Immersion Therapy. The Extended Layers Of The Metaverse

Richard Bradbury: Last week we pretty much figured out that the Metaverse is really just the Internet of the future. It’s funny how Matt Armitage can make even the most exciting tech developments sound boring.

Matt Armitage:

• I take issue with that. You haven’t even finished the intro and you’re abusing me.

• If I wanted insults I’d just spend this time with King Jaff.

• He’s never happy but at least he’s cute and covered in fur.

• You only manage one of those 2.

• I wouldn’t say boring. I wanted to demystify it. That’s pretty much the entire premise of these shows.

• Take the ineffability out of the equation and look at what it actually means.

• So, we’re continuing with that theme today.

• As I mentioned last week, we’d look at the business of the metaverse as well as some of the projects that the big players are building.

• And look at some of the national and supranational developments that may shape the metaverse.

• Of course, there’s that tricky issue of where Web3 – blockchain technology – comes into the equation.

• So I think we’ll tackle that one in the next episode – metaverse adjacent, or metaverse integratum to mangle my non-existent Latin.

Richard Bradbury: Do you want to give us a Twitter update before that?

Matt Armitage:

• I’m not sure how the job of associate twerp landed on my shoulders.

• But sure. Blue Tick on pause. Twitter coders asked to fly to SF to help Musk.

• NiN’s Trent Reznor states he’s leaving Twitter for the sake of his mental health.

• If you’re a NiN fan, you’ll know that he frequently sounds troubled.

• Something of an understatement.

• And Musk labelled him a crybaby. Don’t see a good end to that feud.

• He tweeted that he had fired an employee with whom he had a public back and forth with over some of the platform’s bugs.

• And reportedly fired others who had been critical of him on company communication platforms.

• Other companies, including some big tech players like HubSpot, are actively targeting laid-off Twitter engineers and coders.

• Which might fly in the face of logic – we’re seeing massive layoffs throughout the tech sector.

• But this underplays a skills shortage in many coding and engineering roles.

• It’s people like me that tech companies can live without.

• So, yes, those companies are actively talking about the environment Musk seems to have created, in order to lure workers to their seemingly calmer ships.

• and the big news. Musk allowed Donald Trump back on the platform after a public poll.

• Because he seems to think everyone on Twitter follows his account. You know, ego.

• Trump can’t or won’t tweet because of TruthSocial.

• So Musk created a weird meme of someone about to hit someone else’s bottom in a provocative manner, with said bottom covered in a twitter logo.

• I’m assuming that the message is that Trump should take up the tease and tweet.

• Go figure.

• However, he also announced Info Wars host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones won’t be allowed back on Twitter.

• Because he doesn’t want to give a platform to someone who he says makes benefit from the death of children.

• Again, not a fan of Alex Jones. But there doesn’t seem to be an equally applied logic here.

• Someone who allegedly fomented an insurrection to overturn democracy, fine, We’ll have you back.

• Someone who promotes conspiracies to sell health supplements, not cool.

• I understand the sentiment but it doesn’t suggest a logical approach to policing content on the platform.

• I think that’s it – as ever – up until time of recording.

• He’ll probably abuse someone or something on twitter in the 12 hours until broadcast.

• But it’s on Twitter – so I don’t care.

• Metaverse?

Richard Bradbury: We finished last week with a bit of a rushed parade through the navigation tools for this new metaverse-filled Internet.

Matt Armitage:

• Yes. So this is the VR paradox. If you didn’t hear last week’s episode, my apologies.

• The basis of last week was that I wouldn’t talk about the actual appearance of the metaverse, and the tools like VR that might be used to navigate it.

• That’s because I wanted to uncouple the meaning of the metaverse from the tools used to operate within it.

• Which I’m assuming is why Richard is accusing me of making it boring.

• People often talk about the metaverse and VR almost interchangeably.

• So, firstly how widespread is the use of VR?

• Trying to find consistent stats for this was a bit of a challenge.

• In the end I want with a report on a careers site called Zippia, which mostly cited stats sourced from Statista.

• Supposedly there are around 170m VR users around the world.

• With about a third of those concentrated in the US. This is the stat I had trouble with.

• The conclusion drawn is that 15% of the US population uses VR. Now I don’t know how these figures were arrived at.

• Because that’s more than one in 10 Americans who theoretically use VR.

• And that doesn’t work for me.

• If any of our US listeners want to chime in and let me know if 1 in every 7 people they know has a VR headset, please do.

• I have a feeling that this is a typical early adopter market, where a passionate and small group of users buys the latest version of everything as it comes out.

• If this is based on actual use of VR environments, rather than retail sales of VR headsets, then I’m happy to stand corrected.

Richard Bradbury: Does this include Augmented Reality use?

Matt Armitage:

• No. That’s separate. AR users, in the US at least are almost double VR users.

• Which is what you’d expect – there’s a lower technological barrier to entry.

• To access VR you need a virtual reality headset, and depending on your immersion level, gloves, suits, special chairs or treadmills and other paraphernalia.

• By and large, you can use AR with the smartphone in your pocket.

• But again, despite the ease of use of AR that’s still a relatively low number.

• Especially as it’s calculated on the basis of one use per month.

• So does that include use of say Google’s live translation? Does that count as AR?

• Anyway, we’re a long way from mass adoption.

• Yet many games call themselves metaverses? So why is there that juxtaposition?

• As I keep saying, the metaverse is the Internet.

• The idea of the Internet is based on ubiquity and accessibility.

• Games developers want to maximise their profits, so they want their games to be as accessible as possible,

• And they don’t want a high barrier to entry in terms of physical hardware.

• Because they want to sell you items, assets and add-ons in-game.

• Which they can’t do if you’ve taken out a mortgage to pay for a VR rig.

Richard Bradbury: You could just have said: VR is a part of the metaverse, and not the metaverse itself.

Matt Armitage:

• For that crack, you get to do the Twitter update next week.

• But that’s a fair summary.

bn by: 2027

• And we’ve seen some important trends over the past few years.

• I think Sony was traditionally the leader in the headset space.

• With Oculus its closest rival. Since the pandemic – plus or minus a bit – Oculus seems to have overtaken Sony in sales.

• I’m not going to debate why – the relative merits of different headsets.

• There’s a ton of Google reviews you can check for that.

• The important part is Meta.

• Oculus is part of Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta empire. And the company’s virtual playground Horizon Worlds sits under Oculus.

• And in fact is only accessible with an Oculus headset.

• Why does that matter?

• Meta is betting big on the metaverse and VR is a big part of MZ’s vision.

Richard Bradbury: Does that mean you could only use Meta hardware to access Meta worlds?

Matt Armitage:

• That’s the current reality.

• Although, we still come back to accessibility. Facebook and WA are ubiquitous because they’re accessible.

• Yes, they’re popular, but accessibility is also a big reason for the popularity.

• I’m guessing – I imagine the primary reason you can only use a Meta made headset to access Meta’s world has more to do with compatibility.

• As those environments develop, as we see more common standards, I would foresee Meta opening it up to hardware from other manufacturers.

• It doesn’t make sense not to, because the Meta and FB business model doesn’t derive from the hardware.

• It derives from in-world use. Buying and selling services.

• All the things we currently buy online and offline being available in one form or another in these worlds.

Richard Bradbury: We’ll come back to that business case after the break. But as we’re talking about Meta, and user experience, is there any data on how people have responded to Meta’s virtual worlds?

Matt Armitage:

• Some internal documents leaked from Meta to WSJ last month and they made for bleak reading.

• That most users quit the platform after one month. That doesn’t mean they’re not using VR anymore.

• Just that they aren’t finding what they want in FB’s version of it.

• The model for Horizon World isn’t that Meta provides everything.

• It’s an umbrella – effectively a software platform – for third parties to build in and on.

• So it relies on the virtual equivalent of FB groups to attract people.

• Those same documents indicated that only 9% of the created worlds even achieved 50 users.

• And that’s the problem with big, sprawling virtual landscapes.

• Where are all the people to interact with? Especially at the start.

• So if you go in and find an empty universe are you going to come back?

• It’s one of those feedback loops.

• You don’t go because it’s empty, and because it’s perceived to be empty, no one goes.

• That’s why I stressed those issues of accessibility. The more barriers you erect, the more friction you create in that user journey.

• The fewer people will use it.

Richard Bradbury: It isn’t always a numbers game…

Matt Armitage:

• No. Which is the Twitter argument.

• Twitter isn’t important because of the number of users but who those users are.

• There are plenty of businesses that operate by catering to a niche.

• That’s not Meta’s model. Meta is mass. It monetises data. And it’s spent tens of billions on a metaverse play.

• And it also comes back to the user experience. What are people going to virtual environments for?

• Are they going for entertainment, to hang out and fly around? To work?

• Anyway, after the break, I’ll talk a bit more about the use case for VR in the metaverse and we’ll have a look at some of the more geo-political issues.

Richard Bradbury: [ad lib stop doing your own trails etc]

BREAK

Richard Bradbury: We’re back in the really doesn’t Matterverse today. Before the break, we were talking about the experience of using the VR version of the Metaverse.

Matt Armitage:

• Yes. So there was an interesting piece in NS about a German study into productivity of workers in VR,

• The highlighted a lot of the positive aspects. For example, information access.

• In VR you can have multiple virtual screens, and move your head from one to another.

• So the ability to access and arrange information is improved, without requiring huge amounts of space and hardware.

• When you’re working remotely, you can join others in a virtual office. Working side by side.

• I understand what they’re getting at there – maintaining those team dynamics – though part of me says.

• If you’ve managed to break free from cubicle culture, why would you then recreate it virtually?

• The study was conducted by Coburg University. 10 participants were monitored for 2 five day working weeks.

• One wearing a VR headset. They named the brand, but it’s not really relevant.

• And one week where they worked traditionally.

• Overall, the workers were 16% less productive using VR, and reported higher levels of stress and anxiety.

• They also found the physical constraints of the headsets more limiting than working in a traditional fashion.

• And they found there was a great deal more eyestrain after working extended periods in VR,

• compared to using traditional monitors and office set-ups where your eyes can focus

• and refocus naturally in response to a true rather than simulated 3D environment.

Richard Bradbury: So, if the future of the Metaverse isn’t VR, what will it be?

Matt Armitage:

• It’s not that the VR won’t be a part of the Metaverse.

• It’s more that people equate the metaverse with AR and VR.

• That’s why I keep saying it’s easier to say Internet. Because it shapes the expectations better.

• Some people are also calling this extended reality, or XR.

• If you want a simpler term, try immersive Internet.

• Go back to those points I mentioned earlier. Accessibility and ubiquity.

• That’s what you need for widespread adoption. It’s the basis of our current Internet.

• The evolution, or the adaptation, however you want to frame it.

• Will be this immersive layer providing richer online experiences.

• I sound like a management handbook.

• And most of it you won’t even notice, because most of these changes will be gradual and iterative.

• That’s why the geocities website is a great example.

• You didn’t really notice that your favourite sites had stopped looking like day-glo vomit, until you look back at those cached versions.

• Because it’s a tweak here and a tweak there. A new font. A new logo. New page colours.

• Tweaked layout.

Richard Bradbury: So, the evolution to the metaverse is essentially in these iterative, emerging and immersive layers? [rephrase if you don’t want the alliteration]

Matt Armitage:

• So we’re already seeing this immersive layer. Again, going back to the example of games calling themselves metaverses.

• There may not be VR or AR, but there are tools that allow you to buy and sell games assets, and items.

• To create your own. Inbuilt messaging and chat systems.

• So that within those open world platforms there are experience layers that are being added to as the worlds evolve.

• This is what we’re going to see as the metaverse evolves. Being able to shift experience layers more and more seamlessly.

• I’ve used this example before – and it is mostly fanciful rather than built on what’s technologically possible right now.

• From a voice call to a friend to appearing to sit next to them in the audience of a virtual concert.

• Each new layer adding an immersive quality. Voice to AR to VR. To the dreaded holograms we will never have.

• That’s a callback to a theme from last week, in case you didn’t hear that show.

• And I haven’t even started on the AI component of the metaverse. Which will be huge.

Richard Bradbury: Some people are still going to want to know about the money…

Matt Armitage:

• That’s the thing. The Internet is already a license to print or lose money, depending on where you sit in the food chain.

• At the moment, as MZ has found out, a lot of metaverse investment at the moment is speculative.

• There’s an interesting CNBC piece I came across, it quotes a recent Deloitte report on the impact of the metaverse on Asian economies.

a year to Asian economies by: 2035

• And it puts forward a number of interesting possibilities – that this region could be amongst the first to benefit.

• Partly because the region is also a hub for the production side of the metaverse.

• Semiconductors, electronics. So those gains, aren’t all in-world, service -oriented.

• They’re also in manufacturing, building the servers that house the metaverse.

• And the devices that allows us to interact with it.

• Coupled with the relatively high familiarity of consumers in Asia with open world and games platforms, use of blockchain and crypto.

• I think the figure deloitte uses is 1.3bn mobile gamers across the region.

• So, not only is the region likely to be a key driver when it comes to the use of the metaverse.

• It will also play a key role in shaping what it becomes.

• Again, I’ve seen some figures that suggest that around $120bn has been invested in metaverse projects this year.

• It’s hard to make comparative judgements relating to these investments, because everyone has a different definition of what constitutes a metaverse.

• So we come back to one of the central pushbacks against the metaverse, which is, will it happen?

• Will it be any good? Will I want to use it?

Richard Bradbury: And beyond that, will it be any good and will anyone want to use it?

Matt Armitage:

• I think that’s one of the bigger issues surrounding the VR model of the metaverse.

• I think that’s the biggest issue that Meta faces.

• But that doesn’t mean there aren’t compelling VR apps and games out there. There are.

• It just means Meta hasn’t cracked it.

• And I touched on this last week. Epic’s Unreal Engine. It’s creating these amazing, immersive games.

• It’s being used to create these equally futuristic but real-seeming environments for TV and film.

• Deploying that kind of technology as your backdrop to the metaverse – even without VR and AR that’s an incredibly detailed experience.

• If you can solve the issue of how much computing power it takes in real-time.

Richard Bradbury: I think there’s also a tendency, when people think about buying things in the Metaverse, to default to Minecraft style blocky items.

Matt Armitage:

• Yes. So, again. Which is why we should think about this as Internet rather than Metaverse.

• Think of all the things we already buy online. That won’t change.

• The experience of buying those things will change as those layers become more immersive.

• And then we start to see in-world design starting to shape real world design more.

• For example, there are already digital fashion houses and designers.

• They’re dealing with a different set of physics and conditions than in the real world.

• So that you can achieve shapes or behaviours with clothing that don’t happen in the real world.

• Something like flapping, gossamer butterfly wings. I know it’s a cliché.

• Or clothes that float above and around your body without making contact with your skin.

• That’s great for an avatar. But is it any more than that?

• Brands like Nike and Adidas are creating methods where fans can create their own lines for the brand, and share in the royalities if they sell.

• And potentially even be turned into real world products.

• With digital fashion houses, . For example, you can have yourself photoshopped into that design.

• That piece can then be turned into an NFT. We live life through a lens now.

• It doesn’t matter that you’ve never worn it, only that you appear to.

• But some designers are taking it a stage further. Prototyping incredible, gravity or materials science defying couture.

• And then figuring out how to bring it IRL.

• Designers like London-based Scarlett Yang, have been experimenting with materials like algae to make firm the clothing they create for digital environments.

• Some of the garments are short-lived and ephemeral. The algae dissolves in water, for example.

• But in some ways that’s the point. The way we think about digital objects is different from the way we think about physical objects.

• But as the metaverse becomes more real, more tangible, we will probably see the way we think about those two worlds – physical and digital – converging.

Richard Bradbury: One final area we have to explore, probably very quickly is the borders of the metaverse. When you talk about the metaverse as the Internet, we already have a fractured Internet.

Matt Armitage:

• Yes. So probably best to do this quickly. We can either do this at the surface level or spend the next few hours talking about it.

• And surface level always works for me.

• This is also where we have an overlap with Web3. The basis of the Web3 technologies is autonomy and decentralisation.

• Those two concepts don’t work very well for autocratic countries.

• Often, oddly, they work ok in the financial space, where seeming anonymity is often sought when moving money and assets around.

• But the metaverse is a social space as much, or even more, than it is a commercial one.

• That makes it tricky. We touched on interoperability in the last issue.

• And I think a lot of metaverse platforms or umbrellas will not be interoperable by design.

• Because the underlying value principles will be different.

• And that’s something you already see in the current flavour of the Internet.

• Is your user name registered to a government ID? Are your financial transactions logged with the central bank.

• Does the government or other third parties have free access to your user data?

• From the user experience perspective, it looks the same.

• You have comparable apps and experiences. The levels of immersion are there.

• But the systems they’re built on have very different aims, because they perceive the user in a different way.

• We’re already seeing more countries trying to install their own kill switches on the Internet.

• I think my fear would be that a less decentralised metaverse, would make it easier to fragment and splinter the Internet even further.

• And introduce these isolation and kill-switches in the name of a better internet experience.