Problems in the Metaverse: Here's How Execs from Microsoft, Warner, and Disney are Approaching It

As competition for the metaverse continues, the big companies have started to flex their muscles on this new frontier to make their web2 institutions web3-proof. Metaverse will undoubtedly challenge the already established notions of life as it is. From regular human interaction to entertainment to business, there isn’t a place where the metaverse isn’t eyeing to take over. So as common sense dictates, when you can’t defeat them, you join them.

And certainly, the executives of the largest corporations in the world want to be early and get that big fat return from this new technological marvel. But there is a problem, and the problem is the metaverse is still a distant dream. We have been working on AI, cloud computing, Machine Learning, AR, VR, XR for more than a decade now, and although some progress has been made, we’re not anywhere close to implementing these techs to provide large-scale affordable solutions to the market. The playing field is still limited to research labs and beta programs with only bite-sized packages being released to the public as part of the experiment.

To achieve a fully functioning metaverse will require those techs and other more intricate ones like edge computing running in full-throttle.?

Despite these obstacles, the existing pre-metaverse level platforms like Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite are good examples of what a metaverse might look like, and with whatever VR/AR technology there is, the large corporations seem tempted to get on it early.?

Execs Are Bullish on Metaverse

Despite facing a great many obstacles on multiple levels, companies are clear on their policy for metaverse—figure it out as we go. Businesses from both the web3 and web2 space have been actively preparing to get the best of the metaverse; and why wouldn’t they? Morgan Stanley predicts the metaverse market will reach an $8 trillion valuation in just the US over the next decade.??

The companies that have the opportunity to sit at the helm of this new wave are already pushing their limits to create the best inventory (or the arsenal). Microsoft has probably given the hardest blow with their acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the deal of the century.?

Nadella’s acquisition policy has served the software giant very well, establishing a firm grip on the gaming side of the metaverse. Now Microsoft not only owns the two most promising Metaverse playgrounds, but also the majority of the AAA games with near-unilateral control over both the PC and the console market.?

Preparing for the metaverse race will be incomplete without having proper exposure to the gaming space. Because like it or not, gamers will be the first ones to walk on this mysterious land. And Microsoft is way ahead on this front.

Another example of trust in the metaverse is Meta Reality Labs, the metaverse unit of Meta. Determined to lose $10 billion every year for the next 10 years, Meta got smoked on the stock market after missing their earning target with billions lost in a few hours period. In my last article, I talked about why Meta might lose the Metaverse race, but there’s no doubt Zuck is gonna double down on this bet.

As the tech rivalry heats up, entertainment moguls aren’t sitting behind to watch. Disney started to indicate their intention to join the virtual realms long ago, now with the opportunity at hand, they would like to get their money’s worth. Bob Chapek, the new CEO of the company, said, "Our efforts to date are merely a prolog to a time when we'll be able to connect the physical and digital worlds even more closely, allowing for storytelling without boundaries in our own Disney metaverse."

Disney recently filed a patent for a "virtual-world simulator" that would recreate the experience of visiting Disneyland. If Bob plays his cards right, a basket full of movies, a popular streaming platform, and a virtual theme park visited by millions—combined together can create a massive surge in users.?

But Disney doesn’t want to run their simulation through AR/VR devices yet, as these "can be costly and inconvenient to wear," which is true and one of the many problems I address below. A truly immersive experience wouldn’t come from a block of brick stuck to the eyes, there needs to be a better and more affordable solution.

Warner Music, one of the largest music companies in the world, has joined the metaverse as well. They partnered up with The Sandbox to create “a music-themed world in the metaverse.” Oana Ruxandra, Chief Digital Officer of WGM said, “Our partnership with The Sandbox adds a new layer of possibility in the metaverse… On the LAND, we'll develop persistent, immersive social music experiences that defy real-world limitations and allow our artists and their fans to engage like never before.”

With more artists holding concerts in the virtual worlds, the move was predictable from the music giant. But it’ll be interesting to see how the artist-label relationship dynamics change in the metaverse. Based on a creator-first ideology, the music mafias will have to change their policies to survive and thrive in this new world.

These are just a few companies making their first moves in the metaverse, the list includes hundreds of others. But as I mentioned before, let alone the metaverse being an uncharted territory, it’s not even battle-ready at the moment. There are an astronomical amount of shortcomings that plague the users with one type of trouble or another.?

I have discussed four of the most crucial problems below and how it bars the average user from enjoying the fun of a metaverse.

Security and Trust

The security and trust issue needs to be approached from two perspectives: machine security and human trust. While cyber security can be strengthened with strong code, trust needs to be embedded within the metaversal fabric.

As the virtual worlds become more empowered with human life, platforms need to assure that this new way of life won’t be disturbed or shaken by external security breaches or internal failures. Governance, algorithms, structures, policies, frameworks, and preventative measures should be deployed on every possible vulnerability to mitigate risks and establish a sense of security.

The decentralized decision-making model that’ll be able to create such an environment is yet to be discovered. Settling for web3 comes with a few trade-offs with web2, especially in terms of security measures. Web2 focused on responding to an event that has already taken place and tries to get the best out of it but web3 comes with immutability, once taken an action can’t be reversed. That automatically shifts the focus from responding to predicting and then preventing it from happening.?

And these new problems that emerged from the depth of Web3 often bring others with them. An open-source ecosystem where apps build on other existing apps can create an unforeseen security gap that can be easily exploited. Problems like Log4j vulnerability and other similar ones can be prevented with conscious safety-driven communities and protocols in places.?

On the other side, there is the trust factor.?

Rules and Laws

The dystopian future of the virtual worlds portrayed in sci-fi movies might become a reality if the ‘human factor’ remains missing from the metaverse. A lot of us will spend a big chunk of our time working, entertaining, chatting with friends in the metaverse; imitating the better things of the physical world will inevitably bring up the worse things as well.

Discriminatory practices, biased actions, class divisions are some actions that are already plaguing the virtual worlds. There has been a lot of reported incidents of events recreating extremism, terrorism, sexual harassment, inappropriate public behavior, and a myriad of other things.

Even though these platforms have acted quickly to create preventative measures to problems like groping, there is a lot to be done. One of the most important of them will be to create a multi-chain decentralized justice body to address disputes and exercise verdicts over a large territory.

Explaining XR, an article from The World Economic Forum mentioned, “central to the concept of the metaverse is the idea that virtual, 3D environments that are accessible and interactive in real-time will become the transformative medium for human engagement. If they are to become practical, these environments will be dependent on widespread adoption of extended reality.”

Not only Extended Reality, but a lot of the actions taking place in the metaverse will also be on Mixed Reality(MR), a semi-virtual environment existing within the physical world. This is a huge deal in terms of law and order.

What is the definition of crime in the virtual world? What is the code of conduct one should adhere to? What is the punishment for a crime??

As these questions pile up, we need to objectively decide a course of action that will define our future and it’s better not left to the corporate.

The Metaverse Economics

Most of the games from the very beginning relied on the reward model of points and scores. The higher your score or point is, the more you go up on the game eventually securing a pro-tag. Then with the introduction of in-game accessories and performance-enhancing payment structures, real money found its way into the gaming world. For so long, this was the functional economy of games, but it’s been changing recently.

Platforms like Roblox, Minecraft, Upland, Fortnite have their own currencies to buy and sell accessories and experiences. People are getting employed, companies are hosting campaigns and events, influencers are endorsing brands, all of these are already happening inside the metaverse.

Much like the real-life economy, in the metaverse, a person earns tokens from their job, celebrates their promotion in a VR pub, goes on a date on remote islands, buys expensive Gucci products from the meta-Gucci store.

The problem starts when this flow gets disturbed. A crash in the market, a long dip, a panic sell, and all of these go down the drain. All of these custom currencies, crypto or otherwise, are often based on broken tokenomics.?

The hyper volatility signals the uncertainty of the market. There’s also the pump-and-dump schemes and the rug pulls where money evaporates in minutes. Creating a rock-solid economy that will be working independently to serve as the base of a new generation, needs riper efforts such as separating actual traded tokens from the metaverse economy.

Tech Advancement

The level of advanced tech required to build a properly functioning metaverse is similar to the evolution of a smartphone. Through a decade-long evolution, a smartphone that only had a few hundred megabytes of RAM now scores up to 8-12 GB RAM. The first steps towards the metaverse were taken with the invention of VR goggles and extensive gaming environments. But still, we’re looking at another decade-long period to create a decent metaverse.

Matthew Ball, in his forward to The Metaverse Primer, explained this process using iPhone as an example:

Consider the iPhone 12, which was released in 2020. There was no amount of money Apple could have spent to release the iPhone 12 as its second model in 2008. Even if Apple could have devised a 5G network chip back then, there would have been no 5G networks for it to use, nor 5G wireless standards through which to communicate to these networks, and no apps that took advantage of its low latency or bandwidth. And even if Apple had made its own ARM-like GPU back in 2008 (more than a decade before ARM itself), game developers (which generate more than two-thirds of App Store revenues) would have lacked the game-engine technologies required to take advantage of its superpowered capabilities.

We’re currently lacking a great deal of resources to create a behemoth all-encompassing limitless virtual world.?

Holographic smart lenses and VR goggles are inconvenient to wear. We’re still experimenting with sensors to activate sensory inputs in the metaverse. Meta’s Haptic gloves, microfluidic processors working with tiny sensors woven into gloves to create a feeling of the object getting touched, are still at a prototype phase.?

The metaverse requires high-bandwidth low-latency broadband constantly. But unfortunately, we don’t yet have any practical source to fulfill the need. Musk’s Starlink or Amazon’s Project Kuiper is another faraway target.??

To get 1000 people together at one place for a concert requires immense computing power to conduct the whole thing. A platform like Fortnite or Roblox can’t pull off a gathering of that many people without any tech issues. Even if the central unit does manage to do something like that, consumer processors are way too weak to render 1000 simultaneous inputs of various data like costume and movement.?

And in a metaverse environment, that’s just a Tuesday.

Conclusion

While we’re trying to recreate the physical world inside the metaverse, it may turn out to be something different. At the beginning of the 20th century, when the need for speed was felt, it would have been foolish to look for faster horses. Instead, what we needed were motor engines.?

Similarly, trying to imitate the physical world won’t be as successful a venture. The metaverse will be something of its own, and we’ll embrace it like that.? In terms of how and when the cautiously optimistic answer will be, a completely immersive metaverse experience will take 10-15 years to build. But the process won’t be any less enjoyable if the problems are taken care of at their root.