Looking for a model of the Metaverse

There aint’ such a thing as the Metaverse. At least not in the sense that most people think about it. It’s a marketing ploy, a way to try to change the fortunes of a dwindling social media empire. Virtual reality is a niche medium, and that is not about to change in the near future. Augment reality may be the way of the future, we’ll see. Sure, there are lots of smaller communities using these technologies, but this is nothing that requires any regulatory response.

Case closed, let’s go back to talking about AI…

But let’s just assume that I’m totally wrong (it does happen), and we get a wildly successful and thriving Metaverse, or at least something metaverse-like. What shape would it take? What would it look like?

During a few presentations I have floated the idea that the Metaverse will take one of three forms if it ever comes into being, I call them Ready Player One, Ralph Breaks the Internet, and the Multiverse of Madness. [Spoilers ahead]

Ready Player One

“Ready Player One” is a science-fiction film based on the 2011 novel of the same name by Ernest Cline. The story is set in the year 2045 in a dystopian future where much of the world has fallen into poverty and despair. To escape their bleak reality, people spend most of their time in a virtual reality world called the OASIS, where they can be anyone and do anything they want. What matters for the present explanation is that the OASIS is for all purposes the Internet, and that it is owned by a single corporation. In other words, the Internet is private.

So the RPO model of the Metaverse is one in which one company wins and there’s only one platform with no competition, practically a monopoly. That company could be any of the ones already on the market, or perhaps even a different one, but the idea is a “winner takes all”. This is a dystopia, imagine everyone connected to a single service controlled by one company, who would think this is such a good idea, huh?

Ralph Breaks the Internet

This movie is a sequel to “Wreck-It Ralph”, and in many ways it’s a better film. In this world video game characters are alive, and sometimes they can interact with each other. Games from one arcade console can also travel to others. The two protagonists from the original movie are Ralph and Vanellope, who became best friends and are still spending their days in the arcade. However, their routine gets interrupted when Vanellope’s game breaks down and the arcade owner decides to unplug it, leaving Vanellope without a home. Ralph and Vanellope then venture into the internet to find a replacement part for Sugar Rush, and they discover a whole new world full of possibilities.

In this world the internet is represented as a common space, the arcade games are connected to it via a newly installed Wi-Fi router. This connection allows the game characters to explore the vast and ever-expanding world, when a character enters the internet, they are represented by a customizable avatar that they can create themselves. These avatars can interact with other internet users, visit websites, and participate in online activities like shopping and social media.

What matters is that while there are independent games, all are connected together in a busy metropolis filled with skyscrapers and busy streets. Each website is represented as a building with a unique design and function.The Metaverse analogy here should be obvious, different platforms co-existing, connected to one another through common protocols.

Multiverse of Madness

Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness is not my favourite Marvel movies by a long shot, it completely destroys the character of Wanda Maximoff, and I also think that it demeans Doctor Strange, who is a secondary character in his own movie. The film is too complicated to summarise here, but what matters is that there’s a multiverse, but all worlds exist independent of each other, with the exception of one character that can travel between them.

So for the purpose of this analogy, the Metaverse is a multiverse, incompatible worlds that coexist but can’t communicate with one another.

Which model will prevail?

Each of the models have their own proponents at the moment. I suspect that Meta would like the Ready Player One model in which they are the winners. At the moment we have a Multiverse of Madness scenario, different versions of the Metaverse that do not talk to each other. Perhaps the ideal would be a model after Ralph, in which we get common protocols and you can move avatars from one platform to the other, this is likely to be the one preferred by Web3 developers and activists, where tokens can be used to move goods and characters from one world to the other. But the most likely to happen is actually the Multiverse of Madness of incompatible worlds.

But then again, there may be a fourth option: there is no Metaverse.

Only time will tell.