The Metaverse Mini Series — Part 1

Welcome to the future of gaming worlds

If you have played Minecraft, Roblox, Grand Theft Auto, Sandbox or Fortnite’s creative mode, you have already entered the metaverse. For decades since Snow Crash, the tech and gaming world have been fantasizing and building their own version of the metaverse. At Totality, we are also enthralled by the metaverse and are building products which would be a major addition to the metaverse ecosystem. More on that later.

This series is our attempt to demystify the Metaverse. We will be exploring various perspectives from tech, hardware, art, design and current ecosystem around the metaverse.

Stay tuned for the journey ahead.

A Preamble To The Metaverse

Written by Harshita Singh

Pillars of Creation (Photo Credit: TiAnn, a Metaverse Community member)

“Whatever your mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”

- Napoleon Hill

No matter what you call it, the Metaverse, the Mirror-World, the AR Cloud, the Magic verse, the Spatial Internet, or Live Maps, the future is here. If this macrocosm is the concoction of billions of galaxies, comprising of living things, planets, stars, light, time and whatnot, then we can also easily decompose the portmanteau of the term metaverse into the Greek prefix, ‘meta’, meaning beyond and ‘universe’.

So, picture not having to peruse through this article with your own eyes and instead having an automated archetype of my persona narrate the entirety of what I have to say in real time space while you sit back and relax. In such a manner, the aforementioned interactivity takes place between ‘avatars’ that move around and explore the virtual space. Avatar is actually a concept in Sanskrit, which means descent or incarnation. Isn’t its presence in a computer generated environment called the metaverse, that is engineered to facilitate social interactions, the epitome of evolution?

This series is a compendium of ideas of a legion of tech scholars and sci-fi writers and filmmakers, who talk about the increasingly established primacy of intellectual property and how, as technology arouses us to express IP in more avenues that come with more frequency, more user control and input into the massive immersive fantasy worlds, the very same are to become the reality in the decades ahead. It is of utmost importance to truly comprehend what lies forward because we all get success in life not based on what we know, but by how we use our imaginations. Welcome to the preamble of the metaverse, we at Totality Corp look forward to taking you on an academic ride through the future with the aid of our articles.

The nomenclature of such a device was first introduced in the dystopian novel, “Snow Crash” which is deemed to be a cyberpunk parody produced by Neal Stephenson, in the year 1992, considered today to be the bible for the concept. Observing the dynamics around me, I find it safe to assert that the author was ahead of his time in constructing a plot that prophesied the future of technology and innovation that left a lasting impression on the founders of Google, Amazon and Facebook. The single most prominent example of such a development has got to be the self-driven cars working seamlessly on the streets of Silicon Valley. On similar lines, Nissan’s Intelligent Mobility invisible-to-visible (I2V) future technology aims at supporting drivers by merging information from sensors outside and inside the vehicle with data from the cloud. This enables the system not only to track the vehicle’s immediate surroundings but also to anticipate what’s ahead or behind a building, or around a corner. Such exemplary innovation will kickstart metaverse’s engine for sure.

System Mechanism (Photo Credit: Nissan Motor Corporation)

A detailed review of Snow Crash and of other classical and pop culture treatises sprinkled with my own interpretations of fine arts will be presented as we move forward in this series inclining the plane of understanding towards the humanities side of the metaverse.

As explained by Matthew Ball in his article, it is apparent that rough outlines of the future are understood and agreed upon well in advance of sowing the seeds of the technical capabilities to produce them. And, although it is impossible to predict exactly how such a technology will unfold, its features, the governance models required to grease the wheels of its innovation, the commercial models which will wrap the bogey of its ideas lie on the long arbitrary arc of future profits and lucrative organisations. The same doctrine can be applied to the vague, but in vogue, template of the metaverse.

Building up on what Matthew Ball says in his article, a concrete elucidation of the concept does not exist as of now, but its core attributes have been delineated. They include an application that never pauses, resets or ends; that is a living experience consistent for everyone in real-time; in which everyone can participate with individual agency; where business will be able to create own, invest and sell and be remunerated for an incredibly wide range of work that creates value; in which experience spans both digital and physical worlds, public and private networks, open and closed platforms; where interoperability of content is possible. Questions regarding the calculus of identifications, communication architecture and the degree of decentralization remain areas of debate in the arena of the metaverse.

At this juncture, it is essential to curate how obliviously entrenched the concept of the metaverse already is in our collective psyche. The laymen descriptions of the metaverse arising out of sitcoms and movies like ‘Rick and Morty’ traversing through a multitude of dimensions, ‘Her’ in which an operating system is on the brink of acquiring human consciousness, ‘Black Mirror, Bandersnatch’ which keeps the viewer on her tenterhooks to exercise her free will in a digital world and other such cinematic experiences bear testimony as to how a gigantic potential to transition to e-motion pictures is the indubitable consequence of harnessing such creativity.

The metaverse has become the latest macro goal for numerous of the world’s tech giants. As Matthew Ball outlines, it is the express goal of Epic Games, the maker of Unreal Engine and Fortnite. It is also the stimulant behind Facebook’s purchase of Oculus VR and its newly launched Horizon virtual meeting space, other projects to the likes of AR glasses and brain-to-machine communications. He emphasises on how our online-offline future is a deterministic variable of the investment in cloud gaming.

Tim Sweeny explains how the most successful games today are those that offer interactivity and capture an inexhaustible variety of experiences for the audience that thrives on the motivation to keep a story from ending, translating fancies into something the consumer can experience more personally and visually.

The metaverse has the potential to generate trillions in value as a new computing platform or content medium and also a great labour platform emerging via the amalgamation of different products, services and capabilities, integrating and melding together.

While the web today is built on open standards, the amenities available on it are closed and proprietary, demonstrated by the fact that the similar technologies used by Amazon, Facebook and Google cannot just merge into one another for the sake of interoperability. But, if an industry wide consensus is inaugurated on the lines of data security, data persistence, forward compatible code evolution and transactions; and new rules are set up regarding censorship, control and communication, regulatory enforcement, tax reporting and prevention of online radicalization, then, a conglomerate of more and more companies and brands connecting their products and services will gain traction just like Marshmello’s live concert, JJ Abrams’ live interview upon the release of Star Wars, The Rise of Skywalker, Weezer’s exclusive first listen and Limited Time Modes accessed by Nike did on the platform of Fortnite.

Such a miniature world actually expands the aesthetics of everyday life, items and playstyle of the game itself to resemble our authentic universe. Such is the interpretation of interpenetration between the video gaming multiverse and the upcoming metaverse with the objective of bringing lives closer together..

Joseph Schumpeter coined the term ‘Creative Destruction’ in 1942 which he described as the dismantling of long-standing practices in order to make way for an upgraded metamorphosis that increases productivity, with the advent of capitalism. Regardless of whether we concur or not, new tech inevitably becomes an integral part of our lives. The VR world provides a gamut of opportunities for aspiring artists and struggling business-men, which until now required a huge amount of expertise, an office space and a humongous amount of funds for advertising. IP is being converted into a solid business model if the belief in the supremacy of IP, in its transcendence across media, in the fact that the growth of an IP comes from what the audience wants to do with it is refurbished. In his guest appearance on the podcast, ‘Invest Like The Best’, Matt Ball describes the dynamics of such economics.

Thus, when it comes to economics, consumer behaviour observed through the contours of rational leisure optimisation will help streamline the asymmetrical competition that currently exists amongst tech firms. Tim Sweeny, underscored how the real time 3D massively participatory medium will welcome content creators and programmers alike to build the structure for a perfectly fair competitive economy which must be robust and complex as to host millions of servers that are running all of the simulations that contribute to the experiences in the metaverse. As opposed to creating something artificial that is the mammoth monopoly of a single company, in the metaverse, a much higher percentage of profits will accrue to the creators to ensure the adherence to the ethics of development.

Let me also allay your fears, here. Any ponderings over the algorithmic manifestation war between carbon and silicon, as emphasised by Yuval Noah Harari in his book ‘Homo Deus’ or the thought experiment of ‘Roko’s Basilisk’ are slightly obtuse, in my opinion, because the virtual immortality that the metaverse dispenses us with is rife with the soft blush of human touch and sensitivity throughout its rubric of functioning. An exploration into the vast mines of the human mind has been made daintily by Anshul Rustaggi, CEO of Totality Corp, in his article, ‘A Unified Theory For Why People Do What They Do’

Be it a prospective buyer of a car who puts on his VR goggles and downloads an experience offered by Mercedes, an architect expounding on the benefits of his new design to his customers overlooking the digital graph of their new home, a student engaging in interactive and intellectually stimulating video games in her classroom to understand her lessons better and then, at the end of the day, attending her graduation ceremony online, or any reader of this article celebrating their loved ones birthday using the device of her hologram while enjoying the comfort of her couch from miles apart, the metaverse is going to benefit humanity by complementing its consciousness and conscience.

It is a conviction that the Coronavirus pandemic has coerced people to find a new normal away from the bonhomie of reciprocity in a tiny niche of their houses. Gaming and allied interactive media have offered solace in the harshest times of existence to ameliorate the psychological hurt such an isolation causes. This respite has a huge potential to turn into a deeply ingrained feature of our everyday lives.

In fact, in an article named ‘Not Business As Usual’ , Vikram S Mehta in the Indian Express, curates Fareed Zakaria’s excellent book, ‘Ten Lessons For A Post-Pandemic World’ which listed Lesson 5 as- “life is digital”. He writes that Covid-19 has “obliterated the one remaining obstacle to a digital future- human attitudes.” He asserts that the tools for such a future existed before Covid struck but the populace did not utilise them. They were “stuck in their old ways.” It is Covid that has forced them to adopt and adapt. Now, the challenge for business leaders today is to steer clear towards a pathway that sustains the benefits of these tools .

When Francis Fukuyama claimed that the Cold War marked the end of World History, he certainly did not see the future of a possible digital war coming. Dense and heavy digital files required for 3D metaverse content, replete with textured media from video to immersive sound will rely on the 5G network that China and USA seem to be having a bout over, and that is bound to replace the face of the internet as we know it today.

Minecraft, Roblox, Grand Theft Auto, Sandbox and Fortnite’s creative mode already feels like a proto type of the metaverse. The sub economy thriving on these gaming platforms which allows gamers to monetise their own content is a new segment of budding economies. The gaming platforms are gradually transforming the traditional definition of the metaverse by overcoming the limitations of a single persistent world as they step into the infinite ever evolving metaverse.

For metaverse to be a multidisciplinary field of activity, it is crucial to draw the reader’s attention as to how fringe projection profilometry uses fringe analysis through a scan of the human brain so as to identify corresponding pixels on a projector and the camera image plane and then use triangulation to perform 3D reconstruction. Any idea about what such a novelty can bring about in the fields of entertainment will seem myopic.George Bloom, in his Ted Talk explains how the culture of media will change with the realisation of the metaverse. And, this is just a preamble to the concept of the metaverse!

Demographics and age of the traditional fan-base will play a crucial role in the transition to the metaverse. Each generation is adapting to gaming and with increasing age their media appetite also grows.

Treading towards the end of this article, I remember how Oscar Wilde, in De Profundis, says, “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” The introspective component of his statement is not only spiritually enlightening for mankind today, but who knows, it might become the foundational reality of our mirror images in the metaverse. We will see.

“The next major technological platform for creative expansion of the mind will be cyberspace, or more specifically the Metaverse, a functional successor to today’s 2D Internet, with virtual places instead of Webpages. The Internet and smartphones have enabled the rapid and cheap sharing of information, immersive computing will be able to provide the same for experiences. That means that just as we can read, listen to, and watch videos of anything we want today, soon we’ll be able to experience stunning lifelike simulations in virtual reality indistinguishable from our physical world. We’ll be walking and actively interacting in the Metaverse, not slavishly staring at the flat screens. We would be able to turn our minds inside out and show our dreams to each other in this ecstadelic matrix of our own making.”

― Alex M. Vikoulov, The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind’s

Stay tuned with our upcoming articles, traversing the full length and breadth, from history to the future of the idea, to dig deeper into the philosophical wealth of the infinite metaverse.