INDUSTRY INSIGHT
Experts discuss what the metaverse could mean for the 3D community
Not long ago, many saw the metaverse as the future of entertainment. Then things changed. As AI came to the fore and companies like Meta and Disney cut their metaverse divisions, thousands of layoffs had us wondering: was the whole thing just a fad? For senior creative technologist Charley Draper, the answer is a resounding no.
After a decade of experience in largescale live events, theatre, film and as a video jockey for music festivals, he’s now part of visual storytelling tech company, disguise. Together, Draper and disguise don’t just believe the metaverse is still important, they’re actively developing its possibilities.
“When we first started, it was a bit of a stampede,” he explains. “The metaverse as we know exploded out of Covid. Now those circumstances have changed. Every company wanted to jump in and today, that gold rush phase has ended. But that’s a good thing. Many who were just in it for the prospect of fast money or market share have left. That left those of us who are passionate about innovation to get past the marketing material, and quietly do incredible work.”
THE METAVERSE SO FAR
You’ve probably heard the term ‘metaverse’ a thousand times without understanding what it means. Is it the world’s biggest video game? A social media platform? Or a virtual shopping centre to spend your life’s earnings? It can be hard to pin down. In simple terms, the metaverse is a shared 3D, virtual space. Many believe it’s the next evolution of the internet; an immersive, persistent world that users can dip in and out of, navigating with lifelike avatars that can jump from one metaverse to the next.
The idea of a vast virtual world isn’t new. Neal Stephenson coined the term metaverse in his 1982 novel SnowCrash, in which characters use virtual space to escape their totalitarian surroundings. That vision of a virtual world hasn’t yet come to pass, but smaller proto-metaverses already exist.
Multiplayer games such as Fortniteand Robloxpresent fenced-off virtual worlds and, although players are bound by the limits of each game, they can customise their avatars, purchase items and interact with others. Forward-thinking companies are also already using small metaverses of their own to do all manner of things. Tesla, for example, uses a kind of metaverse to train its self-driving cars in the safest possible environment.
