The VR Metaverse
There are tons of definitions for the metaverse. I think the best definition is that the metaverse is the combination of the physical and digital universe. It’s the synchronization about atoms and elements and bits and bytes. It spans device categories, times of day, and use cases.
That is not my focus for this blog post. This blog post is about what tons of people think the metaverse is. The whole world in a VR, Ready Player One, world.
The metaverse is already here
I don’t think the metaverse, from a theoretical concept, is worth writing about. I think it’s anticlimactic. You’re already in it, but in a rudimentary way.
My favorite definition is that it’s the combination of atoms, elements, bits and bytes.
You can build entire worlds and adventures in Minecraft, fight in Fortnite, and create and play games in Roblox. When Roblox IPO’d, they announced that their daily active users spend over 2.5 hours per day on the platform.
It’s not just games, though. The metaverse already exists, and you interact in it. Facebook digitized your offline relationships. Your Facebook groups are a metaverse. Your Facebook comments are a metaverse. Your newsfeed was the digital “town square.” It’s a more simplistic version, but they’re a metaverse.
Zoom is a portal to the metaverse in the same way an airplane is a portal to another city. If, during a lockdown, you had a Zoom call, you were actually in the metaverse. There was no “location” for your meeting, it was just “in Zoom.” That’s a metaverse.
Pokemon Go? Metaverse. Apple Maps? Metaverse. Online video games where you’re playing with people around the world? Metaverse.
See? Anticlimactic.
The VR metaverse is a place. It’s literally a digital universe.
When people think of metaverses, they think of worlds like Ready Player One. People connect through VR, maybe wear haptic feedback, and they have all sorts of experiences and interactions digitally.
People will play games in VR, learn in VR,
The debate is when and how this will happen, not if it will happen.
The key to the metaverse
People will like their digital lives more than their physical lives.
Take an easy example: looks. A person doesn’t need to create a digital avatar that looks like themselves. They can create an avatar that looks like who they wish they looked like. If someone is out of shape, they can be skinny or muscular. If someone wishes their hair was different, boom! It’s different.
The idea of a digital life that’s easier than a physical life spans all sorts of areas.
You can have friends anywhere in the world.
You can travel anywhere you want to (in the digital world), largely cost-free.
You can earn social currency (in the form of points, gems, medals, etc) in the games/platforms that are best suited to you. Are you great at memes? You can spend your time making memes and get points for that.((Spoiler alert: this already happens on Reddit and Imgur))
You can, with minimal friction, find endless games or entertainment.
You can generate income by building Roblox games, for example.
Why does it matter?
It will be easier to build an amazing life in the digital world than in the physical world. If you want to be in shape in the personal world, it’s way harder to get in shape than it is to create a new avatar.
It’s easier to make like-minded friends in the digital world. Look at what Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Zoom have done for building connections.
It’s easier to be exposed to new cultures through the digital world, and to translate that into the physical world. In the first two weeks after Squid Game got popular in the United States, Duolingo recorded a 40% increase in people learning Korean. Airbnb online experiences allowed my family and I to learn to tango from an Argentinian. These weren’t possible before Zoom and streaming internet, which are essentially portals to another world.
Does this negate the physical world? I think it makes it even more important. This isn’t a commentary on the potential “issues” or “challenges,” it’s a comment on what is. That said, I’ve included a list of common objections below.
“VR is long-promised and underdelivered”
Oculus Quest was the #1 app on the iOS App Store on Christmas in 2021, so that, for all intents and purposes, is here, it’s simply not evenly distributed. It’s mostly gamers and kids right now. There are two events that will make it spread far and wide:
VR will become sufficiently comfortable to wear for over an hour at a time.
Apple will release some sort of an AR/VR solution
Until that happens, “metaverse” will probably remain niche, but it will continue to get better. In the meantime, however, VR-native experiences like Dreamscape will get better and better, and VR will probably experience an all-at-once growth moment where it becomes mainstream in a matter of 6 months. Like Zoom did, but hopefully not out of necessity.
“But I just don’t think people will want that. I mean, we need real, human-to-human connection.”
I don’t disagree with the latter point, but the former point has a missing component. People you know currently won’t want it. You and they were born and raised in the physical world. My bet is, if you’re over the age of 30, you also don’t listen to K-Pop that much either. You probably don’t play games in Roblox. You probably don’t make TikToks. You probably don’t follow YouTubers.
People who know nothing other than the metaverse will embrace it. I don’t really remember life before the internet, and now there’s not a chance I would go to a library to do research when I could use Wikipedia. In fact, if I needed to write a research paper, instead of doing preliminary research, I’d go to Wiikipedia, scroll to their citations, and start there with my research. It’s a completely unique way of thinking.
“People won’t want to wear the headsets all day. They’re uncomfortable and hard on your eyes.”
They’ll get better. Look at the Oculus you had to plug into a computer vs the Oculus Quest 2. Look at big-screen TVs and laptops. They’ll get to an acceptable form-factor.
“But people won’t have real, meaningful relationships.”
So you say. They’ll feel real. They might not be physical relationships, but there will absolutely be strong emotional connections between people/avatars. For many, this will be enough, especially if there are robots for… other purposes.
In case you were worried about those “other purposes,” 28% of men and 18% of women between the ages of 18 and 30 have not had sex in the last year. That reality is already here. Here’s a second source (admittedly, from The Washington Post, too) saying it’s here.
“I already have my phone, my computer, my TV, my tablet. When does it end?”
Whenever people stop building really compelling products that millions, or billions, of people love. That won’t stop now.
“How will screen time be limited?”
This is the critical question in my opinion. I don’t know, but it won’t stop people from buying the products. Parents will want to distract the kids, people will use them for work, Netflix will serve content through them, and there will be entire relationships and societies built on them. Right now, screen time is pretty out of control for most Americans, my sense is that it will increase, but maybe not by much. There will probably be a replacement of screen time from a phone/tablet/TV to VR goggles.
“People will never know boredom.”
This is a problem we face today. As Naval said, “Bored is better than busy.” I completely agree. I do my best to limit my personal screen time and my personal interactions, but I’m about to finish this blog post and check Twitter.
The metaverse isn’t all fire-and-brimstone. It will be revolutionary to feel like you’re in the same room with family members who live across the world. It will change the way we work and travel. It will allow us to meet more people, organize, and build relationships with those we would’ve never crossed paths with. We will have a much larger quantity of meaningful interactions and a much larger quantity of friends we consider to be “close friends.”
These entirely new societies and economies will bring their own challenges, obstacles and journeys.
The physical world will still be here. People still need to eat. They’ll have real, offline relationships. They’ll have families and kids and a home. They’ll meet for coffee, fly across the world, and go on adventures. They’ll go get fresh air, spend time in the sun, and have bucket lists.
There’s a percentage of the metaverse which is a replacement for what we currently do digitally. There’s a percentage of the metaverse, which, for some, will be a replacement for aspects of their physical world that they don’t like now.
But hey, it’s your metaverse, we’re just living in it.