The Metaverse is fast becoming the future of society as more companies race to be a part of the virtual platform. In March of this year, the company reached 400 million active users, as more brands established a presence on the platform. Last year Adidas tweeted that it was partnering with Metaverse, which was seen as the first step in the company launching its presence in the online gaming world. As more brands and game developers join the Metaverse, the way we interact and game is rapidly changing.
Players Now Play as Themselves
Unlike traditional video games where players choose a character, the Metaverse makes the actual player the main character in the games. The characters in Metaverse games are virtual representations of real identities, and players can create accurate avatars that look like them. As a Metaverse avatar, players can travel around and choose which game they want to participate in. This is further developed by the extended use of VR and AR technology which gives players a greater interaction in the digital world. Two popular games where players can already play as themselves are Snow Crash and Ready Player One.
Potential for Hologram Gaming
Mark Zuckerberg has big plans for the future of gaming in the Metaverse. In a recent interview, he explained how he was looking to combine the real and digital worlds together. The example he used was how the Metaverse could change online poker and make it even more realistic. Zuckerberg said in the interview, “We could deal hologram cards to each other and we could play poker, and you could have a poker night where some of your friends are there, and some of them could be holograms.”
The Metaverse has already begun looking into this genre of online gaming through its free ICE Poker game. In the same way players play online poker for real cash, players in the Metaverse play poker for ICE, the in-game currency of game developer Decentral Games. As the Metaverse looks to bring in new gaming audiences from non-traditional genres, the technology to evolve these games and make them more realistic is currently being developed. In the next few years, Zuckerberg’s dream of combining the real and digital worlds together could be fully realized through Metaverse hologram games.
The Future of Major Gaming Companies
While Metaverse is a gaming platform, it still has a long way to go in order to compete with PC and game consoles. There is still currently a divide between the two. This will soon change as major gaming companies are looking to invest in the platform. Epic Games, which owns the Unreal Engine and Fortnite, recently raised $2 billion to “further build out its future metaverse platforms”. Fortnite is one of the world’s best-known shooting games and an obvious trendsetter in the online gaming world.
Identifying the Metaverse as the future of gaming, Tim Sweeney, CEO and founder of Epic, outlined how the investment will “accelerate our work to build the metaverse and create spaces where players can have fun with friends, brands can build creative and immersive experiences, and creators can build a community and thrive.” As more companies heavily invest in the Metaverse, we could soon see a shift from traditional gaming platforms to a time where all games are built for the Metaverse.