Working And Playing In The Metaverse

For a lot of us, still, our work lives, our social lives, and our online lives are different. They’re managed differently, involve different people, and more importantly, different platforms. For example, your work might use more emails, and a bit of Linked.in or Facebook. Your friends and family might interact more on Instagram or WhatsApp (Twitter and Telegram or Signal if you’re untrusting of Meta Inc). And your escapism is done online via games, or on forums or whatever it is that you do in your free time. The aim now, for most metaverse companies, is to bring all of that into one single system. They want you to work, play and escape all using the same metaverse system and services. Mark Zuckerberg literally told you that when he announced the company’s name change from Facebook Inc to Meta Inc. 

So what will such a life look like, and will that be a good or bad thing? Do we care? Won’t we just hop on to the bandwagon anyway? That’s what we aim to find out in this article. 

Work

This one is easy. Most of us are used to working remotely thanks to the global pandemic, and that involves coordinating across distances and using voice or video calls. With video calls it’s a lot easier to see people and notice if they’re paying attention in the meetings, though of course it’s just as likely they’re playing a game on their screen, which is something you cannot see unless they share it. The VR metaverse, in that sense, would certainly take care of that, because we’d need to be wearing our headsets to see and hear what’s happening in a meeting and thus would certainly be more ‘present’.  

It’s going to go much further than simple meetings. All of the big money to be made in tech is in enterprise and business technologies. For a lot of us end-users Apple, Amazon, Google (Alphabet) and Facebook (Meta) dominate the headlines when it comes to big tech, but the second most valuable tech company on earth (behind Apple) is actually Microsoft. Why? Because it still owns huge market shares in enterprise and large business. A heck of a lot of things built by companies all across the planet rely on Microsoft’s products to be able to do so. It’s why Microsoft will certainly be a big player in the metaverse, and will certainly try and leverage their existing advantage of inroads with everything work related to continue to rule this aspect of our lives. 

Microsoft too, is betting on work meetings being the first point of entry into the metaverse for most people. It already announced Mesh for Microsoft Teams which it hopes will not only allow us to use Avatars to attend meetings and sit around round tables just as we like to do in the real world, but also included what it calls Holoportation – a virtual hologram to allow you to really feel like you’re in the room with colleagues. Some fancy 360 degree camera hardware will no doubt be required, and they will push their own HoloLens VR hardware on people, but the final results seem exciting. 

A simple advantage the metaverse has is that it’s essentially unlimited in terms of space. In our real lives we might have small and cramped work spaces, with colleagues sometimes rubbing shoulders with us, or we might have the exact opposite problem, and be in a branch office with colleagues who are in different cities or countries. The metaverse solves this, because we all have the ability to be trillion dollar companies and have virtual workplaces that rival the real life Apple Park. 

All of us can have luxurious bays, yet all close enough to talk to one another, and to be able to quickly gather and meet to discuss something important. We could have the freedom to not commute and work from home, whilst still being able to work together, in real-time. All of the problems of remote working, such as not being able to monitor employees, or feeling isolated and alone, can all be solved in the metaverse. Providing we get VR hardware that doesn’t cause us to get headaches or throw up from overuse, we could all start working eight hours a day from the comfort of our sofas! 

Another advantage of a virtual work environment is that companies can spend a lot less in the long run on machines and hardware, and even software. You would be able to log into the metaverse and just pull up a software to use it, and then close it and move on to something else. In the physical world, this means giving you a licence to use a software app on your work PC or laptop. Now it can just be simultaneous cloud logins, which usually works out cheaper. All computing could be moved to the cloud too, with only 3D rendering ability and a fast internet connection needed to keep individuals connected.

Play

While work might be the way most of us will first experience the metaverse, it will be the fun things we do there that will sell it to us and hook us. It’s all nice an exciting (for about 3 minutes) to use VR to attend meetings, but the novelty will wear off quick. The focus will shift away from the novelty and down to work pretty fast, and we all have bosses that will make sure of it too. This writer just got off a video call where his editor was yelling at him for missing a deadline for this very article you’re reading now. The idea that in the future that yelling will seem even more real, as if he’s right here in my room, is becoming less attractive by the second! 

Now games, that’s the real pull for most of us when it comes to the idea of VR and the metaverse. And it’s no surprise that most of the initial metaverse offerings are all to do with multiplayer gaming. 

Decentraland

Built around a concept of selling virtual real estate, Decentraland uses MANA (their coin) to allow users to buy real estate within the game, and then build a home, an office, or whatever it is you want to build. There are games you can play, and even museums you can visit in the metaverse. As it gains more popularity there will be more and more things happening, and you will eventually be able to attend concerts, or other events inside Decentraland. 

Sandbox

This is also a well known metaverse where there is a play to earn as well as a real estate sales objective. Basically you play games built inside the metaverse to win money, and use that money to buy land. You can then even choose to sell what you built on NFT marketplaces, or just be someone who loves playing the games and buying things with your winnings, building a sandbox empire. 

Axie Infinity

Want to collect, nurture and grow animals, then breed them to get new Axies and make them fight one another? Sounds like a farmville meets illegal cock fighting mafia doesn’t it? If your Axies keep winning battles, you level up and then earn AXS (Axie Infinity Shards), which can be used to buy more Axies and earn even more money. Or you could sell powerful Axies on the marketplace and get paid in AXS. 

Socialise

Work may be the reason a lot of us will invest in the hardware required for the metaverse (just as we buy laptops now to be able to work from home or on the go). It will break the ice, in a sense, when it comes to experiencing the metaverse. Games are what will sell us even more on the concept, and allow us to have more fun with our investments than just meeting our bosses. However, it is how well we will be able to socialise and to what extent that we will eventually truly adopt the metaverse as default. 

And be warned, this goes into uncomfortable territory. Because a large part of socialising is also dating, hooking up, and yes, even having sex. There used to be a time when the porn industry led the way for early adoption of all things tech, and for VR and the metaverse, expect the adult sections to go up wherever they are allowed or tolerated, almost immediately. 

But it’s not just about the sale of porn and sex by corporations. If the metaverse is aiming to mimic real life, it will need to satisfy our need for human interaction. Hanging out with old friends, or meeting new people and making all new friends. Give us the freedom to go to a nightclub and meet, dance with and chat to someone from Argentina, even though we’re sitting in a suburb of Mumbai called Andheri! And then yes, if consenting adults want to do things consenting adults do, then the hardware, software and services that make up the metaverse need to enable that. More about this in the next story.

While for many of us, being jacked into the Matrix like people were in the movie might sound horrific, for many others, that’s the pinnacle of the metaverse. Imagine being able to feel, smell, touch, and live in a virtual world. Exploring far away stars in our galaxy, meeting alien life might entice those of us who thrive on escapism. For reality buffs, you could choose to work in the metaverse from a new city in any country of your choosing, every month. You could explore the world, make new friends, and learn new languages and cultures, without going bankrupt by spending on airline tickets and rent. The sky isn’t the limit anymore. Nothing is! 

Read more articles about the Metaverse.

This article was first featured in the January 2022 issue of the Digit magazine. To subscribe to the magazine, head to this link. To get the digital subscription, head over to Geek.Digit.in

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