To see what the Metaverse promises, check out 3D Charades.
This video game has a simple premise. Players gather in a cafe-like room and divide into groups. A player draws an image, and team members guess what the drawing represents.
Similar games, such as Pictionary, already exist in the real world. In virtual worlds, however, gameplay is just the beginning. Soon after developer Rec Room released 3D Charades in 2016, fans started turning their drawings into works of art and cafes into galleries.
"We've just seen people expand the capabilities of this tool," Rec Room CEO Nick Fait told me in an interview on his Digital World, referring to the Maker Pen for creating virtual drawings. He demonstrates by using a spit out colors, shapes and bouncing balls.
The Maker Pen (see bottom left) started out as a drawing tool for 3D Charades. But it has become a tool for creating metaverses.
3D Charades might sound like standard online multiplayer, but it's a pointer to what the Metaverse could become. The much-hyped Metaverse refers to shared, persistent digital spaces for meeting, gaming, and socializing. People there are represented as avatars, usually cartoon-like 3D characters, who roam the virtual space. The concept is already on the agenda at trendsetting conferences like the recent SXSW music festival in Austin and this week's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
The idea for the Metaverse began decades ago with novels written by Orson Scott Card and Neal Stephenson, who both dreamed of computer-generated spaces in which their characters spent most of their time. Games like Second Life, Minecraft, and Roblox represented the first wave of Metaverse development shortly after. In some of these games, players use virtual materials to build items that their avatars use, extending the virtual world's metaphors for real life.
Epic Games sees its hit Fortnite as more than just a Hunger Games-style shooter. This is a place to play, hang out with friends or watch a movie. The popular game has hosted concerts by musicians such as Travis Scott and Ariana Grande. In Beat Saber, people compete in a game of swinging their arms to the beat of pop music by Lady Gaga and Billie Eilish. In Echo VR, players compete in a game that mixes Ultimate Frisbee and Space Capture the Flag.
Facebook and Microsoft see the Metaverse as a place to live and work. Some are even creating digital offices to connect colleagues on the other side of the world.
The campaign is still largely experimental, and no one knows what it will look like in a few years. Still, business leaders from Walt Disney to supercar maker Ferrari talk about how their products can be found in the virtual world. Or in multiple metaverses.
One dreary Friday last month, Fajt invited me to his version of a virtual world. I found myself sitting across from him in a room that contained the university recreation center, children's playroom, and ski lodge. It's colorful and furnished with chairs and coffee tables. Spring trees sway in the breeze outside. In the real world, we are thousands of miles apart. He's in Seattle wearing an Oculus Quest headset, and I'm in Washington, D.C., staring at my computer screen.
Rec Room Creative Director Cameron Brown (left) and CEO Nick Fajt (middle) chat with me in their virtual worlds.
In the Rec Room, people play games like virtual paintball, dodgeball and frisbee golf with other people who log into the world using a virtual reality headset, a phone, a controller connected to a video game console, or a keyboard and mouse on a computer.
CNET editor Dan Ackerman tried out some of Rec Room's games shortly after they first launched in 2016. At the time, he said the social experience, including voice chat while playing games, would be different. "I've tested dozens of VR apps and games," he wrote at the time. "There's nothing more fun than that in virtual reality right now."
Science fiction, like the hit Matrix series, often depicts the metaverse as part of a dystopian future.
dream world
Back when the metaverse was a philosophical plaything in fiction, virtual worlds were often used as dystopian warnings of the future. Card's 1985 novel Ender's Game uses a computer-generated world for warfare. Stephenson's 1992 novel Snow Crash describes people living in the digital realm. They are called "gargoyles" because of the technology on them that makes them look terrifying. In the 1999 film "The Matrix," a "dreamworld" computer simulation is used as a tool to enslave humans.
Today, metaverse game worlds serve as social experiences. For some, it's a story-driven adventure game, like Activision Blizzard's World of Warcraft or the battle royale game Fortnite. For others, it's world-building games like Minecraft. The idea of social games has been baked into the Metaverse, but predates it.
"Rather than 'I want to do something,' say 'I want to be there,'" says Paul Bettner, whose mobile Scrabble-like Words With Friends game became a hit in 2009 because of its design It's easy to play with other people on the internet. "People don't like Words With Friends, people love each other," he once told a room full of developers. "Our games are just the latest and greatest excuse to hang out with our friends."
As these social games grow in popularity, newcomers are using them in unexpected ways. US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is already using online games to help raise money for charities. Families have used them to throw virtual birthday parties during the pandemic.
"We didn't necessarily need to create a whole new genre of game when these new waves of technology hit us," said Bettner, now head of Playful Studios, whose 2016 adventure game Lucky Stories was an early hit with VR fans. Zhongda is very popular. "We'll be able to reach new audiences in a new way."
create the future
There are many technological worlds that the Metaverse could improve upon.
Today's internet can often feel lonely, the developers say. A Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok feed isn't the same as hanging out with your friends, even if you're looking at what they're posting. "100 percent of the time, almost no one is with you," says Philip Rossdale. Despite these flaws, he found that the social network was growing far faster than the virtual world Second Life his team released in 2003.
Compared to Facebook, which has nearly 2 billion daily users, most Metaverse projects are small. What sets them apart is their potential to act as a canvas for players to create their own worlds.
"We thought, 'How do you make it immersive?' and 'What tools are there for people to create these 3D environments?' said Manuel Bronstein, an alumnus of Microsoft's Xbox team and social giant Zynga, who is now chief product officer at Roblox. The online game dates back more than a decade and gives players the tools to create their own digital worlds, including Digital pet simulator Adopt Me! Go to hell tower puzzle game.
Roblox recently developed a technique called layered clothing that can make almost any outfit suitable for any character you choose to play.
Developers like Roblox, Rec Room, and Microsoft's Minecraft primarily build tools to make their game worlds more engaging. Bronstein's team is introducing a feature called spatial speech, which uses computer intelligence to raise and lower the voices of other people speaking about how far away or how close they are. "We want you to feel surrounded," Brownstein said.
Many developers agree that the Metaverse is still in its infancy. It's jarring that jumping into these digital worlds isn't just a fleeting experience for someone with no gaming or tech experience. Metaverse's technology isn't sophisticated enough to provide the nonverbal communication essential in the real world through social cues, such as furrowing the brow.
"If I'm going to have a conversation with my mom or have a serious meeting, I want to be real with them so I can understand them and their emotions," says Denny Unger, head of rhythm music game Pistol Whip at VR developer Cloudhead Games. Trending topics on social media.
Back at Fajt's Virtual Entertainment Center, I wondered if the room could be dressed up enough to host a serious event, like a treaty signing or a business deal.
I may find out soon. According to Fajt, about half a million people create and improve experiences in the Rec Room. That's about four times the number of people who edit Wikipedia, the most popular online encyclopedia.
"It's really a world built by millions of different hands," Fajt said. "We let creators in the community tell us what they need and in what order."
Source: Metaverse Matrix