However, they tend not to have high levels of concurrency: most video chat programs max out beyond a few people, and once you hit 50, you tend to need to “live stream” a broadcast to your viewers, rather than share a two-way connection. Fortnite isn’t the Metaverse, but nothing is closer to the Metaverse today in spirit and it is clear how the “game” might eventually underpin one. It’s a difficult question to answer. Key Takeaway from Matthew Ball’s Metaverse: The Metaverse will transform the modern economy and represents a next-generation opportunity akin … To this end, there is also a myriad of start-ups trying to build early, proto-Metaverse styled experiences. The Metaverse: What It Is, Where to Find it, Who Will Build It, and Fortnite — MatthewBall.vc For centuries, developed economies have transformed as the scarcity of labor and real-estate waxed and waned. And it operates at the scale of Fortnite’s player network, allowing any title to leverage the world’s largest player graph to kickstart their userbases. It also operates one of the largest digital ad networks (a nice side effect of powering 10B daily minutes of mobile entertainment). Still, the Metaverse requires everyone be able to create and contribute ‘content’ and ‘experiences,’ not just well-staffed corporations and technically skilled individuals trying to make games or movies. To operate, the Metaverse requires something more akin to video conferencing and video games. Two months later, he was even more explicit: “The amount of power possessed by Google and Facebook. This doesn’t mean turning Unity into a proprietary engine can’t be strategically smart. The Metaverse will require countless new technologies, protocols, companies, innovations, and discoveries to work. This engine is used by more than half of mobile games and is even more widely deployed in real-world rendering/simulation use cases (e.g. The metaverse, broadly understood as a persistent, shared virtual realm — like an evolved, more-immersive internet — is no longer just fodder for science fiction. To this end, Epic charges only 12% (which includes the 5% Unreal licensing fee, too, making it only 7% for many customers). Over time, each option is likely to become more capable, easier to use and integrated. In addition, the company is not just the market leader in indexing both the digital and physical world (nearly 10,000 employees contribute to its mapping initiatives), but it is also the most successful digital software and services company outside of China. If you “declared” your intent to start a Metaverse, these parties would never embrace interoperability or entrust their IP. Inspiration for several characteristics of the Metaverse was taken from Matthew Ball's article: The Metaverse: What It Is, Where to Find it, Who Will Build It, and Fornite. He’s the former head of strategy at Amazon Studios, an investor, and probably my favorite business essayist writing today. I love that his default mode seems to be thinking about big picture and strategy. “That doesn’t require any belief in the multiverse or the Metaverse … Valve has also spent years developing and releasing VR hardware, generates billions in profits each year, and is privately owned by a team of technologists focused on open-source technologies with a disdain for closed ecosystems. Be persistent – which is to say, it never “resets” or “pauses” or “ends”, it just continues indefinitely, Be synchronous and live – even though pre-scheduled and self-contained events will happen, just as they do in “real life”, the Metaverse will be a living experience that exists consistently for everyone and in real time, Have no real cap to concurrent participations with an individual sense of “presence” – everyone can be a part of the Metaverse and participate in a specific event/place/activity together, at the same time and with individual agency, Be a fully functioning economy – individuals and businesses will be able to create, own, invest, sell, and be rewarded for an incredibly wide range of “work” that produces “value” that is recognized by others, Be an experience that spans both the digital and physical worlds, private and public networks/experiences, and open and closed platforms. In 1945 Vannevar Bush described what he-called the “Memex”, a single device that would store all books, records and communications, and mechanically link them together by association. Companies at the forefront of the Metaverse (virtual immersive experiences with a wide base of creation) want funding to produce native advertising. Regardless, the Metaverse should produce the same diversity of opportunity as we saw with the web – new companies, products and services will emerge to manage everything from payment processing to identity verification, hiring, ad delivery, content creation, security, and so forth. Now they talk to their friends on Fortnite, but not about Fortnite . Matthew Ball is a strategist, essayist, venture investor, and worked as head of strategy at Amazon Studios. True, it operates the second largest computing platform of the modern era (and by far the most valuable one), as well as the largest game stores on the planet (which also means it pays more to developers than anyone else on earth). Our mission is to encourage a higher level of collaboration amongst advertisers, agencies, media partners and creators, leading to a richer media environment for all. Matt Ball - The Future of Media: Movies, the Metaverse, and More - [Invest Like the Best, EP.185] By Patrick O'Shaughnessy. To this end, Epic acquired the company Twinmotion in April of last year. As a result, it’s important to consider how the Metaverse emerges, not just around which technological standard. Just as the standards for the Metaverse can’t simply be “declared”, consumers and businesses won’t embrace a would-be proto-Metaverse simply because it’s available. Just imagine, for example, if credit card fees weren’t 0.5-2.5% but up to 60-20x as much; whole sectors of the physical economy wouldn’t be able to operate (such as a coffee shop or grocery store). Matthew Ball is CEO of Epyllion Industries, a venture and corporate advisory firm, a Venture Partner at Makers Fund, and advisor to Telefilm Canada. Instead, it will slowly emerge over time as different products, services, and capabilities integrate and meld together. ... (wrote a proto-Metaverse piece a year earlier). But more importantly, CEO Satya Nadella understands Microsoft, at a minimum, needs to be wherever work happens. In some cases, these “LTMs” transform part of Fortnite’s map into a mini-virtual world that, when entered, changes the aesthetics, items and playstyle of the game to resemble another. In this excellent analysis by Matthew Ball, he identifies “core attributes” of what a MV would look like, and what it is not. This means thousands of games already operate on its “stack” of tools and software (to simplify things), making it easier to share assets, integrate experiences, and share user profiles. In addition, it’s likely that, as with the web, a dozen or so platforms hold significant shares of user time, experiences, content, etc. With this in mind, Snapchat, which boasts a large and heavily-engaged social graph and has strongly anchored itself around cameras, glasses, location-based experiences, and digital avatars, could have a key role in the Metaverse (especially if acquired).And for all of its uniqueness, Fortnite isn’t even the only Fortnite — there are several other online “games” that share many of the same attributes, behaviors, and potential. In fact, most of the FAAMG companies seem to believe that glasses will be a key gateway into our digital future and are collectively investing billions into the form factor. This Protocol piece instead centers on another important "game," Roblox. A cool note is the emergence of CGI-tech that "de-ages" the actors so they can play themselves in the younger years. Patrick and I went deep into topics including the Metaverse (its technical challenges, opportunities, and philosophy), IP and the role of business model and technical innovation in storytelling, the Unreal Engine, Cloud Gaming, Fortnite as a competitor to Spotify, and more. And if the Metaverse does indeed serve as a functional “successor” to the web — only this time with even greater reach, time spent, and more commercial activity — there’s likely to be even more economic upside. Many also debate whether a true Metaverse can have a single operator (as is the case in Ready Player One). These sales were typically to higher-income players in the West. Will we know the future when we see it? 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