Story Time
When I was a kid, I couldn’t sleep one evening and started taking apart my Spider-Man styled toy convertible sports car. (Why would he need one? I don’t know!). I also started tinkering with another model sports car I got as a hand-me-down. I found some hobbyist screwdrivers from a little drawer I had in the hallway and figured, “Hey, these cars are roughly the same size. I bet I can swap the pieces out!”. I had probably been watching too much Top Gear at the time, but I was convinced I had the gist of how cars worked (I hadn’t). I took apart the bottom plastic plate after removing and then carefully organising the screws. I got to a point where I could push out the plastic seating chunk that both cars had. Then I started trying to cram the parts into the other car. I kept trying to pop the undercarriage plate into place on the bottom of the opposite car’s chassis, but it was a few millimetres too long. I can still recall the image of the undercarriage trying to jam itself in there to this day – and instead of modifying both of my model toy cars, I had ended up breaking both.
The reason why these two cars didn’t work was, of course, because they were from two different manufacturers. Therefore the parts simply didn’t work together because of their different sizes – which I thought was a tragedy. But I think there’s something profoundly powerful in that. It’s a testament to the young children who accomplish great bouts of creativity with what they have. Of course, some tools are more amenable to this than others by design, such as Airfix or Lego.
Since that day, I’ve had the idea of creating a universal toy standard. Imagine the industry agreeing that all car models have a similar construction standard and scale so your figurines from different intellectual properties can sit comfortably in the seat of a sports car or imagine being able to strip apart one car so that its wind-up wheel functionality can be used in another. All of this would aim to reward the creative brilliance and reckless abandon that can only be found in the imagination of a child.
Of course, this will pretty much never happen. And it makes you feel a bit sad about how limited we are when it comes to enabling play and celebrating this wonderful facet of the human mind. But also, it’s incredibly naïve to assume this can easily happen, admittedly being someone who knows little about how things are made.
The Metaverse and all topics related keep me thinking about this. It’s probably one of the closest imaginings we are going to have to this idea in the consensus of the marketing industry’s LinkedIn community – except there’s quite a few problems I have with the whole thing. Biggest of all being that The Metaverse is already here and has been for nearly 30 years now.
I am in no way a game developer. If I was, I would have a lot more respect for myself than I currently have. But after reading Jason Schrier’s Blood Sweat and Pixels, I consider myself to be more versed on what it takes to create a game than before: the sacrifices, time, coordination, resources, as well as creativity and the challenges with corporate meddling. Frankly, I find it almost disrespectful to hear anyone talk about gaming and The Metaverse so frivolously without the appropriate knowledge or credentials, going on about combining two separate gaming worlds as though they were Lego blocks that could be stuck together. In my opinion, the phrase ‘plug in and play’ has the potential to be one of the most aggravating four words surrounding this subject in the next 20 years.
Anyone who knows the first thing about game design understands that there’s no common engine for development in all experiences – it’s hubris to suggest it’s that simple. Yes, you could go for Unity or Unreal as your game engine, but each title will have different requirements, and the tech will have to be updated for the context. Just look at every non-FPS Frostbite project coming out of EA from the past 10 years. Games such as Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect: Andromeda had issues adapting to an engine not optimised for third person RPG games. Interoperability is much easier said than done. This is why it’s very difficult to believe in ideas such as ‘IP Legos’ (Lego is a non-change plural, by the way), and this is before we even get into the conversation around legal rights. Also, if you’re a creator, why would you even want to sign up to unifying your vision with someone else’s? Compatibility will mean compromise, and they get enough problems from that already.
One thing that people who play and write about games have been saying is that we already have The Metaverse – it’s called The Internet. The only thing that I can see The Metaverse meaningfully adding is better tools to help form one’s identity, but this requires human moderation. That isn’t a cautionary guideline from me either, it’s the fundamental truth behind every Metaverse framework that needs to be built.
Ownership
It seems that one of the most captivating aspects of a blockchain-enabled Metaverse is ownership, a clear chain link to the owner and the object. You could also call it ‘responsibility’, which is both an exciting and dangerous idea. This idea of responsibility for actions and objects into that of The Metaverse is common in the discourse. However, one question you must ask yourself is: Who even wants that more than what we have now?
Ownership and responsibility for assets are very prevalent topics in gaming since you literally are hopping into a different world or platform in each session. Ownership in regards to the connection between what you own Digitally vs Physically was a huge discussion during the start of the 8th generation of consoles, and eventually became another new normal (although the Destiny 2 Content Vaulting kerfuffle makes you wonder if The Metaverse will have to shelf stuff similarly, looking at server and storage limitations etc.). Also take a look at emulation and preservation being hot topics right now too.
Responsibility can also be considered an extension of this discussion of ownership with ownership of action. What does escapism truly mean? Should your identity extend and be impacted with your actions in virtual worlds? Games are the best medium for escapism and immersion full stop. What they do is help enable people’s identity and help them discover beautiful things about themselves and others without the risks of doing so in real life: it’s one of the brightest, shining stars in the universe of this art form. Conversely, it can also enable the darkest parts of people’s identities and their communities – allowing them to perpetuate toxicity in online communities and anonymously shirk the consequences of their actions.
I attended the virtual Game Developers Conference this year and listened in on a lot of talks from the Fair Play Alliance. For one half of a second, I had an idea around a universal reputation platform for all gaming platforms. Borne out of the impatience for Rainbow Six: Siege to implement their own reputation system, this would be a common database based on a combination of peer reviews and gameplay data. It would allow players to play amongst people with similar behavioural profiles for a healthier experience for those who were healthy members of the wider gaming community. Immediately acknowledging the technical and ethical challenges of making this happen, I half dismissed it, but it got me thinking about if anyone would want this at all. And then I remembered Nosedive (Season 3, Episode 1 of Black Mirror), which deals with a similar concept, and furthermore, China’s Social Credit system.
Even starting this blog, I was hyper conscious about attaching my real-life name to it – what does it mean to write something on ‘The Metaverse’ that you’re attached to? How does it affect what you’re confident enough to say and think aloud? Especially when you know people whose opinion you care about will see it?
Identity
When it comes to identity, specifically the visual elements and ownership thereof, I don’t have high hopes. With the way things are heading it will only result in lacklustre experiences and expression up to a certain point, at least within our lifetime., Unless there is a common design standard for ‘new metaverse building’, each conglomerate is going to be releasing their metaverse as a product, and how can that be considered democratic and truly empowering? Everything will need to be moderated or will be moderated by accident by the fact that anything that can exist in a specific metaverse product will have been created just for that platform. The more unintentional (or intentional) restrictions and barriers put in place means that the disconnect between your imagination and virtual identity will widen further and further – it won’t even be your imagination anymore. It will be a figment of Mark Zuckerberg’s. It’s just like one of those existentially dreadful thoughts that you have where you realise you might be living in the dream of an insect. Except instead of an insect, it’s a Silicon Valley CEO.
Digital vanity and appearance are things I’ve been thinking about a lot when playing games recently. The only thing I want to accomplish in my playtime right now is recreating my Halo: Reach armour on Halo Infinite but I’m confined by the inflexible cosmetic systems and will need to make some microtransactions to do it. (I just want my Gungnir helmet back!). In Halo Infinite (And Forza Horizon 5 too!), I can customise my playable character with a prosthetic, but this accessibility-minded celebration of identity wasn’t available until quite recently. My point is that your identity in The Metaverse will continue to be confined by the tools and laws of the human-made environment. Which is to say it will be no different to real life or the current Metaverse of the internet, except you will have a lot fewer tools to create, forge, and discover your identity.
This is one of the most heartbreaking things about discussion on The Metaverse. The idea is that The Metaverse is an escapist’s paradise in which you can be whomever you want, but this is all forgetting that your identity in The Metaverse WILL be inherently linked to the person you are in real life: how big your bank account is, the floor plan of your flat (for VR), your internet connection. Yes, The Metaverse bridges a lot of gaps, but how can we expect it to be all-embracing and democratic when, even now, it will take you at least £300-450 to be able to have a middle level gaming experience? How can we ever consider The Metaverse anything but dystopian when we struggle to recognise that we’re just building another VIP club?
Play2Earn
This financial current will run both ways too. As we all know, the most high-profile use of the blockchain and NFT technology is for making lots of money. It was only a matter of time that someone started pushing for an idea of what earning money would look like in The Metaverse. And thus, Play2Earn was born. (Except in-depth game economy had already kind of been explored already with Eve Online, but nobody outside the gaming community wants to talk about that.)
I think one of the most abhorrent things about the idea of Play2Earn is the erasure of compartmentalisation between work and play; the loss of innocence in one of the few interactive mediums which can deliver that nostalgia, pureness, and innocence so well. I remember in the Gen III Pokémon games Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald, the Mauville City Game Corner had slot machines and roulette available, but by the time it came to release the remakes HeartGold and SoulSilver (hands down the best Pokemon games ever made), the Celadon Game Corner had its mini-games removed due to PEGI regulations on gambling in games. This was because you now had to have an over-18 rating if it had depictions of gambling. Now my opinion is that these changes made sense, but these were minigames at the end of the day. That said, if you were to attach currency to it then it becomes a lot more dangerous.
Now this may come off a little bit like “Will someone PLEASE think of the children?” but it’s a little bit disconcerting for two main reasons: 1) The second you can convince people to make a living off a Play2Earn game you can easily see some nightmare scenarios of parents or guardians taking their children out of education to play a game all day and earn money, and 2) The loss of innocence. Sometimes you want to play because you want to play – because you don’t want to be thinking about the ticking clock of your finances day and night – that someone’s actions elsewhere will reset your progress, or dramatically affect your financial situation (that is, if bad luck doesn’t get to you first). Of course, there can be regulation, but I can see a lot of people getting rich, and even more people getting hurt on the long road to get to that point. I mean, look at the US Congress when they question Silicon Valley’s leaders on contemporary tech issues in society: we’re fucking doomed.
Anybody who’s ever obsessed over Gamerscore knows how this feels – the obsession around internet points. The strange behaviours it can make us do. Staying up well into the night is only one of the more banal possibilities. Now I realize that this is all starting to sound like a cautionary tale from your mother, but it’s more from a place of fascination. In the same way these digital experiences can make us do good things, they can also unexpectedly make us do bad things whether intentionally or unintentionally designed to do so.
A prominent nightmare scenario I never want to live again was when I joined a hardcore survival Minecraft server as a teenager. I used to obsess night and day about my progress: the virtual currency I had, the base I had put hours and hours into hiding and building. I remember stressing every single night so much that I couldn’t sleep and had to keep working on it. The point where it had to stop for me was when I remember logging off to call it a night and decided to go back on after around 5 minutes to discover my entire base had been griefed (destroyed) and wrecked beyond repair. My hidden stash of wealth had been plundered, and I had no idea who did it and how they found me. Heartbreak was what I felt. And it breaks my heart even more today to imagine people who are about to go through something similar. Except this time it’s not their Minecraft base ruined, it’s their livelihoods.
And then there’s the environmental impact of a blockchain-enabled Metaverse, which is talked about a lot, but not enough. It gives me an existential headache thinking about how ready people are to move forward with NFTs and cryptocurrencies, and the potential ‘exponential growth’ that comes with attaching it to gaming.
To kind of wrap everything up, The Metaverse isn’t a particularly scary concept to me. It’s been done, seen and attempted many times before. And hey, some attempts have even survived, but they have done so with an awareness of what they are and what they know they can accomplish. But anything that comes along now will still be following the lovely rules of the competitive free market and will be throwing another thing on top of the stable pile that already exists. I just can’t stand the idea of it only becoming embraced by ‘mainstream’ stakeholders right now in the age of Blockchain, NFTs, declining democratisation of the web and the over-commercialisation of things we love. If you believe in it, then go ahead – put your money, your personal finances, your time, and your marketing investment into it – but I won’t. I would much rather take the embarrassment of being proven wrong in 10, 20, 30 years from now with this piece still available to read, than suffer the humiliation of trying to make a shitty Second Life clone for brands to hold a pop concert in.
Maybe I should sell this as an NFT?
minutiae+musings 