with a small town and optimize it first (e.g. where are the roads, where are the schools, public facilities capacity, etc.). As it grows, you build around the town, occasionally tearing down and replacing "old" parts, which needs to be done wisely, sometimes only when there's a problem (lack of power supply) or disaster (fire). But unlike SimCity, there will be many mayors in the metaverse, not one—and their wishes and motivations will often collide.
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The "on-ramp" experience
Just as the standards of the Metaverse cannot simply be "announced", consumers and businesses will not accept a prototype of a potential Metaverse simply because it is available.
Consider the real world. Just because a mall can hold 100,000 people or a hundred stores doesn't mean it will attract one consumer or one brand. The "city square" emerges organically around the existing infrastructure and behavior to meet existing civic and commercial needs. At the end of the day, any congregational place—whether it’s a bar, a basement, a park, a museum, or a carousel—is there because there are people there, not because it’s a place in itself.
The same goes for digital experiences. Facebook, the world's largest social network, succeeded not because it announced it would be a "social network" but because it started as a campus hotspot, then a digital yearbook, a photo-sharing and Messaging services. Like Facebook, the Metaverse needs popularity, not just "popularity to be injected," and that population must then populate this digital world with things to do and content to consume.
That's why thinking of Fortnite as a video game or an interactive experience seems so small. Fortnite started out as a game, but quickly morphed into a social square. Its players log in not to "play" per se, but to be with their virtual and real-world friends. Teenagers from the 1970s to 2010s spend three hours on the phone when they get home. Now they talk to their friends on Fortnite, but don't talk about Fortnite. Instead, they talk about school, movies, sports, news, boys, girls, and more. After all, Fortnite doesn't have a story or IP - what happens in Fortnite is what happened and who was there.
Additionally, Fortnite is quickly becoming a vehicle for other brands, IP, and stories to express themselves. Most notably, this included last year's live Marshmello concert. Since then, however, the library of such cases has expanded rapidly. In December 2019, Odaily Wars: The Rise of Skywalker released clips of the highly anticipated film exclusively in Fortnite as part of a larger in-game audience engagement event that included an interview with director J.J. Abrams. Live motion capture interview. What's more, the event is explicitly mentioned in the film's opening moments. The band Weezer made a custom island where fans could listen to the exclusive debut of their new album (while dancing with other "players." Fortnite also made several themed "Limited Time Modes," including Nike's Air Jordan and Lionsgate John Wick movie series. In some cases, these "LTMs" partially alter Fortnite's maps to appear as mini-virtual worlds that, when users enter, alter the aesthetics, items, and The style of the game, so that it resembles another world. This includes the game's world of Borderlands, Batman's hometown of Gotham, and the Old West.
To that end, Fortnite is one of the few places where Marvel and DC's IP crossover. You can wear the costumes of Marvel characters in Gotham City while interacting with people wearing legally licensed NFL uniforms. This kind of thing really hasn't happened before. But it's crucial to the metaverse.
Broadly speaking, an entire sub-economy has emerged on Fortnite where "players" can build (and monetize) their own content. This can be as small as digital clothing ("skins") or dances ("expressions"). However, it has rapidly expanded to create all new games and experiences using Fortnite's engine, assets, and aesthetics. This ranges from a simple scavenger hunt to an immersive mash-up of the Brothers Grimm and parkour culture, to a 10-hour sci-fi story spanning multiple dimensions and timelines. In fact, Fortnite's creative mode already feels like a prototype for the Metaverse. Here, players load up their avatar — an avatar that’s unique to them, with associated experiences across all Fortnite — and enters a game-like lobby where they can choose from thousands of “doors” (rifts in spacetime) , the gates send them to one of thousands of different worlds with up to 99 other players.
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Epic Games' Epic Games Initiative
The best example of Fortnite's potential is its ability to convince many so-called competitors to work with each other (or early "interoperability"). Today, Fortnite runs on every major entertainment platform - iOS, Android, PlayStation, Nintendo, PC, Xbox - allowing for complete integration across multiple identity/account systems, payment methods, social graphs and typically closed ecosystems. cross play. Over the years, this has been strongly resisted by the major gaming platforms, as they believe that implementing such an experience will destroy their network effects and reduce the need to purchase their proprietary hardware. The result is that players on PlayStation will never be able to play Call of Duty with their friends on Xbox, even though both Sony and Microsoft know they want to.
Likewise, IP owners rarely allow their characters and stories to be mixed with other IPs. This does happen from time to time (for example, there are several Marvel v DC crossover comics and video games). But we rarely see a gaming experience where they don't have control over the editor, let alone one based on unpredictability (not even the creative team behind Fortnite knows what they'll be working on in 2021) and such a wide range of IP.
At The Game Awards, Fortnite Creative Director mentioned their goal is to "build a virtual reality, a place where all IPs can live together, where experiences can happen" - @DonaldMustard CC @ballmatthew pic. twitter.com/eSwVnnzfZk — Julie Young (@juliey4) December 13, 2019 .
This organic evolution cannot be overemphasized. If you "announce" your intention to launch the Metaverse, these stakeholders will never accept interoperability or commission their IP. But Fortnite has become so popular and unique that most counterparties have no choice but to participate -- in fact, they may be desperate to get into the "game" -- just as P&G can't say "uh, Facebook isn't for us ". Fortnite is an all too valuable platform.
Fortnite is a game. But please ask this question in 12 months. — Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) December 26, 2019
Meanwhile, Epic has brought much more than a plausible entry into its efforts to build the Metaverse. In addition to operating Fortnite (which is theoretically a side project), Epic Games also owns Unreal, the second-largest independent game engine. That means thousands of games already run on its "stack" of tools and software (to simplify things), making it easier to share assets, integrate experiences, and share user profiles. Over time, the sophistication of Epic's game engine has become so important that it now powers a variety of traditional media experiences. Disney's The Mandalorian was shot and fully rendered in Unreal, and director Jon Favreau was able to literally input its digital set to frame and position the characters. If Disney chooses to do so, viewers are free to investigate most of these scenes -- most of the environments and assets already exist. Outside of film and television, Unreal is also increasingly being used for live events: for example, it powers Fox Sports' NASCAR scene.
Still, the Metaverse requires everyone to be able to create and contribute "content" and "experiences," not just a few well-staffed companies and skilled individuals trying to make a game or movie. To that end, Epic acquired Twinmotion last April. Rather than focusing on VFX engineers or game designers, the company offers intuitive, icon-based software that enables "architecture, construction, urban planning and landscape professionals" to generate photorealistic Unreal-based graphics "in seconds." , immersive digital environments. According to Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney, this means there are now three ways to create in Unreal: the standard "coding" of the engine itself, the more streamlined and "visual" Twinmotion, and Fortnite creative mode for those with no programming and design experience. Each option is likely to become more powerful, easier to use and integrate over time.
Another increasingly important part of Epic's offering is its suite of "online services", which allow developers to instantly support cross-play across Sony + Microsoft + Nintendo + PC + iOS + Android and leverage Epic's account system or social Graph (user connection with size 1.6B). This isn't all that unique in itself - Microsoft paid $4M for PlayFab plus millions more to support Xbox Live, while Amazon bought both GameSparks and GameLift for development towards games that require a lot of servers and tools to play online sellers of services. Valve doesn't provide the server infrastructure, but its Steamworks solution offers developers matchmaking and account services for free -- but only within Valve's core business, the Steam store. This sheds light on Epic's role for online services. Unlike today's market leaders, Epic doesn't charge a fee. It's also free for any engine, any platform, and any game. It operates at the scale of Fortnite's player network, allowing any game to tap into the world's largest player graph to kickstart their user base. Such a product is obviously valuable, but for Epic, it's "more valuable if it's free" because it expands the company's already huge social graph, makes it easier for more games to "talk" to each other, and enables Players are able to jump more seamlessly from one game experience to another. All of this also reduces Epic's reliance on Fortnite when building the metaverse. While Epic Online Services is still in closed beta, the company says it will be publicly available in the second quarter of 2020 and should support "hundreds and thousands of games in 2020." Also note that this will all reduce Epic's reliance on Fortnite in its long-term effort to build out the Metaverse.
Epic also operates one of the largest (though still small) digital game stores -- meaning gamers already access a wide variety of digital content and experiences through Epic. Few consumers are demanding more distributed digital content, and most are fairly happy with market leader Steam. However, Epic Games founder/CEO Tim Sweeney (Tim Sweeney) bluntly stated that today's standard commission (30%) on digital content sales (such as iOS or Amazon or Google Play) is not only usurious, but also hinders real interest. The creation of a digital world economy. Just imagine, for example, if credit card fees were not 0.5-2.5% but as high as 60-20 times, entire sectors of the real economy would not be able to function (eg coffee shops or grocery stores). For this, Epic only charges 12% (which also includes the 5% Unreal license fee, which for many customers is only 7%). It's worth noting that Sweeney was rumored to have pushed for a lower fee, but ended up agreeing with the board at 12% -- an amount that, by his own admission, doesn't always include operating costs. That doesn't mean there isn't an overall business here—running the storefronts will undoubtedly help build the Metaverse—but Sweeney's efforts seem much broader. He publicly begged Google and Apple to match their prices with Epic's, and the two companies made thousands of times more than Epic's fledgling store.
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Chapter 4: Who Else Can Build the Metaverse?
While the Metaverse has the potential to become a computing platform on the Internet, its underlying development process may have little in common with its predecessor. Internet comes from public research universities and US government programs. This is partly because few in the private sector understand the commercial potential of the World Wide Web, but it is also true that these groups are essentially the only entities with the computing talent, resources, and ambition to build the World Wide Web. That all changes when it comes to the Metaverse.
Not only is the private sector fully aware of the potential of the Metaverse, but it probably has the most positive beliefs about this future, not to mention the most cash (at least when it comes from willing to fund Metaverse R&D), the best engineering talent, and the desire to conquer greatest desire. Major tech companies don't just want to lead the Metaverse, they want to own and define it. Open source projects with a non-entrepreneurial spirit will still play an important role -- they will attract some of the most interesting creative talent in the metaverse -- but there are only a handful of possible leaders in the early metaverse. You'll recognize each one.
Microsoft is a good example. The company has hundreds of millions of federated user identities through Office 365 and LinkedIn, is the world's second largest cloud provider, has a broad suite of work-related software and services across all systems/platforms/infrastructure, and has clear technical experience heavily shared online Content/action, and a set of potential gateway experiences through Minecraft, Xbox + Xbox Live, and HoloLens. To that end, the Metaverse offers Microsoft an opportunity to recapture the OS/hardware leadership it gave up during the switch from PCs to mobile devices. But more importantly, CEO Satya Nadella understands that Microsoft at least needs to be where the work happens. Successfully adapting from business to consumer, PC to mobile, and offline to online, all while maintaining its dominance in the "work" economy, it's hard to imagine that Microsoft won't be a major driver of the future of workforce and information virtualization processing .
While Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hasn't explicitly announced his intentions to develop and own the Metaverse, his obsession with it seems fairly obvious, and of course it's smart. Facebook has the most to lose from the Metaverse than any other company because it will build a larger and more powerful social graph and represent a new platform for computing and a new platform for engagement. At the same time, the metaverse also allows Facebook to expand its reach up and down the stack. Despite multiple efforts to build a smartphone operating system and deploy consumer hardware, Facebook is still a FAAMG company stuck at the app/service layer. Through the Metaverse, Facebook could become the next Android or iOS/iPhone (hence Oculus), not to mention Amazon's version of virtual goods.
The advantages of Facebook being the Metaverse are enormous. It has more users, daily usage, and user-generated content created each day than any other platform on the planet, as well as the second-largest share of digital ad spend, billions in cash, thousands of world-class engineers, and the founders Faith has the majority voting power. Its metaverse-facing assets are also growing rapidly, and now include patents on semiconductors and brain-computer computing interfaces. Meanwhile, Facebook has a terrible track record as a platform on which 3rd party developers/companies can build sustainable businesses, as the head of a consortium (e.g. Libra), and when it comes to managing user data/trust.
Amazon is interesting in a few ways. Most obviously, it always wants to be the main place we buy "stuff". It doesn't matter whether you buy it in a game engine, a virtual world, or a web browser (it's already sold inside Twitch). In addition, the company already has hundreds of millions of credit cards, the largest share of e-commerce worldwide (excluding China), is the world's largest cloud provider, and operates many different consumer media experiences (video, music, e-books, audiobooks, video games) broadcasting, etc.) and third-party commerce platforms (e.g. Fulfillment by Amazon, Amazon Channels) are building what they hope will be the first major game/rendering engine designed for the cloud era, are reportedly developing AR glasses, and are The leader in home/office digital assistants.
What's more, founder/CEO Jeff Bezos has a very strong hand on the underlying infrastructure. For example, the web runs on AWS (Amazon's best business). 80% of its revenue is actually "fulfilled by Amazon," where the company sells, packs, and delivers what other businesses sell, rather than Amazon buying and then selling inventory directly (like most retailers). While Elon Musk's private aerospace company SpaceX aims to colonize Mars, Bezos has made it clear that his goal with Blue Origin is to facilitate a space infrastructure similar to the early web protocol and his AWS so that “we can build giant chip factories in space and just send a little bit.” To that end, Amazon probably supports a truly “open” Metaverse more than any other FAAMG company — one that doesn’t need to control UX or ID , as it benefits from huge growth in back-end infrastructure usage and digital transactions.
The Internet is a data mine, and the Metaverse will have far more data and greater rewards than the web today. Globally, no one monetizes this data better than Google. Moreover, the company is not only the market leader in indexing the digital and physical world (nearly 10,000 employees are involved in its mapping initiative), but also the most successful Digital software and services company. It also runs the most used operating system (Android) on the planet, and the most open major consumer computing platform. While unsuccessful, Google first really seized on the wearable computing opportunity with Google Glass, and is aggressively digitizing the home with Google Assistant, its suite of Nest products, and FitBit. So the Metaverse might be the only move so far that can unite all of Google's massive investments, from Stadia's edge computing to Project Fi, Google Street View, its bulk purchase of dark fiber, wearable virtual assistants, and a whole lot more .
Apple is unlikely to drive or operate the underlying Metaverse. Indeed, it operates the second-largest computing platform of the modern era (and by far the most valuable), as well as the largest game store on the planet (which also means it pays developers more than anyone else on the planet. many). Additionally, the company is investing heavily in augmented reality devices and "connective tissue" to help the metaverse (e.g. beacons, Apple Watch, Apple AirPods). However, building an open authoring platform -- where everyone has access to all user data and device APIs -- runs counter to Apple's ethos and business strategy. All of this is to say that Apple is more likely to be the dominant way the West world interacts with the Metaverse than the carrier/driver. As with the internet, this probably applies to everyone.
If the metaverse requires extensive interplay of assets, experiences, and common APIs, Unity will play a fundamental role. The engine is used by more than half of all mobile games and is even more widely deployed than Unreal in real world rendering/simulation use cases (e.g. architecture, design, engineering). Director Jon Favreau made Disney's "The Mandalorian" in Unreal Engine, while he also created and shot a photorealistic "Lion King" in Unity. It also operates one of the largest digital ad networks (a nice side effect of powering 10B minutes of mobile entertainment per day). However, it's unclear what role Unity will play in driving the Metaverse. It has no store, user account system, or true direct-to-consumer experience. Most of its ancillary (i.e., non-engine or ad) services have not yet been widely adopted. Also, most (though not all) Unity-based games are relatively simple mobile games, not those that might serve as portals to the metaverse. Yet its inevitable impact on standards, airtime and content creation is so great that it's hard to imagine it not being acquired and integrated by a major technology player with broader assets and strengths.
In the past, it was difficult to justify the acquisition of Unity. Despite the company's enormous value, any potential acquirer would have to make Unity completely platform-agnostic in order to maintain its market share, developer support, and influence (Google, for example, cannot make Unity Unity becomes exclusive or best choice for Android/Chrome). That doesn't mean it's strategically unwise to make Unity a proprietary engine. The value destroyed by such a decision and the premium required to buy Unity would likely make such a move prohibitive. However, if the goal of acquiring Unity is to ensure a fundamental role in the new internet, then the acquirer has an incentive to keep the engine open/available across platforms, and price can easily become irrelevant.
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While it's easy to imagine a single head company or experience being entrusted with the role in the metaverse, the process itself will really be guided by a Cambrian explosion of different "things" coming together (not that there can't be leaders or big winners). To that end, there are countless startups trying to build early, Metaverse-style experiences. For example, Ubiquity6 wants to use millions of individual content creators to "map" the real world and then build smartphone/AR/VR accessible digital experiences on top of those maps. The eponymous Singularity6 is building a virtual world distinct from Fortnite, aiming to grow into the Metaverse from day one. Other companies, such as Genvid (a portfolio company), are building SDKs that allow anyone to build server-rendered experiences—millions of people can participate together using live broadcasts with light client interactions. While this lacks several key properties of today's metaverse, such as personal "presence," it begins to bring together large numbers of "players" into fully shared virtual environments, something that's not currently possible with cloud- or locally-rendered games.
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Ultimately, too much of the Metaverse remains unclear for us to have firm faith in who will lead it or how they will get us there. In fact, the Metaverse likely emerged from a network of different platforms, institutions, and technologies working together (however reluctantly) and embracing interoperability. Today's Internet is the product of a relatively chaotic process in which the open (mostly academic) Internet developed in parallel with closed (mostly consumer-facing) services that often wished to "rebuild" or "Resetting" open standards and protocols.
For that reason, it's hard to imagine any major tech company being "crowded out" of the Metaverse and/or missing major players. Not only would the metaverse make the pie grow too much, but big shifts tend to break off when they are hard to see, incumbents are slow to respond, or capital is constrained. None of this is true today (which doesn't mean market share won't shift, or that some companies, like Epic, won't rush to the forefront).
At the same time, China's bifurcated metaverse is likely to be even more different than the West's (compared to centralized control). Here, tech/media conglomerate Tencent (which also publishes most Western titles released in China, as well as games from Japan's Nintendo and Square Enix), is clearly a big pillar. The company also reportedly owns a 40% stake in Epic Games.
The visions, technologies, and capabilities I've described above still feel like science fiction—and even if they become reality, they're still decades away. At the same time, many parts began to come together. So the question is about who, why and the end. So it's helpful to go back to the (lengthy) creation of the World Wide Web. Imagine if instead of being designed by nonprofits and technologists looking to share research files and messages, it was designed to sell ads or harvest user data for profit.
That's why it's so important to Sweeney that his company lead the early efforts to build the Metaverse—he worries about who will replace it. “As we build these platforms for the metaverse, if these platforms are locked down and controlled by these proprietary companies, they will have more power over our lives, our private data, and our private interactions with others than any platform in the in previous history," Sweeney said in May 2017. Two months later, he was more explicit: "Google and Facebook have power. President Eisenhower talked about the military-industrial complex. They are a serious threat to our democracy." As "Epic's founder and controlling shareholder," Sweeney "Epic will never be allowed to share user data with any other company.... We will not share, sell or broker access to it for advertising purposes as many other companies do."
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Nine Essays by Matthew Ball on the Metaverse
"Framework of the Metaverse"：This article sorts out the two waves of technology related to the Metaverse - the invention of electricity and the mobile Internet, to illustrate that the emergence of the Metaverse will not have a definite time, because technological changes require a large number of technological changes, plural, to come together . Like the internet, the mobile internet, and electrification, the metaverse is a web of interconnected experiences and applications, devices and products, tools and infrastructure. That's why we don't even say that horizontally and vertically integrated giants like Facebook, Google, or Apple are the Internet. Instead, their destinations and ecosystems are either on the Internet, or provide Internet access, or provide Internet access services. Of course, almost all of the internet would exist without them.
"Metaverse and Hardware"：This post focuses on the role of hardware in the "Metaverse". Hardware refers here to “the sale and support of physical technology and devices for accessing, interacting with, or exploiting the Metaverse. This includes, but is not limited to, consumer-facing hardware (e.g., for operating or creating virtual or AR-based environments such as industrial cameras, projection and tracking systems, and scanning sensors), this category excludes computing-specific hardware, such as GPU chips and servers, and network-specific hardware, such as fiber optic cables or wireless chipsets." This article distinguishes between "consumer hardware" and "non-consumer hardware". The former is concentrated on the user side, enhancing the user's actual experience and immersion. It is updated rapidly every year and each update is accompanied by an increase in price. The price and size of the latter are astonishing, which can help companies more easily, Inexpensively make high-quality "mirror worlds" or "digital twins" of physical spaces.
"Metaverse and the Internet"：This post focuses on the role of the web in the "Metaverse". Networks are defined here as "providing persistent, real-time connectivity, high bandwidth and decentralized data transport, managed by backbone providers, networks, switching centers and services routed between them, and last mile to consumers" 'data as a service." Bandwidth, latency, and reliability are three core areas of networking, and their limitations and developments will determine how we design Metaverse products and services, when we can use them, and how we can ( and may never be able to) do anything.
The Metaverse and Computing：This article focuses on the role of computing in the Metaverse. Computing is defined here as “the enabling and provisioning of computing capabilities that support the Metaverse, supporting diverse and demanding functions such as physical computing, rendering, data coordination and synchronization, artificial intelligence, projection, motion capture, and translation.” In the two articles of hardware and network, Ball has mentioned that the progress of these two pieces will bring huge increments of data generated, sent and received. The metaverse will have the largest continuous computing demand in human history, and today's computing power that can cope with such an order of magnitude increase in data calculations is still quite scarce. Thus, both the availability and development of computing power will constrain and define the Metaverse. At present, the beneficial exploration in the field of computing is "decentralized computing". Using blockchain for decentralized computing may be 1 billion times faster than computing on desktops.
"Metaverse and Virtual Platforms"：This article focuses on the role of virtual platforms in the Metaverse. Here, virtual platforms are defined as “the development and operation of immersive digital and often 3D simulations, environments and worlds in which users and businesses can explore, create, socialize and participate in a wide variety of experiences (e.g. racing, draw, take classes, listen to music), and engage in economic activities. These businesses differ from traditional online experiences and multiplayer video games in that they have a large ecosystem of developers and content creators that operate on the underlying generate most of the content and/or collect most of the revenue on the platform”. Almost all of the leading virtual platforms today originated from games, because they have the highest requirements for computing power, and their fun is also conducive to a large number of user retention. However, the game is still not a virtual platform. The virtual metaverse platform must have the technical capabilities of the creation engine + studio + tools), support services (prefab and asset market, voice chat, player accounts, payment services), and operate multiple aspect of the economy (i.e. consumer spending shared with creators/developers on the platform, and creator/developer to creator/developer revenue). When successful, these platforms create a virtuous cycle. Better technology and tools lead to a better experience, which leads to more users and more spend per user, which means more platform profits can be generated, through which better technology and tools can be generated, and Greater creator/developer profits, through which better experiences can be generated, which attracts more developers, more users, etc. Therefore, the Metaverse will definitely surpass virtual worlds like games.
The Metaverse and Exchange Tools and Standards：This article focuses on the role of exchange tools and standards in the "metaverse". Interchange tools and standards here refer to "tools, protocols, formats, services, and engines that serve as de facto or de facto standards for interoperability and enable the creation, manipulation, and continuous improvement of the Metaverse. These standards support rendering, physics and artificial intelligence, as well as asset formats and their import/export from experience to experience, forward compatibility management and updates, tools and authoring activities, and information management". The current development of the virtual platform has raised the demand for many switching solutions. The solutions in this area include:
Disney's Pixar open-sourced its Universal Scene Description (USD) file format to help developers create interchangeable 3D data;
Nvidia's Omniverse platform then uses USD to coherently integrate assets from Maya, Houdini, Unreal, AutoCAD, and more into a shared virtual environment;
Epic's Twinmotion platform can also be used to import models from virtually any BIM and CAD program such as Archicad, Revit, SketchUp Pro, RIKCAD, and Rhino, then upscale and integrate them as much as possible using machine learning and AI in a matter of minutes;
Cesium, an open platform dedicated to streaming, analyzing and visualizing 3D geospatial data using the 3D Tiles open standard;
In 2020, Epic Games also launched Epic Online Services (EOS), a new product line that essentially acts as a live service inside a “Fortnite” box”;
Discord is another key solution in the category of real-time services;
GGWP (disclosure: Makers portfolio company) is working with publishers to create an opt-in system to feed player behavior signals into the "Global GGWP Score";
Unity also launched the Unity Distribution Portal in 2020, enabling developers to create a single version of their app, then distribute and manage it across all mobile app stores, including Apple's App Store and Google Play.
There are also many open standards and exchange formats that are being built into the metaverse, but the incentives for developers will be critical, and they must be higher than the profits that closed platforms can provide and control.
"Metaverse and Payment, Payment Channels, Blockchain"：This article focuses on the role of payments in the Metaverse. Payment here means "support for digital payment processes, platforms and operations, including fiat on-ramps (a form of digital currency exchange) for purely digital currencies and financial services, including cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum and other Blockchain technology". In fact, these technological enablers are among the most important instruments of exchange and standards that underpin and manage the flow of money across an economy and define the basic “cost of doing business” for every business, worker and consumer in said economy. , the competition in this field is fierce. Currently, the blockchain is considered to be an extremely important payment channel in the metaverse. It has the advantages of decentralization, no need for permission, no need for trust, and automatic compensation. Most importantly, developers and users can safely use Put time, effort, and money into it and make your own contribution.
"Content, Services, and Asset Transactions in the Metaverse"：This is the eighth article in a series focusing on the role of content, services, and property businesses in the Metaverse. Here, the content, service and asset business is defined as “the design/creation, sale, resale, storage, security and financial management of digital assets (such as virtual goods and currencies) related to user data and identities. This includes establishing All businesses and services that are on and/or serving the Metaverse and that are not vertically integrated into the Virtual Platform by the Platform Owner, including content built specifically for the Metaverse, are independent of the Virtual Platform". Virtually consumed content, virtual payment or driven services, and virtual asset trading will be a very important part of the metaverse economy. The virtual content consumption of Metaverse will bring users a more realistic experience, and the digital service industry of Metaverse will flourish, among which immersive virtual courses and fitness meditation business will have great development. At the same time, the development of these two areas will also bring more new services and jobs. Based on the rapid development of the "operable virtual asset economy", we will also need a convenient way to trade assets in the virtual world. Maybe Metaverse Wallet will appear. Moreover, enterprises and companies will also produce a large number of commercial virtual assets, which will also stimulate the generation of a large number of related enterprise businesses.
"Users and Business Behavior in the Metaverse and Evolution"：This is the current final article in the series, focusing on the role of evolving user and business practices in the Metaverse. This paper identifies observable changes in consumer and business behavior (including spending and investment, time and attention, decision-making and capabilities) that are either directly related to the Metaverse or otherwise enable or reflect its principles and ideas. These behaviors almost always appear as 'trends' (or more pejoratively 'fads') at first, but later display enduring global social significance.
Among them, the short-term behavior change is the past year. Affected by the new crown epidemic, we spend more and more time online and in the virtual world. People participate in and even enjoy virtual worlds and activities such as Dongsen and Fortnite. User engagement naturally spurs better production, so we've witnessed two major capital injections into Metaverse revenue, one in the rapid legalization of pure virtual assets, with NFT's notable performance, and the second in a major non- Investment in game brands and talents, such as Prada, etc. Such investments help virtual platforms further diversify away from "game-like" activities towards other activities such as creating, exploring, identifying, expressing, collaborating and socializing. This has also prompted many businesses to support Metaverse in changing their technology processes, channels and investments. The Metaverse also stimulates an open asset economy and interoperability across IPs, which is great for players but can mean lost revenue for closed platforms.
Long-term behavioral change has far-reaching consequences for children, and today's generation of "ipad natives" (virtual world natives) express themselves, constantly learn and socialize through virtual worlds they can access, change and collaborate on. They are still maturing, and most of them are still consumers, some are creators, and almost none of them are business leaders. But they will be creators and business leaders. Their frame of reference will bring massive changes to the development of the Internet and the Metaverse.
