If you had to ask what the most popular concept is right now, it would be the Meta-universe.

How hot is the metasverse and how important is it to the Internet industry? Take a look at a recent interview with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In an interview with The Verge, The head of The world’s largest social networking platform said that he hopes to turn Facebook into a meta-universe company within The next five years or so, and recently changed its name to Meta to usher in The meta-universe era. The hot concept of the meta-universe is also reflected in the ChinaJoy this year’s speech about the meta-universe repeatedly reported, even chip giant Nvidia could not help but “rub hot”, and so on.

Which begs the question, what exactly is the meta-universe? How will it affect our industry today?

What is the meta-universe

Metaverse is the English word for Metaverse, Meta means “beyond”, “yuan”, and verse means “universe”. The concept of a meta-universe first appeared in Neil Stephenson’s 1992 science fiction novel Avalanche, which depicts a virtual digital world parallel to the real world, in which people use digital avatars to control and compete with each other to improve their status.

Although most people know the source of the metasomes article, I don’t think many people who have actually read the original work understand the meaning of the book.

Compared with the secretary of the dull, director Steven spielberg’s 2018 science fiction film “the number one player is considered by far the most conforms to the” avalanche “described in the form of” yuan “universe, in the movie, the hero after wearing VR headsets, instantaneous can enter their own design another extremely lifelike virtual game world,” Oasis “(Oasis).In the scene of ready Player One, people can switch identities anytime and anywhere, freely shuttle between the physical world and the digital world, and study, work, make friends, shop and travel in the “meta-universe” composed of virtual space and time nodes. Metaverse, a virtual world built on a blockchain, is a decentralized platform that gives players ownership and autonomy.

Wikipedia describes the metadverse as a 3D virtual space based on the Internet of the future with link awareness and sharing features that exhibit convergence and physical persistence through virtually-enhanced physical reality.

However, I think Professor Zhu’s description of the metaverse is more specific than wikipedia’s: [Meta-universe] is the result of incorporating the information revolution (5G/6G), Internet revolution (Web3.0), artificial intelligence revolution, VR, AR, MR, especially game engine, and virtual reality technology revolution, showing the possibility of building a holographic digital world parallel to the traditional physical world to mankind. The interaction of information science, quantum science, mathematics and life science has changed the scientific paradigm. Promoted the traditional philosophy, sociology and even the humanities system breakthrough; It covers all digital technologies, including blockchain achievements; It has enriched the transformation mode of digital economy, integrating DeFi, IPFS, NFT and other digital financial achievements.

2. Properties of the metadverse

If the metasomes still exist in novels and movies, the successful listing of Roblox, the first stock in the metasomes, on the New York Stock Exchange in March seemed to signal that the virtual world was coming to life. As we all know, the metasomes are based on games, so it’s no surprise that the metasomes were first created in relation to games.

Now that the meta-universe is represented in the game, let’s look at eight key features of the meta-universe in the game, Immersive: Identity, Friends, Low Friction, Variety, Anywhere, Economy, Civility.

Attributes are explained as follows:

• Identity: Having a virtual identity, whether or not it’s related to a real one.
• Friends: To have friends in the metasverse, to socialize with, whether or not you know them in real life.
• Immersion: The ability to immerse yourself in the experience of the metadverse to the exclusion of everything else.
• Low latency: Everything in the meta-universe happens synchronously, with no asynchrony or latency.
• Diversity: The meta-universe offers a variety of rich content, including gameplay, items, art, and more.
• Anywhere: You can log into the metasurverse using any device and immerse yourself anywhere, anytime.
• Economy: As with any large complex game, the metaverse should have its own economy.
• Civilization: The meta-universe is supposed to be a virtual civilization.

The value chain of the meta-universe

The reason why the meta-universe concept exploded this year is not only because of the pursuit of capital, but also because the meta-universe has its own value chain and attracts Internet companies to enter the track to shape and define the meta-universe in their own way and understanding.

Although the concept of the metasverse is still vague, it does not prevent the metasverse from making a good story. When Roblo went public in March, it was valued at $40 billion, a 10-fold jump from its $4 billion valuation a year ago. Roblox continued to take the top spot in July, according to App Annie’s ranking of the world’s top grossing games. Domestically, MeteApp, a company that claims to create a meta-universe for all ages, has raised a $100m Series C round led by SIG Hainer Capital Asia following Roblox’s listing. Bytedance has made a strategic investment of nearly 100 million yuan in Qiankun, a game engine developer and “China’s version of Roblox”.

Let’s take a look at the meta-cosmic value chain, which is about looking for technology experiences that can be achieved. Therefore, starting from this value chain, the value chain of the meta-universe consists of seven levels: Experience; Discovery C. Creator economy; Spatial Computing; Decentralizition; Human Interface; Infrastructure.

• Content and Experience: Digital content dominates the Internet. In the metasverse, the proportion of digital behavior increases dramatically, allowing users to experiment with a variety of real-time experiences. At the moment, the business in this tier of companies is more on the gaming side, because the current hardware is still in the early stage, such as VR devices are not widely available. When hardware devices become mature and popular, a large number of companies will digitize various offline behaviors and provide rich experiences, including but not limited to: tourism, education, sports competitions, concerts and so on.
• Discover and Connect: The amount of content and experiences in the metasverse is unprecedented and will grow exponentially. This means that there is a problem for everyone: how to find content and experiences that are valuable and interesting. Companies with the ability to solve this problem tend to become packaging/distribution platforms for content and experiences.
• Hardware: An important feature of the metasexes compared to the Internet and mobile Internet is immersive experience, which means we need a new generation of information interaction devices. The device that can best achieve this condition is AR/VR smart glasses, and the computing platform behind them. It’s worth mentioning that Facebook-owned Oculus Quest2 could be an important product in the history of the metaverse.

• Operating system: In addition to the AR/VR hardware itself, a full XR operating system is still required. Most VR hardware currently runs on Android, but that’s probably not the answer. XR OS will be very different from mobile OS in terms of interaction, application mode, content distribution, hardware form and experience.
• Infrastructure: Technological revolution alone will not change The Times. Similarly, the next generation of Internet also needs adequate infrastructure, such as VR/AR, 5G, AI, decentralization and other technologies we are familiar with.

To sum up, the core value of the meta-universe lies in that it will become a super-large digital community with extreme immersive experience, rich content ecology, social system beyond time and space, economic system of virtual and real interaction, and can reflect real human social civilization.

Fourth, the influence of the meta-universe on the industry

From the perspective of the value of the metasomes and the current technical situation, the influence of the metasomes on the current industry is reflected in the pan-entertainment industry, especially the game industry is expected to be the first scene to be settled under the concept of the metasomes.

There are already a number of immersive scenario-based experiences based on the core of games. For example, Travis Scott held a virtual concert in the game Fortnite, which attracted 12.3 million players worldwide. The UNIVERSITY of California, Berkeley, recreated its campus in Minecraft, with graduates taking part in an online graduation ceremony as avatars; ACAI, a top AI academic conference, held a 20-year seminar on Nintendo’s Animal Mori Club, where the speaker delivered a speech with PPT in the game.

Roblox, an online game creation community, is recognized as the prototype of the metasomes because of the freedom of play and user activity brought by the phenomenal content creation ecosystem. With the deepening of the market’s understanding of the meta-universe, the greater significance of the game to the meta-universe is to provide a way of presentation, which is the underlying logic of the meta-universe to build a virtual world. At the same time, the popularity of the concept of the meta-universe has attracted numerous game manufacturers to enter the game.

Another easy place to land is in the social space. Facebook (now Meta) CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced that the company has formed a team dedicated to the development of the Meta-universe, and that in the next five years, Facebook will go from being a social company to a meta-universe company. In fact, virtual social networking is also changing the way people socialize and becoming a new direction of social development in the future.

In the field of consumption, with the arrival of the meta-universe, users’ consumption experience may usher in a new wave of interactive experience upgrading. At present, Xinoxygen has realized the service of AR face detection for users, and can calculate the makeup, hair and skin care products suitable for each user by scanning the face on mobile phones. The AR virtual shoe try function of Dewu App allows users to select their favorite shoe type and color and try on the shoes in AR to see the effect of the shoes on the feet. Driven by AR, VR, wearable devices, tactile sensing and other technologies, more immersive consumption may become the norm. It is not limited to the purchase of clothes, shoes and other basic consumption, AR house decoration, remote viewing, and even the simulation of tourist attractions will become possible.

It can be seen that the meta-universe is inseparable from AR and VR wearable virtual devices. As for the current situation of AR and VR wearable virtual devices, we can refer to talk about the non-existent “meta-universe”.