Speaker John Goodale stepped onto the stage at Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki to talkabout the metaverse. Goodale has 27 years of experience in the games industry and currently handles global growth initiatives for the live ops platform Beamable. Goodale worked and consulted for numerous companies such as Activision, Unity Technologies, and Epic Games before joining Beamable.

Drawing on years of industry experience, Goodale mentioned that there have been numerous transitions within that time, such as that from playing at the arcade to playing in the comfort of your own home, single player to multiplayer, and the recent transition of popular free to play and play to earn titles.

Goodale then pointed out that a common factor when these transitions take place is that the industry adapts to the changes rather than creating a complete shift. Essentially what came before does not simply disappear, for example single player games still exist despite the take off we have seen with multiplayer titles, and people should look at the metaverse in the same way, as it is simply a different avenue for developers to pursue.

The metaverse

“We in the industry have been playing in the metaverse for years” Goodale commented after joking that the existence of the metaverse did not begin when Mark Zuckerberg mentioned it last year. In fact,10six, an early metaverse experience that came out 22 years ago, may have been the first true persistent universe on the internet.

Then we have titles like Secondlife and Habbo Hotel where thousands of people in a virtual world could be performing mundane activities like going to a park or hanging out at a bar, titles which also saw people spend real money to get land or homes in-game. So whilst the metaverse may seem new, really it has been a part of the gaming space for some time.

Goodale commented on the future of the industry saying “We have a tendency in tech to overestimate what a new tech is going to do in 5 years, we saw that in VR, but we underestimate the impact it can have in 20 years, this applies to web3 too”

Goodale did state that new game technologies will make it easier for the metaverse to flourish, and with game engines being widely accessible nearly all metaverse builders will be familiar with platforms such as Unreal or Unity, which enables creators to use familiar tools to build more powerful experiences.
You can find out more about Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki here. In other Metaverse related news Rec Room announced it will be coming to PC soon.

In other Metaverse related news Rec Room announced it will be coming to PC soon. You can follow our coverage of the Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki event in the coming weeks.