Yesterday I opined about the possibility that Amazon may be the dark horse that makes the metaverse real. So far I may be the only one to say so but it is a point in my progression to divine where this technology will go. Today I am going to explore another aspect of the engine moving the metaverse forward; gaming.
Gaming has always led simply because the visualization technology that is used by games has been at the center of the technology needed for the metaverse. While an Amazon driven metaverse will be all about shopping, a game driven metaverse will be about gaming. This is the subject of this Medium article by Durai Prakash (https://medium.com/javarevisited/metaverse-virtual-gaming-1684881f2c80). But I see things a bit differently than he does in that article.
I agree that gamers would very much like to have a unified experience when they are engaged in gaming. Consider that right now gaming is spread over many different consoles, applications, and devices. Going from Fortnight on XBox to Roblox on Meta/Quest is not like going from one web page to another in a browser. Any screen based entertainment should be accessible once one dons the HMD with the least friction possible. This is the vision Prakash describes. It is not a new idea. Here is a vid from 2022 which discusses the need for interoperability. And the HMD maker HTC has their Viverse. But both technological and economic obstacles will prevent this.
Each platform has made choices that are in their best interests. These are artistic and marketing decisions realized with different technologies at present. Prakash suggests that some future platform provider will draw developers to their ecosystem once the unique benefits of a proprietary platform do not justify the added costs. But we are many years from that. And for now each platform will compete with the others delaying any adoption of a unified gaming standard.
But let’s consider a less ambitious goal, one metaverse that does not HOST the game platform but merely provides the environment to support gaming. It would be like some arcade with all the different distributors with storefronts and each of their games arrayed along the walls like so many portals. This gives them the marketing space to sell games but also a way to seamlessly transition into their space (servers). The game developers and distributors only need support this neutral environment which would be easily rendered by any of their platforms yet transition to the full experience of the game after authentication. This is exactly one of the problems to be solved; each platform must authenticate anyone coming to their sites from an unauthenticated destination. A neutral environment could work to develop industry standards of authentication and verification that would allow single sign on and frictionless movement among the proprietary spaces.
I describe this neutral space as the liminal space that encompasses and connects all the other metaversi under proprietary control. This environment would likely offer utility functions to developers such as well tuned and efficient physics or rendering engines but stop short of requiring their use. And a key utility the liminal space should offer to go with authentication is commercial exchange.
Mentions of some cyber-currency are often paired with mentions of metaverse. This is natural since metaverse needs to be more than an environment OUTSIDE of our commercial life. It is intended by most visionaries to BE the environment of our commercial life. Having one currency for Decentraland, another for Roblox and yet another for Amazon goes against what the consumer wants which is a seamless experience.
There is no inherent incompatibility between the metaverse Amazon might create for its own purposes from the gaming metaverse that provide the liminal space between all the games available. But with all these powerful interests involved the creation of the interchange standards needed is a long-term project and I haven’t yet looked to see what the movers of internet standards have said about this. Am I talking about a Web4.0?
The impediment is that there are few incentives for anyone to work at creating a liminal space that does not have clear payback. Economically it could be viewed as a shopping mall with the players paying rent to the creator of the marketplace. Or someone like Amazon who already has created a marketplace could bring the marketplace of games into their eco-system. If by some miracle the government or the internet standards organizations took an interest in this, they too could be a source of this new way. But the consumer hunger for a new way is clear.
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