Metaverse: a new fad?

Artificial intelligence, Agile methodologies, OOP, those words are once has been a fad in the past. I call it a fad not because they were lies or not useful at all. They were all useful, however, people use those words to create a promise that any problem in this world will be solved if we adopted them. The reality is, there is never a single thing that becomes a true solution for every problem. They will only act as a solution for 40–60% of the problem. We still need to use other methodologies to completely solve the rest of the problem.

Ever since Facebook introduces itself as Meta, Metaverse become the new fad. An overpromising solution for the future of human interaction. Here is my thinking process on why everyone should be sceptical about the company naive vision in this space.

Not only Facebook, Microsoft also announce their further roadmap on their investment in Metaverse as Microsoft Mesh. Gather (the company that builds gather.town) also published their series B funding for about 50 million dollars to improve their virtual presence business which also falls under the metaverse scene.

I am neutral in this new technology exploration space. However, I am not happy to hear the blunt claim that their exploration in the Metaverse is actually because it is the future of human interaction related to entertainment, work, hanging out, playing games, etc.

Metaverse is indeed has a position in the future, however, it won’t replace the current civilization interaction that consists of face-to-face interaction and various electronic interactions. It will only be used by people who are familiar with Virtual Reality gadget owners. To adopt Metaverse, VR gadgets need to be as ubiquitous as mobile phones. I haven’t found a scenario that makes me need one, let alone make everyone on the planet need one.

The below illustration contains a hypothetical market share of Metaverse adoption. If the service of Metaverse is already live, it will still contain only the smallest portion of human interaction possible. It is such a small and niche place where Metaverse companies will fight for user adoption.

Challenges to make metaverse “the future” of human interaction:

1. Device — VR gadgets are still not ubiquitously available
2. Resistance in changing human behavior — Adults who grow up and manage to live without VR gadgets won’t have a single need to adopt them. The Metaverse company needs to really create compelling marketing to make the needs of VR are primary of human needs.
3. The majority of users in Social Media are consumers and not content creators — If metaverse is indeed viable, people will use it to consume entertainment, instead of interacting with each other on a daily basis.
4. Non-remote first workplace still heavily relies on offline interactions — As a manager, it is challenging enough to make team members collaborate with their peers relying only on online presence. Face expression, hand gestures, body language, and offline presence are still powerful to create team bonding and a sense of belonging to a specific group.
5. Expensive content management system — In order to make the metaverse environment exciting, we require effort to actually make the environment. We will depend on an individual who has expertise in interior design and 3D graphics development. If a simple user really hosts a virtual outing, it will require them so much time to prepare for a decent environment. My company has tried Gather.town to host our internal online activities, it requires weeks of preparation and tens of volunteers to host for only 100 people.
6. Unstandardized union to make the Metaverse building blocks. Even though each company put a lot of effort to build their own Metaverse, it will still be hard to make them want to cooperate to create an interchangeable environment. Can an environment built by Microsoft be used by people who registered in Facebook Meta? Weeks of decoration of 3D spaces and environment only available on a single platform. Yikes.

Viable position of Metaverse

Tools for Online activities(Compete with Zoom, Google Meet, etc)

• Unable to meet the family due to work overseas? Use it as a way to be “present” instead of not at all. The offline family meeting should still exist and be irreplaceable as the status quo.
• Online onboarding tool for remote working. The physical office space still contains the offline meeting. Those who are unable to fly to the HQ can still feel like attending the session.

Entertainment (Compete with Twitch, Youtube, Instagram, etc)

• Attend as an avatar to an online concert (offline concert would be still available, except if it fulls online experience)

Gaming (compete with Steam, Playstation, etc)

• Do gaming in an avatar mode together with an already a gamer

Based on the above, I predict that most Metaverse adopters are people who are already familiar with the online experience and make a living with it. It is quite a small population to be put so much investment in. Anyway, who am I able to judge where companies put their capital effort on. I believe their vision could still be realized in the year 2200. At that time, there will be a new fad where humans can already interact only using brain waves.

References

Welcome to Meta | Meta

Introducing Microsoft Mesh | Here can be anywhere.

https://www.finsmes.com/2021/11/gather-raises-50m-in-series-b-funding.html