The metaverse has been heavily discussed in the tech world for the last few years. While the conversations usually stay on the surface, the metaverse has the power to change the online gaming world. It will transform how players interact with online gaming environments, as well as the way virtual real estate is purchased and utilized.
For gamers and developers, we will examine the changes the metaverse will bring and what to expect in the coming years based on the current state of online gaming.
What is the Metaverse? Why is it Important?
The metaverse is a series of online worlds which are permanently accessible, interlinked, and online. In this world, you are able to socialize, work, and shop. As opposed to other online experiences, the metaverse connects your gaming experiences, even when you are logged off.
From a gaming perspective, the metaverse isn't a completely new concept. There are already numerous multiplayer gaming platforms which support building and collaborating within virtual environments and spaces as opposed to traversing through them. One of the core ideas of the metaverse is the interoperability between gaming platforms and virtual economies.
Interconnected gaming platforms means that players can bring their virtual game assets to other platforms and games. This fundamentally changes the structure of gaming and the online gaming community.
How Might the Metaverse Differentiate from Other Platforms for Online Gaming?
Persistent Virtual Worlds
The Metaverse is the first platform to incorporate persistence as a defining characteristic. In contrast to the vast majority of games, which contain a defined beginning, middle, and end (or at least a point at which the game can be reset), theoretically, games that are constructed on the Metaverse will be persistent. The spaces that players inhabit within the Metaverse will change and evolve continually. Additionally, changes and events will occur, whether or not players are present. Finally, the progression that players have made will have long-term, real-world significance.
Complex Player Identities
In this model of gaming, player identities become more complex. There will be no need for multiple player avatars. Instead, players can possess one persistent identity that encompasses their history, assets, and social reputation, all across various gaming platforms. Emotional investments in games will be stronger, and consequently, players will be retained for longer durations.
Virtual Economies
The Metaverse is the first platform to incorporate persistent player identities as a defining characteristic. This will reshape the player experience more than anything currently on the market. The incorporation of the Metaverse will also bring with it Digital Economies, Digital Ownership, and Player Markets.
The incorporation of blockchain and NFTs has divided users, but at their core is the idea of real ownership of game assets across the participant's controlled marketplaces and platforms. This will form the basis of Digital Economies and Player Markets when the Metaverse is fully bound to gaming.
Fair Go Casino offers a glimpse of how online gaming platforms will allow for real ownership of game outcomes and assets. It is said that the winner of a game will have ownership of the outcome. This has real implications for gaming and online casinos.
Social and Community Gaming at Scale
All video games contain some level of social interaction, however, the metaverse has the ability to expand this dimension to a considerable degree. Gamers will enter a digital space designed for social interaction, where gaming is just one of many activities available.
This concept begins to further integrate gaming and social media. Different community functions, shows, games, and other events can take place within the same digital space. This makes the interactive components of digital gaming, like chat functions, community activities, and leaderboards, just as important as the gaming activities.
Immersive Technology: VR and AR Integration
Virtual and augmented reality simultaneously represent both the hardware and the software of the metaverse. Gaming has the potential to shift from a heavily niche market to a mainstream market with the development of more lightweight, less expensive, and greater gaming-focused comfort level of headsets.
This has the potential to significantly shift the online gaming experience. Traditional gaming can be developed into fully interactive spatial gaming environments. Participants can be placed in virtual sports arenas to experience gaming from the perspective of being in the environment. This has the ability to shift the online gaming experience from traditional gaming in a combat-focused and competitive medium to a more interactive gaming experience.
Cross-Platform Play and Interoperability
Interoperability is a major structural principle of the metaverse and is described as the ability to transfer, or “seamlessly” carry, assets, identity, and progress across various platforms. Within the context of gaming, the promise of interoperability is that it could eliminate the frustration of “walled gardens” at the level of gaming, where progress in a given game is worthless anywhere else.
This promise is particularly important for the many online gaming platforms that currently operate independently. Under a metaverse framework, a player's history and loyalty points, and in-game assets could, in principle, hold value across various platforms. Because of that, this promise is likely to create additional competitive pressures and opportunities, while also presenting challenges about how individual platforms will differentiate from one another.
What are the Key Challenges?
When we consider the potential of the metaverse to impact online gaming and the extent to which it will, we can not assume that it will happen in the near future, and there are several constraints that are likely to slow its progress.
- The metaverse will likely face infrastructure challenges. Achieving a truly persistent and interoperable virtual universe will require significant innovation in computing, latency, and bandwidth.
- The state of the metaverse also faces challenges in terms of various jurisdictions. For gaming, the promise of digital ownership and virtual currencies creates cross-border transactional and regulatory challenges that are not clearly defined.
- While the metaverse has the potential to redefine how gaming is done across the globe, it will not achieve mass adoption automatically. Players have to feel that, at the very least, they are being offered an improved gaming experience. Until that happens, the metaverse will only be viewed as an incremental change in gaming technology.
- Fragmentation is, without question, an underestimated challenge. Several organizations are busy creating separate and competing metaverse ecosystems. The “interconnected” vision for the metaverse may end up being a collection of separate branded virtual environments, which is simply a variation on the closed garden problem, but with superior visual design.
What Will Gamers or Gaming Platforms Encounter?
The conventional approach to gaming will not be abandoned for the metaverse. Instead, the metaverse will offer a slow integration. New features will be added to legacy systems.
Incremental changes will be visible to gamers quickly. They can expect to see richer social interaction features, Discovery and ownership of digital assets, and enhanced game interfaces through the addition of new technology and game systems.
Gaming platforms will need to proactively design systems of community, identity, and digital assets. The platforms that are able to develop and foster a loyal gaming community will be best positioned to offer the new and emerging systems.
What is the Potential for Metaverse Gaming?
The metaverse will shift the dominant paradigm of online gaming from a gimmick to a truly integrated modular digital gaming system. The combination of persistent virtual environments, ownership of digital property, and new immersive social technologies will integrate the next generation of online gaming. The degree of difficulty is clear, and the timeframes are unknown, but the direction is obvious.
Players should look to engage with platforms playing with early iterations of metaverse concepts. For developers and operators, the time is now to construct the first metaverse-ready offerings and have first mover advantage that will be significant once the technology catches up with the vision.
Frequently Asked Questions
What role does online gaming play in the metaverse?
The metaverse is an emerging collection of virtual realms that are interrelated and continuous. Online gaming, where players are already in virtual realms, is one of the primary use cases. The metaverse takes this and expands it to continuous, social, and economic interaction in realms where gaming is a dominant activity.
Will gaming in the metaverse require VR?
VR is a major facet of the metaverse but is not the only one. Many of the first metaverse gaming activities will be available through traditional screens. There will be a slow gradual change to VR as gaming hardware becomes more affordable, but it will not be necessary for the first activities.
What will ownership of metaverse gaming items mean?
In metaverse gaming, ownership of digital assets typically means that they are on the blockchain and users can own them in-game and outside of it. There is the potential of these items having a value that can be traded and moved to other gaming platforms.
Are there metaverse games?
There are already the first metaverse games. Games and platforms like The Sandbox, Decentraland, and Roblox have social and economic systems in a persistent virtual world and are the first examples in an early stage of what a metaverse game can look like.
What are the risks associated with metaverse gaming?
The key risks are regulatory issues with digital currencies, potential losses from virtual economies, privacy risks from persistent digital environments, and the risk of a fragmented metaverse with competing platforms that have limited interoperability.
