What is a higher degree of freedom? Perhaps some people feel that we are in online games, is not also very free? Play it any way you want.
However, no matter how rich the elements of an online game are, the roles, tasks, careers, props and scenes in the game are all pre-designed by game designers.
Take world of Warcraft, a massive online game, for example. You can be a mage or a hunter, but if you want to be a “star warrior”, I’m sorry, it’s not designed for that.
Similarly, if you want to forge a “sword of Heaven” in World of Warcraft, despite the variety of weapons available in the game, you can’t. Blizzard designers have never heard of such a thing.
But in the meta-universe, the entire virtual world is co-created. Every user can not only participate, but also transform the world, creating new elements and rules.
In Minecraft, the work of the players
If, in the world of online games, game designers are gods of creation. So in the meta-universe, there is no longer an authoritative “god”, and all users are “people” who participate in and transform the world together.
The industry has a term for such a pattern: UGC (User Generated Content), which translates to “User Generated Content.”
Online games also have their own economic systems, with virtual currency and transactions of various items. So what’s so special about an economic system in the meta-universe?
Scarcity is the cornerstone of economics. In the real world, whether it is a steamed bun or a villa, the quantity is limited. If you want to make more steamed buns and build more villas, you need more materials, energy and labor costs.
However, in online games, all items and equipment are numbers. In theory, a gaming service could make infinite copies of an item at no extra cost. Therefore, in online games, the economic system is not independent.
But in the meta-universe, each object is unique and cannot be replicated in large numbers. In addition, these items are guaranteed by secure digital contracts during all transactions, making digital assets in the metasomes as scarce and stable as people’s assets in real life.
Scarcity and stability are the cornerstones of the independent economic system of the meta-universe.
Digital assets “Boring ape” series
What technologies are involved in the realization of the metasverse?
First, it is the common technology in many Internet products and games, such as cloud computing, 5G communications, VR virtual reality technology and so on. We will not go into the details of these techniques.
The meta-universe can achieve decentralization, and the underlying relies on the development and progress of blockchain technology in the past decade. In blockchain, there is no central server, and each user is an independent and equal node, free to submit their own content and update the whole blockchain on the premise of consensus. This is the basis on which users of the metasomes can transform their virtual worlds.
In addition, the recent popularity of NFT provides a guarantee for the independent economic system of the meta-universe.
NFT, which stands for non-fungible Token, translates as non-homogeneous Token. NFT is also based on blockchain and is a digital token like bitcoin before it. But the difference is that each bitcoin is homogeneous and divisible. For example, you can own 0.01 bitcoins. And each NFT token is unique and indivisible, like an original painting of the Mona Lisa or your house.
In the meta-universe, every item is produced and traded based on NFT, ensuring the scarcity and stability of all digital items in the virtual world.
Roblox is the world’s largest online multiplayer game. On this platform, players can participate in the game itself, as well as develop and create their own games.
The variety of games created by gamers — shooting, fighting, racing, survival, and more — has captured everyone’s imagination.
In March 2021, Roblox went public in the US and was called the first share of the Metasomes. 2021 is also known as the first year of the Metasomes.
To yuan universe this blue sea, each big guy also made positive reaction in one after another. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is an avid supporter of the metasurverse, even rebranding his company as Meta.
At home, Tencent has invested in the red-hot project Roblox, while ByteDance has invested in game developer Qiankun, which bills itself as “China’s version of Roblox.”
Now, the meta-universe has become a new battlefield for many Internet giants to compete.
