Seriously, What Does “Metaverse” Mean?
To help you get a sense of how vague and complex a term “the metaverse” can be, here's an exercise: Mentally replace the phrase “the metaverse” in a sentence with “cyberspace.” Ninety percent of the time, the meaning won't substantially change. That's because the term doesn't really refer to any one specific type of technology, but rather a broad (and often speculative) shift in how we interact with technology. And it's entirely possible that the term itself will eventually become just as antiquated, even as the specific technology it once described becomes commonplace.
Broadly speaking, the technologies companies refer to when they talk about “the metaverse” can include virtual reality—characterized by persistent virtual worlds that continue to exist even when you're not playing—as well as augmented reality that combines aspects of the digital and physical worlds. However, it doesn't require that those spaces be exclusively accessed via VR or AR. Virtual worlds—such as aspects of Fortnite that can be accessed through PCs, game consoles, and even phones—have started referring to themselves as “the metaverse.”
Many companies that have hopped on board the metaverse bandwagon also envision some sort of new digital economy, where users can create, buy, and sell goods. In the more idealistic visions of the metaverse, it's interoperable, allowing you to take virtual items like clothes or cars from one platform to another, though this is harder than it sounds. While some advocates claim new technologies like NFTs can enable portable digital assets, this simply isn't true, and bringing items from one video game or virtual world to another is an enormously complex task that no one company can solve.
It's difficult to parse what all this means because when you hear descriptions like those above, an understandable response is, “Wait, doesn't that exist already?” World of Warcraft, for example, is a persistent virtual world where players can buy and sell goods. Fortnite has virtual experiences like concerts and an exhibit where Rick Sanchez can learn about MLK Jr. You can strap on an Oculus headset and be in your own personal virtual home. Is that really what “the metaverse” means? Just some new kinds of video games?
Well, yes and no. Saying that Fortnite is “the metaverse” would be a bit like saying Google is “the internet.” Even if you spend large chunks of time in Fortnite, socializing, buying things, learning, and playing games, that doesn't necessarily mean it encompasses the entire scope of what people and companies mean when they say "the metaverse." Just as Google, which builds parts of the internet—from physical data centers to security layers—isn't the entire internet.
Tech giants like Microsoft and Meta are working on building tech related to interacting with virtual worlds, but they're not the only ones. Many other large companies, including Nvidia, Unity, Roblox, and even Snap—as well as a variety of smaller companies and startups—are building the infrastructure to create better virtual worlds that more closely mimic our physical life.
For example, Epic has acquired a number of companies that help create or distribute digital assets, in part to bolster its powerful Unreal Engine 5 platform. And while Unreal may be a video game platform, it's also being used in the film industry and could make it easier for anyone to create virtual experiences. There are tangible and exciting developments in the realm of building digital worlds.
Despite this, the idea of a Ready Player One-like single unified place called “the metaverse" is still largely impossible. That is in part because such a world requires companies to cooperate in a way that simply isn't profitable or desirable—Fortnite doesn't have much motivation to give players a portal to jump straight over to World of Warcraft, even if it were easy to do so, for example—and partially because the raw computing power needed for such a concept could be much further away than we think.
This inconvenient fact has given rise to slightly different terminology. Now many companies or advocates instead refer to any single game or platform as “a metaverse.” By this definition, anything from a VR concert app to a video game would count as a “metaverse.” Some take it further, calling the collection of various metaverses a “multiverse of metaverses.” Or maybe we're living in a “hybrid-verse.”
Or these words can mean anything at all. Coca-Cola launched a “flavor born in the metaverse” alongside a Fortnite tie-in mini-game. There are no rules.
It's at this point that most discussions of what the metaverse entails start to stall. We have a vague sense of what things currently exist that we could kind of call the metaverse if we massage the definition of words the right way. And we know which companies are investing in the idea, but after months, there's nothing approaching agreement on what it is. Meta thinks it will include fake houses you can invite all your friends to hang out in. Microsoft seems to think it could involve virtual meeting roomsto train new hires or chat with your remote coworkers.
The pitches for these visions of the future range from optimistic to outright fan fiction. At one point during Meta's original presentation on the metaverse, the company showed a scenario in which a young woman is sitting on her couch scrolling through Instagram when she sees a video a friend posted of a concert that's happening halfway across the world.
The video then cuts to the concert, where the woman appears in an Avengers-style hologram. She's able to make eye contact with her friend who is physically there, they're both able to hear the concert, and they can see floating text hovering above the stage. This seems cool, but it's not really advertising a real product, or even a possible future one. In fact, it brings us to the biggest problem with “the metaverse.”
State-run WAM news agency said the government’s vision for the strategy will see the metaverse sector support as many as 40,000 additional virtual jobs and generate up to $4 billion for the city’s GDP by 2030. These jobs will mostly be in fields that are the pillars of the metaverse, including extended, augmented (AR), and virtual reality (VR).
The plan is also in line with the vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, to transform the emirate into a global capital of advanced technologies, primarily artificial intelligence (AI) and Web3. It will build on Dubai’s achievement of attracting over 1,000 companies in the sector contributing $500 million to the national economy.
“The metaverse is a promising digital world. We aim to harness this technology to enhance the quality of life in the UAE and across the globe,” Hamdan bin Mohammed said.
Bloomberg adds that the metaverse strategy is part of Dubai’s plan to develop global standards in building safe and secure platforms and technology infrastructure for users, as well as regulations to accelerate the adoption of these technologies.
Following the launch of the strategy, Hamdan bin Mohammed also announced a global event called the “Dubai Metaverse Assembly” to bring together metaverse experts. The event will be held in September at the Museum of the Future and will be hosted by the Dubai Future Foundation (DFF).
The event will see over 300 regional and international experts engage in sessions underscoring three main tracks—educate, inspire, and contribute. The educate track will consist of in-depth sessions on the metaverse, inspire will showcase use cases in different industries, while the contribute sessions will include workshops on metaverse foresight.
Metaverse adoption growing among governments
The initiative is Dubai’s latest move related to the metaverse. Previously, Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Agency (VARA) launched a virtual headquarters in the Sandbox metaverse to understand the firms they would be regulating.
Like Dubai, several other governments have plans to embrace metaverse technology. In its five-year plan announcement, the city of Shanghai revealed that some technologies it will focus on includes the metaverse, NFTs, and blockchain.
Similarly, the government of South Korea has budgeted funds to incentivize metaverse startups in the country. To support the government initiative, fintech giant Dunamu has also launched a $385 million investment to create 10,000 Web 3 jobs in the country
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