WTF is the Metaverse?

The successor to the internet might be rooted in the gaming industry.

The term “Metaverse” was coined by science fiction writer Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel “Snow Crash.” In “Snow Crash,” the Metaverse is a massively popular virtual world experienced in the first person by users equipped with augmented reality technology.

Over the past year, executives and creatives in the gaming and tech industries have breathed new life into the Metaverse concept, framing massively multiplayer games such as “Fortnite: Battle Royale,” “Roblox” and “Minecraft” as precursors to an expansive digital world that combines Stephenson’s fictional Metaverse with a real world that has become increasingly digitized during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In an interview with The Verge last week, Mark Zuckerberg turned heads by opining that Facebook would transition from being a social media company to “a Metaverse company” within the next five years.

“It’s probably fair to say that what we have today is not quite the Metaverse yet,” said Moritz Baier-Lentz, a partner at Metaverse-minded venture capital fund BITKRAFT Ventures. “But when you ask people to describe the Metaverse, most would converge on something that is the stuff of ‘Ready Player One’: a persistent bridge between the physical and digital worlds with unprecedented scale, interactivity and interoperability.”

With so many different interpretations of the Metaverse going around, here’s a primer on what it is in its purest form — and why it has everyone excited, from Roblox to AB InBev.

What is the Metaverse?

The Metaverse is a “successor state” to the modern internet, with all the same content but fewer limitations as to where and how that content can be accessed. Current online platforms allow users to move about somewhat freely within the confines of specific services, but limit interoperability between platforms: you can build anything in “Minecraft,” but you can’t transfer your creations into a “Fortnite” map. The Metaverse will allow users to generate their own content and distribute it freely throughout a widely accessible digital world.

Unlike the modern internet, Metaverse users will experience changes in real-time by all users. If a user makes any kind of change to the Metaverse, that change will be permanent and immediately visible to everyone else. The persistence and interoperability of the Metaverse will afford users increased continuity of identity and experience compared to the modern internet. In the Metaverse, users won’t need to have separate Twitter profiles, “Fortnite” characters and Reddit accounts — they’ll simply be themselves across all channels. This continuity of identity will be a core factor behind how users purchase and consume content in the Metaverse.

“The brands that are progressive in this area are the ones that understand the fact that self-expression is such an important component of why people spend so much time online,” said Christina Wootton, vp of brand partnerships at Roblox. “They can be who they want to be.”