As part of Pocket Gamer Connects Digital #4, Wormhole Labs COO Phil Ranta discussed the metaverse and how creative media and social media are merging.
"The metaverse is best defined as a future iteration of the internet, made up of persistent, shared, 3D spaces linked into a perceived virtual universe," said Ranta.
"It's a natural evolution of things that are happening already."
It started with messenger and chat rooms, from here, social media was formed, such as Facebook and Twitter.
Then we moved on to passive live streaming such as zoom. Moving on, we play games that are fantasy, such as Fortnite. Teenagers use the game as a means to talk to friends. All of these areas are combined to create the metaverse.
The metaverse is ever-changing.
Opportunity
"It is a huge opportunity because as we know, social media monetises very well," said Ranta.
Especially this year, monetisation and revenue have been huge due to the COVID-19 pandemic as people were forced to stay home.
New platforms are always on the rise, with a lot of big apps being of a social nature.
Being able to link the gaming universe to social media, which also monetises well, provides a huge opportunity.
The current social trends are gamified creation, live communication, personalisation and access to influencers, live video and social gaming such as Fortnite, Among Us and Fall Guys.
The current attempts at creating a metaverse are a combination of all the above propositions.
Breaking through
"It is kind of already here," said Ranta.
People are already becoming avatars and communicating through games such as Fortnite and Roblox. Next, there is VR chat that allows you to have social interaction as a virtual character.
To be huge, a metaverse will need scalability and accessibility to match. Furthermore, it must be easy to use whilst satisfying the need to create content and gamification - "everyone needs to feel like they are changing the world."
It needs to be different from what is already out there. Then it also needs to see consistent engagement.
The metaverse will aim to have monetisation through the free-to-play model.
PGC Digital #4 will run from November 9th to November 13th. To keep up to date with all of our coverage, check out the roundups here. There's still time to sign up - to find out more and book a ticket, head to the website.
