Why Discord has the most face of the metaverse, and an analysis of the feasible path of the metaverse of domestic Internet companies Why Discord has the most face of the metaverse, the path of the metaverse of domestic Internet companies 
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/ s/X7DltRa9uRwvLIZ3kyOKUQ
Why Discord has the most metaverse aspect
Mentioning the word "metaverse" is a bit of a hot topic. And it is the kind of hot topic that has been rotten - the word "metaverse" has been said over and over again in many articles. So before we start the discussion, please let us First define what is discussed here.
We might as well imitate the mathematical axioms, and first give a few recognized concepts of the Metaverse:
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Axiom 1: The metaverse connects reality and virtual world
Metaverse does not construct a purely fictional world. This directly distinguishes it from multiplayer online games-multiplayer online games are based on a fantasy world and do not directly introduce elements of the real world.
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Axiom 2: User activities in the metaverse are "group social"
If only a single user interacts with the AI, it is at best an advanced stand-alone game.
Metaverse is based on the concept of "sociality". We all know that human beings are "social groups". Therefore, for the "metaverse" that aims to build a new world, the most important thing is the community attributes reflected in user activities
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Axiom 3: There is a continuous information history in the metaverse.
This is easy to understand, the information history of this universe should be continuous, instead of overturning and starting over every five minutes
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Axiom 4: Participants in the Metaverse have full degrees of freedom.
A virtual space experience without a degree of freedom might as well be a VR movie.
Everyone has also noticed that these few articles do not involve AR/VR, underlying hardware, business models, etc., and those are only relevant content of the Metaverse rather than core elements.
If you agree with these four axioms, then our metaverse discussion can proceed happily
What is Discord
A discussion of Discord as a product could be written on its own. Here are some of Discord's core features:
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Discord is a mix-and-match platform full of various social topics. Countless young people from all over the world gather here. There is no doubt that this is the world's most active public community
As shown in the figure, Yuanshen Discord server has 270,000 online.
On Discord, there are countless large servers with more than tens of thousands online at the same time.
(Note: Discord uses the term "server/server" to represent a theme community, and any text chat sub-channel and voice chat channel can be established in the community),
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In addition to the interest community, Discord has gradually become the platform of choice for many new entities, especially Web3-related entities, from NFT to DAO; today, if a global Internet product project does not establish an official Discord community position, it is absolutely negligence of the product operation.
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Discord was developed from a chat tool for gamers, and the community experience of the current Discord server also reflects many gamification concepts such as level growth.
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Discord is anti-algorithmic . In the Discord world, there is no "algorithm recommendation" element, for example, you will not receive community recommendations from the system, let alone advertisements with private goods. If you want to join a community server, the main way It's going to a "discover" page and doing a particularly classical "search"; or more classically, receiving a link inviting you to join the community through word of mouth.
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It may not be widely known, but Discord has an unprecedented strict handling mechanism for scripted advertising accounts. Don’t expect that like other platforms, you can use scripts to operate trumpets to spread in the Discord community. As long as there are any user complaints, or the system automatically judges the account Even if the behavior is a little abnormal, Discord will automatically ban the account without hesitation. The mainstream Discord community requires an account bound to a mobile phone number to speak; and after the account is blocked, the mobile phone number cannot be registered and used again. This is extremely strict The account management mechanism makes the Discord community clean.
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While strictly cracking down on script accounts, Discord has creatively promoted the use of the official robot Bot. All major communities use Bots for intelligent operation and management of the community. In fact, one of Discord's main profit points is the robot market, It is used to provide various paid Bot services to the community. If you are not satisfied with the Bot in the official market, you can also develop the community’s own Bot yourself. It is essentially an artificial intelligence service in the virtual world.
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In contrast to the strictly controlled account system, Discord itself is very open. Its openness lies not only in the fact that the content and topics are very open, but more importantly in its community mechanism:
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A newly registered account can directly establish its own community server. Can you imagine that after registering in a general forum, you can create a subsection by yourself?
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Free access to any Discord community - think of WeChat group QQ group, free access is impossible, you must apply for consent. In fact, it is rare to see Discord's high degree of freedom setting that allows users to freely enter and exit the community.
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After joining the community, Discord users can directly communicate with any user in private messages.
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The review system seems to basically not exist in the Discord community concept, and no behavior needs to be "approved". The experience of Discord users is a kind of real "freedom" (some communities define sub-channels that only high-level members can enter, This requires accumulating the level of the community, which is also the embodiment of the Discord community's emphasis on growth).
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As for the excellent product experience of Discord itself, including silky-smooth text chat and multi-person voice interaction, user UI design that is recognized as a model, etc., there is no need to mention it.
Why Discord has the most metaverse "face"
After explaining so many backgrounds, we finally get to the point: why does Discord have the most metaverse "face"?
A brief review of the metaverse axioms defined at the beginning: 1) Metaverse connects virtuality and reality 2) Metaverse has group sociality. 3) Metaverse has a continuous information history, 4) Metaverse gives users a high degree of freedom
In Discord, many well-run communities have user growth systems;
The community widely uses AI robots to interact with the community;
Different Discord communities reflect different themes of the real society;
All communities together constitute a global virtual social system;
In the highly open Discord, users can freely enter and exit different communities;
All community text communication has a history, and new users who join the community can see the history.
If the Discord community is imagined as a large or small population gathering place, the Yuanshin community is a super city (the management of this super city must be very complicated), and there are also small villages with tens of hundreds of people (this small Local management is very simple).
Cities and villages, populations flow with each other, and information can also communicate with each other to some extent. In this sense, Discord's information organization and user flow are very close to the real society.
Maybe readers have understood what the author wants to express: Discord is a platform for open social communication and organization with a high degree of freedom in the online world. This platform has gathered a considerable part of the active Internet population on the planet; Axiom and the scale of Discord's own development, it is truly meta-universe.
Some people will ask, is this a joke, there is not even a virtual space, what kind of metaverse is there?
Some people think that the most important thing in the metaverse is to have a virtual space scene, just like MMORPG (multiplayer online game) must have 3D graphics display.
But wait a minute, does an MMORPG really have to have 3D graphics?
If you are a little older, you might know "MUD"; this is the form of multiplayer online games in the ancient times of the Internet (when graphical multiplayer online games have not yet been developed). MUD is a text-only version: all scene descriptions , character interaction, combat and trading behavior, are all expressed through an interactive text.
Does pure text interaction have the core fun of the current 3D graphical MMORPG?
As a senior game player, the author has personally played MUD in depth. It can be said responsibly that the interactive game experience brought to players by the pure text experience of MUD is no worse than the later MMOPRG with beautiful graphics such as World of Warcraft/FF14. This There are 2 reasons:
1) The essence of MMO is multiplayer interaction. This interactive experience has nothing to do with the screen, but only with the social interaction itself.
2) The power of text description + human imagination, compared with displaying visual pictures, it is really not necessarily better.
It will be clearer with another example: readers who have read both the original novel and the remake of the novel will definitely agree that the plot experiences of the two have their own advantages and disadvantages; even, the movies are often not as exciting as the original.
Why? Because based on the magnificent imagination of human beings, the pleasure of beautiful words is endless. The author has memorized the six factions of "Yi Tian Tu Long Ji" and the battle against the Guangming Ding, but so far I haven't seen a movie or drama that can fully display it. Bring out all the excitement of the original.
It’s far away, take it back. What is expressed here is that visual presentation is important, but it is not the key to the existence of "virtual space"; the concept space of the metaverse that conforms to various axioms can exist in the human imagination.
Completion plan for Discord metaverse: virtual space, economic system
If readers feel that the discussion of "virtual space based on imagination" is a bit avant-garde, then this section will return to the mainstream: let's discuss two pieces of the puzzle that Discord lacks from the "complete metaverse": virtual space and economic system.
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scene-driven virtual space
Discord users need a personalized virtual puppet (Avatar) to interact in the independent virtual space of the community. This model can be supplemented by the metaverse shown by Meta or Micorsoft, that is, the conference/party metaverse, or In the author's terms, a small metaverse: a well-themed interaction within a limited virtual interactive environment.
The virtual interaction of the Discord community coupled with the original text and audio channels is a particularly perfect combination.
In fact, what some star entrepreneurial projects overseas do is this kind of party-style small metaverse product.
Compared with the small metaverse for specific limited scenarios, Discord can further expand its own virtual space into a large metaverse: a universal virtual world that summarizes all social activity scenarios in an all-encompassing manner.
As for Discord, imagine that the virtual space of each community gathering place is materialized, coupled with the spatial relationship established between each other, this big metaverse world will naturally appear.
Perhaps, the ultimate form of the Metaverse is what the Matrix describes, the Inception space without borders, where everyone can spend a lifetime. However, the ultimate also means the end, the end of human civilization.
In short, at the current stage, the small metaverse based on specific limited scenarios is a product with practical significance; the large metaverse is a beautiful utopia, but it is a bit far away.
From the perspective of product design, let’s talk about the small metaverse and the big metaverse.
Users need active content or goals to "activate" in a space. Anyone who makes games knows that it is necessary to provide users with enough "content" to consume game time.
A social interaction in a fixed scene can be regarded as a well-defined "activity content".
However, the difficulty in building a general metaverse system is not how to create a sufficiently large virtual space, or how to handle a sufficient scale of real-time interaction. The core difficulty is actually:
Create this infinite space for users to spend time here to do something?
Before thinking clearly about this problem and having the ability to solve this problem well, all the metaverses are false propositions.
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Goods and Merchandise:
Like the real world, the metaverse virtual society needs an economic system.
This is what Discord does not have for the time being, and lacks a global virtual currency system. However, the economic system is not included in the previous metaverse axioms, because the emergence of the economic system is a matter of course in a social system internal needs.
This brings us to what Discord is doing.
Discord has done a questionnaire survey, and the only product information clearly mentioned to users is the introduction of Web3 wallets. Just imagine, when Discord is connected to the Web3 blockchain network, using a custom blockchain currency as its currency Universe Currency, and officially released NFT and allows users to release NFT as a virtual commodity in the Discord metaverse. The Discord economic system was naturally established without any difficulty.
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The above mentioned are all kinds of things, and some core concepts of the Metaverse are discussed through Discord. Next, let’s take a look at the feasible paths of the major Internet companies in China in the direction of the Metaverse.
First a disclaimer: The owner of this city has some friends in various major factories, but the following is purely personal opinion, just for fun; if there is any similarity with the strategy of each factory, it is a coincidence.
Big Factory Tencent
Tencent has many products, but it can be said responsibly that without WeChat and QQ, Tencent is Nothing (Don’t worry about the literal meaning, I just want to express that these two social relationship chains have laid the entire glory of Tencent’s empire)
So Tencent’s Metaverse, if there is one, was obviously born on one of the two ecosystems of WeChat and QQ
(Other departments can also do Metaverse, but it doesn’t make much sense to leave the core competitiveness of WeChat and QQ social relationship chain. The same is true for other major manufacturers, we pay attention to the core competitiveness of each company)
So, who will win?
The answer given by the author is very clear: Tencent Metaverse will appear on top of the QQ ecosystem.
The reason and listen carefully.
First of all, will WeChat be a Metaverse?
Zhang Xiaolong has been emphasizing the restraint of WeChat, an extremely complex metaverse system and "restraint" can't match the eight poles.
Of course, WeChat is also doing more field expansion, such as video accounts. But if WeChat maintains the current product rhythm and realizes the distance of a metaverse system, there may be thousands of mountains and rivers.
More importantly, it is QQ's own actions.
What is QQ doing recently?
1) Super QQ show, 2) Introduction of Unreal engine 3) Copycat version of Discord QQ channel
First of all, the first action, ""Super QQ Show".
It is easier to understand. QQ show returns to super QQ show, more exquisite 3D image, various paid props system, the familiar taste of QQ show is back.
But the reason why the super QQ show is "super" is not only the improvement of the visual presentation effect. In fact, after the full 3D transformation, QQ has started to let the doll Avatar of the QQ show appear in the QQ built-in mini-game. This looks very Of course: QQ users spend money to create their own QQ show dolls, of course they hope that this image will appear in the game.
But the meaning of this matter is far more than that. In August last year, there was a star NFT project Loot that attracted the attention of the Web3 world. This project randomly generates combined entries of virtual equipment, and each Loot NFT is an 8-word random equipment text description Composition. Yes, only text. As shown in the picture:
This simple NFT project can be written by students who are even beginners in programming. Once it appeared, it detonated the Web3|NFT circle.
Why? Because the current online games have always had the game first, and then the virtual equipment in the game. The equipment of different games cannot be interoperable. The Loot project provides a possibility, so that each user can first get their favorite equipment combination , and then used in all web3 games that support Loot, that is, "obtain game equipment first, and then use it across games".
Think about it, is it cool and reasonable? If you have a rare mount, of course you want to show off it in all games. In this way, the virtual equipment in the game has universal value and a sense of presence.
It sounds reasonable, but what does it have to do with the Super QQ Show? In fact, it is obvious that the Super QQ Show created this "equipment first, then enter the game" mode, at least it has been realized in QQ built-in ecological games , it is natural to access more games in the future.
And this is only the first stage goal of QQ Metaverse.
The second action, the Unreal engine is built into QQ.
In January of this year, the mobile version of QQ was updated to version 8.8.55, and a complete Unreal 3D engine was inserted into QQ. The direct result was that the installation package of the iOS version swelled to more than 800M. Even on the mobile platform, there are particularly approachable WIFI is automatically updated, and QQ is also flooded by the user's saliva for a while.
Users have complained about the brain damage of the QQ team, making QQ so bloated for the super QQ show; QQ really wants money and crazy;
But, is it really the QQ product manager who has lost his mind?
Super QQ show with a 3D engine is really great; on the other hand, it seems not worthwhile to increase the volume of QQ products to a somewhat exaggerated level just for a subsidiary QQ show.
Those who can make QQ products are definitely smart people. Would a smart person make such an obvious mistake?
So, what if the introduction of the Unreal engine is not just for a super QQ show?
First of all, let me briefly talk about what is the Unreal Unreal 3D engine. Unreal Engine 5.0 has just been officially released in the past two days. Unreal is one of the two general-purpose 3D game engines today (the other is Unity). Those PC games and consoles with awesome effects Most of the games are developed based on Unreal.
Unreal 5.0 also introduces full-realistic rendering based on ray tracing, direct use of movie-level ultra-high-precision materials and other nuclear bomb-level functions.
In the vernacular that everyone can understand, with Unreal, as long as the virtual world can be imagined, it can be expressed, and it looks like the real thing.
More importantly, what Unreal is good at is not just looking at beautiful things, it is essentially a proven large-scale interactive game engine, which means that it is a clear solution to directly create a complete virtual interactive world based on Unreal.
To make it clear, using the Unreal engine to realize the metaverse virtual world is one of the most commercially feasible solutions at present.
With the built-in Unreal Unreal Engine, at some point in the future, if QQ wants to show users an interactive virtual space, it only needs to download materials and game scripts online, and it doesn’t even take the effort to let users install plug-ins.
The third action is the QQ version of Discord - QQ channel.
The QQ channel actually has nothing special to say, it’s just a replica of Discord.
The Discord product itself is good enough, as long as it is copied in place, there is no problem.
As for the crucial issue of supervision in the open community, in view of the fact that the real-time live broadcast AI content supervision is well done, there is reason to believe that the content supervision of the QQ channel should not have technical challenges, and it is just waiting for the day of public use.
(Also, if any Tencent student reads this article, can you send an internal test invitation code:))
The three actions of QQ are finished. So, what does super QQ show + Unreal engine + QQ channel mean?
Obviously, this means that in the corresponding community of the QQ channel, users can participate in the virtual space interaction of the small scene built by the Unreal engine with the avatar of the super QQ show.
This is the Discord community small metaverse model mentioned earlier , perfect.
Another important point is that the current head of QQ is Yao Xiaoguang.
Who is Yao Xiaoguang? The president of the well-known Tianmei Studio Group, whose works <Glory of the King> <QQ Speed> <Cross Fire: Gunfight King>... The pillar of Tencent's game empire, no more introduction.
Let me say something that may offend people: the most suitable person to build the metaverse must be a gamer. This is because of the many conceptual homology between the massively multiplayer interactive game world and the metaverse.
If there is no partner who understands game design in a metaverse project, it is probably unreliable.
Therefore, it is reasonable to guess that when QQ is handed over to game tycoon Yao Xiaoguang in April 2021, Tencent’s board of directors has already thought clearly: QQ will develop into QQ Metaverse under Yao Xiaoguang’s control.
Looking back at the metaverse battle between WeChat and QQ, it’s not that WeChat cannot be a metaverse at all, but that QQ has the right time, place and people to do this.
In fact, there is another reason why I am very optimistic about the birth of QQ Metaverse: the younger QQ user base.
Young people in their early 20s around me are all using QQ. The reason is that WeChat has become too work-oriented, communication-oriented and boring.
QQ is active at a trough, but compared to WeChat; QQ has young people, and young people are the main user group of Discord-like communities, and they are also the target user group of Metaverse.
For so many years, QQ has been living under the shadow of WeChat. It is a lie not to be aggrieved. But the QQ team has not done a good job in the product, so there is nothing to say.
In the hands of Yao Xiaoguang, QQ will one day be reborn as a phoenix and return with the king of the QQ Metaverse, perhaps that will be the day when it launches a formal challenge to WeChat.
Dachang's NetEase
NetEase has the most powerful MMOPRG game development capabilities in China.
An industry assessment of game R&D capability is whether it can be repeated. It’s okay to make a blockbuster MMO, and if you have the ability to continue to release blockbusters.
NetEase is the kind of company that can repeatedly produce MMORPG hits.
From another point of view, NetEase is the only game giant that can compete with Tencent Games. This is achieved under the advantage of Tencent’s monopolistic social relationship chain. It is very doubtful, such as Tencent without WeChat and QQ. Chain, whether the advantage of NetEase Games over Tencent Games is overwhelming.
There are no ifs in the world, everything is the best arrangement. Perhaps it is precisely because of the strong pressure of Tencent's social relationship chain advantage that it has forced NetEase's awesome online game content self-development ability.
Foreshadowing here, readers must know that the author wants to say that Netease's Metaverse will be born in the game ecology.
In fact, NetEase already has its own metaverse system: NetEase Fuxi's immersive conference system "Yaotai".
In "Yaotai", each participant has his own avatar, and can set the scene environment of the meeting room. In the virtual environment, users can chat with text and voice, and even have simultaneous interpretation, and support virtual screen projection PPT, etc. .
This is the prototype of a typical small metaverse , with virtual interaction in a fixed and limited scene.
Note that it is called the "prototype" of the small metaverse rather than the small metaverse, because Fuxi's "Yaotai" still lacks a vital link: a lasting community|social relationship chain. Therefore, "Yaotai" can only It is a virtual conference system: people in reality come to hold a virtual online meeting, temporarily set up a stage to sing an opera, and the music ends and the people leave.
There is no fixed community here, nor does it form a persistent information content precipitation. In this point, it is different from the community-based small metaverse.
In fact, what is worth discussing is not Fuxi "Yaotai" itself, which is already a well-known virtual conference system in the industry. Rather, if Fuxi "Yaotai" is regarded as the embryonic form of Netease Metaverse, then what is the follow-up path? ?
Create a more realistic virtual environment? Sure, it will happen sooner or later with the engine upgrade, but rendering quality has never been the key to the metaverse.
Introducing a community or social relationship chain? Very good, but the success of building a general community or social relationship chain from scratch seems to be almost the same as doing the Metaverse itself.
In fact, NetEase has its own social relationship chain. Where are these relationship chains? It is in NetEase’s MMORPG. Every mature MMOPRG has a stable in-game social relationship, which is why MMORPG can continue to operate for ten years or even The underlying reason for a longer period of time.
But as mentioned above, the game is based on a completely overhead virtual world. It is incompatible with the attributes of the Metaverse based on the connection between reality and virtuality. If you forcefully open up the relationship chain between multiple games (how to get through is a question mark), It is not easy to explain logically.
Of course, it’s okay not to be a metaverse, and it’s already a great thing to continue to create excellent games. Just search, and the Netease Leihuo team that created Fuxi’s “Yaotai” has registered “Netease Metaverse”, “Leihuoyuan Universe", "Fuxi Metaverse" and other trademarks.
So, it seems that there must be an idea, but it’s still the same sentence, what is the path?
Haha, there is no definite answer this time.
However, the author believes that if NetEase finally succeeds in building the Metaverse, it will most likely develop along the lines of NetEase Leihuo's current Fuxi "Yaotai" iterative development.
What games has NetEase Leihuo ever made? <A Chinese Ghost Story> which is farther away, <Naishuihan> which is closer, and the 2021 popular Steam network, which successfully exported the light of Chinese game culture to the world <Eternal Tribulation>.
NetEase has other excellent game divisions, but what makes Leihuo different is its layout and dedication to new technologies. As early as a few years ago, Leihuo first integrated its own blockchain technology in MMO games; Leihuo Fuxi It is also the top AI team built by Leihuo by introducing talents, before AI became a hot topic.
In the end, for a mature game system like Leihuo with superpowers and money-making capabilities, the metaverse is not a question of whether it can be done technically and financially, but a question of where to go.
Again, there is no answer to this priceless question. Perhaps Leihuo’s top bosses are also thinking about this. Those few bosses are masters who really understand products and technology, and can write planning books with their left hand and write code with their right hand. Support this kind of original heart-driven team from the heart. One day, the team can find that answer.
NetEase Metaverse may be like NetEase's game development style. When the final project is announced to the public, it has already silently internally iterated for several years.
Netease's consistent style, low-key, calm; plan before moving;
If it doesn't sing, it will be a blockbuster.
Dachang's Ali
If Ali had a Metaverse, where would it be born?
Readers now, if they are a little familiar with the routines of this article, will they first think about whether Ali has a social relationship chain?
It was true that there was no such thing before; now that there is, the answer is: DingTalk.
But the problem is that Wu Zhao, the founder of DingTalk, has already left. After DingTalk was integrated into the Alibaba Cloud system and no longer developed independently, Wu Zhao left Ali.
DingTalk is indeed Ali's strategic weapon. Otherwise, it wouldn't make such a big fuss.
DingTalk, which has been integrated into the Alibaba Cloud ecosystem, has gained greater support and development; DingTalk is undoubtedly very successful in building the domestic ecology of collaborative office software, and it is also a particularly important business segment of Ali at present.
But if we look at the evolution possibility of the product itself, we have to put a little question mark.
I privately believe that it is difficult to have a soul without the founder’s product. Therefore, I don’t think that DingTalk, which serves the overall situation of the group, can still give the answer to the metaverse with a ground-breaking answer.
So, what about Ali's e-commerce system?
If it is said that the e-commerce empire must not be born in the metaverse, it may be difficult to convince the public; but the problem with Ali is that it is different from Tencent and Netease. Ali’s genes are not a product-driven company. The birth of Dingding is a beautiful accident. Ali products are basically born in marginal teams. For the core e-commerce system, expect a new concept product to be hatched... I can only say that it is not optimistic.
However, Ali also has other businesses, such as games.
If it could be said that Ali had no game genes before, after <Three Kingdoms.Strategy Edition> turned out, it would be swallowed up. However, Ali’s self-developed game system still needs more explosive products to maintain its own plate Stability: If only one popular model is not enough, a second model must be made.
Therefore, one day Ali’s self-developed games can also think about the entry path of the Metaverse like Netease Games or other awesome game teams (such as Mihayou), but this is not necessarily their focus today.
The author’s point of view is that if Alibaba Metaverse can break out of the cocoon, it will most likely come from a business that seems a bit unsuitable: Alibaba Cloud. To be precise, it is the Alibaba Cloud game platform, a technology based on Alibaba Cloud Architecture to provide a platform for cloud game rendering services.
Compared with the challenges of the Metaverse mainly in the product design mode, the challenge of the cloud game rendering platform is purely technical. The challenge of standard cloud computing services is the dynamic allocation and coordination of CPU resources in the cloud, while the challenge of cloud game rendering is Going a step further, it means to solve the dynamic high-throughput transmission and parallel rendering output of massive rendering data between multi-graphics hardware. Every word described in the sentence just now may make technicians shudder.
Moreover, with the rendering results of high frame rate, how to reduce the delay to the user client as much as possible, and at the same time upload the user interaction response to the server in time, and cooperate with each other to realize the real-time interaction of the game is a problem.
Alibaba Cloud Games seems to have a mature solution to these technical problems, and one of their good answers is the commercial <Yun.YuanShen>.
It is prudent to believe that Alibaba Cloud's cloud game rendering solution named "Yuan Jing" is one of the fastest commercialization solutions in the industry. The Yuan Jing team who directly deals with games should also be well versed in games.
Therefore, if they can implement a set of common Metaverse product framework on the solid foundation of their own cloud rendering technology, it will be an ideal plug-and-play solution for many third-party companies that want to enter the small Metaverse .
Even the big metaverse can be envisioned in this scheme mode, all the third-party small metaverses need to be connected together through a unified economic system, and this game seems to be formed.
Note that the key words of this solution are cloud rendering, toB ecology, PaaS architecture, each word is full of weight.
This is essentially impossible to be copied, just as Tencent’s social relationship chain cannot be copied, NetEase’s game capabilities cannot be copied, and the countless technological accumulations and toB ecological accumulations that Alibaba Cloud games rely on cannot be copied.
Well, every big factory has its own unique dragon-slaying sword, which is very good.
Baidu articles of Dachang
Since last year's particularly successful "metaverse" concept Baidu Create Conference 2021, Baidu's own metaverse brand has gained enough attention.
In terms of product definition, Baidu’s own Metaverse and Netease’s “Yaotai” are both virtual scene conference systems, and they can only be regarded as the embryonic form of the Metaverse; in terms of technology, Netease’s “Yaotai” has a more solid and powerful technical foundation ; But to be able to have a stable business income, gain a firm foothold and continue to develop, is already stronger than anything else in the current environment.
But what I want to talk about today is actually Baidu’s other two treasured products, Baidu Tieba and YY.
Needless to say, Baidu Tieba is the only active general-purpose community platform in China.
As for YY, since its birth in 2008, it is still regarded by many online game players as the best choice for multiplayer voice communication in the game. A large number of game union channels are only in YY.
Regrettably, today's Baidu Tieba is full of boring advertisements, and YY focuses on all kinds of beautiful anchors who are edging around. It is a pity to say that the teams of these two treasure-level products are currently only thinking about traffic monetization, not Focus on the quality of the product itself.
On the other hand, game trade unions have been calling for YY to provide supporting text communities to store union management information in YY for a long time; it is not a day or two that Tieba users want to return to a clean community without advertisements.
Think about it, everyone, if Tieba did not have those annoying advertisements, YY would abandon the boring live broadcast of beautiful women, and combine two into one; Tieba’s existing text community also supports voice chat. YY’s existing game union channel plus a text layout. ..
Isn't this a Discord?
Discord originally developed from a third-party game chat tool similar to YY.
After Baidu acquired YY, there is a realistic basis for the integration of the community and social relationship chains of these two products.
Maybe one day, Baidu will have a great master who has enough product capabilities and team control to completely reorganize Baidu Tieba + YY, and let the two treasured products escape the bitter sea of traffic monetization; while Baidu has the best opportunity, Have your own community|social relationship chain ecology-a priceless treasure that many big factories dream of.
Coupled with Baidu's excellent virtual human capabilities, AI capabilities, and benchmarking against QQ Metaverse, Baidu's community-based Metaverse is about to emerge. Baidu may be able to regain its lost mobile era.
But, it's hard.
This great god needs to be as drastic as Tencent Yao Xiaoguang did to QQ.
It is even more difficult, which means that you must have sufficient control and integration capabilities over two completely different product teams at the same time, and be able to withstand the pressure of realization, and concentrate on building a product that belongs to the future.
Think big head.
But the author firmly believes that the integrated reorganization of YY+ Tieba is the only possible opponent of QQ’s future community-based metaverse. If Baidu does not do this, Tencent will be unstoppable on this road.
As the old saying goes, there is no difficulty in the world, so where are the outstanding people? If the great god does this, he will become a Baidu hero and go down in history.
But, where is such a great god?
Dachang's Byte Beat
The ByteDance section was added last. Originally, this article was written on Baidu and it was over. Later, I thought it was wrong. When talking about domestic manufacturers, ByteDance cannot be avoided.
ByteDance is actually an Internet company that the author respects very much. From Toutiao to Douyin to TikTok, which is invincible all over the world, ByteDance has been proving the power of its algorithm-driven business model. The rise of ByteDance is a miracle of algorithms .
So ask yourself why byte beating is ignored in the framework of this article?
The answer may be that the author believes that algorithms have no soul . A metaverse based on social relationships needs a soul. Discord even completely opposes algorithms.
Therefore, ByteDance can make any product, but it cannot make C-end social/community products, and it is difficult to make a metaverse.
This is not the fault of ByteDance's subjective wishes, but the curse of weak social/community products that companies with strong algorithmic genes cannot escape. Google is a typical example, and the vigorous Google+ cannot avoid the treatment of closing down in the end.
Think about it, this is actually quite good, community and social products need a deep understanding of human nature; algorithm-led teams can’t make good community/social products, which shows that algorithms are not terrible enough to read people’s hearts :)
ByteDance has made many attempts in community/social products. The more well-known social app "Duoshan" attempts to copy the success story of QQ diverting WeChat through the diversion of Douyin user relationship chain.
At the press conference of Duoshan 3 years ago, I remember a girl born in the 90s who was called the product manager of Duoshan walked up to the stage. I was very impressed at the time, because the product manager of the girl directly attacked Zhang Xiaolong on stage, claiming that young people understand young people better , Duoshan will definitely defeat WeChat (to the effect).
At that time, I was surprised and inexplicable. I thought that if I was not too young and too frivolous, I would be used as a gunman. There is a saying that the one who defeats WeChat must not be another WeChat; Of course, countless products have disappeared under WeChat. This is a matter of strategic direction, not the fault of the team.
Far away, back to the Metaverse of Byte. In the metaverse axioms of this article, the community attribute is an important one. Therefore, ByteDance, which lacks this aspect of genes, attempts to build Metaverse products from the pure C side, which is difficult. Heavy.
But Byte still has an opportunity, and this opportunity is the product that the author very much recognizes, Feishu.
What is more interesting is that Ali and Byte, two companies that are not very good at making social products, finally started from the office collaboration end and made a breakthrough.
Compared with DingTalk, Feishu products are more pure. The author recommends Feishu unreservedly to any team that wants to try collaborative office software. With the personal use and understanding of Feishu in the past few years, it is a well-deserved choice for domestic office collaboration products outstanding.
As for what is Feishu’s cloud universe? The answer is simple. Comparing with Microsoft Office, start from the metaverse of virtual office meetings, and the answer is over.
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As a conclusion, I would like to give a summary of this article;
After much deliberation, I just want to pay tribute to those who are dedicated to polishing the product. This kind of pureness is the true embodiment of the spirit of the Internet. In the field of metaverse, no matter what the future ends, no matter which team has the last laugh, I would like to thank all those who have the spirit of exploration The team expresses their heartfelt respect.